I'll present my work "Rape Fields" for this month and a half long exhibit:
This year's theme is "Green", following last year's "Red". Are we going to have "Yellow" next year? Hope not.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Annual Memeber Show at Berkeley Art Center Opens Tomorrow
Tomorrow evening from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, the annual member show at Berkeley Art Center opens to the public with artists reception. This time, Art Center increased the limit of the dimension and I was able to present my more representative work, instead of small enough to fit in.
I'll present my work "Rape Fields" for this month and a half long exhibit:
This year's theme is "Green", following last year's "Red". Are we going to have "Yellow" next year? Hope not.
I'll present my work "Rape Fields" for this month and a half long exhibit:
This year's theme is "Green", following last year's "Red". Are we going to have "Yellow" next year? Hope not.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
San Francisco Opera's New Commission - Heart of a Soldier
On 7 December, San Francisco Opera (SF Opera) announced the details of their new commission, Heart of a Soldier, by Christopher Theofanidis based on a book of the same name by James B. Stewart about Rick Rescorla, the head of security for Morgan Stanley who died shepherding people to safety during the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. The librettist of the opera is Donna DiNovelli and it will be conducted by SF Opera's Principal Guest Conductor Patrick Summers, with SF Opera Artistic Adviser Francesca Zambello chosen as director. The main characters will be performed by baritone Thomas Hampson, tenor William Burden and soprano Melody Moore.
SF Opera disclosed that the opera has a traditional orchestra but also includes electric guitar and synthesizer. Theofanidis claimed that there are hints of music from very different circumstances here that run below the surface, music from the 1940s, rock of the 1960s, Cornish folksong and Islamic calls to prayer, as a reference to a character’s conversion to Islamic religion.
Producing an opera is expensive and staging a commissioned opera is a gigantic task. SF Opera should be lauded for its efforts. However, I only wish it would be more selective. In recent seasons, it had presented several interesting or so-so world premiere operas. Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking was a runaway success, if largely due to its vivid theatricality, while Stewart Wallace's Bonesetter's Daughter was a dud. Saddled in between were dramatically flaccid Doctor Atomic by John Adams or inept A Streetcar Named Desire by André Previn.
Current SF Opera's general director David Gockley freely admitted that the current enterprise started with his last job as general director of Houston Grand Opera and it was Zambello who came up with the idea of adapting Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James B. Stewart's book on the life stories of Susan Rescorla, Rick Rescorla and Daniel J. Hill into an opera.
According to SF Opera's announcement, the new opera is
Gockley said that on the surface the piece was about what it takes to be a true hero, but what would drive the music was the passion, the suspense and the ultimate tragedy. Francesca Zambello added: "When I read James Stewart's true story of an unsung hero of 9/11, its epic themes of a warrior's code of honor, intense bonds of loyalty, late-found love and overwhelming tragedy struck me as extremely theatrical. It also takes up ideas and ideals, morals and morality in the context of modern American lives. I have always wanted to create an opera based on a real life story and was very gratified when David Gockley agreed to develop this work with me."
These statements were meant to be reassuring but they didn't. More often than not, a spate of new commissioned operatic works in the US are devoid of engaging dramatic situations and musically conservative in pseudo-hollywood ways. I see quite a lot parallel between Heart of a Soldier and Doctor Atomic, which had stretches of gorgeous music but was dramatically very flat. That project was more a presentation of a strong-willed director's idea (Peter Sellars), rather than the ideas of a dramatist and composer. The central issue of Doctor Atomic was if the weather going to be too bad to detail the detonation of the first atomic bomb. How interesting. Adams, a truly amazing composer, unfortunately ignored the entreaties from then SF Opera general director Pamela Rosenberg, to compose a modern Faustian story. Like Heart of a Soldier, Doctor Atomic had a love story as well - an absolutely non-essential one. Doctor Atomic made a wonderful oratorio and home listening but didn't made a theater at all. A golden opportunity wasted. That said, even if the central issue is less obviously dramatic and less complex, it still might work well, if a character's obsession is presented dramatically - the smashing success of Jake Heggie's new opera for Dallas, Moby Dick, was a prime example.
But I am not confident in this creative team. They all have some connections to one place and are of too much similar minds, thus the whole project smells like created by committee. Gockley had presented many world premieres in Houston before but his record was impressive more for its sheer numbers. Many of his commissioned works were just like television movies with generic and obvious scores. He is a crowd pleaser but not cerebral enough to make real valuable contributions to modern lyric literature.
As for the music, I'm afraid that it falls to the same camp as Stewart Wallace's - lush, colorful, easy-listening and very cinematic but ultimately meandering and watery. On-cue crescendos and spices of exotic sound designs could not prevent it from being bland.
Similarly, Doctor Atomic used electronic sounds as well but it neither added nor deduced - all the special effects could be achieved with traditional instrumentation. This rely on electronic sounds has become a common folly of the modern composers. Citing a master composer, who was not an intellectual but an instinct theater animal, Puccini, generated myriads local colors without any such electronic wizardry.
To sample Theofanidis's work, you can view below video of the ending of his orchestral concert work, Rainbow Body, which has been one of the most performed new orchestral works of the last ten years, having been performed by over 100 orchestras internationally.
Related articles:
--> A Wasted Opportunity - on San Francisco Opera's New Commission "Heart of A Soldier"
--> Not Enough Drama, Love to Rescue - on San Francisco Opera's Commissions "Heart of A Soldier"
--> World Premiere Opera "Heart of A Soldier" and What Is a Tragedy
SF Opera disclosed that the opera has a traditional orchestra but also includes electric guitar and synthesizer. Theofanidis claimed that there are hints of music from very different circumstances here that run below the surface, music from the 1940s, rock of the 1960s, Cornish folksong and Islamic calls to prayer, as a reference to a character’s conversion to Islamic religion.
Producing an opera is expensive and staging a commissioned opera is a gigantic task. SF Opera should be lauded for its efforts. However, I only wish it would be more selective. In recent seasons, it had presented several interesting or so-so world premiere operas. Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking was a runaway success, if largely due to its vivid theatricality, while Stewart Wallace's Bonesetter's Daughter was a dud. Saddled in between were dramatically flaccid Doctor Atomic by John Adams or inept A Streetcar Named Desire by André Previn.
Current SF Opera's general director David Gockley freely admitted that the current enterprise started with his last job as general director of Houston Grand Opera and it was Zambello who came up with the idea of adapting Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James B. Stewart's book on the life stories of Susan Rescorla, Rick Rescorla and Daniel J. Hill into an opera.
According to SF Opera's announcement, the new opera is
a story of war, love, friendship and heroism. Heart of a Soldier reflects on the extraordinary true story of Rick Rescorla, a man trained to be a consummate warrior who gave up his own life saving thousands in the attacks on September 11, 2001. Inspired by the American soldiers he saw as a boy in Cornwall, England preparing to launch the Normandy invasion on what became D-Day, and his adult friendship with American fighting man Dan Hill, whom he meets in war-torn Rhodesia, Rescorla emigrates to the United States in the early 1960s to become a soldier and a "Yank," ultimately becoming a decorated platoon leader during the Vietnam War.
On September 11, 2001, as head of security for Morgan Stanley at Two World Trade Center, Rescorla is thrown to the floor when United Airlines Flight 175 crashes into the South Tower. Amidst the unimaginable chaos that ensues, Rescorla uses his commanding presence and booming voice to literally sing his colleagues down smoke-filled stairs and out of the building. While he successfully evacuates all of his company’s 2,700 employees from the South Tower before it collapses, Rescorla makes the ultimate sacrifice when he goes back into the building to search for stragglers. Heart of a Soldier is an opera about a hero who disdains that very term, and about his deep friendship with an American soldier, so unlike him in approach and yet so similar in dedication and bravery.
Gockley said that on the surface the piece was about what it takes to be a true hero, but what would drive the music was the passion, the suspense and the ultimate tragedy. Francesca Zambello added: "When I read James Stewart's true story of an unsung hero of 9/11, its epic themes of a warrior's code of honor, intense bonds of loyalty, late-found love and overwhelming tragedy struck me as extremely theatrical. It also takes up ideas and ideals, morals and morality in the context of modern American lives. I have always wanted to create an opera based on a real life story and was very gratified when David Gockley agreed to develop this work with me."
These statements were meant to be reassuring but they didn't. More often than not, a spate of new commissioned operatic works in the US are devoid of engaging dramatic situations and musically conservative in pseudo-hollywood ways. I see quite a lot parallel between Heart of a Soldier and Doctor Atomic, which had stretches of gorgeous music but was dramatically very flat. That project was more a presentation of a strong-willed director's idea (Peter Sellars), rather than the ideas of a dramatist and composer. The central issue of Doctor Atomic was if the weather going to be too bad to detail the detonation of the first atomic bomb. How interesting. Adams, a truly amazing composer, unfortunately ignored the entreaties from then SF Opera general director Pamela Rosenberg, to compose a modern Faustian story. Like Heart of a Soldier, Doctor Atomic had a love story as well - an absolutely non-essential one. Doctor Atomic made a wonderful oratorio and home listening but didn't made a theater at all. A golden opportunity wasted. That said, even if the central issue is less obviously dramatic and less complex, it still might work well, if a character's obsession is presented dramatically - the smashing success of Jake Heggie's new opera for Dallas, Moby Dick, was a prime example.
But I am not confident in this creative team. They all have some connections to one place and are of too much similar minds, thus the whole project smells like created by committee. Gockley had presented many world premieres in Houston before but his record was impressive more for its sheer numbers. Many of his commissioned works were just like television movies with generic and obvious scores. He is a crowd pleaser but not cerebral enough to make real valuable contributions to modern lyric literature.
As for the music, I'm afraid that it falls to the same camp as Stewart Wallace's - lush, colorful, easy-listening and very cinematic but ultimately meandering and watery. On-cue crescendos and spices of exotic sound designs could not prevent it from being bland.
Similarly, Doctor Atomic used electronic sounds as well but it neither added nor deduced - all the special effects could be achieved with traditional instrumentation. This rely on electronic sounds has become a common folly of the modern composers. Citing a master composer, who was not an intellectual but an instinct theater animal, Puccini, generated myriads local colors without any such electronic wizardry.
To sample Theofanidis's work, you can view below video of the ending of his orchestral concert work, Rainbow Body, which has been one of the most performed new orchestral works of the last ten years, having been performed by over 100 orchestras internationally.
Related articles:
--> A Wasted Opportunity - on San Francisco Opera's New Commission "Heart of A Soldier"
--> Not Enough Drama, Love to Rescue - on San Francisco Opera's Commissions "Heart of A Soldier"
--> World Premiere Opera "Heart of A Soldier" and What Is a Tragedy
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Leonardo's Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway in New York
 |
| New York Time image |
His vision, seen in the video below, sans in-situ wow factor, is not without interest and fun. On surface, it even provides a glimpse of some semblance to the real masterpiece; but the emphasis was decidedly on the technique wizardry and passion play pageantry. The creator also showed no real understanding of the original and no interest of presenting the original in appropriate way. It is all technological bells-and-whistles, very flashy in a way of a polished but hollow Las Vegas extravaganza. The exhibit is all about Greenaway and his technical prowess, which surely is valid and legitimate. But this exhibit is not what it claimed to be, as Leonardo's masterpiece came to live. Anyone goes to the exhibit hoping for a fairly true representation of the work and gain insight, will be disappointed. It hardly enlightens us of the work and eventual Leonardo's masterpiece through his vision became images of high-resolution murkiness. This is spectacle masquerading as art. High tech tableau vivant. It is actually kitsch with capital K.
I'm not a prude or purist and I am not against utilizing new technology to reach out and create. I have discussed in positive terms of artworks created with new media, and have used video to present my own works. My first encounter with Italian Renaissance painting in Shenyang, China, was through light-box photo reproductions, in 1980s. Without such substitution, I would have to wait for decades to see some real ones and some Chinese would never had such chance to see any.
Only if Greenaway presents something truly interesting, other than just cheeky entertainment, the merit of the show would be greater. However, according to a very detailed New York Time review by Holland Cotter, Adding Bells and Whistles to Leonardo, his vision even fell short of a cheeky entertainment and kitsch:
Straight ahead is a replica of the painting, digitally scanned and printed on plaster, with its familiar image of Jesus seated among his perturbed apostles at a long table. A three-dimensional version of the painted table, replete with plates, knives and loaves of bread but with everything plaster white, sits in the center of the enclosure.
Special effects kick in. Images projected onto the replicated painting make figures look three-dimensional. The light in the depicted scene changes; sometimes seeming to come from above, sometimes from a mysterious background source. One group of apostles is momentarily spotlighted as the others fade into darkness; another group is set off with diagrammatic outlines. At regular intervals the whole scene goes dim except for the figure of Jesus, which radiates beams like a searchlight.
Digital reproduction and video recording of art can be valuable, letting us see things we would otherwise never see.
In China, to take one example, the many marvelous frescoes being discovered in ancient tombs are so susceptible to light and moisture damage that they are accessible only to scholars and scientists. Various forms of digital simulation may be the closest the public will get to seeing this art "live."
Then there is the "Last Supper" itself. In irreversibly degraded condition, it may one day have to be taken off view to preserve what’s left. At that point copies are what most of us will know of it. (Whether those copies should be colorized as Mr. Greenaway's "Last Supper" has been, presumably to recapture its original look, will be a matter for debate.)
But by Mr. Greenaway's account, his project exceeds mere documentation. He says that his multimedia remakes of masterpieces are intended to revive visual literacy in art audiences.
As for what's at the Armory, it falls short as art, as art history, as conservation and even, I regret to say, as kitsch. So what's left? A gassy something or other called a "vision," and not the last of its kind. Mr. Greenaway’s painting-by-pixel project calls for at least seven more makeovers of art's greatest hits. Among the candidates are Picasso's "Guernica," Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" and Jackson Pollock's "One: Number 31, 1950."
Sunday, December 5, 2010
My First Devastation and Cynicism
My paintings, often made commentaries on societal affairs, have perhaps revealed that I, though not without compassion, can be quite cynical at times. I have mentioned before of my "education" in general terms, which surely had contributed to my unsentimental world view, which in turn was reflected in some of my paintings, such as the example below - Devils' Dance, which was inspired by a passage of Tin Drum by Günter Grass, whose depiction of book-burning under Nazi regime was not so distant a memory in China when I grew up. However, there was a particular event I remember clearly which laid the first foundation of my cynicism.
When I was about to graduate from my five-year elementary school, my head teacher of three years called me aside for a tête-à-têtes. Anticipating a congratulatory speech on my admission to a highly competitive middel school, I prepared my obligatory gratitude silently. Instead, she offered me an unsolicited piece of advice, which turned my world up-side-down. I was so unprepared that I fell silent but furious inside. When I got home, I cursed her with utmost vehement and all my very limited vocabularies of dirty words. That piece of advice instantly opened my eyes by shedding lights on the dirty world of grown-ups and the treacherous roads I'd tread upon and would be forced to choose, repeatedly perhaps.
The piece of advice she gave me was that in the future, I should not continue my certain practice, a practice she initiated and had so far encouraged during three years' time she was my head teacher. What I, along with several chosen "good students", had done was keeping a record of misdeeds of other students, and reported to her what had happened when she or other teachers were not around. We had performed this task diligently, with great self-regards and pride -- a head teacher's trust was very seductive to elementary school pupils. Considering that our record keeping had not been really a secret, it perhaps gave us, the bookkeepers, a gratifying sense of power and self-righteousness. We had strongly believed that what we had been doing was for the common good and should be most lauded.
In the end, however, in my head teacher's one sentence, I realized that what we had told to do, was despicable and should only be conducted in secrecy, out of sight of light and decency, and by creatures with no self-regard and consciousness. We had been delegated to the same class as rats. Naturally, when my usage to her came to an end, the motive behind her giving me such advice was her care for me, but apparently her care for me was not big enough to eclipse her need to use us, her convenience of three years, paid with the high price of the innocence of several children.
No serious harm had been done to any other students - what we had reported were only mere travilaties, such as who whispered in class, who looked out of the window when a plane flew by, and who copied other people's homework, etc. - except to me, and any other such bookkeepers if who was as sensitive as I was.
I vowed not to be a cat's paw again and will adherent to my own judgment and my good conscious, and remain dignified and not to yield to seductions of trust of the powerful and easy praises.
From then on, I mistrusted any authorities and always question the motivations of the influential, and tried to observe the world with open cold-eyes.
>> My Path, Part V: My Two Christmases in China
<< My Path, Part III: Fifteen Authors Influenced Me Most and Watching Shakespeare in China
When I was about to graduate from my five-year elementary school, my head teacher of three years called me aside for a tête-à-têtes. Anticipating a congratulatory speech on my admission to a highly competitive middel school, I prepared my obligatory gratitude silently. Instead, she offered me an unsolicited piece of advice, which turned my world up-side-down. I was so unprepared that I fell silent but furious inside. When I got home, I cursed her with utmost vehement and all my very limited vocabularies of dirty words. That piece of advice instantly opened my eyes by shedding lights on the dirty world of grown-ups and the treacherous roads I'd tread upon and would be forced to choose, repeatedly perhaps.
The piece of advice she gave me was that in the future, I should not continue my certain practice, a practice she initiated and had so far encouraged during three years' time she was my head teacher. What I, along with several chosen "good students", had done was keeping a record of misdeeds of other students, and reported to her what had happened when she or other teachers were not around. We had performed this task diligently, with great self-regards and pride -- a head teacher's trust was very seductive to elementary school pupils. Considering that our record keeping had not been really a secret, it perhaps gave us, the bookkeepers, a gratifying sense of power and self-righteousness. We had strongly believed that what we had been doing was for the common good and should be most lauded.
In the end, however, in my head teacher's one sentence, I realized that what we had told to do, was despicable and should only be conducted in secrecy, out of sight of light and decency, and by creatures with no self-regard and consciousness. We had been delegated to the same class as rats. Naturally, when my usage to her came to an end, the motive behind her giving me such advice was her care for me, but apparently her care for me was not big enough to eclipse her need to use us, her convenience of three years, paid with the high price of the innocence of several children.
No serious harm had been done to any other students - what we had reported were only mere travilaties, such as who whispered in class, who looked out of the window when a plane flew by, and who copied other people's homework, etc. - except to me, and any other such bookkeepers if who was as sensitive as I was.
I vowed not to be a cat's paw again and will adherent to my own judgment and my good conscious, and remain dignified and not to yield to seductions of trust of the powerful and easy praises.
From then on, I mistrusted any authorities and always question the motivations of the influential, and tried to observe the world with open cold-eyes.
>> My Path, Part V: My Two Christmases in China
<< My Path, Part III: Fifteen Authors Influenced Me Most and Watching Shakespeare in China
Friday, December 3, 2010
Monochromatic Drama
Dramas, by nature, are often full of contrasting or complimentary colors. As an avid theater lover, I, however, do not consider myself as colorist painter. This is not to say that I don't appreciate colorful offerings by other artists. It is simply that I neither use color as primary tool to convey, nor I pursue wonderful combination of colors as the end goals. Sometimes, I found ways to express myself satisfactorily with very few colors, sometimes even monochromatic colors, as in the traditional Chinese water ink paintings. That similarity actually surprised me sometimes since I had practically no training in traditional Chinese paintings. I suppose that subconsciously I must have absorbed much.
Recently, I revisited such efforts of mine and chose the most representative works in this group and assembled them onto a video below:
Painting list:
- Woodcutter
- Snowy Mountain, I
- Dark Trees
- Birches
- Explosion
- Liberation Road
- Companion
- Sisyphus
- White Fish
- One Fine Day
- Sea Storm
- Dirge
- Swamp
- Kampf
- Funnel
- Homeland Impression, I
- Rape Fields
- Purple Dream
- Red Sail
>> Video presentations of paintings and drawings, Part XVI: 2010 Recapitulation
<< Video presentations of paintings and drawings, Part XIV: My Theatrical Paintings on Video
Recently, I revisited such efforts of mine and chose the most representative works in this group and assembled them onto a video below:
Painting list:
- Woodcutter
- Snowy Mountain, I
- Dark Trees
- Birches
- Explosion
- Liberation Road
- Companion
- Sisyphus
- White Fish
- One Fine Day
- Sea Storm
- Dirge
- Swamp
- Kampf
- Funnel
- Homeland Impression, I
- Rape Fields
- Purple Dream
- Red Sail
>> Video presentations of paintings and drawings, Part XVI: 2010 Recapitulation
<< Video presentations of paintings and drawings, Part XIV: My Theatrical Paintings on Video
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Fifteen Authors Influenced Me Most and Watching Shakespeare in China
Recently, several friends tagged me on Facebook with their list of fifteen authors, or so, including poets and playwrights, who have influenced them. I was invited to list my list of 15 or so authors, including poets and playwrights, who have influenced me and will always stick with me.
My list, in alphabetically order, is below:
My home city, Shenyang, has been an industry center for more than a century. It is the capital city of Liaoning Province, one of the three Manchurian provinces in northeast China. At one time, one third of the national products were produced in Liaoning Province alone, before its decline like the rust-belt in the US and its rebirth as a IT, commerce, finance and transportation center, though with a much reduced national importance.
In my previous entry, Growing Up In Cultural Desert, I mentioned a prestigious troupe lost their theater to a discotheque. It was a sad event for a few otherwise largely unnoticed. Fortunately, the troupe didn't disband and continued to play in other theaters, and later moved to another permanent home.
It was through this very troupe, Liaoning People's Art Theater, I had my first live Shakespeare experience. In 1986, when China staged the first Shakespeare Festival in Beijing and Shanghai, this theater participated with its first production of King Lear starring Li Moran, who had been a national icon due to his 1962 film performance of a tragic naval hero in Naval Battle of 1894, as King Lear. Their performance was met with great acclaim in Beijing and returned to further perform for Shenyang audience under the commandment of Cultural Ministry, second ever such command performance in the People's Republic of China.
In 1950s, they had attempted to stage this play but aborted the effort. The theater was steeped in Stanislavski's system and their adherence to this method proved too cumbersome for such gargantuan play. Only after many modern theater experiments flourished in 1980s in China, the theater was able to come back to King Lear with a new approach and struck the right balance between verisimilitude and stylization.
It was a devastating performance and I still remember vividly how Mr. Li's resonant deep bass rolled out like thunder in the theater and how his giant body bent down like broken doll. Though the costumes were traditional, the staging was modern, succinct and fluid. Other successful elements were the sets and the lighting. There was no curtain, a novelty in China at the time. Dominating the stage, floor to ceiling, was a giant sculpture of a crown, formed with massive beams, which slowly disintegrate with the progression of the play and matched the psychology of the characters perfectly, and also provided locales such as castles, forests, and ruins at various stages. Near the very end of the play, the heartbroken Lear, and fell on the body of murdered Cordelia, who was wrapped up in a white gown, which merged with Lear's white mane and became the focal point of the stage and through absolute stillness they conveyed an unbearable sadness and resignation. Then the bier they rested upon started to roll upstage in a solemn and endlessly long procession, inching towards the unlit rear area of the stage whose enormous depth astonished me. Her white gown and his white mane became dimmer and dimmer and eventually was swallowed up by complete darkness.
Before watching this seminal performance, I also saw many televised performances of that Shakespeare festivals from Beijing and Shanghai, including Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Taming the Shrew, etc. Some were good, some were insufferably bad, particularly those free adaptations, which managed to lose the gravity and resonance of true Shakespearean plays without gaining much through their "immediate appeals to local audiences". Those performances seemed to me somewhat gimmicky. Most novelties of that festival were the adaptations into folk operas, including but not limited to Peking Opera -- almost every region has its own version of folk opera, some more lyrical and some more declamatory. Most of those free adaptations moved the time and locales to China, à la Kurosawa, which seems utterly superfluous, because the humanity within Shakespearean plays, if not the English verses, were truly universal.
The crowning production of that festival definitely was that King Lear by my home troupe and I will always treasure that memory, full of dramatic truth and emotional honesty from that much exulted large cast.
Limelight © Matthew Felix Sun
>> My Path, Part IV: My First Devastation and Cynicism
<< My Path, Part II: Growing Up in Cultural Desert
My list, in alphabetically order, is below:
- Honoré de Balzac
- Yǔ Cáo (Chinese playwright)
- Anton Chekhov
- Jean Cocteau
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Friedrich Dürrenmatt
- Euripides
- Carlo Goldoni
- Henrik Ibsen
- Aleksandr Pushkin
- Rainer Maria Rilke
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Friedrich von Schiller
- W. G. Sebald
- William Shakespeare
My home city, Shenyang, has been an industry center for more than a century. It is the capital city of Liaoning Province, one of the three Manchurian provinces in northeast China. At one time, one third of the national products were produced in Liaoning Province alone, before its decline like the rust-belt in the US and its rebirth as a IT, commerce, finance and transportation center, though with a much reduced national importance.
In my previous entry, Growing Up In Cultural Desert, I mentioned a prestigious troupe lost their theater to a discotheque. It was a sad event for a few otherwise largely unnoticed. Fortunately, the troupe didn't disband and continued to play in other theaters, and later moved to another permanent home.
In 1950s, they had attempted to stage this play but aborted the effort. The theater was steeped in Stanislavski's system and their adherence to this method proved too cumbersome for such gargantuan play. Only after many modern theater experiments flourished in 1980s in China, the theater was able to come back to King Lear with a new approach and struck the right balance between verisimilitude and stylization.
It was a devastating performance and I still remember vividly how Mr. Li's resonant deep bass rolled out like thunder in the theater and how his giant body bent down like broken doll. Though the costumes were traditional, the staging was modern, succinct and fluid. Other successful elements were the sets and the lighting. There was no curtain, a novelty in China at the time. Dominating the stage, floor to ceiling, was a giant sculpture of a crown, formed with massive beams, which slowly disintegrate with the progression of the play and matched the psychology of the characters perfectly, and also provided locales such as castles, forests, and ruins at various stages. Near the very end of the play, the heartbroken Lear, and fell on the body of murdered Cordelia, who was wrapped up in a white gown, which merged with Lear's white mane and became the focal point of the stage and through absolute stillness they conveyed an unbearable sadness and resignation. Then the bier they rested upon started to roll upstage in a solemn and endlessly long procession, inching towards the unlit rear area of the stage whose enormous depth astonished me. Her white gown and his white mane became dimmer and dimmer and eventually was swallowed up by complete darkness.Before watching this seminal performance, I also saw many televised performances of that Shakespeare festivals from Beijing and Shanghai, including Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Taming the Shrew, etc. Some were good, some were insufferably bad, particularly those free adaptations, which managed to lose the gravity and resonance of true Shakespearean plays without gaining much through their "immediate appeals to local audiences". Those performances seemed to me somewhat gimmicky. Most novelties of that festival were the adaptations into folk operas, including but not limited to Peking Opera -- almost every region has its own version of folk opera, some more lyrical and some more declamatory. Most of those free adaptations moved the time and locales to China, à la Kurosawa, which seems utterly superfluous, because the humanity within Shakespearean plays, if not the English verses, were truly universal.
The crowning production of that festival definitely was that King Lear by my home troupe and I will always treasure that memory, full of dramatic truth and emotional honesty from that much exulted large cast.
Limelight © Matthew Felix Sun
>> My Path, Part IV: My First Devastation and Cynicism
<< My Path, Part II: Growing Up in Cultural Desert
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
