Chinese Theatre and the Actor in Performance (review)

Reviews 517© 1998 by University Jo Riley. Chinese Theatre and theActor in Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xii, 348 pp. Hardcover $64.95, isbn 0-52157090 -5. Jo Riley's book on Chinese theater is the third in a series on modern theater to be published by Cambridge University Press. Series editor David Bradby ofdie University of London states that each work will "explore the political, social and cultural functions oftheatre while also paying careful attention to detailed performance analysis" (p. iv). Unlike the first two books, which focused on theater traditions defined by clear chronological and geographical boundaries (i.e., alternative theater in Britain in the years 1968-1990 and postcolonial dieater as represented in the works of some major Third World playwrights), Riley's in contrast suggests that her study is limited only by die fact that it deals with theater in a single country—China. In a somewhat rambling introductory chapter, readers discover exacdy what Riley means by "Chinese theatre," and why she believes her perspective and approach to its analysis to be unique. Although she writes that during her travels in China in the 1980s she attended numerous theatrical performances (e.g., "spoken Western-style theatre, traditional theatre, socialist cinema, music concerts and variety shows, to comic dialogue sing-storytelling and disco"), the detailed descriptions she gives of the performances she attended are those of the xiqu (Chinese opera) and nuoxi (masked drama) traditions (p. 4). Widi an emotional flair, Riley reconstructs for her readers one performance (presumably ofa regional opera form, difangxi) that she attended in soudiern China in 1983: My ears filled with noise and chaos. Of people talking, shouting, eating, laughing . Of the rough percussion on stage and the performer's song. Of piglets snorting and hens clucking, ofbabies suckling, grandpas spitting. . . . For hours and hours, a gentle chaos, a sleepy bustle, and then a pause, a stop, a breath, a concentration, an involving passion for the moment on stage, as the female role tosses a sleeve over her shoulder, cries, exits, dragging the white silk on the floor behind her, trailing it for the dead hero to catch and call her back, before being released again by the crack of sunflower seeds in the mouth of my neighbour before the shell flies to the ground, my feet, the earth, (p. 4) For some unstated reason Riley writes that she perceived Beijing as the "pure [city], the north, the citadel" andjingju (Beijing opera) as "the 'true' theatre" of China (p. 4). She describes the firstjingju performance that she attended in 1984 ofHawai'iPressuPon returning to China: The stalls were half-filled with old grey men, their eyes closed, nodding, tapping their long yellow fingers to the beat, muttering; five white-shirted youths leaned 5i8 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 lugubriously over the gallery resting their heads on their arms, languidly watching the flickering digits on their silver quartz watches. . . . The actors played their play like automata, the only real movement was the shifting strip of characters displayed on either side of the stage giving the text. Without it, the figures on stage are dumb to the spectator, even with it, the text is unforgivingly classical, few can follow its intricacies (and I wondered what spectators could read anyway). ... (p. 5) Obviously unimpressed by what she saw onstage, Riley writes that she attended other less-than-satisfactory jingju performances in Beijing as well as performances of other theatrical forms outside the capital. It was after this experience that Riley embarked on a "search for the 'missing' theatre. The theatre people ofmy generation East and West had never seen, a theatre not coloured by the designs of those new theatre makers" (p. 7). (Who exactly these "new theatre makers" are, readers are never told.) After a lengthy description of a nuoxi performance, a tradition closely associated with shamanism, Riley returns to jingju, suggesting that the nandan (female impersonator) Mei Lanfang is the "one figure which unites all kinds of theatrical performance occurring in China; [and that] elements ofhis art are reflected in all theatrical events, from puppet theatre, mortuary ritual and nuo masked theatres" (p. 9). Riley proposes to place...