Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Theatrical Impulse and Posthumanism: Gao Xingjian's "Another Kind of Drama"

Author(s): Yan Haiping
Source: World Literature Today, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Winter, 2001), pp. 20-28
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40156310
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 THEATRICAL IMPULSE
AND
POSTHUMANISM
Gao Xingjian's "Another Kind of Drama"

YAN HAIPING

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 Chinese drama since the late 1970s, like other forms of art and
literature of the era, began as an emotionally charged negation
of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and developed as a multi-
dimensional reflection on the turbulent history of contemporary
China, fueled by the rapidly unfolding and violently changing
forces of what has been called "modernization."1 Many emerg-
ing playwrights in the early 1980s, as spiritual children of the
long tradition of Chinese literary ethics,2 viewed themselves as
"speakers for the common folk" and "authors of social con-
science and cultural change."3 Connected with yet different
from many of his contemporaries in this regard, Gao Xingjian
appeared on the nation's cultural scene with a distinctive
impulse: taking Western literary modernism in general and the
theater of the absurd in particular as points of engagement, his
first staged play, Juedui xinghao (Absolute Signal; 1982),4 treats
of such overt social issues as youth unemployment and juvenile
delinquency to enact a mode of psychic rhythms subjectively
felt by socially detached individuals.5 Such a mode with its
defining impulse enacted through a range of innovative visual
images becomes crystallized in Gao's dramatic narrative,
Chezhan (Eng. Bus Stop),6 his second play, staged by the People's
Art Theater Company the following year (1983).
A seemingly Beckettian play, Bus Stop focuses on a group
of people of different social identities who have been waiting
Opposite:
for ten years at a bus station somewhere between countryside Seal
and city for a bus that is to take them into the latter. One bus Chinese, Ching Dynasty, stone
Below:
after another passes by, but none stops at their station. While
Seal
waiting and agonizing over their individual dreams and desires,
Chinese, stone
they hardly notice that one silent middle-aged man leaves the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art
University of Oklahoma
station after several buses have passed: "He strides away with- Photos: Konrad Eek

out turning his head even once. Music rises, tru

melody evoking a painful and persistent search"
(BS, 125). By the end of the play, the people begin tc
realize that perhaps this bus stop has been sus-
pended or the bus route has been changed; they
finally decide to stop waiting and begin preparing
to walk to the city, as the middle-aged man has just
done alone.

Realistic in characterization and symbolist in

structure, the play provoked immediate controver-
sy in Beijing cultural circles, followed by heated
discussion in major cultural centers throughout the
nation. Some critics stressed the play's creativity,
and hailed its message that people should take
charge of their lives and not waste themselves in
blind waiting. Others contended that the play con-
tained a basic negation of the operations of contem-
porary Chinese society, a condescending attitude
toward the deluded "pitiable multitude," and an

WORLD LITERATURE TODAY * 75:1 • WINTER 2001 • 21

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"elitist" position embodied in the "silent man" walking
alone to the city.7
Bus Stop was suspended by authorities in July 1983,
after only ten performances, having been judged "seri-
ously flawed" by decision-making officials; nevertheless,
enthusiasm for Gao's "new theater experiment" intrinsi-
and ideological departure from the tradition of socialist
realism of PRC theater and culture since the 1950s. Yet
the implications of this departure are much more com-
plex than what surfaced in the tense debates surround-
ing its public staging. It is interesting to note that those
who denounced it and those who embraced it both

cally associated with Western modernist theater was viewed the play as "a Chinese version of Western mod-
spreading among an ever-growing number of dramatists ernism," an esthetic and political position-taking that
across the nation. While the "Era of Cultural Pluralism" seizes Western modernism as the transparent inspiration
was heralded by several rising new writers in the mid-
for the fashioning of a Chinese cultural modernity. At
1980s,8 it appeared clear that Western modernism andodds with the assertions of both its admirers and its
modernist theater were among the most frequently detractors, however, Bus Stop with its center of dramatic
evoked categories redefining the esthetic and politicalgravity - the "silent middle-aged man" - is no mere
bases of Chinese theater, culture, and society. imitation of European modernism. Evidently aware of
Indeed, Bus Stop (some sources list Bus Station as the
the historically specific motives of modernism in post-
World War II Europe - e.g., epistemological uncertain-
title) seems to have both registered and issued a structural
ty and despair, existential
agony, and ontological noth-
ingness - and their histori-
cally specific function in
deconstructing the estab-
lished yet crisis-ridden
Maoist culture in postrevo-
lutionary China, Gao Xing-
jian articulates the features
of his drama as follows in

an essay titled "Modernism

and Chinese Literature"

(1987):

The movement of contemporary

Chinese literature toward moder-

nity shares some features with

Western modernism, but it can-
not possibly repeat the process
of development of modern West-
ern literature. The school of mo-

dernism that has emerged in

China, in general terms, is rather
different from that of Western
modernism. . . . Unlike Western

modernism, which is under-

lined by a negation of the Self,
Chinese modernism is founded

on an affirmation of the Self; it

exposes the absurdities in the
realities of Chinese society but
does not - as Western mod-

ernism does - take absurdity

as constitutive of the existential
=5
conditions of humanity. ... A
s.
x
is critical skepticism about the old
o
humanism is the point of depar-
I ture for Western modernism; but

22 * WORLD LITERATURE TODAY • 75:1 * WINTER 2001

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 for Chinese modernists, the rediscovery of humanism that ern self" as a manufactured optic and discursive closure;
was lost under the social conditions of modern and contem- "it results from the 'human self as well. Such a self is
porary Chinese society is their core. Such rediscovered human-
not divine and is not issued from the gods" (F, 73). Yet
ism is imbued, in effect, with the spirit of romanticism.9
ultimately, a non-Foucauldian but humanist spirit throb-
bing in a world (whether it is deemed modern, post-
Such a rediscovered humanism in the spirit of romanti-
modern, premodern, or all of these together in a muddy
cism, while not overtly rejecting Chinese socialist collec-
mixture) that constantly decenters the human, Gao turns
tivism, focuses on the individuality of the nation's citi-
zens, which had been radically deemphasized if not his dramatic writing into a personal battle of life-and-
erased in contemporary Chinese public discourses. death
One magnitude. It is a battle against the violent prac-
may then argue that, while Samuel Beckett's Waitingtices
for of a humanly decentering world by persistent theater-
making, thereby opening up a liminal space between the
Godot visibly provides a situational impulse for Gao's
play, Bus Stop has an unmistakably Chinese quality death
in of the modern self and a haunting shadow that may
terms of its structural implications in the post-Mao prefigure
era. its return as both impossible and imperative.
Beckett's play explores the loss of humanity's ontologi- Sheng si jie (Eng. Between Life and Death), a "wom-
cal meaning in the postwar West; Gao's play centersan's
on pouring out of the human agony," as Jean-Pierre
what he considers the blind multitude who have been Leonardini in Paris terms it," or "a seventy-minute mad
trapped by illusory, group-bound conventions and scene," as Bert Wechsler in New York prefers,12 is a play
promises throughout their lives. As an embodimentof
ofone extended act during which an actress shows how
"she" - the protagonist, referred to only as Woman -
epistemological negation of Western modernity, Godot
offers nothing; indeed, it suspends any possibility for
tears through several life-and-death turns "to find out
change. As an embodiment of disillusionment aboutfor sure if she's real or just a body without a soul."13 As
Chinese socialist practices, Bus Stop offers the modethe
of act begins, the actress is struggling to say something,
the "silent man" who tropes humanistic enlightenment
but then stops and, after an agonizing pause which sug-
and an individual search for direction in life at a mo- gests an abyss of bottomless agony, she suddenly erupts
and "cannot control her outburst" (BLD, 47). The first
ment of social transformation and political uncertainty.
The global magnitude and the profundity of such
part of this outburst, which "lasts for seventy minutes"
transformation and uncertainty, which was unexpected
and engages a male actor (Man) who responds to its
momentum with detached and ambiguous gestures,
if not unimaginable in the early 1980s to most Chinese
dramatists, as the last decade of the twentieth century
enacts a painful rhythm of longing for "love" between
soon witnessed, shows just how impossibly illusoryintimates, a love locked in its deformation by actions of
and /or heroically imperative is the life-path that Gao
betrayal, cruelty, deception, and indifference. Displaying
Xingjian's rediscovered self has to carve in its subsequent
all the typical "feminine" features, including a body with
journeys within a turbulent world of posthumanist "superfluous
if not jewels" and a mind of "irrational jealousy,"
"possessiveness," and "groundless anxieties," the actress
posthuman modernity. In another "more China-specific"10
lowers her eyes and looks down, seeing "half a wooden
play written in the aftermath of the Tiananmen tragedy
in 1989, Tao wang (Eng. The Fugitives), the lyrics of the
leg, whose paint has peeled off, slowly stretch[ing] out
self in Bus Stop linger, but no longer as an unmediated
from under her skirt," then stretching out farther "until
emancipatory impetus. Depicting a group of threeit -finally comes off her skirt" (BLD, 56). As the actress
two men and one woman - who are trapped by their
reacts with wide-eyed horror to what she sees, an arm
social conditions as much as by the humanist configura-
appears from inside her shawl, then slowly "falls off
tion of their "selves," Gao writes his lyric flow of the selfthe shawl. From the palm up, the paint has peeled
from
into an "oozy puddle" of "dirty water or blood" (F,off
67-as with the detached wooden leg" (57). In the midst
68) in which culturally figured and disfigured desiring
of such human disembodiment, physically and figura-
selves are imprisoned and of which they are physically
tively, the Woman enacts how the protagonist ("she")
constitutive. "The misfortune of the human not only
desperately attempts to escape from this nightmare of
results from external political oppression, social confor-
living destruction.
mity, dominating fashions, and the will-to-power of the
Woman: No! (Runs away.) This is too horrible, she can't con-
others," he writes in his "Afterword," tremulously close
tinue to be cut up like this, she can't keep on butchering her-
to Derrida or Foucault and their intellectual fellow trav-
self to death! She must run now, run away from this room!
elers who demystify, displace, and suspend "the mod- (Simulates action of opening a door.) Strange, she can't open

WORLD LITERATURE TODAY • 75:1 * WINTER 2001 * 23

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 the door, how could she be so stupid? How could she possi-
bly lock herself in? (Crawls all over the room in a circle around
the pile of man's clothing, the jewellery box and the detached arm
and leg.) She can't find the key! How can this be possible? . . .
(Stops, staring blankly at the detached arm and leg.) She just can't
understand, can't understand what's happening here. Her
home, this warm and comfortable little nest of hers, has turned
into a horrifying abyss overnight, how could this be? . . . She's
got to get out. (Shouting.) She wants to get - out - (57)
able memory follows: her witness to her modern moth-
er's humiliation at the hands of various male lovers, and
her own desperate seeking of her mother's love, which
was met only with constant negligence and cruelty. When
her mother died a strikingly modern death - in a car
crash - it ended her youthful dreams and emptied them
of all meaning (63). Then "she" remembers how she was
once seduced by a woman and a man who jointly

Locked in a living death accentuated by the ticking abused her body (the man) and mind (the woman) to
sustain their moribund marriage; her escape from them
of a clock that is increasing in volume, the actress simul-
taneously shifts among and acts out several of "she's" sent her onto a highway "alone at night," leading to a

real or imagined memories in a search for the always- confrontation with "a masked man who blocks her way"

elusive self that may or may not have ever existed. First, - death itself - in an increasingly violent and isolated

there was the dark, damp, locked house from which her postmodern "fog" that is everywhere (69-70): "She's

father escaped and her mother disappeared with anoth- only scared that nobody'll know when she's dead. She's
er man, and in which her brother broke an antique vase even more afraid of a prolonged death, afraid of being

- "a family heirloom" - and her grandpa died of can- crippled, being half dead and half living, nothing is
cer which had spread to his bone marrow, forcing him more horrifying than that" (70).

to turn to opium to kill the pain. Evocative of a semidy-
nastic and semicolonial China, with its opium-overdosed
"grandpa" and its "doorless houses," the Woman's
enacting of what "she" remembers intimates some tem-
poral and spatial traces which respond to the haunting
question, "How did it all begin?" (59).
Yet "she" seems to be coming out of her early fatal
abyss and lingers on as a living entity as the play enters
its final section. As she works through death scenes of
what seem to be the premodern, the modern, and the
postmodern moment and between the human traces of
an identifiable China and an unidentifiable world in a

Then there is the memory of her having had a mod- kind of narrative fluidity, the actress's version of what
ern romance with all its expected signifiers, yet all turns "she" remembers takes on the potent force of mourning,
out to be false. Her prince wrote identical love letters to which is also a "carrying through,"14 a sorting-out, a
her best friend in her class: "She wants to tell a romantic leavetaking, and almost a chain-breaking liberation. As
story, . . . but everything has been so hypocritical . . . "she" resists her fear of a man in black with a mammoth
policing eye on his palm and a woman without a head
that it's made her utterly sick" (62). An almost unbear-

Between Life and Death, Sydney, 1993. Gao Xingjian, director.

24 * WORLD LITERATURE TODAY * 75:1 • WINTER 2001

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on her shoulders, "she" is also shown to have transfer- plays written since the early 1990s, including Duihua yu
entially experienced the agony of a Buddhist nun strug- fanji (1992; Eng. Dialogue and Rebuttal) and Ye you shen
gling to reach "the other shore" from this world. When (1993; Eng. Nocturnal Wanderer), also evidence such a
the nun cuts her own stomach open, pulls out her intes- rupturing change: the form of the former is "inspired by
tines, and cards them one by one to cleanse them, "she" the gongan style of question and answer in Chinese Zen
is resonating with the nun and every physicalized emo- Buddhism" (OS, 136); the form of the latter is that of a
tion involved in the nun's action. Living in and out of dream, a nightmare that both employs and suspends the
the body of the nun and circled by an old man or his connection between reality and illusion (OS, 189).
shadow whose monkhood comments on her real or illu- Gao Xingjian himself is aware of the traces of such a
sory space, "she" reaches beyond her state of liminal Buddhist spirituality in his dramatic textures and lan-
being by tearing through the narrow passage betweenguage rhythms, and of how such spiritual fabrics intrin-
sic to his writing distinguish him from modern Western
life and death, almost emerging at the other end, which
may or may not mean "her true self" (57). writers in general and Western literary modernists in
"She" has almost emerged at the other end, but not particular. Informed on matters of traditional Christian
quite: "Everything is enshrouded in the big Chaos, only metaphysics and engaged with modern psychoanalytic
rewritings
a glimmer of secret light still exists in her heart, some- of foundational cultural principles, he defines
his spiritual traits within the frameworks of Chinese
times it's bright and sometimes it's dark, and if she can't
even prevent it from disappearing, then all will returnTaoism,
to Zhuangzi's narratives, and a certain kind of
Nothingness" (77). Interweaving the Woman, "she," andpan-Buddhism: "What differentiates me from authors of
the audience in overlapping rhythms of living agony, Western traditions is perhaps an attitude of serene and
reflective observation. It is the attitude that I live regard-
the play's performance ends with questions rather than
affirmations. ing society and the self."15
Still the self, however ruptured. The self as the cen-
Woman: Is this a story? A romance? A farce? A fable? A joke?
ter of Gao's experiential, observant, cognitive, imagina-
An admonishment? An essay not good enough to be a poem,
tive, and narrative gravity persists throughout the
or poetic prose which is not quite an essay? It's not a song,
because it has meaning but no spirit, it resembles a riddle,immense rupture between the "silent man" in Bus Stop
and the "outbursting woman" in Between Life and Death.
but it has no answer. Is it an illusion, no more than the ram-
blings in an idiot's dream? ... Is this about him, about you,
Gao Xingjian is, then, no Buddhist, Taoist, or practicing
about me, about her who is that girl, about her but not her,believer of Zhuangzi's philosophy, as he himself notes:
. . . not about me, and not about you or all of you, . . . it's
"Zhuangzi's philosophy of 'letting things take their
merely the self, . . . that so-called self looking at her, looking
course' and [his adherence to] Buddhist teachings on
at me, what more can you or I say? . . . What is the self? (78)

From a "silent man" who resolutely walks alone The Other Shore, Hong Kong, 1995. Gao Xingjian, director.
toward an unknown city for an individual actualization,
to "a glimmer of secret light [that] still exists in her
heart," but caught in a living agony under the shifting
shadows of a nun and monkhood, one sees a figurative
displacement that registers an immense rupture in Gao
Xingjian's narrative enterprise, in his imaginative world
of representation. Surely this rupture between the two
figurative enactments of the self - one man and one
woman - has a gendered dimension, but one would do
better by taking seriously Gao's "suggestions" on how
to produce the play, especially his suggestion that its
staging "should not strive for naturalness" but rather
"for utter theatricality" (OS, 80). At once gender-specific
and gender-exceeding, the self of romanticism or the
poetics of the humanist subject initiated by Gao in his
dramatic praxis of the early 1980s has profoundly trans-
muted with a distinct Buddhist tremor. His other major

WORLD LITERATURE TODAY * 75:1 • WINTER 2001 * 25

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renouncing the world seem to me a trifle excessive in In other words, allow the human body and human
their passivity; I, after all, want to do something. I am action to return to, inhabit, and constitute the center

neither a Taoist nor a Buddhist. My writing is a method stage both of the theater and of the world.
of self-rescue."16 From his "rediscovered humanism But such a return and reentry of the human self is
hardly a resurrection of the ideal subject of the European
imbued with the spirit of romanticism"17 to his writing
Enlightenment.
process as "a method" that "rescues the self," one sees a It is not premised upon the supremacy
of the Cartesian cogito, the abstract individual sovereign-
life-and-death struggle to revisit the ideal of the Enlight-
enment, which has become "the bone in the chokingty, and the modern apparatus with its eternalized value
system as the overlord of universality. Rather, it assumes
throat of Western culture" (borrowing Stephen Green-
a multidimensional, constantly changing and shifting,
blatt's recent line on Shakespeare's Hamlet).18 More ambi-
and inherently transformative system of human relation-
tiously or more desperately, or both, it is also a struggle
ships. It is through such a relational system that the
to reenact through what he calls "another kind of drama"
human self (which on Gao Xingjian's stage is "a secret
such an ideal of the modern self, which has choked so
glimmer") might gain new possibilities to act in this
many to death. One can hardly overemphasize the
human world, but act with an acute consciousness of its
importance of Gao Xingjian's theoretical explorations in
constant self-making and remaking within, against, with,
drama and his formal innovations in theater practice
and through the forces and shapes of others without the
and stagecraft.
ontological certainty of its ahistorical or transhistorical
"Another kind of drama" as a concept was formally "true self."
proposed by Gao Xingjian in 1993, in an essay bearing
The human self, then, is a relationally conditioned
that very title. Recognizing the limitations of the estab-
process of acting, a constant remaking of itself by self-
lished system of Western theater in the twentieth century,
consciously inhabiting the relational system that Gao
which he views as "an era of directoral dictatorship,"19
calls the "medium of neutrality." The sociocultural
Gao argues for a revival of the central importance ofimplications
act- of this theatrical impulse, which is central
ing (or "the performance process") in theater and rede-
to Gao's dramatic writing, are concisely articulated in
fines this process in a way that both engages and extends
his 1995 Liberation interview with Gerard Meudal.
the theory and practice of Stanislavski (who focused
The process of fictional narrative [and dramatic perform-
more on identification between the performer and his or
ance] involves three "persons," at least three. The self, "I,"
her scripted role) and Diderot (who insisted on the sepa-
in daily life shifts almost indiscernibly into "You" when
ration of the two), and also revises Brecht (who refash-
monologues engendered through meditation take place.
ioned Diderotian cognitive esthetics to create his own Where does the third person, the Other, come from? When
one thinks more philosophically, taking leave of one's own
brand of political poetics using the concepts of "alien-
body, the "I" then becomes an eye of neutrality that looks
ation" and "dialectics").
back on the self's body; the Other comes from such a leave-
I believe that the art of theater, ultimately, depends on the taking from the objective, living, material world.21
actor's acting for its actualization. ... I have observed and
The Other, the medium of neutrality, is therefore a sys-
analyzed the actor's acting in traditional Chinese music
tem of human relations through which the possibilities
drama, and have discovered that, while Western acting theo-
ries have long been discussing the relationship between of
themaking and remaking the acting self (or the self in
acting) are opened up as three-dimensional motions
actor and his or her scripted role, such a relationship has
without the constraint of Hegelian immanence or its
always been premised upon a two-dimensionally conceived
more
dynamic, which overlooks the passage between the actor as secular version, humanist ontology. Enacting and
a living human who acts and the scripted role that he orenacted
she as a posthumanist impulse in Gao Xingjian's
enters. I call this passage "the medium of neutrality/' Itreenvisioning, the human self is fundamentally theatri-
means that, before the actor enters the role, he or she needs
cal in its configuration, the human self in and as a the-
to purify his or her body of his or her self in daily life, a
atrical agency. It is through such a reenvisioning of the-
leavetaking as it were. If theater acting validates this third
ater and its central dynamics - human acting - as a
medium of neutrality as a process, fully opens it up, reveals
site of human agency in the making that the rupture
it, and lays it bare, then the configurations of the relationship
among "the self - the actor - the role" would afford the art
between Gao's "humanist self" of the 1980s and its
ghostly "secret glimmer" of the 1990s is transfigured
of acting many more new possibilities. The ways of playwrit-
ing would also be enriched.20 into a source of enormous creativity.

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 Hence Gao Xingjian's probings into and engage-
ments with a Chinese dramatic culture that is premised
and thrives upon its theatricality are essential to an under-
standing of his concept of "another kind of drama," his
theatrical rather than ontological process of (re)making
the human self. His play Ming jie (1991; Eng. Hades,
though I would prefer City of the Dead as more modernly
evocative), drawn from many versions of the Chinese
story about how the Taoist sage Zhuangzi tested his
wife's love for him, is an intriguing case in point. In part
1 of the play, Zhuangzi pretends to have died and then
acts as the Prince of Chu State to seduce his weeping
wife, who now believes herself widowed. We then see
how the wife in her "widowhood" is affected by the
feigned love of this "prince," how this pretend "prince"
turns out to be her "dead" husband, and how she cuts
herself open with a hatchet and dies after being deranged
by the unrealness of what feels real and by a perceived
reality that turns out to be unreal.
In part 2, the wife's ghost, now in the City of the
Dead, haunts the city's legal and political courts, making
a variety of theatrically stirring sounds, facial expres-
sions, gestures, and movements, which are witnessed
and commented on by a group of human ghosts whose
names and stories are all recorded in Chinese (oral) folk
literature. The human effects and material consequences
of Zhuangzi's play-acting are rendered physically and
graphically real in the ghost-wife's highly theatrical
motions, as are the rhythms and movements of this dead
woman in the body of a living actress who refuses to
disappear and insists on her theatrical agency with a
vengeance. Indeed, the human and material realness
that is embodied here through such stirringly theatrical
acting is so overwhelmingly potent that it renders the
play's coda - wherein Zhuangzi sings his signature
song, which cancels "the real" - almost irrelevant as
the point of the play.22 Such potent realness of acting and
theatrical agency, as Gao views it, is produced through
the relational dynamics between the actor and the acted,
the acting and the audience, an intertwined human field
his poetics calls "the medium of neutrality," with tem-
porally and spatially infinite human possibilities.23
Shanhaijing zhuan (1993; Eng. The Story of the Classic
of Seas and Mountains, though my preference would be
Stories of Shanhaijing: A Three-Act Tragicomedy of the
Gods), a play that is quite possibly one of the world's
dramatic masterpieces of the twentieth century, is a
monumental reenactment of Chinese myths originating
in the Yangtze River valley and its surrounding regions,
a land of human and natural abundance. The term Shan-
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haijing literally means "classics of the mountains and
seas" and serves as the generic title of some eighteen
volumes of written texts ranging from extended longer
narratives to tales of only a few lines about enchanting
rivers and hills, various tribal peoples and their customs
and rituals, intriguing animals or spirits or goblins,
human and nonhuman marvels, magical scenes, and leg-
ends and myths - a veritable cultural trove of ancient
Chinese mythological imagining. Evidently, it was not
composed by a single author at one specific time;
instead, it was probably the product of many hands,
most likely completed during the Period of the Warring
States (475-221 B.C.), then expanded during the Qin and
Han Dynasties (221 B.C. - 200 a.d.). In "Some Explana-
tions and Suggestions on Staging Stories of Shanhaijing/'
Gao Xingjian makes certain that his readers and the pro-
ducer or director of the play understand that his drama-
tization is based on the historical texts in close consulta-
tion with prominent scholars on the Shanhaijing. Even
more important is his statement that he regards this
trove of ancient Chinese mythology as a constantly
renewable theatrical resource for the remaking of the
human spirit and human drama, since, as he writes,
"its richness and colorfulness matches the trove of Greek
mythology."24
Rich and colorful indeed! And most imaginatively
free and forthrightly theatrical. The play opens with a
scene in which the goddess Nu Wa molds figures from
the yellow earth, uses magic ropes to multiply them,
then gives them life and the ability to bear children,
thereby creating an ever-renewable humanity. As this
process of creation is enacted against a background of
furious flooding, vast rainfall, cosmic thunder, and
flashes of light presaging earthquakes or auroras of un-
known kinds, a folklore artist observes, narrates, com-
ments upon and explains the action, and sings in time
with the rhythms of the actress's marvelous perform-
ance, rendering Nu Wa's actions essentially those of
human creativity. When, still in act 1, ten fiery suns who
are also brothers are shown to be committing all kinds
of outrages in the sky while burning the human lands
below to cinders, along comes Yi, another mythological
god, who breathes in agony with ordinary humans and
kills nine of the suns with his bow and arrow, leaving
only one in the sky, since he is needed by the common
mortals below. Yi, portrayed by an actor whose expres-
sions and movements are all observed and illuminated
by the folklore artist and his songs, is revealed as more a
farmer's son than a mythological god.
WORLD LITERATURE TODAY * 75:1 • WINTER 2001 * 27
 In act 2, as the gods fight for supreme dominance actions of mere mortal human beings. Indeed, Gao Xing-
over the fluid and human and celestial spheres and drag jian believes that poetry in drama can only be engendered
every earthly and celestial being through mud and in and through such human enactments of conscious
blood, there appears the Jinwei Bird. Formerly the young theatricality, in and through the motions of acting that
daughter of the Sun God who had gone to the East Sea in constitute theatrical agency.26
search of love, only to drown in the waves, she now For a posthumanist if not posthuman theater and
returns in the shape of a small bird determined to fill up world (some call it postmodern or simply post-), the
the sea so that it will never take another life. She picks up "theatrical agency" theorized and enacted by Gao
small stones, leaves of grass, and tree branches with her Xingjian, with its promises of making "another kind of
delicate beak, then flies to the sea and drops them into drama," another kind of world, and another kind of
the water. Each and every day, she continues doing this,
human subject, deserves further close, sustained exami-
without cease - an impossible task, but a necessary one
nation and explication. (The limitations of and problems
that gives form and meaning to her existence.
in Gao's dramatic theory and theatrical practice also
In act 3, the commingled human and celestial
need more study.) Suffice it to say here that, as the first
spheres are separated, and all the connecting passages
Nobel laureate in literature who writes primarily in Chi-
between the two are closed off. The struggle among the
nese, Gao Xingjian envisions "another kind of drama" as
gods for dominion is now over. Yet before "the century
an essentially posthumanist gesture which requires still
of the Emperor"25 and its order appear on the horizon,
the human world is inundated in a violent flood caused a good deal more articulation and development. It may
contain a formative impetus that prefigures certain cul-
by the final battle among the gods. Taking center stage
tural rhythms with which the human subject of the
at this point is Gun, the grandson of one of the gods,
modern world can regain his or her home - in and
whose heart weeps for the mortals caught up in the vio-
through
lent flood. Overhearing suggestions made by two strug- the varying forms and shapes of a colorful the-

gling humans, Gun decides to steal from the gods theatrical agency - in a changing world that has long

mythical soil that can multiply itself in volume andexiled

stop its human spirits.27 If we gently probe the theatri-
cal of
the floodwaters. The gods, angered by Gun's defiance impulse and the posthumanism in Gao's major dra-
their decrees and his tenderness toward humankind,matic works, one would hope, such spirits can show us
their formative momentum and indicate to us their still-
send Zhurong, the god of fire, to punish him. Gun is
unfolding, possible futures. E5H
killed by Zhurong, yet begets a son, Dayu. Continuing
his father's will and working day and night, Dayu ulti-
mately spreads the soil across "nine ancient continents," University of Colorado, Boulder

so that the vast and consolidated land of China is finally

brought into being. 1 The definition of such modernization is uncertain and
Legends and mythological stories of thisshifting in the Chinese context throughout the reform era. See
kind, and many others, fill the play with Wang
an Hui, "Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question
epic grandeur, a stunning constellation ofof Modernity/' Social Text, 16:2 (Summer 1998), pp. 8-44.
2 See Cyril Birch, "The Man - or Woman - of Letters as
colorful figures, gestures, and movements
Hero/' postscript to Yue Daiyun, Intellectuals in Chinese Fiction,
that animates the acting onstage and
Berkeley, University of California Institute of East Asian Stud-
mobilizes the sensibility of the audi- ies, 1988, pp. 134-43. F°r a rnore specific discussion of the conti-
ence, while producing an extraordi- nuity of such Chinese literary ethics in the cultural ethos of the-
nary theatricality made up of ordi-ater circles in the 1980s, please see Haiping Yan, "Theatre and
nary human bodies. Among the Society: An Introduction to Contemporary Chinese Drama/' in
Theatre and Society: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama,
forces at work here is a poetics of
ed. Haiping Yan, Armonk (N.Y.), Sharpe, 1998, pp. ix-xlvi.
the mythological creativity of ordi- 3 See Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker, Ideology, Power, Text, Stanford
nary humans with their distinct (Ca.), Stanford University Press, 1998.
physical bodies and artistic abilities, 4 Gao Xingjian and Liu Huiyuan, Juedui xinghao [Absolute
showing how such larger-than-lifeSignal], Shiyue [October], 1982, no. 5.
5 See Lin Zaohua, "Lin Zaohua on His Cooperation with
mythological occurrences can be fully
Gao Xingjian," NetEase.www.163.com, 8 December 2000.
actualized in and through the ex- 6 Gao Xingjian, Chezhan [Eng. Bus Stop], Shiyue, 1983, no. 3,
traordinary theatrical talents and pp. 119-38. (Subsequently abbreviated as BS.)

28 * WORLD LITERATURE TODAY « 75:1 • WINTER 2001

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 7 See "Bianzhe an" [Notes from the Editor] in "Chezhan san-
ren tan" [A Dialogue by Three Critics on Bus Stop], Xijubao [On
Theater], March 1984, pp. 3-7.
8 See "Liu Xinwu tan xingshiqi de bianhua" [Liu Xinwu on
the Literary Changes in the New Era], Liu Xinwu and Li Li,
Wenhui yuekan [Wenhui Monthly], 1988, no. 5.
9 Gao Xingjian, "Chidao de xiandaizhuyi yu dangjin zhong-
guo wenxue" [The Slow Arrival of Modernism and Contempo-
rary Chinese Literature], a speech given at the Hong Kong con-
ference "Contemporary Chinese Literature and Modernism,"
11 October 1987, and published in Gao Xingjian, Meiyou zhuyi
[No Isms], Hong Kong, Tiandi, 1996, p. 102.
10 Gao Xingjian, Tao wang [Eng. The Fugitives], in Gao Xingjian
xi ju liu zhong [Six Volumes of Gao Xingjian's Plays], Xindian,
Di Jiao Chubanshe, 1995, vol. 4, p. 72. (Subsequently abbreviat-
ed as F.)
11 Jean Pierre Leonardini, L'Humanite, 21 July 1993.
12 See "One Woman's Many Problems," in "Reviews of
Asian American Theatre by Bert Wechsler," taken from "NY
Theatre-wire," at www.abcflash.com/arts/r_tang/wechs-
ler.html, 22 February 1997.
13 Gao Xingjian, Between Life and Death [orig. Sheng sijie], in
The Other Shore: Plays by Gao Xingjian, tr. Gilbert C.F. Fong,
Hong Kong, Chinese University Press, 1999, p. 57. (Subsequent-
ly abbreviated as BLD. Subsequent references to The Other Shore
are abbreviated as OS.)
14 See Sigmund Freud, "Mourning and Melancholia," in his
General Psychological Theory, New York, Collier, 1972, pp. 164-
65, 166-67.
15 Gao Xingjian, "My Views on Creative Writing," NetEase.-
www.163.com, 8 December 2000, p. 1.
16 Ibid., pp. 1-2.
17 Gao Xingjian, "Chidao de xiandaizhuyi...," p. 102.
18 Stephen Greenblatt, "On Shakespeare's Richard III," public
lecture, 21 February 2001, University of Michigan.
19 Gao Xingjian, "Another Kind of Drama," in Six Volumes...,
vol. 5, p. 130.
Opposite:
Foo Dog
Chinese, jade
Right:
Seal with Irregular Shape, Incised Landscape
Chinese, stone
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma
Photos: Konrad Eek
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20 Ibid., p. 131.
21 "How Does Gao Move the Mountains," interview with
Gao Xingjian by Gerard Meudal, Liberation (Paris), 21 December
1995-
22 Gao Xingjian, Six Volumes..., vol. 2, p. 64.
23 Gao Xingjian, "My Plays and My Key," Six Volumes...,
vol. 2, p. 85.
24 Gao Xingjian, "Some Explanations and Suggestions on
Staging Stories of Shanhaijing," Six Volumes..., vol. 3, p. 107.
25 Six Volumes..., vol. 3, p. 105.
26 "My Plays and My Key," p. 84.
27 It should be noted here that the musicality of human sub-
jects, in both making and remaking and in their infinite varia-
tions, occurs again in Weekend Quartet (1996), now visualized,
oralized, and explicitly theatricalized. This play is contained
in The Other Shore, pp. 191-253. Gao's most recent drama (his
eighteenth) is titled "Snow in August" and was just published
in early 2001 in Taipei by Jin Lian Chubanshe; it will soon be
produced by Hu Yaohen in Taipei and offers one more highly
innovative instance of "another kind of drama."
Yan Haiping is Associate Professor of Theater and Comparative Lit-
erature at the University of Colorado in Boulder and Adjunct Full
Professor of Humanities at Tsinghua University in Beijing, with
specialties in modern drama, critical theory, esthetics, transnational
feminisms, and cross-cultural /performance studies. Her recent publi-
cations include Theatre and Society: An Anthology of Contempo-
rary Chinese Drama (1998) and Samuel Beckett and His Critics:
A Cultural Redefinition (2001), and Chinese Women Writers
and the Feminist Imagination 1905-1945 will appear in late 2001.
Her accolades include China's 1980-81 First Prize for Excellence in
Drama, and selection as one of CNN's "six most influential Chinese
cultural figures" for her scholarly and creative works in both Chinese
and English.
WORLD LITERATURE TODAY * 75:1 * WINTER 2001 * 29