Drowning in intellectualism before reaching the other shore

Intellectuals have always had an anomalous place in the theater. Drama has generally been a popular art form depending on such things as suspense, conflict, the reversal of fortunes, and the strong delineation of character. Attempts to confront fundamental and profound questions of human destiny have by and large only succeeded in the theater when incorporated, as in Hamlet, into vigorous, forceful and easily-graspable plots. For the rest, the theater historically has been the locale for wit, romance, thrills, and simple entertainment.

Of course there have been exceptions. Some of the early masterpieces of European modernism in the theater such as Ibsen's Peer Ghynt and Strindberg's Ghost Sonata were deliberate attempts to address a minority audience willing to think about philosophical issues while occupying their theater seats. And by mid-century, Beckett's plays were able to succeed while containing none of the above ingredients.

Nevertheless, today, when TV and the cinema have almost entirely captured the audiences that once patronized the popular theater, live drama has, as never previously, become the domain of specialist groups -- students, intellectuals, and outsiders seeking the subversive thrill of attending events that fly in the face of everything that mass entertainment has to offer.

It is only in the context of this kind of elite audience that it is possible to think about the plays of Gao Xingjian (高行健), five of which are contained in this volume. On the surface, they are difficult to read, difficult to understand, and even more difficult to imagine in production.

There is no reason why the theater cannot recapture a mass audience, but to do so it must turn its attention once again to color, charm, energy, mystery -- the things, in other words, that the human heart has always been drawn to, and has always longed for. Plenty of dramatists still know how to provide these things, but they are all working in television and film where the largest audiences can so easily be reached, and where the highest financial rewards lie. Shakespeare today would undoubtedly be writing for television. The live theater, in the mean time, has been sidelined for those with other, more elevated, interests.

Gao looks set, up to a point, to satisfy these audiences. No pulses will be set running by his plays. What they will do, rather, is provide fodder for earnest discussions in expensive coffee-shops after the performance. What does he mean? How should we behave? What is the meaning of life?

These five plays date from Gao's residence in Paris. His Beijing success Bus Stop, and his controversial meditation on the aftermath of the events of June 4, 1989, Absconding, are, for example, not included. Gao, you can deduce, was by the time these plays were written already turning away from popular audiences, and addressing himself to narrower interest groups.

In a note, he cites the ideas of the late Polish theater guru Grotowski who believed in a "poor theater," drama stripped of its traditional accouterments but rich in primal images such as fire or ice. Unfortunately, he also believed the word was over-valued in drama, whereas Gao's plays are nothing if not wordy.

One play here, Between Life and Death, is a monologue from a women who speaks about herself throughout in the third person. Various mimes provide a measure of relief, but you cannot but agree with the translator when he writes in his Introduction that Gao was interested in "internal conflicts, the psychological drama within a character's consciousness." This is not a piece of theater that will ravish anyone's emotions. For intellectuals it may serve as a test of intelligence; for the average person, to be honest, probably be a test of endurance.