MCLC: Gao Xingjian collaborates with Lin Zhaohua in HK

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Gao Xingjian collaborates with Lin Zhaohua in HK
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Source: NYT (3/1/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/arts/02iht-gao02.html

At Hong Kong Festival, a Nobel Laureate Returns
By JOYCE HOR-CHUNG LAU

HONG KONG ‹ Gao Xingjian, a Nobel laureate long exiled from his native
China, had just flown in from Paris. He walked into a Hong Kong
performance hall and embraced the theater director Lin Zhaohua as singers
and dancers milled around onstage before a final run-through of their new
production.

The two men, now in their 70s (Mr. Gao is 72, Mr. Lin is 76), last worked
together 30 years ago when Mr. Lin directed three of Mr. Gao¹s plays ‹
³Absolute Signal,² ³Bus Stop² and ³Wild Man² ‹ in China in the 1980s.

Soon after, Mr. Gao left for France and Beijing banned all performances of
his works, reportedly because of references to the Tiananmen Square
crackdown in one of his  plays. Mr. Gao, best known for his novel ³Soul
Mountain,² went on to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000. He
never returned to mainland China. He also never worked again with Mr. Lin
‹ until the Hong Kong Arts Festival commissioned a new production of the
playwright¹s ³Of Mountains and Seas: A Tragicomedy of Gods.²

The rehearsal, a few hours before the opening last Friday, was Mr. Gao¹s
first glimpse of what his old friend had done with his script.

Speaking to journalists backstage, Mr. Gao said he was surprised by the
result, which combines traditional arts, like the Laoqiang and Nuo forms
of Chinese opera, with contemporary ballet.

A small, tidy figure with crinkly smiling eyes, Mr. Gao brushed away the
inevitable questions about his relationship with Beijing.

³I have no interest in that. I¹ve been away from mainland China for 24
years,² Mr. Gao said. ³China is far away from my real life. My
contribution to Chinese literature is finished. Now I live in the West and
my concern is Europe, which is undergoing a crisis.²

He also dismissed his usual tag of writer-in-exile.

³I¹m lucky to have had three lives: The first was in China; the second in
exile; and the third in France,² he said. ³I am a French writer with a
French passport. I am a citizen of the world. For me, national borders are
meaningless.²

Hong Kong, which reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997, is exempt
from the censorship that bars works by Mr. Gao and others from the
mainland. The fact many of the almost 300 participants at a public talk by
the two men were mainland Chinese exchange students was notable.
The enthusiasm in Hong Kong ‹ organizers said they sold nearly all tickets
for the four-performance run that ended on Monday ‹ was not unexpected. It
was the Chinese University of Hong Kong that published ³Of Mountains and
Seas² in 1993 and staged it in 2008.

The festival, now in its 40th year, was not limited by the usual Chinese
restrictions, but organizers also said they had not commissioned the work
to be deliberately provocative.

³We do not seek to be controversial, nor do we present work because it is
prohibited anywhere else,² said Tisa Ho, executive director of the Hong
Kong Arts Festival. ³We try to present work of value, in artistic terms
and in terms of understanding the human condition.²

³What is controversial in one time and space may not be so in another,²
she added.

Organizers said they did not yet know whether the show would tour after
its run here, either in China or anywhere else.
According to Mr. Gao, the 2012 production is the first time in more than
two decades that a mainland Chinese cast and crew have performed one of
his works.

Mr. Lin worked with the Shaanxi Huayin Laoqiang Troupe, who specialize in
an opera form found in an interior Chinese province, and Beijing Dance
Theater, the nation¹s pre-eminent contemporary dance group.

³Of Mountains and Seas² is an irreverent retelling of ³Shanhaijing,² an
ancient text that includes the classic Chinese creation myth.

Nu Wa, a wailing banshee of a goddess, expels the first humans from her
bowels. They are a dirty, noisy, vulgar lot, dressed in rough canvas
clothes, with distorted masks held over their faces. They fight and dance
and copulate, to bear even more dusty offspring.

Local viewers would recognize elements from Chinese mythology: The
handsome Yi the Archer shoots down 9 of the 10 suns scorching the earth.
His wife, the lovely Chang E, wishes for immortality and rises up to the
moon, in a legend still celebrated during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

There is a universality to the symbolism: the flawed woman eating the
forbidden fruit, the punishing deluge cleansing the bickering mortals
below, a god who becomes a civilization¹s first emperor.

Because of Mr. Gao¹s background, there is the temptation to look for
political overtones. Surely, the gods lording it over the common man can
be drunken, vengeful, petty, power hungry and self-absorbed. Deities are
portrayed with larger-than-life figures topped with oversize masks. The
frustration of being a lone individual going against the grain is depicted
by a decapitated man jumping around in vain while a mean-spirited crowd
plays keep-away with his head, represented by a basketball.

But ³Of Mountains and Seas² should not be viewed too literally. Mr. Gao is
a well-known absurdist, and Mr. Lin an experimentalist. Their
collaboration is as fragmented, confused and chaotic as one would imagine
the beginnings of humankind to be.

An audience struggling to follow the plot would be well advised to listen
to the master of ceremonies, a grinning peasant who bangs on a gong and
reminds everyone to just sit back and enjoy the show.

And what a variety show it is, with powerful singing, elegant dance moves
and acrobatic fight scenes. The Shaanxi Province troupe adds grit and
humor, while the modern ballet ‹ choreographed beautifully by Wang
Yuanyuan ‹ adds finesse.

None of the performers are professional stage actors in the usual sense.

³It¹s not a conventional play, and it shouldn¹t have conventional acting
either,² Mr. Lin said.

The elderly opera singers have a loose, natural style more suited to a
village festival than the rather formal Hong Kong Academy for Performing
Arts.

The most remarkable scene features colorful, gorgeously crafted, whimsical
shadow puppets. The actors sit cross-legged on the edge of the stage,
making the audience feel as if it is actually watching the show in some
anonymous, timeless village.

³It¹s strange seeing this play on stage,² Mr. Lin said. ³It would be
better to have it outdoors.²

Zhou Wenjia contributed reporting.