(Download) "Peking Opera and Grotowski's Concept of "Poor Theatre" (Essay)" by Yao-kun Liu # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Peking Opera and Grotowski's Concept of "Poor Theatre" (Essay)
- Author : Yao-kun Liu
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 82 KB
Description
In the long and rich Chinese cultural tradition, theatrical performance is one of the most popular artistic forms. Many dramas have been preformed for about a thousand years and are still popular. Among the various forms of drama, Peking opera is the most influential and successful among and it is said that wherever there are Chinese, there is Peking opera. Although its origin can be traced back to ancient times, Peking opera, as performed today, is largely a product of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). In 1790, Emperor Qian Long of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) invited several drama groups to the capital, Beijing, to give performances for the celebration of his eightieth birthday. Afterwards, these drama groups stayed in the capital and continued to perform, thus bringing about a flourishing period in dramatic performance in Beijing. From the dramatic performances given by different drama groups, a new type of drama emerged gradually. It took shape as a combination of the dramatic elements from both the ancient tradition in performance and local dramatic genres. Since this new type of drama was first performed in Beijing, it was traditionally called "Beijing opera" or "Peking opera" as foreigners have pronounced it. However, the Chinese people prefer to call it "National Drama." This was not only because the term "opera" may mislead Westerners with the concept of "opera" in the Western dramatic tradition, but also because Peking opera has become an important part of Chinese culture, and because it is a dramatic embodiment of Chinese aesthetics, philosophy, and ethics (see, e.g., Scott). Undergoing more than two millennia of development and with thousands upon thousands of dedicated dramatists striving for its perfection, Peking opera evolved from primitive religious rituals to a highly developed artistic form of dramatics. It is a dramatic performance of symbolic gestures, dance-like body movements, poetic dialogues, singing, and dancing in harmony with music and rhythm. With different historical, social and cultural backgrounds, essential differences inevitably exist in both dramatic aesthetics and theatrical practices between Western and Eastern traditions of drama. These differences fascinated and impacted upon some of the most representative modernist dramatists in the Western theatre, such as Constantin Stanislavski, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, and Jerzy Grotowski and Eastern dramatic traditions have either inspired or were embodied in their theories of drama and theatrical practice. With his examination of Balinese theatre and his unique position in the "theatre of cruelty," Antonin Artaud explained that to stage a show he intended to "explore the limits of our nervous sensibility ... use rhythm, sound, words, resounding with song, whose nature and startling combinations are part of an un-revealed technique" (66-67). In discussing the influence upon the formation of his actor-training methods, Jerzy Grotowski wrote that "particularly stimulating to me are the training techniques of Oriental theatre--specifically the Peking opera ... but the method which we are developing is not a combination of techniques borrowed from these sources (although we sometimes adapt elements for our use)" (16). However, owing to their unfamiliarity with Oriental culture and stage conventions, these modernist dramatists tended to focus on one aspect in the stage performance of Eastern theatre while neglected the other in their exploration of the differences between Western and Eastern theatrical traditions.
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