New Makers of Modern Culture

GAO XINGJIAN 1940-
Chinese writer

The first Chinese Nobel laureate in literature (2000), Gao Xingjian is regarded as one of the founding fathers of avant-garde drama in China, as well as one of the most controversial figures in the contemporary Chinese cultural scene. Born in Ganzhou (Jiangxi) to a bank officer and an amateur actress, Gao was exposed to theatre from childhood and started writing at an early age. From 1957 to 1962 he studied French at Beijing Foreign Languages Institute. In those years he became actively involved in theatrical activities and acquainted himself with a number of Western literary works and dramatic theories including those of Brecht, which would play a major role in the development of his own dramaturgy. Upon graduation he was assigned to work as a translator at the Foreign Language Bureau and continued writing in his spare time. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Gao was sent to work in remote rural areas for six years. He kept writing in secret, although he eventually had to burn his manuscripts to avoid punishment.

In late 1975 Gao resumed his job in the Foreign Language Bureau, where he came into contact with the works of such Western avant-garde authors as Ionesco and Beckett, which were to exert a considerable influence on his writing. After having his works rejected several times because of their modernist style—which was anathema to the official dogma of socialist realism—in 1980 he managed to publish his first novella, Hanye zhong de xingchen ('Stars on a Cold Night'). In 1981 Gao published the collection of essays Xiandai xiaoshuo jiqiao chutan ('Preliminary Discussion of the Techniques of Modern Fiction'), which was officially condemned as a serious challenge to the realist orthodoxy and inflamed a national debate on modernism.

In the same year he became resident playwright at Beijing People's Arts Theatre, the stronghold of realism and Stanislavskian acting in China, for which he produced—in cooperation with director Lin Zhaohua—the experimental plays Absolute Signal (Juedui xinhao, 1982), Wild Man (Yeren, 1985), and The Bus Stop (Chezhan, 1983), now regarded as the seminal works of Chinese avant-garde drama. Despite their unconventional staging and modernist techniques—such as inner monologues, disjointed temporal sequences and multiple narrative voices—the former were well received by the audiences and relatively tolerated by the authorities, while the latter—an absurdist piece about a group of people waiting for a bus that never comes—was harshly criticized and banned from public performance for its alleged political subversiveness. Barred from publication for one year, Gao went into self-exile in Southwestern China. This 'spiritual' journey would provide him with inspiration for a number of later works, primarily the novel Soul Mountain (Ling shan, 1990, trans. 2000).

Soul Mountain is an autobiographical account of a man's epic voyage of self-discovery in peripheral areas—both geographically and culturally—of the Chinese countryside. During his quixotic quest for the sacred and mythical mountain, the narrator embarks on a rigorous investigation of the self, and the relationship between the individual and the collective, man and nature, as well as a profound and often mournful reflection on China's history, culture, and civilization. Such exploration is achieved through a multiplication of narrative selves, a complex dialogue—or polyphonic monologue—between 'I', 'you', 'she', and 'he', their meditations, interactions and recollections, as well as through the stories of countless characters encountered along the way—itinerant priests, old shamans, hermits, ethnic minorities—thus propelling the narrative into a myriad of different projections and perspectives.

The controversy aroused by his next play, The Other Shore (Bi'an, 1986)—again target of political attack and halted after a month of rehearsals—prompted him to go into exile in France. Following Taowang ('Escape', 1989), a dramatization of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, his Party membership was revoked and his works have been banned in China ever since. In 1998 he became a French citizen.

From the mid-1980s Gao began exploring a number of theoretical notions—such as the concepts of 'theatricality' and 'suppositionality' and the idea of the 'tripartition of the actor'—which indeed represent major contributions to both Chinese and world theatre. Such principles, rooted in Chinese dramatic aesthetics, broadly refer to the intentional exposure of the fictitiousness of the theatrical event, as well as 'traces' of the actor's craft. Theatricality and suppositionality—also translated in English as 'theatricism' and 'hypotheticality'—aim at dispelling the illusion of realism by exposing the artificial, and thus unreal, quality of the stage. A theatrical performance is not an authentic simulation of reality but a sort of 'hypothetical resemblance' of it, a product of artistic representation and subjective imagination. The notion of 'tripartition', on the other hand, describes Gao's idea of the three identities of the performer, who is simultaneously himself, his role, and a 'neutral actor'—a transitional state between his own person and the character he embodies on stage.

Most of his post-exile plays—such as Between Life and Death (Shengsi jie, 1991), Dialogue and Rebuttal (Duihua yu fanjie, 1992), and Nocturnal Wanderer (Yeyoushen, 1993)—display a substantial departure from social concerns and Chinese subject matter in favour of more universal themes. Gao proclaims in fact the idea of 'no-ism' and calls for a 'cold literature', a literature which is not burdened by ideology and refuses moral teaching. In terms of style, while his early production is characterized by a combination of traditional Chinese techniques and European influences—primarily Brecht, Artaud and the Theatre of the Absurd—his later works often explore forms and motifs borrowed from the aesthetics of Zen Buddhism.

Gao Xingjian is also also a critic, essayist, stage director—mostly of his own plays—and painter. His literary production also includes the novel One Man's Bible (1999, trans. 2002), the short story collection Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (1989, trans. 2004) and the modern Beijing opera Snow in August (Bayue xue, 2000, trans. 2004). Several of his plays are collected in The Other Shore: Plays by Gao Xingjian (1999), edited by Gilbert Fong.

Rossella Ferrari

See: Henry Zhao, Towards a Modern Zen Theatre: Gao Xingjian and Chinese Theatre Experimentalism (2000); Kwok-kan Tam ed., Soul of Chaos: Critical Perspectives on Gao Xingjian (2001); and Sy Ren Quah, Gao Xingjian and Transcultural Chinese Theater (2004).

See Also: Bertolt Brecht; Eugéne Ionesco; Samuel Beckett; Konstantin Stanislavsky; and Antonin Artaud.

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