Week 4 Assignment 2 Outline Draft

Week 4 Assignment 2: Presentation Draft Outline
Submit Assignment
· Due Sunday by 11:59pm
· Points 20
· Submitting a file upload
Required Resources
Read/review the following resources for this activity:
· Textbook: Chapter 11
· Lesson
· Link (website): Narrated PowerPoint Tutorial
· Link (Word doc): Presentation Outline Template (Use this
template to complete the assignment.)
· Minimum of 3 scholarly sources
Instructions
Continue researching your topic and refine your thesis
statement. You should by now have written at least 3 sentences
for the main ideas concerning your topic.
Submit the following in outline form:
· Thesis statement
· At least 2 subtopics for each of the 3 main points
· References page (minimum of 3 resources, 1 per each main
point)
Complete the outline tutorial exercises provided in the lesson.
Spend time learning about outlining and solving your topic
organization, sequence, and outline problems. You will also
continue working on this outline next week.
Notify your instructor now if you do not understand how to
create an outline. If you are having difficulty creating a draft of
your outline, e-mail specific questions to your instructor. You
may wish to ask for a personal phone call.
Presentation Note: PowerPoint presentations with recorded
narration are due in Week 6. Begin practicing the use of your

microphone with your computer and the PowerPoint narration
feature. Review the Narrated PowerPoint Tutorial for
information on how to use the narration feature.
Writing Requirements (APA format)
· Length: 0.5-1 page (not including title page or references
page)
· 1-inch margins
· Double spaced
· 12-point Times New Roman font
· Title page
· References page (minimum of 3 scholarly sources)
Grading
This activity will be graded based on the W4 Presentation Draft
Outline Grading Rubric.
Course Outcomes (CO): 3
Due Date: By 11:59 p.m. MT on Sunday
The Greek Plays: New Translations edited by Mary Lefkowitz &
James Romm (2016) Modern Library, NY

Excerpted from The Bedford Introduction to Drama, 6th edition,
edited by Lee A. Jacobus, 2009

"Alienation-Effect" for Whom? Brecht's (Mis)interpretation of
the Classical Chinese
Theatre
Author(s): Min Tian
Source: Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Autumn, 1997),
pp. 200-222
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1124277
Accessed: 01-08-2019 22:08 UTC
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"Alienation-Effect" for Whom?
Brecht's (Mis)interpretation of
the Classical Chinese Theatre
Min Tian
Few Western theatre artists have been as celebrated for their
appreciation of Asian the-
atre aesthetics as has Bertolt Brecht, who, among other things,
used his understanding
of Mei Lanfang's acting as afoundation for his highly
influential theory of the "Alien-
ation-effect. "Min Tian looks closely at Brecht's
comprehension of Chinese theatre and
finds that the German playwright-director was considerably off
base.
Min Tian holds a doctorate from China's Central Academy of
Drama, where he has
been an associate professor since 1992. The author of many
scholarly articles and the
coauthor of a forthcoming book, Xian Dang Dai Ouzhou Xiju
(Modern and Con-

temporary European Drama), he is currently pursuing his Ph.D.
at the University
of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
Bertolt Brecht's essay, "Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting,"
has been widely celebrated not only because it formally
introduced his
concept of the "Alienation-effect" but also because of its
insight into
the classical Chinese theatre, particularly its acting. But
considering
the role played by Brecht's interpretation in the dissemination
and
reception of the classical Chinese theatre in the West and its
reper-
cussions in contemporary Chinese theatre, as well as the
increasing
importance of the Chinese theatre in the development of
intercultural
theatre since Brecht, it is imperative that Brecht's
interpretation of the
classical Chinese theatre should be properly examined, not
simply in
the perspective of Brecht's theory, but in the true perspective of
the
classical Chinese theatre.
Brecht's first exposure to Chinese drama was presumably
through Klabund's adaptation of StanislasJulien's translation of
a thir-
teenth-century Chinese play, The Story of the Chalk Circle
(Huilan jia),
written by Li Qianfu.b In 1925, Max Reinhardt produced
Klabund's
Asian TheatreJournal, vol. 14, no. 2 (Fall 1997). ? 1997 by

University of Hawai'i Press. All rights reserved.
2019 22:08:24 UTC
BRECHT'S (MIS)INTERPRETATION
adaptation in Berlin. In 1926, outraged by Klabund's
"shameless mis-
representation of the Chinese play," Alfred Forke made an
"accurate"
translation of the play, although he cut all the "indecent"
passages.
Brecht may or may not have known Julien's or Forke's
versions,1 but
the recurrent use of the story of the chalk circle in Brecht's
works from
1925 on and especially in his Caucasian Chalk Circle (1945)
testifies that
he had an indirect knowledge of at least one Chinese play
before he
saw Mei Lanfang'sc performance in 1935 and wrote his famous
essay
on Chinese acting some time before the winter of 1936. In an
inter-
view published in 1934, talking about "the epic, storytelling
kind" of
acting, Brecht said that "it's the kind the Chinese have been
using for
thousands of years" (Brecht 1964b, 68). In any case, his use of
certain
dramatic techniques, such as expository characters and direct
audi-

ence-address, in his plays written after 1925 may give evidence
of his
knowledge of Chinese drama, although he may have borrowed
these
techniques from the medieval, Elizabethan, or Japanese
theatres. In
an interview in 1940, Brecht talked about his experience as a
"copyist,"
saying that "as playwright I have copied the Japanese, Greek
and Eliz-
abethan drama" (Brecht 1964b, 224).
All in all, Brecht's limited reading knowledge of Chinese drama
cannot convince us that he could have understood the
quintessence of
it and, especially, its performance. There is no evidence that he
had
attended any performance of Chinese drama before 1935. It is
highly
possible that he saw Reinhardt's production of Klabund's
version,
which was "a great popular success" (Tatlow 1977, 293). But in
Kla-
bund's "shameless misrepresentation," although some traces of
Chi-
nese conventions remain, such as characters addressing the
audience
directly when introducing themselves, for the most part
Klabund thor-
oughly westernized the play by adding detailed descriptions of
decor
and realistic stage directions. Thus Brecht could not have
learned
much more about the Chinese theatre than the text gave him.
During his refuge in Moscow in 1935, Brecht saw for the first

time an authentic Chinese theatrical performance given by Mei
Lan-
fang, its most famous performer, distinguished as a dand
imperson-
ator,2 who was then on a theatrical tour with his troupe in
Russia.
According to A. C. Scott, Mei Lanfang gave his first
performance pri-
vately on March 19 at the Chinese Embassy in Moscow (Scott
1959,
117). According to Mei himself, he performed in six playlets as
a lead-
ing actor during a six-day residence of his troupe in the
Concert Hall,
Moscow, beginning on March 23. These playlets include
Yuzhou fenge
(Beauty Defies Tyranny), Fenhe wanf (By the Fen River
Bends), Ci hug
(Killing the Tiger), Dayu sha jiah (The Fisherman's Revenge),
Hongni
guan' (The Rainbow Pass), and Guifei zui jiuj (The Drunken
Beauty).
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He also performed six dances from six other plays, including
Xishik
(Xishi), Mulan congjun' (Mulan Joins the Army), Sifanm

(Longing for
the Mortal World), Magu xian shoun (Magu Wishing Wangmu a
Long
Life), Bawang bieji0 (The Emperor's Parting with His
Concubine), and
Hongxian dao heP (Hongxian Stealing the Box) (Mei Lanfang
1962,
44). A. C. Scott wrote that "after making his debut at the
Embassy Mei
opened a three week season in Moscow and Leningrad. His
troupe
appeared at the Grand Theatre in Moscow where the stage
community
afterwards held a forum to discuss and analyze technique and
symbol-
ism in the Chinese theatre" (Scott 1959, 117-118). According
to Ge
Baoquan,q who accompanied Mei and later wrote an article,
"Mei Lan-
fang in Russia," Mei's performance, including The Fisherman's
Revenge,
occurred on April 13 in the Grand Theatre and was his farewell
per-
formance (Mei Shaowu 1984, 132-134). According to Mei
Shaowu,r
Mei's son, "he was also asked to speak on Chinese theatrical art
at the
Masters of Art Clubs in Moscow and Leningrad. At these talks
he
demonstrated on the spot the various hand gestures, stage steps
and
singing peculiar to Peking Opera" (Mei Shaowu 1981, 61). Mei
Shaowu
does not give the date of these talks, but he confirms that
Brecht was
present (Mei Shaowu 1981, 62). In 1988, Mei Shaowu

translated and
published a document purporting to be the minutes of a forum
on
Mei's performance held in Moscow on April 14, 1935. The
document
shows that the speakers in the forum included Nemirovich-
Danchenko,
Sergei Tretiakoff, Constantin Stanislavsky, Vsevolod
Meyerhold, Alex-
ander Tairov, Sergei Eisenstein, Gordon Craig, Erwin Piscator,
Brecht,
and Alf Sjoberg (a Swedish director).3 However, we now know
that this
"document" was actually conjectured in a dramatic form and
pro-
duced as a play in 1986 in Poland and two years later in
France, by a
Swedish scholar, Lars Kleberg, who had long been fascinated
with
Mei's performance in Russia and tried but failed to find the
original
document recording the forum discussion. Kleberg later found
the
genuine record of the forum in the Russian national archives
and pub-
lished it in 1992 in a Russian journal, Iskusstvo Kino (Cinema
Art). The
record shows that Brecht, Piscator, Craig, Stanislavsky, and
Sjoberg
were not among the speakers. Indeed from this record we are
not even
sure they attended the forum at all.4
From the foregoing information it is possible for us to assess
the extent of Brecht's exposure to, and his knowledge of,

Chinese act-
ing. We know that Brecht attended the lecture and the
exemplary per-
formance given by Mei at the Masters of Art Clubs in Moscow.
This is
confirmed indirectly in Brecht's essay on Chinese acting:
"What West-
ern actor of the old sort (apart from one or two comedians)
could
demonstrate the elements of his art like the Chinese actor Mei
Lan-
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fang, without special lighting and wearing a dinner jacket in an
ordi-
nary room full of specialists?" (Brecht 1964a, 94). But as
Brecht's
observation suggests, what Mei did demonstrate was "the
elements of
his art," or, as Mei Shaowu put it, "the various hand gestures,
stage
steps and singing peculiar to Peking Opera" (Mei Shaowu 1981,
61).
It is clear that Brecht was not in a position to fully understand
Chinese
acting only on the basis of Mei's exemplary demonstration,
which

could not provide a full presentation of Chinese acting in a
theatrical
context. In his essay Brecht gives a brief description of a
fisherman's
daughter who "is shown paddling a boat" (Brecht 1964a, 92).
This
indicates that Brecht must have seen The Fisherman's Revenge
as per-
formed by Mei on some occasion or other. We are not sure of
Brecht's
presence at Mei's other performances. In sum, then, we must
acknowl-
edge that Brecht could not have gained a substantial knowledge
of the
Chinese theatre from his viewing of the exemplary performance
of
Mei and his troupe in Russia-at least not a knowledge that
could
enable him to interpret Chinese acting in its own perspective
and
context.
Despite his insufficient exposure to the Chinese theatre, Brecht
was greatly impressed by Mei's performance. Indeed, Brecht
acknowl-
edged that his essay "arose out of a performance by Mei
Lanfang's
company in Moscow in Spring 1935" (Brecht 1964a, 99). But
although
he used the term "A-effect" in this essay for the first time, it
would be
a mistake to conclude that Brecht found the A-effect in the
Chinese
theatre via Mei's performance. Actually, long before he saw
Mei's per-

formance in 1935 Brecht had been pregnant with new
conceptions of
theatre and acting and had given them articulation both in
theoreti-
cal writings and in theatrical practices. By 1933, when Brecht
went
abroad, and before 1935, when he saw Mei Lanfang's
performance in
Russia, the basic ideas of his theory of the epic theatre and, in
partic-
ular, his theory of the epic style of acting had been essentially
formu-
lated. What was later termed the "A-effect" was already firmly
estab-
lished and clearly articulated as the core of the epic theatre. As
Werner Hecht has pointed out, "Brecht's theory of epic theatre,
as it
appears in the Versuche [1930], is essentially complete. All
that follows
is an elaboration of the theory in greater detail-none of the
basic
ideas are changed" (Hecht 1961, 95-96). The concept of the A-
effect
first used by Brecht in his interpretation of Chinese theatre was
actu-
ally found in Russian formalist literary theory, and, according
to John
Willett, it appears to be a precise translation of Viktor
Shklovsky's term
"priem ostranenniya"-"the device of making strange" (Brecht
1964a,
99). Thus when he was seeing Mei's performance, Brecht was
already
armed with a formulated theory and a synthesizing concept, and
did

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not rest content with a description of what met his eye; he was
eager
to interpret what he saw in the interests of his own theory. This
is
exactly what he did in his essay on Chinese acting, which is
actually a
highly subjective concretization and elaboration of his own
theory. In
consequence, we must conclude that it was not in Chinese
acting that
Brecht found his A-effect. Nor did Chinese acting even actually
con-
firm Brecht's theory of the A-effect. As this article will
demonstrate,
Chinese acting in fact does not generate anything identical
with, or
even similar to, the Brechtian A-effect. Martin Esslin has
warned us of
the danger of overemphasizing the influence of Asian theatre
on
Brecht, "who loved the exotic and the 'vulgar."' Esslin
cautions:
"These exotic and folk influences ... should not lead one to
overlook

the large extent to which the Brecht theatre represents a return
to the
main stream of the European classical tradition" (Esslin 1961,
139).
Jacques Derrida has also noted that "the Verfremdungseffeckt
[Alien-
ation-effect] remains the prisoner of a classical paradox and of
'the
European ideal of art"' (Derrida 1978, 244).
At the very beginning of his essay, Brecht equates "the use of
the alienation effect" in Chinese acting with that used in the
epic the-
atre: "This method was recently used in Germany for plays of a
non-
aristotelian (not dependent on empathy) type as part of the
attempts
being made to evolve an epic theatre" (Brecht 1964a, 91). After
a con-
cise explanation of the A-effect, Brecht enters into his study of
the A-
effect in Chinese acting by making the blunt assertion that
"traditional
Chinese acting also knows the alienation effect, and applies it
most
subtly" (Brecht 1964a, 91). He provides a list of some well-
known sym-
bols used in the Chinese theatre which he thinks generate the
A-effect,
such as flags worn by a general (here Brecht's observation is
not cor-
rect. In fact, a general wears four flags no matter how many
troops he
commands), the symbol which signifies poverty, masks used to
distin-
guish characters, certain hand gestures signifying the opening

of a
door, and so forth. While admitting that "all this ... cannot very
well
be exported" and that "it is not all that simple to break with the
habit
of assimilating a work of art as a whole," Brecht asserts that
"this has to
be done if just one of a large number of effects is to be singled
out and
studied" (Brecht 1964a, 91). For the moment I do not wish to
question
whether Brecht could do justice to the Chinese theatre as an
organic
whole while singling out certain effects from its context. First
let us fol-
low Brecht's arguments and examine the way "the alienation
effect is
achieved in the Chinese theatre" (Brecht 1964a, 91).
According to Brecht, the Alienation-effect is achieved in the
Chinese theatre, first, by the way "the Chinese artist never acts
as if
there were a fourth wall besides the three surrounding him. He
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expresses his awareness of being watched.... The audience can
no

longer have the illusion of being the unseen spectator at an
event
which is really taking place" (Brecht 1964a, 91-92). It is true
that there
is no "fourth wall" in the Chinese theatre that cuts the audience
off
from the stage and the actor. But it is precisely this absence of
the
"fourth wall" that conditions the fact that the Chinese theatre
needs
no anti-fourth wall or anti-illusionary "Alienation-effect"
whatsoever.
In short, no devices are needed to demonstrate the absence of a
fourth wall, because the Chinese conception of theatre never
featured
a fourth wall in the first place. In another context, Brecht
suggests that
the use of direct audience-address disrupts stage illusion and
gener-
ates the A-effect (Brecht 1964b, 136). But in the Chinese
theatre,
when the actor is speaking directly to the audience to introduce
his
character and involve the audience in the character's situation,
the
spectator is not expected to distinguish between the actor and
the
character portrayed, and the self-introduction does not affect
his iden-
tification with the stage illusion created by the actor's
performance.

Furthermore, this absence of the "fourth wall" does not neces-
sarily result in the A-effect. In fact, in the Chinese theatre the
audience
is not alienated from what is going on upon the stage but,
rather, is
invited into the poetic atmosphere and imagination created by
the
actor's performance, which synthesizes poetry, singing, and
dancing.
In addition, as a result of the absence of the "fourth wall," the
audi-
ence has no illusion of being the unseen spectator. However,
this does
not result in the elimination of the stage illusion created by the
actor
through his performance. Here, of course, the illusion is not the
nat-
uralistic one to which both the Brechtian epic theatre and the
Chinese
theatre are opposed; it is that kind of illusion primarily of
poetic and
emotional atmosphere and artistic realm (yijingS) which is
based, not
on objective verisimilitude in physical form, but on subjective
likeness
in emotion and spirit (shensit). This kind of illusion works on
the imag-
ination and emotion of the spectator who relishes his aesthetic
and
empathetic pleasures and sympathies while enjoying the
performance.
It has nothing in common with the Brechtian A-effect. Even
Brecht
himself, while maintaining that "the Asiatic theatre even today

uses
musical and pantomimic A-effects" and that "such devices were
cer-
tainly a barrier to empathy," admitted later in his "Short
Organum for
the Theatre" (1948) that "this technique owed more, not less, to
hyp-
notic suggestion than do those by which empathy is achieved"
(Brecht
1964b, 192).
Apart from the absence of the "fourth wall," Brecht argues that
the A-effect in the Chinese theatre is achieved primarily by the
actor's
performance. This is manifested in the multiple relationships
between
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206
the performer and the character portrayed, between the
performer
and the audience, and between the audience and the character.
According to Brecht, in performance the Chinese performer
"observes
himself"; his object is "to appear strange and even surprising to
the
audience. He achieves this by looking strangely at himself and

his
work. As a result, everything put forward by him has a touch of
the
amazing" (Brecht 1964a, 92). For Brecht it is "the performer's
self-
observation, an artful and artistic act of self-alienation," that
"stopped
the spectator from losing himself in the character completely ...
and
lent a splendid remoteness to the events" (Brecht 1964a, 93).
By "self-
observation" Brecht means, as I understand it, to stress the
importance
of the conscious control of the performer in his performance.
This is
one of the major concerns he addresses throughout his essay.
But first let us consider Brecht's definition of the object of the
Chinese performer. Since Chinese playgoers are expected to be
famil-
iar with the stories, the characters, the conventions, and even
the lead-
ing performers of the various schools of Chinese xiquu and
their virtu-
osity, the object of the Chinese performer is to try his best to
meet the
high expectations of the playgoers, not to appear strange or
surprising
to them. He plays with the intimacy and sympathy of his
playgoers, not
the contrary. Brecht's observation that in Chinese acting
"everyday
things are thereby raised above the level of the obvious and
automatic"
(Brecht 1964a, 92) is correct only in the sense that in Chinese

acting
everyday things are artistically selected, condensed,
sublimated, typi-
fied, idealized, beautified, and transformed into a work of art.
It is far-
fetched, however, to assume that this process is done to appear
strange
to the audience. Again, the audience is familiar with this work
of art
just as they are familiar with their everyday things. The
Chinese the-
atre thrives on the playgoer's familiarity with its art. If the
playgoer is
not so cultivated as to understand this art, it surely appears
strange to
him. Such being the case, ironically, there will be no A-effect
simply
because he is not familiar with the art and is thereby unable to
under-
stand it.
To support his argument, Brecht provides a description of his
observation on Mei Lanfang's performance in a scene in which
a fish-
erman's daughter (in Willett's translation of Brecht's essay the
woman
is misidentified as the wife; in E. W. White and Eric Bentley's
versions
the identification is right) is shown steering a non-existent boat
with a
paddle: "Now the current is swifter, and she is finding it harder
to keep
her balance; now she is in a pool and paddling more easily"
(Brecht
1964a, 92). Contrary to his purpose, Brecht's description gives

a vivid
reconstruction of the impressive effect of illusion (not the A-
effect)
Mei's performance produced on its spectators, including
Brecht, who
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experienced such a performance for the first time. In this scene
there
is nothing like the "historicization" Brecht mistakenly
associates with
Piscator's production of The Good Soldier Schweik (Brecht
1964a, 92).
Now let us turn to the "self-observation" of the Chinese per-
former. Brecht observes that if the Chinese actor is
representing a
cloud, showing "its unexpected appearance, its soft and strong
growth,
its rapid yet gradual transformation,... he will occasionally
look at
the audience as if to say: isn't itjust like that? At the same time
he also
observes his own arms and legs, adducing them, testing them
and per-
haps finally approving them" (Brecht 1964a, 92). And in his
"Short

Description of a New Technique of Acting Which Produces an
Alien-
ation Effect," written in 1940, Brecht states again: "A masterly
use of
gestures can be seen in Chinese acting. The Chinese actor
achieves the
A-effect by being seen to observe his own movements" (Brecht
1964b,
139). Here Brecht was obviously impressed by Mei's exemplary
demon-
stration of the gestures and movements in Chinese acting, and
his
observation captures the appearance of Mei's demonstration
perfor-
mance. Characteristically, however, Brecht did not confine his
obser-
vation to the particulars of Mei's demonstration; he liked to
theorize
on these particulars and ultimately made them fit his invested
general
impression of Chinese acting. He argues that the performer's
self-
observation as an act of self-alienation stopped the spectator
from
identifying himself with the character completely. Mei's
demonstra-
tion may indeed have been characterized by self-observation,
but is
self-observation identical with self-alienation? Since self-
alienation pre-
supposes the existence of self-identification with the character
por-
trayed, and since Mei's demonstration was a pure
physicalization of
the basic elements of his art, and thus would work even without
a char-

acter portrayal, even without the character per se, there was
simply no
self-identification with the character, and therefore nothing to
self-
alienate. In a demonstration performance, the performer's
primary
concern is to show his virtuosity to the audience without a
story expo-
sition or a character portrayal; in a live performance, the
Chinese
actor's primary concern, as we shall see, is to portray a
character with
that virtuosity. Hence in a demonstration, the virtuosity per se
is the
end; in a live performance, the virtuosity is one of the means
the actor
uses to portray a character. In a demonstration, the actor is in
com-
plete conscious control of his body as he observes his gestures
and
movements; in a live performance, the process of creation is
much
more complicated. Ultimately, however, this is not the question
of
utmost importance. What really matters is the degree to which
this
self-observation exists and how it works in a full exposition of
the story
and a full portrayal of the characters other than a simple
demonstra-
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tion. This question concerns primarily the relationship between
the
performer's feeling and consciousness and the relationship
between
the performer and the character he portrays.
Compared with the Western actor, the Chinese actor undoubt-
edly has more conscious control of his body and emotion. This
is why
his performance strikes the Western actor as cold, as Brecht
observes.
Brecht pointed out that this coldness "does not mean that the
Chinese
theatre rejects all representation of feelings" (Brecht 1964a,
93). At
first sight, Brecht seems to defend the portrayal of feelings in
the Chi-
nese theatre. But behind Brecht's reasoning is the assumption
that the
Chinese theatre rejects (but not entirely) representation of
feelings.
As we shall see, the experience of Chinese artists of different
genera-
tions, including Mei's, proves just to the contrary. Given that
Brecht
argues for the representation of feelings in the Chinese theatre,
how-
ever, apparently what interests Brecht most is how to represent
feel-
ings in the Chinese theatre: "The performer portrays incidents

of
utmost passion, but without his delivery becoming heated. At
those
points where the character portrayed is deeply excited the
performer
takes a lock of hair between his lips and chews it" (Brecht
1964a, 93).
What Brecht describes here is one of the typical conventions in
the
Chinese theatre which represent different emotions of the
characters.
This kind of convention was developed by Chinese actors from
gener-
ation to generation from their observation and experience in
real life
and was then condensed and sublimated into an art of
expression in
which content and form cannot be separated from each other.
So
when used in performance, they are not merely "the outer
signs" to
which the performer, who plays the angry character, for
example,
points (Brecht 1964a, 93); they also refer to the feelings that
take
place in real life. On the other hand, it is characteristic of
Chinese per-
formance that the performer's gestures and movements must
appear
aesthetically beautiful. Thus emotions are generally artistically
modi-
fied, distilled, refined, and sublimated, or as Brecht observes,
"deco-
rously expressed," in performance. Hence the alleged coldness
of Chi-
nese performance. Therefore, it is wrong to assume that this

coldness
"comes from the actor's holding himself remote from the
character
portrayed" (Brecht 1964a, 93). In this respect, Mei's own
explanation
of the "aesthetic basis" of the Chinese classical opera is worth
noting:
The beautiful dance movements created by past artists are all
based
on gestures in real life, synthesized and accentuated to become
art.
And so the performing artist has this twofold task: apart from
acting
his role according to the development of the story, he must also
remember that his job is to express himself through beautiful
dance
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movements. If he fails to do this, he cannot produce good art.
Whether the character in the play is truly mad or is just
feigning mad-
ness, the artist must see to it that all the movements on the
stage are
beautiful. [Mei Lanfang 1981, 35-36]
In his "Short Description of a New Technique of Acting,"

Brecht states,
apparently with Chinese acting in mind, that "special elegance,
power
and grace of gesture bring about the A-effect" (Brecht 1964b,
139).
But in Chinese acting, the effect of beautification of gestures
and
movements, which appeals more to the senses than to the
reason, is
essentially emotional, perceptual, and aesthetic, devoid of the
social
gesture that is featured by the Brechtian A-effect.
While thinking that the "coldness" in Chinese performance is
created by the actor's consciously distancing himself from the
charac-
ter, Brecht further maintains that the Chinese performer
"rejects com-
plete conversion. He limits himself from the start to simply
quoting
the character played." And, Brecht continues, "the Chinese
performer
is in no trance. He can be interrupted at any moment.... We are
not
disturbing him at the 'mystic moment of action'; when he steps
on to
the stage before us the process of creation is already over"
(Brecht
1964a, 94-95). Brecht's assertion that the Chinese actor "rejects
com-
plete conversion" seems to me paradoxical: no actor, not even
the
most naturalistic one, is able to identify himself completely
with the
character portrayed. However, given the rejection of complete
con-

version in Chinese performance, Brecht's observation that the
Chi-
nese actor confines himself to simply quoting the character,
sophisti-
cated as it might be, is not really true of Chinese performance.
In fact,
in accordance with different characters and different dramatic
situa-
tions, the Chinese actor identifies himself emotionally and
spiritually
with the character in varied degrees in his performance.
This identification can be attested by the practice and experi-
ence of numerous artists of different generations. Tang
Xianzuv
(1550-1616), the most outstanding playwright of the Ming
dynasty,
maintained that "the performer who plays the female role
should con-
stantly imagine himself to be a woman; the one who plays the
male
role should constantly desire to be the man." He argued that the
ideal
performance should be so exquisite that "the dancer does not
know
where his emotion comes from, and the audience does not know
where his mind stops." Tang Xianzu hailed Yu Cai,w who
played Du
Liniangx in Maodan tingY (The Peony Pavilion), for Yu's
truthful por-
trayal of the heroine's tragic emotions. In one of his poems he
notes
that Wu Ying'sz performance of the heroine Huo Xiaoyuaa in
his play
Zi chai jiab (The Story of the Purple Hairpin) moved his

audience to
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tears; he deplored Wu's later performance for its lack of
emotion (Jing
1992, 113). According to an account in Ci Xueac (Teasing
Thoughts on
Poetry) by Li Kaixianad (1502-1568), a playwright of the Ming
dynasty,
Yan Rong,ae a contemporary of Li's, dissatisfied with his first
perfor-
mance of Gongsun Chujiua in Zhao shi guerag (The Orphan of
the
Zhao Family), "came home stroking his beard with left hand
and slap-
ping his cheeks with right hand, took a full-length mirror and
held a
wooden orphan in the arms, speaking for a while, singing for a
while
and crying for a while; his solitary suffering and sorrow were
so strong
that he became truly pitiable in his expression and
uncontrollable in
his feelings." After that, he appeared in the role for the second
time
and "hundreds of people cried and were choked with tears"
(Zhong-

guo Xiqu Yanjiuyuan 1959a, 354). InJu Shuoah (On Drama),
compiled
byJiao Xunai (1763-1820), a scholar of the Qing dynasty, a
record
states that Shang Xiaoling,ai a celebrated actress who played in
The
Peony Pavilion, was able to act so truthfully that it was as if
she herself
were experiencing the events portrayed in the play with real
senti-
ments, grace, sorrow, and tears. Eventually, one day when she
per-
formed in the role of Du Liniang, "singing the lines ... she
collapsed
and died on the spot" (Zhongguo Xiqu Yanjiuyuan 1959b, 197).
Of course, this is an extreme case. But let us consider some
other examples. Gao Langtingak (b. 1774), one of the earliest
leading
performers and once manager of the famous "San Qing"'a
company,5
was said to have portrayed female characters so vividly and
truthfully
that his audience "forgot that he was impersonating a female"
(Zhong-
guo Dabaikequanshu Bianjibu 1983, 82). Ji Yunam (1724-
1805), a
writer of the Qing dynasty, left us a record in his notes in
which a
female impersonator was asked to talk about his experience of
perfor-
mance. He answered:
Taking my body as a female, I have to transform my heart into
that of

a female, and then my tender feelings and charming postures
can
become truthful and lifelike. If a trace of male heart remains,
there
must be a bit that does not resemble a female.... If a male
imper-
sonates a female on the stage, when he plays a chaste woman,
he must
make his own heart chaste, and does not lose her chastity even
if she
is laughing and making jokes; when he plays a wanton woman,
he
must make his own heart loose, and does not hide her
wantonness
even if she is sitting sedately; when he plays a noble woman,
he must
make his own heart noble, and keep her dignity even if she is in
hum-
ble dress; when he plays a virtuous woman, he must make his
own
heart gentle, and does not appear agitated even if she is angry;
when
he plays a shrew, he must make his own heart stubborn and
perverse,
and does not fall silent even if she is in the wrong. And all
other feel-
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BRECHT'S (MIS) INTERPRETATION

ings, such as happiness, anger, sorrow, delight, gratitude,
resentment,
love, and hatred, the actor must experience each of them,
putting
himself in the position of the character, and thinking of them
not as
fictional but as real, and the spectator also thinks of them as
real. [Kui
Fu and Wu Yuhua 1992, 362]
Taking such experiences and observations into account, it is
clear
enough that Chinese performers did have an intense
psychological
and spiritual experience of, and identification with, the
characters and
events enacted in their performance. If Brecht had seen these
perfor-
mances, he would probably have condemned them as examples
of the
"complete conversion operation" he thinks "extremely
exhausting"
(Brecht 1964a, 93). It is important to emphasize that these
examples
cannot be dismissed as isolated; in fact, they exemplify the
theatrical
experience and the principle of acting which make up one of
the cor-
nerstones of the aesthetics of the Chinese traditional
performance art.
This principle is summed up by Huang Fanchuo,an himself an
actor of
the Qing dynasty, in his Liyuan Yuana? (The Pear Garden
Essentials),
the first and the only treatise produced in ancient China which

deals
with the art of Chinese performance:
Any performer, male or female, should consider himself
[herself] to
be the character he [she] chooses to impersonate. Happiness,
anger,
sorrow, delight, partings and reunions, joy and sadness, all
these feel-
ings must come from the bottom of one's heart so that the
spectator
can be emotionally moved. [Zhongguo Xiqu Yanjiuyuan 1959c,
11]
The performance art of the classical theatre in modern China
is a consistent development of the tradition. While the forms or
con-
ventions of the performance have been consistently refined
between
the 1920s and the 1950s and improved with the significant
contribu-
tions made by Mei Lanfang, paramount importance has been
given to
expression of the content of thought and portrayal of the
characters
of the plays enacted; traditional performance, which had
depended
heavily on singing and dancing, has undergone a reformation
toward
what can be termed "characterization performance" (xingge hua
biaoy-
anaP), which stresses the performer's internal experience of the
char-
acter played and the artistically truthful portrayal of feelings
and
thoughts. It would be a serious misunderstanding, therefore, to

label
Chinese performance as purely stylistic or formalistic. It is also
mis-
leading to overstress the significance of its conventions at the
expense
of the creative process, "the mysteries of metamorphosis"
(Brecht's
words) of the individual artist in his performance. It is
impossible here
to detail all the characteristics of traditional performance art in
mod-
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ern China. Instead, an analysis of Mei Lanfang and his fellow
artists'
observations on their own performance will be sufficient to
question
the validity of Brecht's assumptions about Chinese acting.
Summing up the experience of his forty-year stage life, Mei
Lanfang generalizes his "highest realm" of performance as
follows:
Everyone says that some excellent performer can become the
very
image of any character he is impersonating. This means that
not only

his appearance but also his singing, reciting, movements, spirit,
and
feelings must become so closely identical with the status of the
char-
acter that it is as if he were really that character. In the
meanwhile, the
spectators, spellbound by his performance, forget that he is a
per-
former and accept him as the character. It is only in this realm,
in
which it is difficult to tell the performer from the character,
that the
performer, while singing, merges into the situation of the play.
This
alone is the highest realm. [Mei Lanfang 1951, 100]
What Mei expounds here as the ideal of Chinese performance
art is
exactly what Brecht attacks as "complete conversion." We may
well ask
of this kind of performance: Where is the "self-observation" as
"self-
alienation"? Where is the distance between the performer and
the
character? And ultimately, where is the A-effect? The principle
of Chi-
nese performance art that Mei cherished was crystallized from
the liv-
ing experience of his forty-year stage life and embodied in all
his per-
formances.
In his memoirs, Mei made detailed analyses of several of his
performances-notably The Drunken Beauty and Beauty Defies
Tyranny,
which were widely acclaimed as his best performances. After

examin-
ing the conflicting feelings of the character he portrayed in
Beauty
Defies Tyranny, Mei concludes:
All these different emotions have to be portrayed within a very
short
time. The performing artist has to work all this out himself.
The first
thing to do is to forget that you are acting and make yourself
one with
the part. Only then can you depict those feelings profoundly
and
meticulously. [Mei Lanfang 1981, 35]
In his performance of The Drunken Beauty, Mei again stresses
the truth-
ful portrayal of the character's feelings. Noting that Yang
Guifei'saq
feelings are developed and transformed each time she drinks,
he
maintains that all these transformations must be portrayed in
accor-
dance with her character, position, and immediate situation and
ulti-
mately with a sense of beauty:
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The artist must keep in mind that here is a noble lady of the
court get-
ting drunk and forgetting herself in her loneliness and grief,
not a
woman of loose conduct behaving wildly after drinking. Only
by inter-
preting it this way can one convey the spirit and produce a
beautiful
drama. [Mei Lanfang 1981, 33]
Here Mei unmistakably underscores a truthful identification
with the
reality of the character portrayed-far indeed from the "artful
and
artistic act of self-alienation" Brecht so treasures as opposed to
the per-
former's empathy and identification with the character. There is
no
denying that Mei was a rare master of artistic techniques. Yet it
is
equally clear that he refused to sacrifice truthful
characterization in
his pursuit of the perfection of "exhibiting the outer signs."
Brecht
makes it clear that when he speaks of "exhibiting the outer
signs of
emotion" he does not mean "such an exhibition and such a
choice of
signs that the emotional transference does in fact take place
because
the actor has managed to infect himself with the emotions
portrayed,
by exhibiting the outer signs" (Brecht 1964a, 94). Seen from
Mei's

experience, however, this is exactly what Mei did in his perfor-
mances-that is, in his exhibition of outer signs, "the emotional
trans-
ference" did take place because he managed to "infect himself'
with
the emotions he portrayed, not simply by exhibiting the outer
signs as
Brecht observed, but by an intense, internal onstage (not just
pre-
stage) experience of, and identification with, the emotions
portrayed.
Here the "outer signs" are beautified objectifications of the
emotions.
At first sight, Brecht seems to contradict himself at a crucial
point. On the one hand, he admits that in acting like that
practiced by
Chinese artists "there is of course a creative process at work";
on the
other hand, he asserts that when the Chinese actor steps onto
the
stage "the process of creation is already over." But a closer
look makes
it clear that by "a creative process" Brecht means the process
com-
pleted before the actor's performance on the stage, while the
actor's
onstage performance is apparently only a quotation of the
character,
an exhibition of "the outer signs" or techniques. As we have
seen, this
is not true of Mei's acting, which, as a creative process, was
not com-
plete when he stepped on the stage. But this is not the point of
para-
mount importance that Brecht wants to make. What interests

Brecht
most is that in Chinese acting the creative process "is raised to
the con-
scious level," a level of quotation, and thus is "a higher one"
and is
"healthier" (Brecht 1964a, 95) than the Western acting whose
creative
process (Stanislavsky's "creative mood") is "an 'intuitive' and
accord-
ingly murky process which takes place in the subconscious"
(Brecht
1964a, 93-94). Here questions arise immediately: Is there any
creative
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process at the unconscious or subconscious level of Chinese
acting?
And if there is, how is it related to "the conscious level" and
the A-
effect presumably produced at this level?
Reflecting on an observation on his performance in Beauty
Defies Tyranny and The Drunken Beauty, Mei comments:
A friend who has seen me playing the leading role in these two
operas

several times commented that I like to keep changing my
gestures
and movements. Actually I do not do so purposely. As I
perform a
part, new understanding of it makes me alter my gestures
uncon-
sciously. [Mei Lanfang 1981, 37; 1961, 26]
In another context, Mei says of his performance in The
Drunken Beauty:
When I was acting on the stage, I was not exactly certain where
I did
what I meant to do. Sometimes I laughed where I could not
help
laughing; sometimes I laughed where I was driven to laugh in
spite of
myself. I did not remember to laugh where I must. [Zhongguo
Mei
Lanfang 1990, 257-258]
Mei's statements make it clear enough that a good deal of
uncon-
sciousness or subconsciousness played an important part in his
art. And
this use of subconsciousness is confirmed by eyewitness
descriptions of
Mei's performance by his fellow performers. In 1916,Jiang
Miaoxiangar
(1890-1972), another famous performer who worked with Mei
for
over forty years, performed with him in Daiyu zang huaas
(Daiyu Bury-
ing the Blossoms). In his reflections, Jiang provides a vivid
reconstruc-
tion of Mei's portrayal of Daiyu in a scene in which Daiyu, left

alone,
listening to some melancholy songs from The Peony Pavilion,
recites sev-
eral lines from them and identifies them with her own situation:
After reciting, Mei fell silent. The expression on his face
showed that
he was deeply touched, with his eyes staring blankly as if he
was lost in
trance, and until the singing was audible again behind the drop,
he
turned around and moved for a few steps in the direction of the
song.... And later, transfixed with musing for a while, he
repeated
the words "beauty figuring like blooming flowers, and time
passing
like flowing waters" in a voice that became lower and lower,
and
appeared genuinely absorbed and intoxicated. [Zhongguo Mei
Lan-
fang 1990, 431-432]
In the following scenes, Jiang notes again "the boundless
sadness and
depression" in Mei's eyes, his "somewhat staggering" and
"feeble"
movements, and "the blank expression in his eyes as if in
trance,"
which "gives a most vivid and moving embodiment of Daiyu's
mood"
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(Zhongguo Mei Lanfang 1990, 432-433). Yu Zhenfeiat (1902-
1993), a
well-known xiaoshengau (the young male role type) actor who
per-
formed with Mei in The Peony Pavilion on many occasions,
also noticed
Mei's "subconscious movements which arose from internal
excite-
ment" in his portrayal of the heroine Du Liniang (Zhongguo
Mei Lan-
fang 1990, 436). Ma Lianlianga (1901-1966), a renowned
laoshenga
(the older male role type) performer, observed that Mei
Lanfang was
able to identify himself with the role from the beginning to the
end of
a play or a scene and, morover, did so with his gestures and
move-
ments full of the sense of artistic beauty (Zhongguo Mei
Lanfang
1990, 399). The example Ma considered the best illustration of
this
achievement of Mei's performance is one of the plays he
coperformed
with Mei, The Fisherman's Revenge, a play Brecht probably
saw in Russia.
From Mei's reflections and his fellow performers' observations
on his performances, we can conclude that the unconscious or
the

subconscious had an important place in Mei's performance. In
the
creative process at the unconscious level, the performer is
merged
into, not distanced from, the character portrayed. But in
different dra-
matic situations, and in accordance with the final artistic effect
(it
might be called "the effect of beautification") of the
performance as a
whole, this identification is modified aesthetically and is,
therefore,
not absolute and complete. By all accounts, this aesthetically
modified
identification is incompatible with "an act of self-alienation"
and does
not produce the Brechtian A-effect. It is precisely this
aestheticized
identification (not superficial but psychological and spiritual)
of the
performer with the character, not just the performance
conventions,
that the Chinese performers considered the highest achievement
of
their art, as exemplified in Mei's performance. This can be
further
attested by the experience of Gai Jiaotianax (1888-1971),
distin-
guished as a wushengaY (the martial male role type) performer,
who
attached paramount importance to the actor's identification
with the
role portrayed (Zhejiang Wenyi Chubanshe 1984, 366).
As a result of his misinterpretation of the relationship between
the performer and the character in Chinese performance, Brecht

mis-
interpreted the relationship between the performer (and the
charac-
ter portrayed) and the audience. In Chinese performance, as we
have
seen, the audience is not distanced or alienated from the
character by
virtue of the performer's "self-observation" simply because,
first, the
self-observation cannot be considered as an act of self-
alienation and,
most significantly, a performer's intense experience of, and
identifi-
cation with, the character is incompatible with self-
observation. It is
through the performer's identification that the spectator is
drawn into
the dramatic situation emotionally, spiritually, and
aesthetically and
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identifies himself in varied degrees with the character.
Commenting
on the audience's reaction to Mei's performance of "a death
scene,"
Brecht writes:

When Mei Lanfang was playing a death scene a spectator
sitting next
[to] me exclaimed with astonishment at one of his gestures.
One
or two people sitting in front of us turned round indignantly
and
sshhh'd. They behaved as if they were present at the real death
of a
real girl. Possibly their attitude would have been all right for a
Euro-
pean production, but for a Chinese it was unspeakably
ridiculous. In
their case the A-effect had misfired. [Brecht 1964a, 95]
Despite Brecht's intention, this passage provides evidence of
the
magic power of Mei's performance and the reaction of the
audience
under its spell. It is precisely Mei's truthful performance that
made
these spectators either cry with astonishment or, immersed in
the plea-
sures of empathy, instantly become indignant at any
interruption. It
was not the A-effect that misfired; it was Brecht who was only
too ready
in his preoccupation to intuitively read his A-effect into Mei's
perfor-
mance. Compare Brecht's reaction with that made by Stark
Young,
then the doyen of American critics, who, in America in 1930,
saw Mei's
performance of the death of Fei Chen-o (Fei Zheneaz) in The
Death of
the Tiger General (Ci hu): "I am shaken with an excitement that
is curi-

ously stronger than I am likely to get from any mere
photographic por-
trayal of death and horror and is yet at the same time vaguer
and more
exalted" (Young 1930, 298). What Young experienced in Mei's
per-
formance is truly an Aristotelian catharsis that Brecht so
painstakingly
tried to undermine. Brecht's misinterpretation of the rapport
between
Chinese performance and its audience was doomed by his own
theory
and in turn can serve as an excellent exposition of the
incompatibility
of his theory of the A-effect with the reality of theatrical
communica-
tion, including his own practice, just as Martin Esslin has
pointed out:
In his rejection of identification between audience and
characters
Brecht comes into conflict with the fundamental concept of
psychol-
ogy that regards processes of identification as the basic
mechanisms
by which one human being communicates with another.
Without
identification and empathy each person would be irrevocably
impris-
oned within himself. Even the spectators of a sporting contest,
whom
Brecht so often invoked as the ideal of a critical audience,
identify
themselves with contestants. [Esslin 1961, 141]
Esslin further argues that, in practice, Brecht "never succeeded

in
evoking the critical attitude he postulated; the audience
stubbornly
216
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went on being moved to terror and to pity" (Esslin 1961, 141).
His own
productions of such typical Brechtian epic plays as Mother
Courage and
The Caucasian Chalk Circle proved conspicuously
contradictory to his
theoretical considerations (Fuegi 1972, 91).
After his examination of the A-effect in Chinese acting, Brecht
admits that "it is not entirely easy to realize that the Chinese
actor's
A-effect is a transportable piece of technique: a conception that
can
be prised loose from the Chinese theatre" (Brecht 1964a, 95).
In his
eyes, this "A-effect" is part of a theatre he thinks of as
"uncommonly
precious" with "its portrayal of human passions as schematized,
its
idea of society as rigid and wrongheaded," and therefore its
motives
and objects "odd and suspicious" (Brecht 1964a, 95). In his

"Short
Organum for the Theatre," Brecht writes again that "the social
aims of
these old devices were entirely different from our own" (Brecht
1964b,
192). To some extent, Brecht is right: in the Chinese theatre the
por-
trayal of human passions, compared with that of naturalistic
acting,
appears generalized in line with the forms (the conventions) of
expression. But this does not lead to the conclusion that the
Chinese
theatre excludes a concrete and truthful depiction of human
passions
and their transformations. On the contrary, as exemplified in
Mei's
performance, the Chinese theatre can portray a whole gamut of
human emotions; its conventions do not necessarily condition
the por-
trayal as rigidly and dryly schematized; they actually
concretize, crys-
tallize, vitalize, and beautify it with their artistic accuracy,
intensity,
and richness in associations.6 In the light of Brechtian
Marxism, of
course, the ideal of society represented in the classical Chinese
theatre
is essentially negative and wrongheaded with its overtones and
reso-
nances of feudal ideology. Yet the fact cannot be ignored that
in the
Chinese theatre and drama, many issues are treated with
radical, even
subversive, social and political implications.
Ultimately, what is most crucial in Brecht's (mis)interpretation

of Chinese acting and theatre is that, by his dismissal of the
Chinese
theatre as socially and ideologically false, by his (mis)
diagnosis of Chi-
nese performance as "the artistic counterpart of a primitive
technol-
ogy, a rudimentary science," a mystifying magic, and by his
defining
what he (mis) conceives as the A-effect in Chinese acting
either as "odd
and suspicious" in its motives and objects, or as devoid of
social pur-
pose, Brecht attempted to justify his appropriation of the "A-
effect" in
Chinese acting:
In point of fact the only people who can profitably study a
piece of
technique like Chinese acting's A-effect are those who need
such a
technique for quite definite social purposes. [Brecht 1964a, 96]
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Here Chinese acting's "A-effect" is eventually "prised loose"
from its
context and studied "profitably" as "a piece of technique" by
Brecht,

who needed such a technique for "quite definite social
purposes."
What matters most to me, however, is not the appropriation or
the use
of the Other, for it seems to me that this kind of appropriation
is
inevitable in any intercultural theatrical communication. What
con-
cerns me most is the (mis)interpretation socially and
ideologically ori-
ented and guided by a prescribed superiority, its strategies
involved in
the process of interpretation and appropriation, and its
aftermath.
What Brecht gleaned from Mei's exemplary performance is the
most
obvious and superficial aspect of Chinese performance and
Mei's per-
formance as well. He "prised loose" and mislabeled as the A-
effect
pieces of Chinese acting technique, reducing them to a set of
quotable
"outer signs" at the expense of the onstage creation of the
performer
which gives them flesh and blood and saves them from
becoming a
rigid set of cliches and stereotypes. And furthermore, by
demystifying
or dismissing the metamorphosis of creation as an allegedly
mystifying
magic, Brecht mystified the obvious and eventually
incorporated it
into the discourse of his own system. In his exposition of the
ways in
which the West used the Oriental Other for its own purpose,
Edward

Said demonstrates that "the imaginative examination of things
Orien-
tal" was based more or less exclusively upon a centralized
"sovereign
Western consciousness" which defined things Oriental
according to "a
detailed logic governed not simply by empirical reality but by a
battery
of desires, repressions, investments, and projections" (Said
1978, 8). In
a more specific critique of the French postcolonial orientalist
desires
of Chinese utopias in the 1960s and the 1970s, Lisa Lowe
observes that
"the fascination with China was a means of figuring not only
the fem-
inist-psychoanalytic desires of Kristeva, and the semiotic-
psycho-ana-
lytic desires of Barthes, but also the political desires of the
intellectu-
als at Tel quel (including Kristeva and Barthes) as well" (Lowe
1991,
178). On the basis of my examination of Brecht's
(mis)interpretation
of the classical Chinese theatre, I believe that Said's and
Lowe's obser-
vations can be applied with equal force to Brecht's
"fascination" with
the classical Chinese theatre (and Chinese culture in general),
which
was clearly used as a means to valorize and legitimize Brecht's
own the-
oretical desires, investments, and projections. In Brecht's
(mis)inter-
pretation of the classical Chinese theatre, actually involved is
what

James Clifford calls "a poetics of displacement" (Clifford
1988, 152),
in which the received exotic Other is displaced by domestic
desires
and needs.
218
2019 22:08:24 UTC
NOTES
The author would like to thank Dr. Robert B. Graves, Professor
Samuel L. Leiter, and an anonymous reader for their useful
comments on an
early draft of this article. But I am solely responsible for any
error or over-
sight.
1. See Tatlow (1977, 291-302). For a discussion of the
reception of
The Story of the Chalk Circle in the West, see Du (1995).
2. The roles in the classical Chinese theatre are divided into
four
types: shengba (the male role type), dan (the female role type),
jingbb (the face-
painted role type), and choubc (the comic role type). Each of
these four types

is further subdivided into several different categories. Owing to
this conven-
tion, the character portrayal in Chinese acting has long been
considered
stereotyped. As I shall demonstrate in this article, however,
this kind of for-
malist assumption is not true of the reality of Chinese acting.
3. This "document" was published in Chinese in Zhongguo
Xiqu (Chi-
nese xiqu) 7 (1988), and reprinted in Zhongguo Mei Lanfang
1990, 709-743.
4. See Kleberg (1992). A Chinese version (translated by Li
Xiao-
zheng) of this document was published in Zhongguo Xiqu
(Chinese xiqu) 14
(1992): 1-18. I wish to thank Dr. Robert B. Graves for
reminding me to ver-
ify whether Brecht was present in the forum, and Professor Sun
Jiaxiu for
helping me find the Chinese version in China.
5. "San Qing" was one of the four celebrated theatre companies
which
gathered in Beijing from Anhui province after 1790 and played
a significant
role in the formation and development of jing jubd (Peking
opera). After
1910, these four companies disbanded one after another.
6. In his examination of the conception of mobe in traditional
Chinese
drama and dramatic criticism, Jingsong Chen concludes that the
concept
"suggests a powerful expression and revelation of the emotions

of the char-
acters." Although Chen's examination is undertaken primarily
with regard to
the classical theory of dramatic creation-and therefore different
from
mine-I believe that it undoubtedly lends support to my
argument. And I
strongly agree with him that "a study of traditional Chinese
theatre with
Western ideas will produce nothing more positive than
skepticism and con-
fusion." See Chen (1997). I wish to thank Professor Samuel L.
Leiter for refer-
ring me to this article when it was still in proofs.
GLOSSARY
a Ai- it g e'J g
b + * h 4T 4
c 44 i 1
d j j z -i,i
e kf k 1 A
f ^ 1 g _ At 5
219
2019 22:08:24 UTC
Tian

m - L aj t ]J
n A-4t ak qg
o g T h] al f
p :, a am 4Z
q i an ,
r /a, ao ~I1,
s ,t ap 'i4Y- t A;i
t l+a aq i4-gt
u ar -^ A'
v ,11L as 4- tA
w t -' at j-T.
x it i4j au 'Jt
y 4U-t+ av --iS L
z aw i
aa t,], ax X ^l
ab ~ zig ay _
ac i-i az ,,
ad 4-4 ba i
ae 4,~ bb ;-
af cJ, 4 bc L
ag At V~J L bd 'C,
ah J1 i'. be b (X)
ai , 4g bf gj
REFERENCES
Brecht, Bertolt. 1964a.
"Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting." In John Willett, ed. and
trans.,
Brecht on Theatre. New York: Hill & Wang. A slightly
different version
was translated by Eric Walter White, titled "The Fourth Wall of

China:
An Essay on the Effect of Disillusion in the Chinese Theatre,"
Life and
Letters Today 15 (6) (Winter 1936): 116-123. Eric Bentley's
transla-
tion, "On Chinese Acting," which is based on the same text as
White's,
first appeared in Furioso (Fall 1949) and was reprinted in
Tulane
Drama Review 6 (1) (September 1961).
1964b.
Brecht on Theatre. Edited and translated by John Willett.
Chen, Jingsong. 1997.
"To Make People Happy, Drama Imitates Joy: The Chinese
Concep-
tion of Theatrical Mo." Asian Theatre Journal 14 (1) (Spring
1997):
38-55.
Clifford, James. 1988.
The Predicament of Culture. Cambridge: Havard University
Press.
220
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Derrida, Jacques. 1978.

Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: The
Univer-
sity of Chicago Press.
Du, Wenwei. 1995.
"The Chalk Circle Comes Full Circle: From Yuan Drama
through the
Western Stage to Peking Opera." Asian Theatre Journal 12 (2)
(Fall
1995): 307-325.
Esslin, Martin. 1961.
Brecht: The Man and His Work. New York: Doubleday.
Fuegi, John. 1972.
The Essential Brecht. Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls.
Hecht, Werner. 1961.
"The Development of Brecht's Theory of the Epic Theatre,
1918-
1933." Tulane Drama Review 6 (1) (September).
Jing, Dengcai. 1992.
"Tang Xianzu de Xiju Meixue Sixiang" (Tang Xianzu's
aesthetics of
theatre and drama). Xiju (Drama) 3: 105-115.
Klabund [Alfred Henschke]. 1929.
The Circle of Chalk. Translated byJames Laver. London:
Heinemann.
Kleberg, Lars, ed. 1992.
"Zhivye Impulsy Iskusstva" (Live impulses of art). Iskusstvo
Kino (Cin-

ema art) 1 (1992): 132-139.
Kui Fu and Wu Yuhua, eds. 1992.
Gudian Xiqu Meixue ZiliaoJi (Anthology of sources of the
aesthetics of
classical xiqu). Beijing: Wenhua Yishu Chubanshe.
Lowe, Lisa. 1991.
Critical Terrains: French and English Orientalisms. Ithaca:
Cornell Uni-
versity Press.
Mei Lanfang. 1951.
Wutai Shenghuo Sishinian (My forty-year stage life). Vol. 1.
Shanghai:
Pingmin Chubanshe.
.1961.
"My Life on the Stage." Eastern Horizon 1 (15) (December):
11-29.
.1962.
Wo de Dianying Shenghuo (My cinema life). Beijing:
Zhongguo Dian-
ying Chubanshe.
.1981.
"Reflections on My Stage Life." In Wu Zuguang, Huang
Zuolin, and
Mei Shaowu, Peking Opera and Mei Lanfang: A Guide to
China's Tradi-
tional Theatre and the Art of Its Great Master. Beijing: New
World Press.
Originally published in 1951.

Mei Shaowu. 1981.
"Mei Lanfang as Seen by His Foreign Audiences and Critics."
In
Wu Zuguang, Huang Zuolin, and Mei Shaowu, Peking Opera
and Mei
Lanfang: A Guide to China's Traditional Theatre and the Art of
Its Great
Master. Beijing: New World Press.
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. 1984.
Wo de Fuqin Mei Lanfang (My father Mei Lanfang). Tianjin:
Banhua
Wenyi Chubanshe.
Said, Edward W. 1978.
Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.
Scott, A. C. 1959.
Mei Lanfang: Leader of the Pear Garden. Hong Kong: Hong
Kong Uni-
versity Press.
Tatlow, Antony. 1977.

The Mask of Evil. Bern: Peter Long.
Young, Stark. 1930.
"Mei Lanfang." Theatre Arts Monthly 14 (4) (April): 295-308.
Zhejiang Wenyi Chubanshe, ed. 1984.
Gai Jiaotian Biaoyan Yishu (Gai Jiaotian's performance art).
Hang-
zhou: Zhejiang Wenyi Chubanshe.
Zhongguo Dabaikequanshu Bianjibu. 1983.
"Gao Langting." In Zhongguo Dabaikequanshu: Xiqu he Quyi
(China's
encyclopedia: xiqu and quyi). Beijing and Shanghai: Zhongguo
Dabai-
kequanshu Chubanshe.
Zhongguo Mei Lanfang Yanjiu Xuehui he Mei
LanfangJinianguan, eds. 1990.
Mei Lanfang Yishu PinglunJi (Anthology of criticism of Mei
Lanfang's
art). Beijing: Zhongguo Xiju Chubanshe.
Zhongguo Xiqu Yanjiuyuan, ed. 1959a.
Zhongguo Gudian Xiqu Lunzhu Jichen (Collection of China's
classical
works on xiqu). Vol. 3. Beijing: Zhongguo Xiju Chubanshe.
.1959b.
Zhongguo Gudian Xiqu LunzhuJicheng. Vol. 8.
1959c.
Zhongguo Gudian Xiqu LunzhuJicheng. Vol. 9.
222

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Contentsimage 1image 2image 3image 4image 5image 6image
7image 8image 9image 10image 11image 12image 13image
14image 15image 16image 17image 18image 19image 20image
21image 22image 23Issue Table of ContentsAsian Theatre
Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2, Autumn, 1997Front MatterFrom the
EditorPlayReunion with Son and Daughter in Kingfisher Red
County: A Yuan Drama [pp. 157 - 199]"Alienation-Effect" for
Whom? Brecht's (Mis)interpretation of the Classical Chinese
Theatre [pp. 200 - 222]Desperately Seeking Asia: A Survey of
Theatre History Textbooks [pp. 223 - 258]Teater Koma's
Suksesi and Indonesia's New Order [pp. 259 - 280]Book
Reviewsuntitled [pp. 281 - 290]untitled [pp. 290 - 292]untitled
[pp. 292 - 293]Books Received [p. 294]Back Matter

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