Thursday, May 31, 2007
4 to go
Entry Thirteen
May 31st, 2007
I have four days left in Shanghai and then I'm off to Beijing. I've noticed a kind of boredom and sluggishness with myself over the last few days. Also a drop in enthusiasm for projects that are awaiting me at home. In fact when I read e-mails from friends telling me what's going on, who's doing what, who's dating who, what shows are great etc. I get nervous. Anxiety sets in. I think I've figured out why I feel this way. In the beginning of a trip away everything at home is safely in the future. You only have to focus on what is directly in front of you, which in the case of China is strange and beautiful. There will be time for all those future projects. Now that the time has arrived and things must make the leap from imagination to reality the work involved starts to become evident. Deadlines pop up. Applications must be filed. All the shit that I hate. I like the actual work involved in the theatre when it is inside the theatre. Outside the actual space I get bored and disinterested. I guess I don't like the hustle for funding and all that. Give me the rehearsal hall any day...
Being away from home has put my life into perspective. Ghosts from the past and paths for the future are entering my dreams. I always feel more myself when I'm away from my home. Traveling, being a stranger always throws my identity into relief for me. I feel more at ease in movement.
Lots of the friends I've made in Shanghai are urging me to stay. They think that there is more opportunity here for me. China is definitely a place to make things happen. Besides coming back to tour with the show I think that I may have the opportunity, through my friend Mark, to come back and teach workshops. I've also thought about trying to tour my company here. Now that I have theatre contacts this thought isn't so far fetched. I miss touring shows and the open road. I haven't felt this complete in a long time.
The show has been running for over a week now and it is picking up momentum. We sold out on Tuesday night.
In the very beginning it wasn't exactly sure how it would go: after our preview the dressing room was invaded by the grandson of Lu Xun and the curator for the Lu Xun museum. Lu Xun is as beloved by the Chinese as Chekhov is by the Russians. The Chinese are very protective of his legacy and at the same time desirous to have his work disseminated abroad. Before we even had time to get out of costume these people came in and set up a circle of chairs. Lu Xun's grandson obviously felt the need to carry on the family tradition right down to the signature mustache (Lu Xun was famous for this) and the Japanese ballerina girlfriend (although Lu Xun's wife wasn't Japanese he studied in Japan and his enemies often accused him of having a Japanese wife). Baby Lu Xun (as Dean began calling the grandson) sat with the perfectly poised ballerina by his side and began to congratulate us. He said that he worked in television in Japan (I think) and that our work reminded him of Cirque du Soleil (or that he had met people from the circus, I'm not sure as the translation wasn't explicit). Then he said it was great that we were bringing Lu Xun to a Western audience. After this he and the curator of the museum launched into all the ways we could make the show better. They spoke for about an hour...They thought that it was a shame we didn't do Lu Xun's two most famous stories, The True Story of Ah Q and Diary of a Madman. We had deliberately chosen not to do these to try and bring lesser known stories to light. Then they said that the last story in our show, The New Year's Sacrifice, which is Lu Xun's most famous story, was too long. In the show we put it at the end like a centrepiece. They thought we should have put it first and maybe cut one of the shorter stories. At the end of New Year's Sacrifice the main character is outcast by the village and dies a beggar. We end with an image of Dean ruminating over the significance of her death. This is in fact the real ending of the story. Baby Lu Xun thought this was too dark. He said that Lu Xun always ends with a cry or an rallying call. He suggested we all re-enter and scream out, "Save the children!", a refrain from Diary of a Madman. For Lu Xun the children represented the future of China. The curator echoed these feelings.
Now, while everyone is entitled to their opinions I think that these two guys were blinded by what they wanted to see and failed to see the actual show (this suspicion is supported also by the lameness of their actual suggestions and how all the Chinese actors managed to slip the back door before baby Lu Xun even started speaking. I asked Zhen Ping about it and she said, Yeah, I had the feeling he had nothing interesting to say). The show is about memory and about reflecting on the past in order to change for the future. In the show the stories are all about people who are "little people", those who society takes advantage of, uses up and then forgets. We tell the story of a rickshaw driver who risks being arrested to help an old woman, old Lu Xun (Dean) remembering his childhood nanny who taught him many things, a satire called Knowledge is a Crime about how in an upside down society intelligence can be dangerous, the story of Kong Yiji, a scholar fallen on hard times and finally the story of Xian Lingsao, the New Year's Sacrifice, about a woman who becomes the scapegoat for a tiny village. I've written before that Lu Xun became a symbol for the communist party of the writer/scholar who is the defender of the public conscience. On top of this there isn't a single Chinese person who has a secondary education who hasn't heard of or read some of Lu Xun's stories. So there is a very fixed idea about who he is and what his work means. For Dean and Mimi their work is as much about finding a way to create theatre as it is about the material they use. That is not to say that they aren't fanatically faithful to the text, because they are, but creating in this way searches for what is also said beneath the words on a human level, beneath any morality, propaganda or didacticism. I think that a Chinese company, for example, if they went to perform Shakespeare of Dickens in England would face a similar problem, all communist eccentricities aside. But the proof to me that stuffy baby Lu Xun and his old-guard buddy hadn't actually "seen the show" (seeing only what they wanted to see) was the response from the audience. They were with us the entire time. laughing, cheering and weeping. It is truly incredible as a foreigner to participate in a show where all the characters and customs, gestures and movements are so well known by the public. During the show you can feel the audience recognizing the story and waiting to see how we will represent the next part. They are both affirmed and surprised by what they see because as foreigners we allow them a distance through which to see themselves. They witness all the customs and details of character through us. This distance is fascinating to experience and is really what the whole project is all about.
Since the preview the show has gotten better and better. We've had great support from the audience, from the theatre and from the press.
I'm left with the question ( which was brought up during a Q and A after last Saturday's show) how will the experience translate to a Western audience? An audience who isn't familiar with the stories and customs we're representing. It is scary and exciting because I think that we'll have to re-learn how to play the show. But as we, Dean and Mimi and I, became fascinated by the stories and customs, I think that the Canadian public will too. There is something about the work (I hope) that communicates beneath the words (as we the company have learned to do). In fact, as Dean said last night, the show has it's own language.
Random Shanghai happenings:
-I went for a massage the other day. Zhen Ping from the show recommended a massage parlour to Mimi and so I went to the same one. You get out of the elevator on the second floor of this building and there it is. Only I didn't realise there were two parlours on this floor-one on the left and one on the right. I went left to my dismay. I went to a blind massage parlour. Sometimes you get a masseuse who is actually blind but I think that it refers more to the style of the massage. And I now refer to the style as akin to Medieval Torture! It was so effing painful...first he worked on my back which was okay. Only normal tense muscle pain. Then the arms, still okay. Then my legs. Aiya! They way that he dug his iron thumbs into my hamstrings was excruciating. The rest of my body tensed up with pain. I didn't move though. I could have protested but didn't. I only silently waited in fear for him to switch to the other leg. Then he did the front of my legs and it was also very painful.
I should say that for the next few days I did feel pretty great...accept for my back: my back felt sore as if I had worked out. I looked in the mirror and it was red and only sore in the places where I had hair on it...this led me to surmise that while he was massaging my back he must have been repeatedly ripping out hairs all over. This led to hundreds of tiny red spots which though painful only lasted a day or so...
-I hooked up with Mark again after last Friday's show. He brought the producer and star of the movie he was working on, Iron Road. They both loved the show and we decided to go and get drinks after. We had a cast party at a restaurant called Chartres around the corner from the theatre and then I went to meet Mark. After nearly missing him on the street we went first to a club called Ice Bar. You have to travel through an underground tunnel to bet there. It was loud with techno music but I thought it was cool. The actor, Luke, also liked it but I think that it was too loud for the producer so we went back to JZ Club for some jazz. Everybody from the film was very nice and affable. Luke was a really sweet guy and genuinely interested in our process. He's a London, Ontario boy who now lives and works in LA. It turns out he went to school with a good friend of mine, Glen Sheppard. Alas, it is to my continual surprise a small world. We traded China anecdotes and drank and smoked until 3 and then I beat a hasty retreat home. Outside the club there are beggars with their kids who ask you for money. They kids, who are sometimes no older than 1 and a half or 2 know how to say Money in English. Mark told them to go home in Mandarin. He then told me that most of them or rented from their families for use by the beggars. Spurred on by this thought I wept as I stumbled home, thinking about how horrible and tough the world can be.
-Dean and Mimi and I went to Karaoke with Mark on another night. We went to a place called Partyworld. You get a private room with a tv and two mics and you can sing to your hearts content. We had gone to dinner earlier with the company to a restaurant in a converted lane house called Arugala. Decent Italian cuisine in a great atmosphere. The others opted out of the Karaoke experience. We had a great time, though. We sang songs from the 60's and 70's, Lady in Red, Night's in White Satin, etc. Mimi crooned over La Vie En Rose and some other Piaf chansons and we all chimed in on some hits by Frank Sinatra.
At these Karaoke bars you have to order a certain quota of food or booze, equivalent to 19 RMB (about $3 Canadian). We first had about six little cans of Tsingtao (Chinese beer), only three of which were opened. Then they brought nine more. Mark protested that we didn't want them but the waiter said it was as many as we needed to order for our quota and we could take the rest home! So at 1am we left Partyworld with hoarse throats and our little bag of beers.
-I have now finished my novel The Rat by Gunter Grass and am left reading The Life Of Casanova saved on my computer and my Chinese/French copy of Contes Fantastiques de Pavillion des Loisirs, a collection of supernatural tales by Pu Songling from the 18th century (I think). I've been looking all over the limited English book selection in town for a new book to read.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
May 12-May 24
Entry Twelve
May 12, 2007
Two nights ago I saw a disaster of a show at the Theatre. It was a French/Chinese co-pro, an adaptation of text by Marguerite Duras. Two texts divided between four actresses, two French and two Chinese. Before I describe the excruciating 1:45 that I spent in this show let me talk about two other shows I've seen since I've been here.
The first show I saw was Molly Bloom; it was by a Spanish company. It was a dramatic adaptation of the last chapter of Ulysses, Penelope. The chapter is a stream of conscious narrative recounting all of Molly's thoughts as she prepares to go to sleep late at night, her husband Leopold Bloom at her side sleeping It is notorious for having no punctuation thus making it difficult at times to tell who and what she is referring to in her thoughts. In the show Molly was played by Magui Mira, a famous Spanish stage actress. It was staged entirely in the bed with all of Molly's accoutrements surrounding her: creams, a fan, sheet music, a book. Joyce's text is fantastic but the show was problematic. In the text the magic is that we are inside her head and her actions are insignificant. Occasionally Joyce makes reference to what she is actually doing by having the outside world intrude on her thoughts. But in fact her actions are very banal-it is the sea of thought bubbling in her head that Joyce is interested in, showing that even in the quietest moments of the day we are still reeling with thoughts, referring to the past, present, future. We are literally a stream of consciousness. To stage this, having an actress speak these thoughts as if they were a monologue, is a mistake. Actually seeing what she is doing while thinking is uninteresting. And what's more we don't know why she is speaking because there is no theatrical context. In the book we accept it and we are happy to forget her physical presence. On the stage we are constantly reminded of this presence with all the bric a brac that she surrounds herself with and it actually makes it difficult for the audience to hear what she is saying. Because her actions are banal; it is her thoughts that are interesting.
In the show's defense it was in Spanish with Chinese subtitles so I wasn't exactly following the entire thing. Still, I like to think that I am fluent in the language of theatre and it was this that was incoherent in the show.
I also saw an Icelandic dance company perform. Their program consisted of two pieces. One took place under a lighting effect creating the full moon. The dancers were dressed in costumes that evoked the 1910's or 1920's-white linen suits and dresses that you might find people wearing on the French Riviera. The piece was about love so it had lots of permutations of men and women dancing together. The style of the company was influenced by Pina Bausch-lots of physically strong dancers performing muscular choreography interspersed with moments of levity and humour.
The second piece was by a different choreographer, a Portuguese, and it was called Happy New Year. It was darker. It started with a dancer in a black, combat fatigue inspired costume, dancing and pretending to shoot the audience with an imaginary gun, as a child does when playing war. The rest of the piece developed this theme of conflict, war, peace. There was a particularly intense, sexy duet between a dynamo of a male dancer and a strong female dancer. It was violent and sexual, like two beasts mating. Later in the show there was a slow motion fight scene between the whole company performed with purposefully fake smirks on their faces. The ending brought out a huge white flag and they all danced around it. This piece was a little didactic and overly forceful but on the whole the evening and the company were fantastic.
We stuck around after for a Q and A with the dancers and the artistic director. The first question by the press was, What does the title of the second piece and the white flag mean? This lame question led the artistic director to become overly defensive. One of the producers was there as well and she spoke about the Icelandic arts scene being very young and while they don't have a long tradition of modern dance they are also not fettered by such a tradition. So, the lame questions and pretentious answers continued on for a while and we beat a hasty retreat before it was over.
In my experience the Chinese have been incredibly hospitable. This hospitality is great but can sometimes seem to be for the sake of itself and lacking actual empathy. For example, during shows that I've seen here people don't turn off their cell phones, sometimes they even take calls during a show, they constantly leave the theatre to go to the bathroom and come back. They talk and eat during shows. This also manifests itself during our rehearsals when the stage manager and actors are always getting phone calls while we're working or people enter and exit the room during improvisations, talking away. Sometimes people walk in front of Dean or Mimi while they're watching rehearsal to go and light a smoke or get some tea...And during this Q and A after the dance show it was the same. The poor dancers were sweating and tired, sitting on the stage and while they were being asked questions the mics wouldn't work and the stage crew started to strike the set behind the curtain and so all you could hear was huge bangs and crashes as they tore down the lighting rig. You would think they could have waited 20 minutes until the talk back was over. But I think that it didn't even cross the mind of the technical director at the theatre to even try to co-ordinate something like this between the front of house and the stage hands. I'm not saying that the Chinese are ignorant and disrespectful, not at all. I'm merely pointing out that there exists a very definite separation between Asian and North American forms of respect. Some things we take for granted and some things they take for granted. You also have the inverse effect here, as when you go to a restaurant and no matter how up or low scale it is you get genuine fantastic service every time.
I like to attribute this difference in terms of consideration to Communism. In a country with so many people you can't always make sure that everybody's completely satisfied all the time or the country wouldn't be able to function. Bureaucracy is terrible but sometimes I think it is unavoidable. So I think that you make do with less privacy and lower your standards of respect for certain things because you have to survive. Voila. I am probably guilty of numerous gross exaggerations here but so be it.
Now to get back to the Marguerite Duras show I saw the other night. In fact, let me recount the whole day as it was rather exciting. In the afternoon we had a press conference for the show. Lots of press were there, lots of photographers, big wigs from the Canadian Consulate and the Shanghai Dramaitc Arts Centre. So Dean and Mimi are up there with the interpreter (who is absolutely terrified and nervous I should say. She's very sweet and smart and does a great job but she is super shy) and Dean gives a little speech about the process (I should add that the Theatre just assumed Dean would talk and didn't even invite Mimi to speak-I guess old Patriarchal habits die hard. Later I told Mimi not to worry as I knew who really wore the pants in the working process with Smith-Gilmour!) I found out durting the conference that this show is the first Chinese-Canadian theatrical co-production ever! Wow. Definitely one for the memoires. After the speeches we move to our rehearsal hall to present two of the stories we're working on for the press. We start playing and it's the same phenomenon I spoke about earlier-people talking on cell-phones while we're playing, camera men walking on the stage and behind the wings, people leaving etc. At one point Mimi yells out, SHHHHH! Hilarious! But I think that the general buzz is that the show is very interesting. The next day we had publicity photos in several local papers.
It's pretty exciting to see your photo on a huge 15 ft poster and in newspapers where you can't even understand what is written...we found out that one paper was very impressed with the accuracy of Dean's portrayal of Lu Xun (the author). They were particularly impressed with Dean's "fake" mustache-they said it was an exact replica of Lu Xun's signature stache. Dean said he was offended as he had been growing that mustache for a year, grooming it to perfection. Mimi was happy that they noticed the little details, however mistaken they may have been in ascertaining their authenticity.
So, before I'm set to go on to do our press presentation the guy from the Canadian Consolate comes backstage to talk to me. He had previously made eye contact with me during the press conference, as if to say, Hello, I see you there and we'll talk later. As he came backstage he was introduced to me as James Mitchell. We'll hear more about him later. So James and I shake hands quickly and he says, So you know Mark Ceolin? I say yes as he's dialing a number on his blackberry-phone contraption. As he finishes dialing he says, Here, say hello to him.
Mark is a former professor of mine from Ryerson. He taught theatre history and we became pretty friends. He helped and encouraged me a lot outside of class. We also share a passion for Commedia dell'Arte and most things Italian. After second year of University I lost track of Mark. I knew he had adopted a baby from Russia and the last I heard was that he had moved to China. This was in 2001 or 2002. Then his name came up in conversation with Dean. Dean seemed to remember that he met a guy from the Shanghai Fringe last year that sounded like Mark. Sure enough it was him. I had been trying to figure out if he still lived in Shanghai for about a week when James presented me with him on the phone.
It turns out Mark had been here for 2 or 3 years now. His wife works as the head of a large Architecture firm and he has given up teaching and started his own business here. He produces documentaries, publishes two magazines and his newfound business acumen has garnered him a seat as the Chairman of the Board of the Canadian-Chinese business association. He also has a new adopted Chinese daughter named Mattea (after the wife of the famous Italian explorer Giovanni Cabotto). His adopted son from Russia is now 7 and reads and writes Chinese perfectly as his second language!
It is always so great to see familiar faces in strange places. It makes the world see a little smaller. Mark and I make plans to have a drink after the Duras show that evening.
So, Dean and Mimi and I head to the 6th floor of the theatre to see the Marguerite Duras inspired Chinese-French co-production. We've heard muffled warnings about the show...the latest was that there were no seats but only stools set up in the shape of the Chinese character for woman. As we enter the space this is confirmed. Only people are moving the stools wherever they want to get better seats and join their friends. This is the first sign of disaster. The floor is covered in sheets of paper about 2 by 3 feet, like white newsprint. Everytime you move you hear a crinkling noise. Multiply this by the nearly full house and there is an almost constant din of crackling. Second sign of disaster. There is a playing space in the middle of all the stools, which are from IKEA (third sign), and around the edges of the space are paintings done on sheer fabric that make peripheral playing areas. The four actresses, two Chinese and two French, are seating or standing in various positions around the room watching the audience file in-this is the fourth, final and perhaps most telling sign of a disastrous show-I almost always hate, as a rule, when the actors are told by the director to sit and watch the audience come in. Often the actors are placed in this limbo space, neither in the show nor out of it and they usually try their best to play something but in fact there is no action to play. This is usually the first kiss of death and a sure sign of bad mis en scene. I have seen a few shows rise above this first nearly fatal staging choice but often it sinks the ship before it even leaves the harbour.
At this point however I stay optimistic. So what if every theatrical instinct I have says that this show is heading for ruin? I'm in China, the show is from Europe, lets give it a chance.
The show starts. The tall brunette Francaise starts speaking first. It is beautiful text. Maybe this won't be so bad after all, I think. She speaks a portion of text and then one of the Chinese actresses takes over. Still not so bad. At this point the other two actresses, a Blonde Francaise and a shorter Chinese, are just standing around the space, occasionally moving. They both have a weird, other-worldly expression on their face. Try as I might I can't figure out what exactly they're supposed to be doing. Occasionally the two speaking actresses go up to them and play with their hair or costumes (which by this time you realise are ghastly silk constructions done in bright Emilio Pucci-esque patterns and colours). After about twenty minutes I realise that they aren't really going to do anything besides speak. Everyone else must have realised this at about the same time because this is when the first people start indiscreetly leaving the theatre...from then on in it's a catastrophe; people are openly laughing, talking on their phones, leaving in small to mid-sized groups. The poor actresses are just forced to keep on talking. I should also add that it is swelteringly hot in the theatre and there is no ventilation. Occasionally an actress opens the window as part of the show but quickly closes it again.
It's been about an hour now and I'm dying. My only hope is that maybe the blond Francaise and the shorter Chinese actress are not going to speak after all. Maybe they're just there as shadow-like doubles of the speaking actresses. Judging by how little they actually do I know this in my heart to be false but the thought of spending another 45 min in this theatre-death-chamber is too much. And then, sure enough, they start to speak. Ahhh....
Well, after all was said and (not) done we met the director and the actresses. The director's name is Denis and he's one of these typical Parisian dudes, hyper-intellectual, hyper-articulate and loves to talk. He immediately starts in on Dean asking, Est-ce que tu connais ce text? and many great French expressions and turns of phrase follow. Dean ascertains, after several minutes of painful dialogue, that the show is in fact all improvised. It figures. The shows lack of rhythmical variety should have been the first sign. The actors other-worldly gaze should have been the second. The whole concept of the show is that this wonderful text by Marguerite Duras will support the evening. Oh la la! What this really means is a director who has absolutely no conception of mis en scene, of how the stage actually functions. What you're left with is a lot of ideas, a lot of text, a lot of superfluous movement and a lot of empty seats.
It is proposed that we'll all meet up sometime with the French company and have a drink. I'm still planning to meet Mark so I say where we're going. Turns out Mark knows that liason from the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre who's working with the French and we all go to a jazz bar called JZ Club, named after the music I'm sure and not the famous emcee.
It's great to catch up with Mark. We start to talk about life in Shanghai. He tells me he used to live in the building that is on the corner of the street the theatre is on. Across the street from the building is an empty site where just last year there used to be a crowded old subdivision of houses. How the site has emptied is a grusom story: it's the classic tale of developers forcing out the poorer residents to make space for high-rise apartments. This is happening all the time in China but only recently have there been laws put in to place to protect your rights as a resident. What happened on this corner passed before these laws. So the developer had paid off everybody in the neighborhood save an old couple who refused to leave (does this remind anyone of the pictures in the news recently of the man who protested leaving his house as the entire space around it was bulldozed? The picture had a man standing on the roof of his lone house surrounded by a great, empty chasm). The developers paid two migrant workers to go to the house in the middle of the night and burn it down. They did so and burnt the old couple alive while they were at it. After news spread the migrant workers were punished, one being beheaded and the other sentenced to life imprisonment. Meanwhile the developers were never charged and whoever was paid off to hire the migrant workers was never discovered. And the site has remained empty since because no one wants to touch it, it's bad luck. China has many such stories.
Mark is a busy guy. He tells me he's producing the special features for the dvd release of a new film being made in China about the building of the Canadian railroad. Peter O'Toole is in the film and Mark explained how he got to interview him. First he had to submit the questions to O'Toole's handler ahead of time. Apparently O'Toole was delighted with the questions and things were looking good. Mark hears that O'Toole usually only offers about 10 min for an interview but because he liked the questions so much he's prepared to spend 45 min with Mark. When Mark gets to the interview he learns from O'Toole's handler that he's running late. Mark waits an hour. O'Toole finally arrives and Mark launches into the first question. O'Toole immediately says. Yes! about your questions...I can't understand a single one of them. I can't answer these...and then he throws the paper in a drunken gesture towards Mark. Mark says, Okay I guess we'll have to think of some new ones. Mark figures that O'Toole is going to blow him off now. O'Toole starts asking Mark about himself! Mark says he's a theatre professor etc. and O'Toole's ears prick up. The theatre! he says, Let's talk about the theatre! And he proceeds to talk about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Mark had carefully crafted his original question to ask O'Toole about how he prepared for his role in the film and how he felt about portraying a white man who exploited Chinese workers. O'Toole originally played dumb claiming he just showed up and said his text but as he warmed to Mark and ended up talking for a long time it slowly became apparent that his cavalier drunk act (though actually drunken) was just an act and he was in fact just playing with Mark until he found out he was legit. Mark said it also became clear that he was incredibly knowledgeable about Chinese culture and the history behind his role (O'Toole had also shot in China with Bertolucci in The Last Emperor).
So we finished off a few beers, Dean was cornered by Denis the French Duras director again and then we left, making plans to have dinner later on in my stay.
The next day we went to the Canuck Connection, a networking event held on the 37th floor of the Four Seasons for Canadians living in Shanghai to meet and to well, to get drunk. When I told my mother that I went to this event and rubbed shoulders with Canadian diplomats she was very impressed. I told her that in fact it was just like being at a normal Canadian bar with normal Canadian drunks. But maybe I'm being a bit too harsh. We met the diplomat James Mitchell again who had called Mark for me. He was reeling. He kept telling the story of how he started off studying theatre in University and how he really missed it. How he still considered himself a theatre person. It is always kind of sad to hear people who aren't 100% satisfied with their life long for what could have been.
About a week has passed since I started writing this Blog. We've since played our first preview. There is much more to tell but now I must rest a little and get ready for opening night...
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Entry Eleven
Three Days In May pt 2
I'm at the Marienbad again. It's my official watering hole. So close and such a great atmosphere. The waiters here all know me now and one of them even offers me cigarettes every time I come in. I think that I would love it even if it were in Toronto so understand that this isn't a case of making do.
The weather is beautiful here now, just starting to get really hot and you can smell flowers and greenery everywhere you go.
We've had our three-day holiday now. Tomorrow we're back to work. Some interesting things have happened:
On the first day off I came to Marienbad to read and drink coffee in the morning. I slept in until 10 o'clock-the latest I've done so far. I brought my Lonely Planet best of Shanghai and planned my day. I didn't want to waste the opportunity to see some Shanghai sights. I decided to go to the Propaganda Poster Museum. The museum is very close to where I'm staying so I could walk there. It is in an apartment building complex, in the basement of Unit B. I went up to the guards at the gate and showed them the address written down and they gave me a card with a map. I take the elevator down to what I hope is the museum. A man, the owner, greets me, takes my admission and shows me the chronological layout of the three rooms.
Once when I was in London I saw an exhibit of Soviet Propaganda posters at the Tate Modern. I was fascinated by them and consequently they inspired the look of some of the characters in the show Russian Doll that I created with my theatre company, TheatreRUN. I have a collection of posters in jpg form on my computer and I even bought a tiny authentic poster earlier this trip at a store called Madam Mao's Dowry. I'm in heaven at the museum. The first room starts around 1949 at the beginning of the People's Republic of China. I read on the info tabs that the early style of the posters is inspired by traditional Chinese woodcuts and Soviet posters. It is only later, during the Cultural Revolution, that the Chinese poster artists develop the graphic, comic book-style that is re-created on the ceramic coffee cups I also bought earlier in the trip on Taikang Road.
These posters are amazing; the first ones are about supporting the Koreans during the war with America. You see images of heroic, strapping Chinese workers and soldiers stamping on tiny, grotesque American generals and war profiteers. Often the drawings of the yanks make them look a little like rats! Later posters have slogans on them encouraging the Chinese to increase steel production, support agricultural advancement and sometimes show young Chinese students and intellectuals heading off to the remote countryside to "re-educate" themselves amongst the peasantry (this is one of Mao's great ideas). These are from the 50's and early 60's.
There are also pictures that depict solidarity with workers and oppressed people of all nations-Africans, Russians, even American workers and Vietnam protesters.
Then you get to the cultural revolution-1966 to 1976. This was a crazy time in China. By now Mao has become god-like in the way he is depicted, often as the Red Sun looming above whatever image is on the poster. During the cultural revolution Mao is sowing seeds of dischord amongst political parties, debasing intellectuals who are dangerous and destroying historical artifacts and sites that are too strongly linked with the past. This is a time when it is dangerous to be an artist and many are either silenced or re-located. During this time the Nobel Prize winning author of Soul Mountain, Gao Xingjian, burns all of his work for fear of arrest or even death. More on the cultural revolution later...
The last posters are from 1966 to about 1979. They are post-Mao. By then the propaganda poster has slowly lost it's original importance.
Then I go into the gift shop of the museum. All the stuff for sale is authentic stuff-small and big posters, Mao buttons, little red Mao quotation books (the Chinese Communist bible), even a book of Mao's poetry! The museum owner asks me what I'm doing in Shanghai. I explain I'm an actor and doing a show about Lu Xun and he starts to get interested. He says, Follow me. He leads me to another room that is locked. Inside is a room dedicated entirely to posters from the Cultural Revolution. I feel I'm being led into a forbidden place. He shows me a special kind of poster called Dazibao, which means Big Poster. These posters don't have images on them but have text and they're printed on cheap newsprint or whatever they could get their hands on. In fact, he explains to me that the reason that most posters during the Cultural Revolution are printed on cheap paper and take on the more graphic comic book-style I spoke about earlier is because any other kind of art, like painting or printmaking, is considered too bourgeois. The artists aren't allowed to work. The posters have to be made quicky and are often done by students or amature artists working for Mao.
The owner then explains to me that these Dazibao were hung up in public places and read by everyone. They started as an expression of free speech-students and intellectuals put them up to express opinions, thought and criticism. Then Mao realised that he could use them and he hired workers (the brawny guys in the earlier posters) to print slogans from Mao on them. The owner says to me, This is a terrible time in China. Mao is a magician manipulating people's thoughts and causing everyone to fight together. People are accused of being Rightists and anti-Mao. He says that after the Cultural Revolution all the Dazibao were destroyed as people wanted to forget about them. He believes that they deserve to be saved as pieces of art. He has the largest collection of them in China. I ask why the room is sealed and he says it's because people aren't that interested in this room. Perhaps it's too painful to think about the not-too-distant past I think to myself. He says it's the museums mandate to make sure that things aren't forgotten so we can learn from past. He asks me if the young Chinese actors I'm working with talk about this time of history. I say no, in fact I've often remarked this to myself. He isn't surprised and says that the youth are more interested in money, shopping and North American culture. He says that it isn't the time to say whether Mao was good or evil but to look at things objectively. He prefers a middle ground view of history and the future. Many of the things he says confirm and stimulate the impressions of the new China that I (and probably the Chinese themselves) am grappling with. He is one of the few people in China that I've met who is actually open and interested in talking about the past. I'm hanging off his every word. He tells me about a book that is called The Past Is Not Smoke. It is written by the daughter of a politician who was labeled a Rightist by Mao and abandoned by all his friends. He says she writes very objectively and with a great memory about many people under Mao's regime that were suppressed as being dangerous. He says that the book is banned but you can still find it. I ask is it translated into English. He says no. What a pity! I would love to read this book. He goes on to talk about the ruins that the past many years have caused and he explains that he hopes that new flowers will spring from the debris. China is a land of many stories, he says, and it is sad that few of them are allowed to be told.
Before I leave I buy a book of Mao's poems and an art book by a prominent poster designer for the Communist party. I wanted to buy everything in the store! I don't know where my fascination with communist bric a brac comes from.There is something about it being so alien from Canadian culture and about it becoming a real relic as China is fast erasing and forgetting the red past. Living in the West you read about Communism your whole life as being something evil; the failed way of governing from the 20th century. It is the mythological other way of life, the Red shadow of the West. But to actually be here and see the evidence of it, to hold Mao's quotation book in your hand is an experience no book can provide. It is strange that you find a land where people have so little patience and interest in the past. Maybe their fed up with having tradition jammed down their throats for centuries, always having one kind of oppression exchanged for another. They're thriving now and don't want to be held back by the past. Yet, for a people who claim to be more interested in the future they are fiercely proud and quick to point out historical errors in customs and behaviour when we're working. They always stop us and say, No, in China we didn't do that or No, in China you must do it like this. It is in moments like these that you can really sense the precarious balance that the country is walking.
After leaving the museum I go to Xintiandi to meet Dean and Mimi for lunch. Xintiandi is the most shee shee shopping area in Shanghai and overrun with tourists and rich people flaunting their bad taste. The name Xintiandi actual means New Heaven and Earth and is ironic because also located in a fashionable corner of Xintiandi's restored shikumen architecture is the site of the 1st National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party from 1920's.
After Xintiandi I walk home along Changle Road and go in many little clothing shops. I also stop at a Foreign language book store that has a selection of books in French.
Dinner at Ginger and then we try to have a drink at the Marienbad but it has closed early because of the holidays. We decide to buy some beer and drink it in Dean and Mimi's room.
I show Dean ubu.com a site dedicated to avant-garde of the 20th century. This site is fantastic and has sound and video clips from almost every interesting artist you can think of-Cocteau, Beckett, Godard, Appolinaire, Joyce, Derrida, Zappa, Bourroughs, Man Ray-the list goes on and on. I tell them about a great recording Artaud made for French radio in the forties called Pour En Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu. We find it and listen to a recording of A La Recherche de la Fecalite read by Roger Blin. Then we listen to Philip Soliers reading from a book he wrote about Rimbaud. The text is pretty intense and we're hypnotised by Soliers' voice and thoughts about young Arthur. Later we listen to an interview with Godard. The whole evening is a little surreal with our little band of actors sitting in Shanghai, drinking Chinese beer and eating Chinese snacks while listening to French philosophers explain how we've lost the feeling for poetry.
Next day is pretty lazy. We go to a grocery store that supposedly has European products (it doesn't have much) and then have brunch at Ginger. Later we drink Pastis at the Marienbad and eat dinner at the Sichuan restaurant. After dinner we drink pastis again and discuss the state of Canadian theatre. This evenings topics centre around the merits of site-specific theatre vs conventional theatre, a defense of narrative and how to keep the theatrical space a place where the imagination can thrive.
Today we have lunch at Hua Hua's parent's house. Hua Hua is my age and works for the Theatre as a kind of stage manager and producer. She is in charge of taking care of everything we need for the production. She is also a staunch Communist Party member. Her parent's were also staunch members. This is a great chance to glimpse into an area of Chinese life that you don't see on the streets of Shanghai.
We take a taxi ride of about 20 mins south of the city to her apartment. Her parent's greet us warmly. Her mother gives us little blue plastic bags to put over our shoes so we don't have to take them off! The apartment is modest but charming. They have a beautiful hardwood floor. We are given green tea in little plastic cups specially set out for guests and Hua Hua shows us picture albums from when her parent's were young and when she was a baby. These are fantastic! Her father was in the army from age 16 to 24. We see incredible shots of him and the mother from the 70's and 80's. These are real Chinese people living during the cultural revolution and after. When you hear them talk about these much vilified times and say, But then we all had something to eat, you understand that it is Western ignorance and over simplification to dismiss Communism as pure evil. These photos are both completely strange and familiar at the same time. People love their babies the same all over the world, I guess.
The meal we have is more of a feast: bowls of noodles, fried tofu, shrimp and peas, cold beef, cucumber-and this is just the appetizer course! Then we have beef and hard bowled eggs in a hot pot, a huge shrimp (6 inches long!) each in a tomato sauce, then a delicious chicken won ton soup and home made dumplings. I was completely stuffed. Hua Hua said that dumplings were referred to as good luck because the shape of them is like and old money purse. She says they're her father's favourite dish and he goes on to eat a whole plate of them after this enormous meal. He munches on raw cloves of garlic as he eats the steaming dumplings.
Desert is fresh strawberries and cantelope. Then they bring out a cake because it is soon Mimi's and Hua Hua's mother's birthday! Then more tea and candy.
We take a taxi home and I sleep for 2 hours. I wake up, check my e-mail and head over here to write down these thoughts while they're still fresh in my mind.
Entry Ten
Three Days In May
May 1st, Shanghai
I keep a journal on my computer called Thoughts on the City. I started it when I first moved back to Toronto after Europe and my parent's basement. I just re-read most of the entries I've written since beginning it. It documents many struggles, doubts, much pain and longing, and occasionally sudden moments of clear thinking after much muddle. In many ways it is the story of my life for the last two years. But it is only one story. It's the one where the melancholy narrator is the hero, fearless in his honesty, though posing a bit as later day Gide or Orton.
I realise that there are many stories of my life untangling themselves all at once and always. I could even give them instructive little titles, like: Adam's Struggle for Financial Independence or The History of the Obsession with Alexandra or The Hindu Flirtations or Intimations of Genius or The Paris Years and so on, etc, etc. My life is composed of many narratives that are constantly beginning and ending, alluding to each other, supporting and contradicting each other.
One of our greatest stupidities is our propensity to compulsively see our life as unraveling itself as one continuous, un-interrupted narrative thread.
We love to imagine ourselves as the hero or heroine of only one story, the story of our life, the genre of which best suits our temperament-comedy, tragedy, pot-boiler, the evening news. But we are many stories and many genres all at once. We are every personae-hero, villain, king and servant. Each moment of our lives is the intersection of many conflicting narratives, the overlap of countless sub-plots, the cacaphony of many narrators all exercising their own voice. We jump from verse to prose as quickly as the light changes on the street signaling us to leave our buccolic revery and move the plot forward before we get hit by a bicyclist or errant taxi (shout out to my crazy Shanghai taxi drivin' bredrens).
Recently I've begun to think a lot about how the frequency of my brain waves affects my moods, about how I am more receptive to learning at certain times of the day, about how to recognise when my concentration begins to waver and how to re-focus it. I think that we often feel prisoner to our temperament yet I believe that we have more control over it than we imagine. I think that we are constantly fluctuating between different frequencies (as between story-lines) and events in our life must be constantly re-evaluated in light of each new rhythm. Things that happen have an objective quality of being that exists outside of us. They simply are and we have no control over them. How we feel or think about them depends upon our mood which I think (I hope) we have more control over than we imagine. The trick is to try and discover what external factors contribute to productive wave frequencies and productive moods-what food, what colours, movements, company etc.
The linear view of life, of life being a single great narrative, is our greatest work of passivity. We do not actively seek to understand all the minute fluctuations of our personality, all the possible "I's", every narrative tone we are capable of. We submit ourselves to one view. We become compelled by habit, that subtle opiate, and so constantly see our life as having one genre, or a few at best: tragedy, mixed with moments of laughter, picaresque-allegory, boring statistic etc. Genres are great for books, they tell us what kind of world we're in when reading them and they provide critics with easy to use categories that help them when they're criticising. But genres are too constricting for life. Each day we pass through countless numbers of them and we could fill a 1000 pages with our thoughts-look at Joyce's Ulysses! But every book cannot be Ulysses and every life cannot be a book. It took me nearly a year to read Ulysses and I read every page twice. That's one jam packed day Mr. Bloom! Can you imagine pouring over each day of your life in as much detail? Of course it isn't an airtight analogy comparing my average day to Leopold Bloom's but if actively trying to savour every change of mood and tone that I experience every day enriches my life by as much as 1% of the beauty in Ulysses it is worth it. If I had remained passive I would have left the book on the back of the toilet where I kept it, too lazy to even pick it up. It's a lot of work staying curious and living with your eyes open, sometimes it doesn't even stop when you're on the can.
So when I re-read my journal and asked myself, God! So much angst! Did I never laugh? Was I never peaceful and happy? the answer is, of course I laughed and was happy. But not everything can be said in writing and some moments are not meant to be recorded-how many thoughts and feelings crowd one little phrase: "Feel sad today." or "Feeling much better."?
The written word, my journal, is at once a revelation and a concealment. Every documentation of a feeling or a thought also disguises the opposite feeling. Or to put it still better, between each punctuation mark is in fact a terrible ellipsis. The empty space on the page is the hidden path between every thought, the tangle of thought-roads traveled and re-traveled leading up to the next stroke on the page.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Entry Nine
Of love and work
And now to speak of love and work;. How fortunate when the two go hand in hand...
People often hope to love their work. In the theatre you frequently hear the expression "married to the work". I've heard this expression used as a badge of honour, an excuse and a reproach. I've said it myself and even had relationships break up over it. But I think that in the theatre, especially the type in which I work, devised ensemble creation, it is very important not only to love the creation itself but to love the process as well. Ensemble work is so sensitive and delicate that if one does not love the pain and tedium as well as the joy one is in for a terrible time. I often have conversations with Dean about the nature of the work-it is chaotic and relentlessly places the actor in a state of imbalance. Ideas are continually tried and accepted one day only to be re-thought or thrown out the next. In the work one can never be complacent. Dean said today that he and Mimi came to this realisation after many years, many projects and many groups. What they now know for certain is that the work cannot advance if there are people in the room who are complacent or detached, people who are not fascinated by the process and who are more concerned in looking good than making a good show. These people can never commit to the group because they are constantly seeking their place in relationship to the group, instead of inside it. The irony is that in a show where everyone is committed to the group and to telling the story the best they can everyone looks good! Dedication to the creative process makes a great show. This dedication requires love for the work.
I don't think it is overly romantic or inappropriate to refer to one's self as being married to the work. The creative process is like a relationship: at first it is exciting as you discover the material and explore it. You become intoxicated with it through improvisations. Everything is fresh and new. But once you get into the actual process of writing and working things out it can be tedious. It requires dedication and concentration as you go over the same material time and again. Sometimes you become fed up and long for the days off. You need time away, time to assert your independence from the work. Then slowly a change happens. It is almost imperceptible. You have a day off and you find you are bored, peevish. The work has advanced to a stage where you cannot be separated from it, you long for it. It has gathered momentum. The work is now carrying you along with it and you are part of something that is at once within you and without you. And then of course there is the extasy of performance when you share it with a public. This sharing is the meaning of the work. Whether people understand it, or like it or give you great reviews is all one. Because if you love the work itself it will support you, through the rough times and the easy. If you don't love the work itself what do you have after all is said and done? Dean said something that really stuck with me, you are only as good as your last show. You are constantly starting over again from scratch. Fame and fortune are fantastic, don't get me wrong, but they are ephemeral. At the end of the day all you have is your devotion and fascination with the work. Your relationship with it.
There is a passage in the baghavad gita where Arjuna, a great warrior, is preparing to go into battle. At the last moment he looks out onto the battle field and sees in the enemy camp people from his own family (this is a great battle of biblical proportions set to settle a score between feuding families and their respective armies). Arjuna asks Krishna, who has descended in human form to be his council, why he must fight when he sees no good reason for it. Krishna answers that the reasons for things are not for Arjuna to worry over. What does it matter in the grand scheme of things whether or not a few hundred thousand extra people live or die. Living and dying are both an illusion, maya, and everything flows in and out of Brahma, the total reality. Then Krishna explains to Arjuna that one of the paths of yoga towards Brahma and enlightenment is through work. Everyone has their work and they must do it honestly and diligently. They must not concern themselves with rewards or fame but with the simple satisfaction of work well done. This is a true path towards Brahma.
I think this is a great truth in life and not just the theatre, life's double. For me this is what people mean when they say they are interested by process driven theatre.
Good ole' fashioned, honest hard work. It's the only thing that puts you to sleep soundly at night.
And now I must go to rehearsal...
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Entry Eight
Tueday Morning
Tonight you're going to see a Spanish company perform a show called Molly Bloom. It is adapted from Joyce's Ulysses. The show takes the last chapter called Penelope as it's base. It is all staged on a bed with Molly Bloom speaking and Leopold asleep beside her. The Chinese rep from the company who works with you says, Why do you want to see it? I think it's very boring...it is only on the bed. You tell her you'll take your chances with James and his words, even in Spanish.
You want to explain your fascination with Mr. Ma, the Chinese "stage manager". He isn't a stage manager in the western sense; he's more in charge of taking care of the actors, ordering lunch, getting little things done for us, like setting up the scene for rehearsal. You remind your gentle audience that he was the leader of the caravan that retrieved you from the airport. The first thing Dean and Mimi tell you about him is that he likes to wear stylish hats. And it's true that he arrived in a tweed fedora.
He is in his sixties, balding and always wears a crisp white shirt and slacks, usually with a v-neck pullover. Sometimes a blazer. He smokes incessantly. He's great at finding out what you like and having it ready for you. Mimi doesn't like drinking out of plastic cups so he bought us all tea cups with our Chinese birth year animal on them (yours is the rat). He seems to always have great tea at the ready.
You and Dean and Mimi talk about him over dinner quite often. Dean and Mimi think that he must have been an actor. Dean says, He was probably a handsome man in his youth. Mimi says, il aime s'habiler bien, tu vois? Sure enough you get a translator to ask him. He's very modest and says that he began working for the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre in 1961 as an actor. 56 years ago! He says he only played supporting roles. In fact, you've discovered elsewhere that during Mao's regime only five plays were allowed to be staged. Western drama as we know it didn't exist. Mr. Ma confirms that he played in one of these stories.
Oh, the things he could probably tell you! He's seen it all, from an actor's point of view. You think up elaborate schemes involving rice wine, drunkenness and cleverly subtle questions to ask him to find out more without prying to openly. You know that he likes you, he's always ready with a smile and he approves of your infantile attempts to speak Mandarin. Again you think, maybe with a little rice wine and some syruppy compliments...
The whole trip Mimi has warned you about the Mosquitoes. At first you think she is overly concerned and then last night they attack. You have several red, welt-like bits on your forearm, neck and back. They seem to work together, penetrating the defense of your comforter and window screen. These communist mosquitoes never seem to give up!
Now it's off to rehearsal. You finish you tea in one large gulp and hasten to get ready...
Monday, April 23, 2007
Entry Seven
Day Off
It is sunday morning and I've just come back from having a coffee and and a read at a nearby cafe called Jamaica Blue. Crummy coffee, good croissant. There is another cafe down the street from me called Cafe Marienbad that makes excellent coffee-a rare thing in Shanghai-but alas, it isn't open on Sundays until noon. At first I was glad to curb my usual intake of two to three coffee a day but I've started to get headaches from caffeine withdrawal. No joke. I guess some habits die harder than others.
Two days of rehearsal since my last blog. The show is making great progress but the work is exhausting. I spoke about a feeling alienation from the Chinese actors-this erupted in an explosion on Thursday: I was doing a scene with Hongbo, me speaking English and he Chinese. It was a serious scene but I was having a hard time finding the character and tone of the scene. Eventually, as often happens with a difficult scene, I began joking around and Mimi was laughing. Hongbo became angry and said, No, the scene shouldn't be played that way. Mimi assured him we were all in agreement but we were just kidding. We finished it and Hongbo was visibly frustrated. He took his cigarettes and said, Okay, Break time. Dean became furious. "No!" He said. "We're directing this show and we decide when it is break time. We're directing and it is very difficult." I was pissed off too because the Chinese actors always joke around and we say nothing. Then I do it once and they get pissed off. We did the scene again and then broke. After Dean apologised and said he wasn't mad at Hongbo but we all needed to talk. It was a misunderstanding. He explained that I needed to use humour to find a way back to the seriousness of the scene. He understood that Hongbo was trying to concentrate. Dean said that joking around is good, we all need to do it. It lightens the atmosphere and helps us stay human during the work. However, it can bring us together and separate us. For example, on Monday we were working on another scene and Dean was upset. Mimi kept asking him why and he said, No, it's nothing. Afterwards he told us it was because we were trying to concentrate and the Chinese actors wouldn't stop fucking around. Dean said here was a time when he was frustrated but realised that they needed to joke around to get into the scene. He said we all needed to make an effort to accommodate each other's work. When we can laugh and have fun together then we advance and everyone is happy and feels part of the experience.
This talk really cleared the air and allowed me to let out some built up pressure. Other petty things that were bothering me seemed to go away. My feelings of being alone while playing dissipated a little and we all made an effort to let each other in. That afternoon was especially fun and productive.
More interesting rehearsal happenings. We're working on a story about a young widow who is taken on as a servant at a rich house. The woman is a very hard worker and gradually everyone comes to appreciate her. Soon her mother in law arrives to reclaim her and it is a bit of a scandal. We discover that she has run away from her family. The widow refuses to go and she is kidnapped by people from her village and forced into another marriage to make money for the mother-in-law. Later her new husband dies and she has a child. Soon the child is killed by wolves while she's away working. She returns to the rich house and the family reluctantly take her on again. She proves less hard working and begins incessantly repeating the story of how she lost her child. Eventually everyone grows tired of hearing about it. She desperately hangs onto life by incessantly repeating the story. The villagers all make fun of her again. The story begins with the narrator returning to the village and meeting her on the eve of her death. She asks him if people turn into ghosts after death, is there a hell and whether or not she will meet her family in the afterlife. The narrator is taken aback by these questions and brushes her off. She dies the next day and the story begins in flashback.
Anyway, I am playing the go-between from the village who brings the widow to the rich family. She's called Ma Wei and is like a match maker a la Fiddler on The Roof. Dean was unsure if I should play her because I'm a man. In Dean and Mimi's work it usually happens that women have an easier time playing men than the reverse.
I began to try the scenes out and first went really campy. Mimi said, Okay, not bad but don't play that you are a woman. Play the character as you are a man and just do the scene. I tried this and am still struggling to find the right voice and characterisation but Dean said afterwards that it is great. He said that the question of me playing a woman is at the heart of doing stories by this author, Lu Xun. In China Lu Xun is revered as Chekhov is in Russia. Everyone knows his stories and characters and the Chinese have very fixed opinions about him. We've come up against this problem time and again in the work where they say-No, you can't do that like that, In China...etc. In fact, Dean and Mimi's whole approach involves very little free interpretation. They follow the text as faithfully as possible. The problem with Lu Xun is that he was neither for nor against the Communists. He was critical of China but eschewed being overly political by focusing on the human spirit. After the revolution his work was co-opted by Mao as being the exemplar of the modern spirit. No one could be critical of Lu Xun as he was the perfect representation of the party's values in Literature. Sadly, this lack of criticism resulted in people becoming familiar with an idea of Lu Xun that is not necessarily in the actual writing. To return to the problem of me playing in drag-Mimi refers to their style, reluctantly to be sure, as representing a poetic reality: men play women, women play men, we create images using mime and movement all in service of the text in attempt to find what is beneath the text. What it is in the writing that is universal. So Dean said that it's great that we challenge this; we challenge it by having me play a woman, by having Dean play Lu Xun and Kong Ichi (a famous personage from Lu Xun's stories, comparable to Falstaff in that he represents an age or idea about a people that is dying and soon to disappear) and by presenting some works by Lu Xun that are little know by the Chinese public. Hopefully this will create a rupture in the Chinese's usually perception of Lu Xun and force them to engage their imaginations and see Lu Xun in new way. C'est ca le theatre! The Chinese actors are worried about the public reaction, not necessarily because the of the quality of the work but because they perhaps don't see what Dean and Mimi are driving at. They, too, are having their perception of Lu Xun challenged. In fact, I think it is only in this challenge where two cultures can actually meet and make art together to create something new. That is exciting.
The whole phenomenon is a little bit like the reaction Toronto audiences had to the Chekhov shows by Smith-Gilmour. People called it clown-Chekhov or silly. Here Dean and Mimi were fighting against over a hundred years of orthodox Chekhov interpretation. It is always a struggle when you want people to see something in a new way...
Not to beat a dead horse but I'll relay one more anecdote relevant to this problem of culture. As I went for my coffee this morning I noticed on the large TV screen outside the theatre where they play behind-the-scenes footage of current productions they were playing footage from a demo we shot of the Lu Xun project back in December. The footage isn't that great as it was shot too early in the process. They had re-cut it in a non-linear way that actually improved it and really it looks quite good. The only problem is that they've added graphics to it: thought bubbles pop up near characters heads expressing text, in a scene where Hongbo and I beat Dean the words BOOM! and SMACK! appear in bright colours like in the 60's TV show Batman and Robin. The impression you get is that the show is a screwball rendering of Lu Xun. Even the first rough cut of the poster they've mocked up (which is in fact hanging outside the theatre) has all the characters drawn as if they were Hanna Barbara cartoons. Dean thinks it is an expression of their fear to really scrutinize Lu Xun as he is written. In fact, some of our copies of the texts in English are censored in the Chinese versions, omitting lines considered too political and in Chinese title they aren't allowed to use Lu Xun's name because someone did a production adapting Lu Xun stories last year that had nudity in it and it was subsequently censored. The theatre is afraid the same thing will happen here so they anaesthetized all the press material making it seem as goofy and "physical comedy"-like as possible.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Entry Six
2nd Day Off
Oh la la!
What a day of shopping!
We went to the Silk Market to day to buy clothes. It is amazing! Stall upon stall of tailors who are eager to hand make you whatever you desire. I had two cashmere blazers made, both Mandarin style with silk lining. I also had a suit made. All for $200 CDN! Can you imagine!
I'm still reeling over it all. They had beautiful silk bags, scarves, knock off designer ties, shirts...anything you want. Dean also had a suit and a jacket made. I said I was going to pimp out my wardrobe here and I do believe I am.
I ordered the stuff today, had my measurements taken and we go back on Sunday to pick up the stuff. I think I may buy some bags or scarves for my Mom and Sisters.
I had my haircut this week, too. Another crazy experience. You go in and they usher you to your seat. 1st the assistant gives you a thorough massage-your back, arms, neck. Then they put some lathery oil in your hair and massage your head for about half an hour. Then a shampoo. The assistant then takes you back to the chair where the stylist is waiting to cut. They offer you coffee. You can smoke, too, if you like. The stylist named Owen (!?) did a fantastic job, a little too trendy for my taste (he was going off a picture of a European dude that he had, but a great cut. The whole time he orders his assistant (for assistant read "bitch") to do menial things like hold the water sprayer, brush hair off your face and hold the pommade as the stylist works it into the cut. All for about $18! Again, the service in China is 1st class. After Owen presents his card to me, holding the two ends nearest him between thumb and fore finger-I had read the night before in my Lonely Planet best of Shanghai that it is polite to take the card in the same fashion it is offered. Tres chouette...
After the Silk Market we walked through old Shanghai to the Weston Hotel. The market continues into the poorer sections, I think they're called Wu Tongs. All narrow streets with people hawking their wares out front of jam packed tenement-style houses where they also live. Some of the buildings are literally built over piles of junk-bricks, wood and garbage. As you continue the market dwindles into the odd person selling veggies or dumplings or junk toys out of the back of three wheel bikes with flat bed carrying storage space on the back. (The streets are also packed with these bikes, the drivers wringing bells signalling that they're coming to collect junk and garbage-apparently for some it's their job.)
We walked past people on the street preparing spices, vegetables, shelling beans, old people playing Mah Jong and smoking cigarettes and young mothers carrying their babies who have little slits exposing their bare bums out of their trousers. They always smile and we say, Hello! and often the little child will imitate and say Hello back.
The image of two old women in a little alcove sitting on sturdy, low bamboo chairs and chatting with each other, their silvery white hair illuminated by the warm dying afternoon light, is stuck in my mind. A picture that should have been taken but I was too shy to ask.
The poverty here is so out in the open that you try not to appear as a haughty Westerner, staring at them as at some curiosity. Yet you can't stop looking. You try to look at them merely as one human looking at another. You hope they understand this desperate message from your mute eyes.
A man with white hair, wearing jeans and a blazer stops us (I've noticed that no matter how poor the men are here they always wear blazers, even if they have no shoes. Maybe it is a protest against their poverty. A desperate declaration of their dignity.) He says in shaky English, "Can I help you? My father was a doctor. My brother and sister are teacher." Mimi remarks that maybe he said this to us as a way of protest, alerting us not to take him for some poor wretch. He comes from better stock than what we see around us.
The sad thing is that all these narrow streets and houses, this close knit community where people are poor but seem happy living right on top of each other (maybe all of our precious space in Canada really does keep us apart?), all of this will soon be razed to the ground and the people displaced to make way for new high-rise buildings. Already you can see the big buildings with their bamboo scaffolding looming above every corner. I said before that Shanghai is a place of movement, you hesitate and you lose. Well, it is also a city of construction. Migrant workers toil 24 hours a day, steadily preparing the new Shanghai that is being built atop the rubble of the old. Where will all these people go?
Where will this obsession with building and buying lead, I wonder? It makes me think of our Western lifestyle and how our consumption is destroying the environment. The scary thing is that for China this love affair with capital and spending is new and there are over 1 billion people ready to buy into this commercial dream. The shadow of the global capitalist machine has spawned a new and terrible beast with many heads, many arms and a bottomless belly.
But it's easy for me to ponder the apocalypse of the modern world in my comfortable room, writing on my expensive computer and dreaming my new, luxurious cashmere dreams...
Monday, April 16, 2007
Entry Five
Sunday April 15, 2007
Morning, 1st day off
After four difficult days of rehearsal you have a day off. The plan is to go to a very shee shee shopping district with the Deanster and the Mimster.
You get up early, as is your new habit, to sit and write. Breakfast on a granola bar you got at a Chinese grocery store the night before. The store had many European products. You also bought some apples and dried cherry paste candies.
You brew a cup of Oolong tea that you bought two nights ago at a very traditional Chinese Tea shop. The woman there insisted on demonstrating how the Chinese Tea ceremony works: the tiny clay tea pot and cups are on a special wooden tray with slats at the bottom to let water down. There are two types of cups: a tall, narrow one and a tiny saucer-like bowl.
First the woman pours boiling water over everything to warm all the cups and tea pot. She puts the dried tea in the clay pot using a special wooden shovel-like spoon. Then she pours boiling water over the tea pot (she will do this after every step of the process) and pours out the water from the tea pot. This step is to rinse the tea. Then she pours water in the tea pot again. You let it sit for 1 min. Then she pours the tea into the long cup, places the bowl-like cup over top and flips them. The tea goes in the bowl and she rolls the long cup between her hands to let you smell the aroma of the tea. Then you drink. You've never had tea like this before. She adds that you can use the leaves 7-8 times in the little clay pot. Each time let them steep for and extra 30 sec.
The last four days of rehearsal have been very tiring, very difficult but ultimately productive. Your at the stage in the work where you're still writing the show on your feet. You alternate between improvising the stories, one by one and in groups, to see what images and characters stand out, and actually editing and arranging narration from the stories. Again, the language barrier is the most tiring obstacle. When we stop sometimes and discuss possible combinations of scenes or narration the Chinese actors sometimes are left out. Dean and Mimi have explained countless times to them that we cannot have a rigid formality to translation and if they want to be a part of the discussion they have to actively participate and ask for translation if they need it. They often don't and sometimes read, talk amongst themselves and "check out". Joe, the assistant director, even fell asleep once! This all forces Dean and Mimi to split their attention between what is going on in the space and the bored actors. The process is fragile and requires everyone's concentration and ability to see problems through together. As Dean put it, when we're working on a problem we are simultaneaously in that moment but also aware of going towards something, of the process advancing. They don't always see where we're headed and this can make it seem as if nothing is happening sometimes. We're working now on doing two stories together into one. Yesterday we were trying to piece together some bits of action and narration and the distraction was so much that Dean and Mimi had to ask everyone to leave! Everyone except myself and Zhen Ping, who was playing in the scene. Drastic measures but it was necessary to regain some forward momentum. In fact, it wasn't even the other actors fault. It is the translator, the representative from the theatre, her assistant and Joe who are the most restless. But to single them out would be very bad. In the theatre here in China there is a very rigid hierarchy and if you embarrass someone and they lose face it is a grave insult! Joe is often the main problem because Dean and Mimi don't really need an assistant director. He was appointed by the head of the theatre here to learn how Dean and Mimi work so that he can then go and make "physical theatre" in Chinese (a kind of theatrical spy). Joe feels he has no place, this is only partly true because in fact, if he wanted to be a part of the process he could-he only need pay attention, stay focused and he could offer suggestions and help. He even speaks English pretty well, so he has no excuse.
I continue to fluctuate between frustration, joy (when improvising) and sometimes even doubting my place in the process. I know Dean and Mimi asked me here to help as an extra English speaking outside eye and to have another English speaker in the show. Sometimes I feel isolated, for reasons I've already mentioned, and it is difficult to improvise the stories sometimes because I'm unfamiliar with the cultural details in them. When the Chinese improvise they know where they are and what the things are they're doing. For me it is always an interpretation of the stories through western eyes. This wouldn't be a problem if all the actors were western. It is the presence of their authenticity in the room that stifles my imagination.
Maybe it is just your problem, you think. You just have to get over it and focus on what you're doing. But of course you often feel that you give 100% to the process and you only wish your role in the whole piece was a little clearer. The truth is that as an actor in the piece you sometimes feel superfluous. This is a horrible feeling. You think that it may also be a bit of loneliness sinking in. You have no English friends here save Dean and Mimi, who have been fantastic to you. But you need time to yourself, as well. You need a change of scenery from work. And when that change of scenery is also unfamiliar and strange territory you can often feel alone.
You feel that this is all a little neurotic and counterproductive. You are extremely lucky and in a place most others would envy. You are ashamed of doubting your abilities as a performer all the time. In fact, this is the very same self-doubt you scorn in others. Maybe you've been off-stage too long and need the lights a little to reassure you of what you do and who you are. You don't want to be dependent on this recognition, you want to be well balanced on and off stage. But you aren't that strong yet.
You're beginning to think that this balance you seek is not a state to be achieved and then enjoyed but a life's work of searching and struggle.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Entry Four: Friday 13th
Friday April 13, 2007
Oooooh, freaky Friday!
Random thoughts and observations:
-It is always interesting to note the difference between two cultures by examining tiny, seemingly insignificant gestures. Take for example the difference between the way Canadians and Chinese ash their cigarette.
When I Ash I tilt the cigarette upwards and use my thumb to flick the edge closest me downwards, causing the tip of the cigarette to move down as well because the two fingers work as leverage. When the Chinese do it, as I have seen, they hold the cigarette between thumb and middle finger and flick their index finger in a motion away from the body, thus grazing the top of the cigarette in a quick, lateral movement that causes the ash to fall off.
What does this difference mean? Who knows? Maybe they do it like that because they are used to eating with Chopsticks. There are many ways to ash a cigarette and I'm sure some Chinese do it different. This isn't to say all Chinese and all Canadians have one exclusive ash technique. I merely draw your attention to the influence of culture on the quality of gestures.
-this morning I ate oatmeal in my room out of a tea cup (I have no bowl). There was reason to celebrate today, however, because I used chopsticks to eat with. Until today I had no utensils in my room. 1st I was forced to eat the oatmeal by drinking it, like a mulchy tea. This was a disaster that can be corroborated by the stains on my pants. Then I became ingenuous and used the complimentary comb provided in my room. This was also a small triumph, albeit an un-hygenic one. Finally I got wise and stole some chopsticks from lunch. It isn't the strongest who always survive but the most adaptable.
-In China drivers honk their horns almost without cease. You've come to realise that this isn't an act of aggression or a release of rage. No. It is in fact a friendly signal, a little reminder saying, Hello up there ahead of me I'm over hear and I see you and if you don't move I'll probably run you over.
...After two difficult days of rehearsal...
You seem to have gotten over your jet lag however you cannot get rid of the dark circles under your eyes.
You're drinking much less coffee than usual and thinking that perhaps this is a good thing, your morning dose of extra strong gaggia fuel being replaced by the fragrance of jasmine and oolong in your tea.
You talked earlier about coincidences and correspondences. They seem to be everywhere. You seem to be pursued by certain songs. First in Canada, over the last year or so, becoming obsessed with Roy Orbison, Joao Gilberto and songs like Besame Mucho, Maria Bonita, Chega de Saudade, Quixas, etc. You have been pursued by their melodies and rhythms in your imagination but now, in China, they seem to have literally followed you here. You hear them in the apartment on your first night, you hear Besame Mucho at nearly every restaurant you've eaten at. And if that weren't enough, in your room, which is just outside the doors to the upper balcony of the main stage here at the arts centre, you hear every night the music from Francis Lai's Un Homme et Une Femme followed by an Asian-sounding instrumental version of Only The Lonely, exactly at 10pm.
You would like to attribute this to adoration of the West or the influence of Karaoke culture on the desire to sing old melodious songs but these songs seem to represent something else. Even in North America these songs seem to have a new lease on life, popping up in strange places. After all, they found you, didn't they?
You continue to eat like a king. Two nights ago Dean and Mimi take you to a Japanese restaurant called Shintori. Inside is like a modern Bauhaus' dream of Japanese hell: dim lights, concrete floor and wide open concept, all the tables are black, a dumb waiter that takes food to the upper level, the chefs all scream out phrases in unison every so often like Samourai, all the waitresses are dressed in black with black head bands and wrist bands-almost like cute little ninja-girls, all angles are ninety degrees, everything is monumental and functional, even the price. It is very expensive. You have an assortment of seafood brought out on a heated brick and wrapped in tin foil. You let it sit for ten minutes and then the Ninja-girl waitress comes to cut it open with a special knife revealing oysters, clams, shrimp and scallops. You started with shrimp and cheese rolls. You split some very delicious sake with Dean. After you have an assorted dessert tray with many little multicoloured globules of gelly filled with almondy substances, peanutty creams, tofu smoothies etc. Dean has a miso soup that is unlike any you've evey tasted before-it is almost smokey in aroma. Mimi has Peking Duck rolls served with chunks of Duck on the side. Dean also has a Nigiri Sushi platter and Mimi a cod fish steak which may have been cooked in Heaven (or Japanese hell to follow the literary conceit). They bring you a fresh ashtray with a touch of water at the bottom after every cigarette...
