Early Asian drama: conversations and convergences.

Salisbury, Eve

Introduction

The idea for this special issue began as a proposal for a double session on the convergences of Eastern and Western Drama for the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in the spring of 2003. Entitled "East Meets West in Drama," these sessions were intended to provide an opportunity to initiate a dialogue and to engage in a broader discussion of an area of drama that had not previously been addressed in a venue of its own at the Congress before. The two-part session, located that year in one of the infrequently used and out-of-the-way buildings on the campus of Western Michigan University (Sangren Hall), drew a modest audience of interested conferees, some more knowledgeable on the subject than others, but all there to share what they knew and to learn more of what they did not know. What became apparent from the active exchange of information and the sharing of firsthand viewing experiences was that another series of sessions would be necessary to continue the discussion we had just initiated. With that in mind, the next year brought further development of the topic, a broadening of its parameters, and a decision to feature mixed-media presentations, one by Max Harris on the Croatian sword dance (written with Lada Cale Feldman) (1) and another by Zvika Serper, which included a live performance.

Two of the essays in this special issue derive from that early beginning--Mikiko Ishii's analysis of weeping mothers in Japanese Noh and early English drama and Serper's discussion of the complementarity of Noh and Kyogen drama. The three other essayists and their topics--Dongchoon Lee on the carnivalesque function of Korean mask dance, Min Tian on the script markings of Chinese Yuan zaju, and Cecilia Pang on the history and development of Chinese opera in the United States--were added along the way to expand the purview of the subject as well as to demonstrate the range and adaptability of Asian modes of drama.

Whether read individually or in conjunction with one another the work presented here initiates a project rich in implications for contemporary audiences both expert and novice. Early Asian drama, subject to change, and adaptable to the surrounding sociopolitical environment whatever that environment might be, was at the same time able to retain distinctively traditional characteristics: skills and performance techniques, instrumental and vocal music, dance, gesture, costume, masking, and script markings to name a few. From folk drama to more formalized presentations, these plays engage their respective audiences and encourage both imaginative and physical interaction in the symbolic world they engender. Whether high art or low, whether artfully stylized or profoundly parochial, the symbolic meanings of colors and shapes, of gestures and props, of masks and movement, transport their audiences to an otherworld, one jarringly unusual yet at the same time comfortingly familiar. It is in the realm of the symbolic, these plays seem to suggest, that certain truths about human existence can be expressed most openly even when those truths are represented as frequently by visual juxtapositions, percussive instrumentation, and nonverbal modes of communication as they are by verbal expression. Despite the most obvious differences between Asian drama and its Western counterpart, the many points of convergence and familiarity of themes--for example, the loss of a loved one, the disenfranchisement or alienation of self or community--suggest the presence of an underlying effort to address the circumstances and conditions of human experience from the most fundamental of family interactions to the place of humanity in the larger scheme of things.

In the essay that launches the collection Dongchoon Lee maps out the operations of such themes in Korean drama. Entitled "Medieval Korean Drama: The Pongsan Mask Dance" Lee's focus on mask dance, a form he calls a "composite art" demonstrates how dance, music, and symbolic meaning converge in carnivalesque fashion to defuse the frustrations of the "common people." Lee traces the history and development of the Korean mask dance, in particular the widely admired Pongsan variety, and points out how social and political differences could be eradicated in the intermingling of players and audience. The mask dance and the clever use of language provided a means by which a dissenting message, even a scathing social critique, could be delivered without dire political consequences. That the art form moves from rural to urban environments demonstrates its ability to adapt to shifting economies. As Lee makes clear, "The value and meaning of the early style of mask dance, whose background lay in a communal life, was distorted. The sense of solidarity, the spirit of cooperation, and the spirit of festivity among the members of a community yielded to the openness, professionalism, and commercialism of a new mask dance in the towns."

Mikiko Ishii's essay "The Weeping Mothers in Sumidagawa, Curlew River, and Medieval European Religious Plays," compares the Benjamin Britten music drama, Curlew River, with the Japanese Noh play Sumidagawa (Sumida River) on which it is based. In an effort to bridge the gap between medieval Japan and modern Britain, the composer, along with his librettist William Plomer, found a model for revision in the medieval English religious play. Having composed Noye's Fludd which drew "on one of the pageants in the Chester Whitsun cycle," Britten composed, in similar fashion, a Christian-based adaptation of Sumidagawa, which features an anguished and grief-stricken mother in search of her lost son. Described first as "mother" and then as "madwoman," Ishii's "weeping woman" becomes an archetype akin to the Virgin Mary as well as the Old Testament Rachel. The similarities between Britten's adaptation of the Noh play and the medieval English cycle plays as they converge in this particular character are striking: "the mother of Sumidagawa grieving over her lost child has a transcendental power that is able to evoke strong feelings of pathos in the members of the audience, who are challenged by the realization that humans are mortal and that separation from those we love most is inevitable." Themes such as a parent's weeping for a lost child, whatever the reasons for that loss, speak to us from late medieval Japan as poignantly as they do from contemporary Britain.

In "Japanese Noh and Kyogen Plays: Staging Dichotomy" Zvika Serper explains the nuances of Noh and Kyogen drama (and the combined form called Nogaku) as well as the ways in which these forms complement one another. In what Serper calls a "harmony of contrasts" the comedy of Kyogen balances the serious themes of Noh, creating a harmonious fusion of opposing forces in the manner of the yin and yang of ancient Chinese philosophy. In this system, the binary oppositions that Western thinkers often consider to be problematic and delimiting increase dynamism and synergy instead. The harmony of contrasts that Serper addresses--human and superhuman, blessings and threats, fictions and realities, among others--accrue a heightened sense of signification when juxtaposed in this fashion. Moreover, because the system of meaning is dependent on identifiable categories, the extensive Noh corpus is divided into two primary parts--Phantasmal Noh and Actual Noh--and then subdivided into Dramatic Noh and Refined Noh. The ultimate goal of Serper's analysis of the primary themes of the five-play cycle of Noh--gods, ghosts of warriors, women, miscellaneous characters, and demons and beasts--as well as the themes of the Kyogen repertoire is to elucidate "existential and human experience."

A similar sort of existential experience transcends time and space through adaptation and cultural synergy when Chinese opera comes to the United States. In "(Re)cycling Culture: Chinese Opera in the United States" Cecilia Pang addresses the development of what might be described as an intercultural phenomenon when Chinese immigrants entered the United States in search of the Gold Mountain Dream. Over time, "recreational entertainment provided by touring Chinese artists and intended primarily for Chinese immigrants" developed into "a vocation engaged in by Chinese-American immigrants and directed more specifically toward a diverse American audience." Pangs lively articulation of the trajectory of a growing art form from the shakiest of beginnings to full maturity, from resistance to acceptance, coincides with four distinct waves of immigration represented by groups and individuals such as Hong Took Tong, Mei Lanfang, Jackie Chan and Yuen Wo-Ping, and Qi She Fang. As Pang suggests, "All of these artist have worked hard to create additional diversity in the mosaic culture of contemporary America by preserving their own traditional aesthetics while simultaneously living their own version of the American dream."

The importance of stage directions in reconstructing the performance strategies of an ancient tradition is the focus of the final essay by Min Tian. Drawing upon the electronic database he has designed "to collect all stage directions marked with ke (indicating action in a stage direction) totaling more than 7,300," Tian gets closer to the truth of how the original performances of the Yuan zaju plays would have occurred. By examining the "earliest surviving examples printed in the Yuan dynasty and later collections published during the Ming dynasty, categorizing, and analyzing the number and variety of stage directions from this corpus" inferences about actions, motives, prop use, scenic situations, and other sorts of staging practices and performance outcomes can be inferred, though Tian is careful not to engage in unwarranted speculation. These directions are simple instructions intended to integrate the bodily movements of the players with the signifying function of language and ultimately to provoke the imaginative participation of audience members. The revaluation of these often overlooked script markings, studied in conjunction with other kinds of information, enables us to understand and appreciate these plays and their performance strategies more fully.

These essays provide a beginning for some new directions of study--comparative, interdisciplinary, and international, studies of genre and gender, performance and theater history, from several critical perspectives-and promise to continue the inquiry begun at that out-of-the-way classroom on the campus of Western Michigan University. One might even look upon such a collection of essays as participating in a new kind of academic forum, "global" in the sense that the convergence of several voices brings into our present moment dramatic forms separated from all of us by time and many of us by geographical distance. Understanding how these ancient art forms have retained their individual features while at the same time have had the capacity to adapt to the tastes of a twenty-first-century audience helps us understand how other kinds of transformation can occur when different sorts of materials are considered together, when our imaginations and sensibilities are affected in the course of the discussion.

There are many people to acknowledge in the assembling of a special issue such as this. First and foremost, of course, are our contributors who have provided the provocation and subject matter for further study. Many conversations have taken place over the past two years in the clarification of points of difference and in the attention to myriad logistics and necessary details. There are also coeditors, assistant editors, and an editorial staff to thank. First is Clifford Davidson, co-organizer of the first series of sessions, and cofounder of Comparative Drama, whose program of "studies international in spirit and interdisciplinary in scope" established at the journal's inception continues to provide the raison d' etre for the work we do. Likewise, associate editors Anthony Ellis and Cynthia Klekar, editorial assistant Nick Gauthier, and production editor Heather Padgen, have contributed in countless ways, often beyond the ordinary, to the completion of this special issue. With this and with special issues inevitably to follow, we continue to work toward expanding the journal's purview, bringing new voices into the conversation, and reaching out to scholars in every part of the world.

(1) Max Harris and Lada Cale Feldman, "Blackened Faces and a Veiled Woman: The Early Korcula Moreska," Comparative Drama 37 (2003-04): 297-320.