Su Yong: Doctor of Literature and Art, Associate Professor of the College of Literature of Jiangxi Normal University, Young Jinggang Scholar, Member of the China Literary and Art Critics Association, Deputy Director of the Drama, Film and Television Criticism Professional Committee of the Jiangxi Literary and Art Critics Association. Presided over two National Social Science Fund projects. He has published commentary articles in publications such as People's Daily, Guangming Daily, Literature and Art Daily, China Art News, China Art Newspaper, Opera Studies, Literary theory and Criticism, Jiangxi Social Science, Novel Review, Literary and Art Review, Drama Literature, Film Literature, etc., and a number of them have been reprinted in full by Red Flag Digest and Renmin University Photocopy Materials. He has won the first prize and other awards of the First Online Literary and Art Criticism Competition, and his "Chinese Expression of Poetic Modern Drama - An Exploration of Zhang Manjun's Modern Drama Creation" won the Fourth "Woodpecker Cup" Chinese Literary and Art Criticism Annual Excellent Work.
Liu Fei (hereinafter referred to as "Liu"): Interesting to say, this is our second meeting. We met last month at the ceremony of the Provincial Critics Association Drama Film and Television Criticism Committee and the Provincial Gan Theater's "Dream of the Red Chamber" creation project "Pairing Promotion". Before that, I had read your theoretical article commenting on director Zhang Manjun, and my insights were extraordinary and deeply in my heart. So I had to see that day very happy.
Su Yong (hereinafter referred to as "Su"): You passed the award, that day we really met like old friends, there was no point of life, and then I also took the students to watch the script of the Gan opera "Dream of the Red Chamber" to read, everyone was very curious and excited.
Liu: Listening to you talk about it that day, you were not a self-conscious critic at first, and before you engaged in literary criticism, you seemed to have made other attempts, such as literary creation. So can you combine your experience and talk about how you got down the path of criticism?
Sue: Like almost all Chinese students of our time, literature is sacred to us, a way for us to understand the world, to understand others, to understand ourselves, to be mirrors and lamps. At the same time, at least in our time, literature is an enviable, even unattainable means of changing our destiny, gaining social recognition, and self-actualization. Many writers who have been written into the history of contemporary literature have very simple reasons for taking the road of writing, such as Mo Yan in order to be able to eat dumplings at once, and Yu Hua wants to go to the county cultural center to lie flat. In fact, it was precisely because Yu Hua published his first short story in Beijing Literature that he successfully got rid of his status as a dentist. When I was studying, the status of literature was no longer comparable to that of the 1980s and 1990s, but I still hoped that I could change my fate through literature like Yu Hua. So I had my first novella, "Fairy Under the Mortals," which I also voted for beijing literature at the time.
Liu: What was the result? Yu Hua and Su Tong have talked more than once about their experience of being rejected.
Sue: Yes, so I didn't pay attention to it after I submitted it. But it wasn't long before the editor of Beijing Literature called, and the voice was warm and beautiful, mainly saying that I wrote well. I was so nervous that I forgot to ask her last name. I thought it wouldn't be long before the novel was sent out, and I even thought that Zhang Yimou was going to adapt the novel into a movie.
Liu: Haha, you can imagine the ecstasy at that time, and being able to publish works in Beijing Literature can be said to have become famous in one fell swoop, so what happened later?
Sue: Don't mention it, I waited for half a year and didn't hear anything. Later, this novel was published in the "Yellow River Literature", although Zhang Yimou and Jia Zhangke did not contact me, but it is always a happy thing that the novel can be published. I immediately wrote another novella, or submitted to "Beijing Literature", but no one paid attention to me, and I was disappointed. Then I re-read the works of outstanding contemporary writers such as Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Jia Pingwa, and Su Tong with the attitude of learning, and the feeling at that time could be described as despair, and I felt that I would never be able to write such beautiful words.
Liu: So you should "hate" them.
Sue: That's right, I really "hated" them. Later, I thought about waiting for them to retire and then write it.
Liu: But they have no intention of retiring, and Yu Hua published the all-popular Wencheng last year.
Sue: Yeah. So I thought, since I can't write about them, I will "criticize" them, so I started to criticize.
Liu: So, you are abandoning the text. Do you go well on the road of criticism or commentary? What difficulties have you encountered?
Sue: Just kidding. In fact, my research direction was originally literary criticism. My path to criticism has been relatively smooth. This is of course thanks to the gentlemen I met along the way who paid attention, inspired, influenced and helped me. Let me just talk about a few gentlemen who have a direct impact on me, and I guess there are a few that you also know.
Liu: I guess the first one should be your master's and doctoral supervisor, Mr. Lai Daren.
Su: Yes, Mr. Lai Daren is my mentor, he is a man with the attitude of being born into the world, and he does things in the spirit of joining the world. I have been given a lot of care and help in life and study. Academically, sir inspired me a lot. Mr. Li's academic field, which I summarize into three key words: critical morphology, Marxist anthropological value theory, and contemporary literary and art theory research. These three major areas have both methodological implications and value guidance for my research, and my monograph "Deconstructing the Form and Value of Criticism" was completed under the inspiration of Mr. Critical Morphology and Anthropological Axiology. Although he did not have much energy to apply his ideas to specific critical practice, his expositions on the ontology, essence, nature, and value of literature and art had a profound impact on me.
Liu: Besides Mr. Lai Daren, who else has influenced you?
Sue: The second gentleman who had a great influence on me was the American scholar J. Hillis Miller, who is an extremely important contemporary critic and a representative figure of deconstructive theory. I remained in touch with my husband for more than ten years until his death. He loves Chinese culture very much.
Liu: I read your interview with him, and he likes to eat our Chinese rice dumplings.
Sue: Yes, that time was in 2017, entrusted by the editorial board of Foreign Literature, I conducted an exclusive interview with mr. Li, and the article was nearly 20,000 words, entitled "Dialogue between China and the West, Literary Reading, Deconstruction, and Others: An Interview with Hillis Miller." Mr. Miller has visited China many times and has a strong interest in our food, architecture, calligraphy and other cultures, and shortly before his death, he was still studying the "qi" category of our ancient literature. Sir was a kind and generous Venerable. He always patiently answered every question I asked, and often brought me papers that he had not yet published to share with me. Academically, Mr. Miller's influence on me has focused on two main areas: rhetorical reading and other theories.
There is also one, my nobleman, Mr. Fu Xiuyan. I am a staunch atheist, but strange to say, as soon as I meet Mr. Sir, I always have good luck. Sir is rich enough energy and emotion, and he always feels so vibrant and prosperous to me. He is an expert in the field of domestic narrative science and is also an expert in narrative. I have read his Keats Commentary many times, and his soaring imagination, ability to control language, and scientific rigor are so tightly riveted together.
Liu: Every time I read Mr. Fu's papers, I am really amazed by the splendid literary style and the smooth expression of the ancient and modern.
Su: Mr. Fu enlightened me that literary and artistic criticism can also be very "literary", our criticism is not a handmaiden of literature and art, and our criticism can be on an equal footing with literary and artistic works. Of course, in addition to the above three, the gentlemen who inspired and helped me are Mr. Ye Qing, Mr. Lu Guishan, Mr. Wang Guoping, Mr. Hu Yamin, etc.
Liu: You joined the China Literary and Art Critics Association in 2014, has the China Critics Association helped you in your criticism path?
Sue: I really love the China Critics Association. It was the critics association that gave me a lot of opportunities and platforms to learn and show, so that I found another vast world, met so many sparkling people, and to a certain extent, let me be seen as a critic, and thus be able to effectively see what I saw in the form of words.
Liu: The China Appraisal Association is a very young organization, it was only established in 2014, and I know that in the years since the establishment of the China Appraisal Association, you have participated in many major activities.
Sue: As a regular member, I am very grateful to the organization for its care and nurturing of me. I have participated in many trainings organized by our appraisal association, such as the 2014 National Young Drama Critics Seminar, the 2017 National Film and Television Criticism Seminar, and the 2019 Second National Literary and Art Criticism New Media Backbone Training Class.
Liu: I often see your name in the essay contests and promotion activities held by the China Appraisal Association. For example, in the "What Kind of Literary and Art Criticism does the Times Need" essay collection activity, only four scholars in the country won the Excellent Paper Award, and you were listed among them; the first prize of the 2017 National Online Literary and Art Criticism Competition; and the fourth "Woodpecker Cup" Chinese Literary and Art Criticism Annual Excellent Works in 2019. In addition, you also participated in the woodpecker activity launched by the China Critics Association and Guangming Daily, and published the first commentary article since the launch of the campaign, "How Can Routineization Run Rampant in the Market" (Guangming Daily, September 13, 2017).
Su: I actively participate in the activities of the China Evaluation Association, such as seminars and seminars, as long as I have the opportunity. In addition, the official website of the China Critics Association, the China Literary and Art Review Network, will also publish many original review works, and I have also posted some articles on them, such as "Why The Literature and Art of Fighting the "Epidemic" are Fighting", "How Literary and Art Criticism Reflects the People's Nature", "We Should Not Laugh at the Old Hero Zhang Yimou" and so on. It is no exaggeration to say that the many activities that I have appeared in the comment space as a literary and art critic are inseparable from our appraisal association.
Liu: The fields or objects of your comments are also quite extensive, including drama, film, literature, acrobatics, and theoretical criticism. Well, these different areas will involve a lot of very specialized knowledge, which can be called all-round.
Su: I am sincerely afraid of myself, I am not the kind of all-round literary and art critic who is self-taught and quite powerful at the first shot, and I probably have to wait and learn for a long time in every field before I dare to enter. Of course, the reason why I am willing to carry out various critical attempts or critical experiments may stem from my understanding of the nature of literature and art. In my opinion, whether it is painting, music, film, literature, drama, etc., the reason why they can be crowned in the name of art is because literature and art are anthropology, and the particularity of literature and art lies in the fact that it is an openness, a kind of seeing, a kind of disenchantment or disguise. As for the way and medium in which you say it is visible to us, or in what form it appears, it is of course very important, in fact, the reason why I have been involved in so many fields and spent a lot of time understanding these different artistic languages or media is also to know which of these artistic expressions are more effective and which are more necessary in our time, which are effective but not seen, which are unnecessary but overwhelming; but in my opinion, I am more concerned with what they are saying, their "chattering". In addition to what has already been said, there are also what should have been said but has not yet been said, what has been said but not enough, and what has been said but not yet realized by most of us.
Liu: So in your opinion, what exactly can art provide for our world?
Sue: Art is all connected. Any good art is an exploration of possibilities, and this possibility points to two aspects, one is to explore the possibility of its own expression, and the other is to explore the possibility of human life. Literary and artistic works that can have a profound impact will, to some extent, put forward their own thoughts on the paradigm of expression, power structure, established order, and dominant discourse. At the same time, it seems to me that excellent works of art can often provide new possibilities and new inspirations for our daily routines that seem to be sitting on the ground and numbing machinery. In fact, have you ever noticed that Nietzsche and Van Gogh's genius-level masters were often the same for reasons that were unpopular in their time and revered in later times. Today when we look back at Gauguin's Tahitian Women's series of paintings, we will be surprised to find that those remarkable works of art not only provided us with some new logic at that time but also in our time, and when we look at these simple and natural, vibrant pictures of indigenous life constructed by rich colors, I think that our bodies and minds wrapped in modernism must have produced a so-called shocking experience. The shock experience means that we encounter an alien other, and the other is the premise for us to re-understand and develop ourselves.
Liu: Are there any fields or art forms that you are particularly concerned about?
Sue: I like basically all art forms, but after all, I have limited energy, and I may be more focused on literature and drama. I have studied literature as a bachelor's, master's degree, and doctor, and I have a deep affection for literature, and I have received more systematic and rigorous training in literary criticism.
Liu: What do you think is so special about the art form of drama, from the perspective of the medium?
Su: Drama is an area that I have paid special attention to in recent years, and its peculiarity is that it has a strong presence and interactivity compared to other art forms. Although cinema is also theater art, it is one-dimensional, the screen is "cold" and narcissistic, it only shows itself and does not react immediacally to our reactions. The drama is not the case, the drama actor's body is a physical symbol with emotional power, elasticity and tension - this is different from virtual games, he/she is both a character and a role, he/she can grasp the rhythm and proportion according to the audience's feedback. Therefore, as a stage art drama, its comprehensive and its structure is the most interesting place is that the binary relationship between viewing and acting, viewing and acting mirror each other, the audience sees never only the actor's performance, but also must be attached to their own emotions, desires, etc., and the actor's satisfaction or sublimation in creation, to some extent, is based on the satisfaction of the audience as the scale, the actor's performance is never just a mechanical repetition of body movements, but a creative expression of gazing at the audience's gaze.
Liu: The mode of theater has a unique significance in the current context of a global narcissistic culture, at least in form, it makes us willing to listen, can listen to others, and makes dialogue possible to a certain extent.
Sue: In my opinion, if the art form of drama can once again attract the attention of the world in the twenty-first century, then the human strife and diaphragm will be greatly weakened, and the depression caused by human narcissism will eventually be swept away by the re-emergence of others.
Liu: You just talked about literature and drama, the two art forms you like, so as far as literature is concerned, in addition to the very important domestic writers you just mentioned, which contemporary foreign literatures do you like and respect?
Sue: Too many, like William Faulkner, Julio Cortázar, Emma Reyes, José Saramago, Italo Calvino, García Márquez, Chinchis Aitmatov, Visio Naipaul, Peter Handke, etc.
Liu: What are the characteristics of these writers, and why do you like them?
Su: In general, there are three main types of writers I like, the first is the white writers in developed countries who have a strong sense of criticism, who are fully aware of the deep disasters and alienations that modernism or instrumental rationality have brought to mankind, and who have nowhere to escape, and who deeply describe or display these disasters and alienations in creative words in a new way of perception; the second is writers from developing countries and regions, who on the one hand write about the "cultural colonization" brought by modern Western civilization to their lives and traditions. On the other hand, the disaster and confusion also show us their reflection and the courage and determination to resist; the third category is the minority writers in the developed world, such as the African American writer Toni Morrison, who describes the oppression and identity anxieties suffered by lower-class women and women who are also black. What these writers have in common is that they all sincerely show us in their own unique ways: both as others and others.
Liu: By "other" you mean a different logic or other possibility, right?
Sue: Exactly. These writers are enlightening to contemporary Chinese writers, and if we just imitate their writing methods, such as magic, absurdity, parody, stream of consciousness, etc., it is too external and too desperate. In my opinion, there are two deceased chinese writers who deserve to be read and studied again: one is Lu Yao, who is a literary master of the era of conscious writing, and in the era of methodology at that time, Lu Yao was able to engage in literary creation in an anti-avant-garde way, which required courage, and his calmness and honesty were invaluable. The other is Wang Xiaobo, Wang Xiaobo's pioneer is not only a formal pioneer, but based on his amazing insight, fierce emotion, and profound connotation, so his pioneer is not strange and sensational, but has a thick and deep humanistic temperament.
Liu: Your theater criticism is widely involved in theater theory, opera, opera, musicals, acrobatic dramas, dramas, etc. As you just said, you were first engaged in literary criticism, so what was the opportunity for you to turn to theater criticism?
Sue: I'm a theater lover myself. Then the transition from a mere opera lover to a researcher, if there is a turning point, it should come in 2014. I must mention a gentleman who had an important influence on me. He is an important drama screenwriter, and in my eyes, he is also an important theater critic and theater educator, he is Mr. Luo Huaizhen, my theater leader. In 2014, a month-long national young theater critics seminar was held at the Shanghai Theater Academy, Mr. Luo Huaizhen was our class teacher, for a month, he accompanied us every day, discussed drama with us, and gave me a lot of inspiration. Because my time in the field of theater was still shallow, I was particularly unconfident. He has always encouraged me and placed high hopes on me, hoping that I can show what I have learned on the stage of Jiangxi Drama Critics.
Liu: After several years of study and practice, Teacher Luo should be satisfied with you, at least you have been working hard in the direction he has set for you. Opera, drama, dance drama, opera and other fields, what kind of do you particularly like?
Sue: If I want to say that I particularly like the form of drama, it should be opera, which is the art of our nation. I am a son-in-law in Jiangxi, but I am from Shanxi. There are many kinds of drama in Shanxi, and many of the time of my youth has been filled by local operas such as Jin opera, juggling children, duotai, Shangdang Zizi, Yangge opera, and Daoqing. Let's talk about Jin opera, we are talking about it now, some of the predecessor artists who are at least familiar in the Three Jins are like Wang Ai'ai, Wu Zhong, Liu Hanyin (Gong), Ma Yulou, Ji Ping, Gao Cuiying, Tian Guilan, Feng Jizhong, etc., and I can see their performances almost every year when I was a child. Their art is really tempered in practice, and their footprints are almost all over our Shanxi from cities to towns. Their exquisite art deeply infected me, touched me, conquered me, and I even had the urge to engage in opera performance. Later, although I was engaged in literary research, opera was never far away from my life.
Liu: Ten years ago, statistics from the Ministry of Culture showed that in 1983 there were 373 opera genres in the mainland, but in 2012, it decreased to 286. In ten years, nearly 100 traditional opera genres have disappeared. As a popular art, opera has become increasingly niche, in your opinion, what are the main reasons for the decline of opera, and how should we deal with it?
Sue: That's a very frustrating question. First of all, prosperity and decline are the inevitable fate of any art form. From the four-word poems of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the five-character poems of the Han Dynasty to the near-body poems of the Tang Dynasty, from the Chu Ci Han Fu to the Tang poems and song poems, this is not the case, an era has an era of literature and art.
Liu: So the decline of opera is natural?
Sue: So to speak. However, in my opinion, opera will not exist only in the form of "intangible cultural heritage" like Tang poetry and Song Ci, and opera has its particularities, such as popularity, folkness, and presentness. And in the current new era of cultural self-confidence, more and more people are turning their aesthetic eyes to our national art.
Liu: In other words, is it possible that opera will be revived?
Sue: Of course I hope so. It's just that our opera may need some adjustments. In fact, the discussion of the modernity of opera has been a topic of interest in the opera world since the 1990s. Its logic also seems to be self-evident: since contemporary opera is performed for modern people, then opera can only adapt to the aesthetics of contemporary audiences if it undergoes modern transformation. Subsequently, we have seen a large number of "inexplicable" new historical dramas and modern dramas being put on the opera stage, and as a result, the audience does not buy it. In the practice of opera for more than thirty years, the lesson is profound, and the change and invariance of opera should be principled, for example, the traditional norms in costumes, makeup, props, performances, etc. should be adhered to, which is like the rules in the poetry of the law, violating these principles, obviously losing the legitimacy of opera as opera.
Liu: What you mean is that under the framework of modernity, what opera can make adjustments is the ideological connotation, the story structure, the narrative method, and so on. So what variations has our opera undergone at the moment?
Sue: Good question. Following on to the question just now, I think the second reason for the turning point in opera is that the contemporary paradigm of opera has undergone fundamental changes compared with the past. In the past, opera was centered on the horns, which is also very easy to understand, the previous drama classes were basically market-oriented, the corner pick classes were to feed the entire class society, so the screenwriters, directors, etc. were all serving the big horns like Mei Lanfang, Ma Lianliang, and the so-called directors we are now called in the past, such as the introduction of the play, the master, the head of the department, the head of the class, etc., then these people are not full-time directors, many of them have multiple identities, such as actors, managers, etc., the rehearsal is basically part-time. Obviously, the main position of opera actors in traditional opera is unquestionable, and the so-called creativity of opera must revolve around the performance of actors, and even the setting of the story is also in the service of actors. If only from the story or from the narrative level, the "sword dance" such as "Overlord Farewell", "Red Breeze", "Xi Shi", "Green Pearl Falling" and other "feather dances" themselves do not have much effect on the promotion of the narrative, but these dances have become the most eye-catching places in the whole play, and even often performed alone. These dances are lyrical on the one hand, and on the other hand, they show the superb skills of the opera performers. Today's screenwriters often do not create scripts for any role, but for a story, a theme, a concept, an IP. And the current director is no longer as insignificant as in the past, the current director has a strong right to speak, and has a strong sense of directing, which makes many cases, the actor's performance is more to meet or achieve a certain artistic concept or creative intention of the director, so the actor's own performance appeal may be weakened, or even reduced to the director's living props. In my opinion, even if the director has a strong demand for expression or creation, he should still fully respect the subjectivity of the actor, in the final analysis, whether a play can be recognized by the audience depends on the actor's performance.
Liu: In your opinion, how should the institutional environment be conducive to the development of the opera form that is undergoing great changes?
Sue: That brings me back to the third question I want to ask. Where does the vitality of opera come from? From the private sector, from the market. It is precisely in the fierce market competition that the four famous names of Peking Opera will emerge. Therefore, is it possible to consider introducing relevant policies, under the premise of giving certain guarantees, let some of the horns who dare to accept the challenge go to the market first, so that they can develop opera and enrich opera in the test of the market; at the same time, for private theater troupes, can we also consider giving them corresponding policy support?
Liu: Traditional opera has a more standardized program and a unique aesthetic meaning. What value does modern drama seem to you? Or is there any principle of modern drama that we should adhere to?
Su: Traditional opera is indeed a perfect embodiment of the aesthetic connotation of Chinese culture, the so-called virtual reality is born, and the Middle is peaceful. Opera actors use virtualized, stylized movements to perform boats and horses, there is no water on the stage, there is no sand, but through the actor's performance, we see the water in the void, we see the sand, but this kind of seeing is different from the so-called real seeing, not looking at it with the eyes but looking at it with the heart. Opera actors use the language of opera to construct an aesthetic world of virtual reality and vivid rhyme for us. As for Zhongzheng Pinghe, it can be seen from the costume of the opera that in the past, danjiao was played by men, so the face would be made smaller by means of patches, but after the film was pasted, the actor's expression could not be too exaggerated, and the emotion should not be too intense.
In many cases, our current modern dramas are already tv dramas, too realistic, too lifelike, too straightforward.
Liu: So you came up with the concept of "poetic modern drama.".
Su: The concept of poetic modern drama was put forward to a certain extent in order to theoretically describe or respond to the theatrical practice of our Jiangxi director Zhang Manjun as it is, of course, I put forward this concept with more far-reaching, more positive and more direct theoretical appeals. The theoretical concept of poetic modern drama can be said to be a correction and transcendence of the concept of modern drama that lacks creative subjectivity, lack of perceptual experience, exhaustion of imagination, and loss of opera language.
Liu: I agree with you too much, because this cuts to the heart of the current modern drama creation, although it is in full swing, it lacks peak works. The opposite of poetic modern drama is conceptual modern drama, and in your opinion, what is the main problem of conceptual modern drama?
Su: The biggest problem of conceptual modern drama is not the level of creative purpose, creative direction, etc., but its dry and boring preaching mode and condescending presentation posture, in the poetic reproduction of life, poetic understanding of life, poetic grasp of the era, and other things inherent in the dramatic structure of the total absence, and the result of this will inevitably make the creation of modern drama fall into the quagmire of conceptualization, mechanization, and routine, thus losing the strength, depth and intensity of being close to society, close to the times, and close to the people. The possibility of discovering or encountering others or other logics is lost.
Liu: In your case, what is the value of poetic modern drama?
Sue: The word poetry is used by many scholars, so the poetic modern drama I am here is actually referring to a system. Poetic modern drama refers to the stage style that expresses the living conditions of modern people with original opera language. Poetic modern drama not only contains the conscious exploration of the language and structure of modern forms of opera, but also contains the imagination and construction of ideal human nature and poetic life. In this dramatic space full of Chinese aesthetic spirit and humanistic spirit, poetic modern drama inherently contains three closely related levels of poetic spirit, poetic structure and poetic language. The poetic spirit is mainly embodied in the creator's profound reflection on the times, history and society, embodied in the creator's diligent pursuit of a better life and beautiful humanity, and embodied in a humanistic aspect that leads to others. The poetic spirit is not an abstract conceptual teaching, but always resides in a concrete text, and the manifestation of the poetic spirit is inseparable from the unique text structure and poetic language. It seems to me that in today's increasingly increasingly neoliberal world, we as socialist countries deserve to offer it a whole new alternative. At the same time, in our contemporary China, where globalization and modernization are intertwined, our traditions, our history, and the folk logic and indigenous wisdom that still have strong vitality today can still provide a more dynamic and poetic path for our Modernization of China, which is very different from that of the West.
Liu: You have always advocated realist drama, so what is the relationship between realist drama and realistic drama?
Sue: Realistic drama and realist drama are basically two concepts. Realistic drama is a drama with modern themes, while realist drama refers to drama with a realistic spirit. The difference between the two concepts of realistic drama and realist drama can be simply expressed as follows: the former is actual and the latter is supposed; the former is descriptive and the latter is normative; realistic drama is mainly from the perspective of the theatrical subject matter, while realist drama has a more profound value orientation, that is, it not only tells us what reality is like, but also thinks about "how it should be". It is not that a drama that reflects reality must be a thing, because a drama that reflects reality is also likely to be a cover-up or burial of reality (logic).
Liu: Yes, if drama is a logic that is commonplace, then this kind of drama is actually a kind of obscuration, it does not show what we should see but actually do not see, realism should show the logic that needs to be seen but has been obscured. Our theatre reviews should gain insight and reveal this.
Sue: Criticism is a way for me to talk to the world, and drama is a window into the world. In Antonan Aalto's view, drama is a way to rescue us from the repressive and alienated modern civilization, we can only liberate ourselves from the shackles of everyday life in the theater and in aesthetic activities, so Aalto's cruel drama is always keen to show the audience those unnatural and even surreal wonders, noises, etc., in order to stimulate the audience, so that the audience can be deeply aware of their own existence and another possibility or appearance. In fact, those excellent plays always reveal to us a certain otherness or sacredness in their own unique way of speaking.
Liu: Can you briefly talk about what you mean by sacredness here?
Sue: The word sacred comes from the famous British dramatist Peter Brooke, who was inspired by Aalto, and he has a far-reaching theatrical treatise, which has been literally translated as "The Empty Space" in many domestic translations, and I myself translated it as "The Empty Place". In this book, Brooke expounds the concept of sacred drama. Sacredness here refers to the revelation of the hidden, the invisible, the veiled. Guan Hanqing's "Dou E'e Grievance" actually shows the sanctity of drama, which through the display of Dou E's three vows, lets us see the living situation of women at that time. Then on the topic of realism, realism is not a stereotypical description of reality, and the realism and materiality are not a curb on fiction and imagination. In the book "Realism", Grant lists more than twenty kinds of realism that cover dissenting connotations, different positions, and different angles, such as critical realism, grotesque realism, ironic realism, national realism, model realism, satirical realism, illusionary realism, etc. So what matters is the spirit of realism in the work, and as for how to show it, it is only a difference in method or way of expression.
Liu: In other words, realism is an extremely open and inclusive concept. Realism is also an extremely important and excellent tradition of Chinese drama and even Chinese culture. So in the context of realism, if you were to unthinkingly name an important domestic dramatist, who would it be?
Sue: Mr. Xia Yan. It seems to me that he shines not only in his time, but also in our time. Mr. Xia Yan is not only a typical representative of Chinese traditional knowledge elements who "take the world as their own responsibility", but also a modern humanistic intellectual with progressive thought and rational spirit; not only a pioneer in the fields of drama, reportage, and film, but also a watchman of national art, national tradition and national spirit. In Mr. Xia Yan's view, realist drama, especially Chinese realist drama, has never been or should not be a mechanical copy or imitation of reality, and it has never been a "non-relation to me" view of fire from across the strait. "I" is not outside reality, but always present, "I" coexist with the masses of the people, their suffering is "my" suffering, their demand is "I" demand. We should not copy reality in a naturalistic way, not passively reflect the phenomenal world, but gaze at, dissect and transform reality. Drama should not be an "art for art's sake" that does not care about reality or objects, even if it is a historical drama, it should be written for the present people, not just "thinking about the humor of the ancients".
Liu: In Mr. Xia Yan's view, drama is the drama of reality, but also the drama of the people, reality is the reality of the people, the people are the people in reality, so drama should share joy and sorrow with the masses of the people who bear reality.
Sue: Exactly. Mr. Xia Yan's achievements in the field of drama are rich, and in such a vast and complex writing, we have seen the resolute political choice of the dramatists of the predecessors in front of reality, the people and the nation, and their choice is not only their own choice, but also the choice of the times, the choice of the people and the choice of the nation.
Liu: So, Mr. Xia Yan should be your role model.
Su: Yes, when we remember and visit Mr. Xia Yan again, we actually hope that the clear and gentle "left-wing spirit" will continue to warm and illuminate our times. I myself hope that like my husband, I can have the courage to undertake the mission entrusted to us by the times, and always maintain a heart of reverence for art, the times, and the people, and conscientiously complete the tasks left to us by the times.
Liu: I was deeply touched by your words. The art created by an artist who has a career must be the art of the times and the art of the people. A well-established critic will also evaluate art from a historical, people's, artistic, and aesthetic point of view.
Sue: You said what I wanted to say. I have always felt our time with a pure heart, always learning how to see, always wary of whether what I see is a cover in another sense; I have also been searching, looking for a path of criticism that can effectively lead to others.
Source: Jiangxi Literary and Art Review