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Gao Xingjian, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature, has been the most important and productive playwright in the powerful Chinese Experimental Theatre Movement.
This book argues that Gao Xingjian's Idea of Theatre can only be explained by his broad knowledge and use of various Chinese and Western theatrical, literary, artistic and philosophical traditions. The author aims to show how Gao's theories of the theatre of anti-illusion, theatre of conscious convention, of the "poor theatre" and total theatre, of the neutral actor and the actor - jester - storyteller are derived from the Far Eastern tradition, and to what extent they have been inspired by 20th century Euro-American reformers of theatre such as Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Jerzy Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor. Although Gao' s plays and theatre form the major subject, this volume also pays ample attention to his painting and passion for music as sources of his dramaturgical strategies.
An exciting analysis of the myriad literary effects of Tiananmen, Belinda Kong's Tiananmen Fictions Outside the Square is the first full-length study of fictions related to the 1989 movement and massacre. More than any other episode in recent world history, Tiananmen has brought a distinctly politicized Chinese literary diaspora into stark relief. Kong redefines Tiananmen's meaning from an event that ended in local political failure to one that succeeded in producing a vital dimension of contemporary transnational writing today. She spotlights key writers-Gao Xingjian, Ha Jin, Annie Wang, and Ma Jian-who have written and published about the massacre from abroad. Their outsider/distanced perspectives inform their work, and reveal how diaspora writers continually reimagine Tiananmen's relevance to the post-1989 world at large. Compelling us to think about how Chinese culture, identity, and politics are being defined in the diaspora, Tiananmen Fictions Outside the Square candidly addresses issues of political exile, historical trauma, global capital, and state biopower.
Philip F. Williams has published nine books in East Asian studies, including The Great Wall of Confinement (UCal, 2004), and has been Professor of Chinese at Massey University and Arizona State University. --
This collection of scholarly essays offers a new understanding of local and global myths that have been constructed around Shakespeare in theatre, cinema, and television from the nineteenth century to the present. Drawing on a definition of myth as a powerful ideological narrative, Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance examines historical, political, and cultural conditions of Shakespearean performances in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. The first part of this volume offers a theoretical introduction to Shakespeare as myth from a twenty-first century perspective. The second part critically evaluates myths of linguistic transcendence, authenticity, and universality within broader European, neo-liberal, and post-colonial contexts. The study of local identities and global icons in the third part uncovers dynamic relationships between regional, national, and transnational myths of Shakespeare. The fourth part revises persistent narratives concerning a political potential of Shakespeare’s plays in communist and post-communist countries. Finally, part five explores the influence of commercial and popular culture on Shakespeare myths. Michael Dobson’s Afterword concludes the volume by locating Shakespeare within classical mythology and contemporary concerns.
Praise for the print edition:"...a useful and engaging reference to the vast world of the novel in world literature."
In Dionysus on the Other Shore, Letizia Fusini re-examines Gao Xingjian’s post-1987 theatre as a form of tragedy.
Denationalizing Identities explores the relationship between performance and ideology in the global Sinosphere. Wah Guan Lim's study of four important diasporic director-playwrights—Gao Xingjian, Stan Lai Sheng-chuan, Danny Yung Ning Tsun, and Kuo Pao Kun—shows the impact of theater on ideas of "Chineseness" across China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. At the height of the Cold War, the "Bamboo Curtain" divided the "two Chinas" across the Taiwan Strait. Meanwhile, Hong Kong prepared for its handover to the People's Republic of China and Singapore rethought Chinese education. As geopolitical tensions imposed ethno-nationalist identities across the region, these four dramatists wove together local, foreign, and Chinese elements in their art, challenging mainland China's narrative of an inevitable communist outcome. By performing cultural identities alternative to the ones sanctioned by their own states, they debunked notions of a unified Chineseness. Denationalizing Identities highlights the key role theater and performance played in circulating people and ideas across the Chinese-speaking world, well before cross-strait relations began to thaw.
Hui-neng, the patriarchal ancestor of all existing Ch’an/Zen, was invented by Shen-hui (684-758) based on a fusion of Buddhist and Confucian themes. This propaganda led to the creation of a large hagiographical literature that determined the trajectory of Ch’an.