Soul of Beijing Opera, The: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in the Changing World

2 Training a Total Performer: Four Skills and Five Canons

Time: From the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Main issues: The importance of “basic techniques” and the “mouth/heart” method in training actors for a total theatre of “singing, speaking, dance-acting, and combat”, and how they are trained to reconcile the formalized rules of performance with the ability to be creative. Jingju performers learn their essential skills in movement and voice through long and arduous training programmes starting in their childhood. Before discussing the methods in detail, some comments by foreign observers of jingju may highlight the particular requirements of the genre which the training is designed to fulfil. At a reception in Moscow in 1935 for Mei Lanfang, the celebrated male performer of the female role, Bertolt Brecht witnessed a jingju demonstration given by Mei in formal Western evening dress: But with what art he does this! He only needs a minimum of illusion . . . What Western actor of the old sort (apart from one or two comedians) could demonstrate the elements of his art like the Chinese actor Mei Lan-fang, without special lighting and wearing a dinner jacket in an ordinary room full of specialists? It would be like the magician at the fair giving away his tricks, so that nobody ever wanted to see the act again. (1978, 94) Brecht was impressed by Mei’s ability to discard the façade of illusion and “simply quote the character played” (94). This non-identification of the actor with the character in Mei’s performance helped confirm Brecht’s conception of theAlienation Effect. Sergei Eisenstein expressed similar enthusiasm for the “conventionalized form” of jingju in a 1935 article: 2 Training a Total Performer: Four Skills and Five Canons 56 The Soul of Beijing Opera Here we come upon the principal aspect of the Chinese stage. Realistic in its own specific sense, capable of touching upon familiar episodes of history and legend, as well as upon social and everyday problems of life, the Chinese theatre, nevertheless, is conventionalized in its form, from its treatment of character to the minutest detail of stage effect. Indeed, no matter with what aspect of the Chinese theatre you deal, each situation, each object is presented abstractly and often symbolically. Pure realism has been banished from the Chinese stage. (1986, 47) The non-mimetic quality of jingju noted by both Brecht and Eisenstein means that any external element like scenery, costume, lighting or sound effect that assists to create theatrical illusion is dispensable. What do remain indispensable for jingju performers, however, are the conventions that regulate every facet of their acting. As Eisenstein perceived in Mei Lanfang’s playing of female roles, the performer presented “a stylized, aesthetically abstract image of woman” through sets of specific conventions (47). The “conventionalized” or “stylized” quality of jingju need not prove restrictive if performers can exploit the genre’s conventions creatively. Constantin Stanislavski was fascinated by the combination of “limitation and freedom” in Mei Lanfang’s performances, and remarked to Mei that the acting on the Chinese stage was composed of “free movements with the laws of art” (Mei Lanfang 1962, 132). What is the dialectic relationship in jingju acting discerned by Stanislavski and how does it work? In what ways can the codified conventions of jingju yield freedom? Performers are the key to the process.Through their lengthy, rigorous and strictly disciplined training, actors acquire competence in the skills needed in this stylistic theatre. This groundwork also leads the trainees towards conventionalization, the principle described by Li Yuru as “the soul of jingju”,1 which raises physical skills to the level of performance art. Conventionalization in jingju is both abstract and concrete. Abstract because it is the aesthetic concept underpinning jingju’s core attributes, such as its codified acting/musical system and its categorization of role types. It becomes concrete in jingju’s stage techniques: performers of each role sub-type must learn many sets of stipulated techniques, including styles of singing, facial expressions, and movements of eyes, fingers, hands, arms, feet and legs. Each play has uniquely formulated conventions for presenting its plot, characters and their feelings under specific circumstances. These conventions are not only valuable assets of the genre but also carry emotional weight. 1 Quotation from Li Yuru’s letter to the author on 29 October 1998. 57 Training a Total Performer: Four Skills and Five Canons The practical function of conventionalization in jingju has parallels in the use of...