The Chinese theater

To the average Occidental the Chinese stage appears a very queer institution with ridiculous customs. This is due largely to the fact that in the Chinese make-believe world the conventions differ from those employed by us on the stages where we mock life. We accept our own stage conventions as something so natural that habit permits us to forget the strangeness of the devices employed. How many Americans among those who have been under the spell of the realistic action of “The Bat” have thought of the fact that the characters were at all times moving about in rooms with only three walls, that darkness was symbolized by lights carried by the actors, that the attic in the country home of the astute spinster was lighted by footlights, and that an actor who had been killed appeared a moment later for a curtain call? And if in a play that has been pushed approximately to the extreme of realism, an unsophisticated rustic on his first visit to New York might discover the above-mentioned ridiculous customs, what might his comments be on the fact that Mephistopheles sings melodiously in encouraging Faust to fight for his life, that stage whispers are heard by every one in the house except the one person most in need of hearing them, that a flimsy canvas door can shut out a stout villain, or that the last words of a dying man reach to the very highest seat in the top gallery?

Thus it would seem that any one who laughs at the conventions of the Chinese stage simply displays his provincialism. Our forefathers tolerated almost the identical conventions on the medieval stage, as I have shown at length in Chapter Nine. Moreover, it is a very striking fact that there is in many of our theaters at present an extreme reaction against a minute and pedantic imitation on the stage of the realities of everyday life. Because it is felt that too much attention to external things deadens the imagination of the spectators, stage managers of to-day are beginning to prefer once more a conventional presentation.

As a Westerner learns to recognize the conventions of the Chinese stage he quickly becomes used to them, and soon he is as little disturbed by the make-believe of the Oriental theater as he had been before by that of the Occidental. He is then ready to appreciate the art of the Chinese actor, which runs the gamut of human emotions quite as fully as that of the great actors of the West. He must know, however, that the rug on the floor of the projecting, curtainless stage is a magic carpet which carries the actors without change of scenery from Mongolia to Tibet, from the market place to the audience hall in the palace, or from the forest to the prison by the simple device on the actor’s part of walking once or twice about the stage or of exiting and reappearing immediately afterward. The stage has two doors; the one at the spectators’ left is generally used for entrances and the one at the right for exits. However, at times the door at the left is also used for exits, if the actor wishes to indicate that he is not leaving the house or is otherwise remaining in the immediate vicinity. The crossing of a doorsill is presented by raising the feet about eight inches off the floor in making the steps. To open or close a door the actor raises both hands and makes the pantomime of drawing a bolt and moving a door. Slow steps in which the feet are raised well off the floor show that the actor is walking up a stairway. When a general ascends a hill to review a battle he mounts on a chair or table. If a mountain is to be crossed, a similar pantomime is performed. That a man is on horseback is shown by the fact that he carries a riding whip. When he mounts he takes the whip and raises one leg in a movement intended to imitate the action of leaping into the saddle, and when he dismounts he hands the whip to an attendant with a similarly appropriate movement. When the groom leads off the horse he pulls after him the seemingly refractory whip. Sometimes these actions attain a touch of realism, but generally they are—in better taste—confined to quite conventionalized movements. Frequently they escape the newcomer entirely.

A mandarin arriving in a chair walks on the stage surrounded by four attendants, who make a stooping movement such as chair-bearers might make by way of setting down the imaginary palanquin. A lady traveling in a carriage carries with the aid of a servant two pieces of canvas about three feet square, on each of which is painted a wheel; the squares of cloth are supported on bamboo rods, the lady holding the rear ends and the servant the front ends of the rods as they walk across the stage. When she descends she makes an appropriate movement, while the servant folds up and carries off the two painted wheels. Characters who wish to show that they are riding in a boat indicate this by carrying oars with which they paddle in the air. If some one is to enter the boat an oar is stretched out, the new arrival grips it and takes a long step, as though he were boarding a vessel. A man committing suicide by drowning performs a leap as though he were jumping into a well and then quickly runs off the stage. Some commit suicide by throwing themselves down from a wall, indicating this by leaping off a table or a chair placed on top of a table, at times falling on their backs in a manner that requires great acrobatic skill. However, many of the somersaults and similar feats performed on the stage are simply ornamental, with no symbolic significance whatever.

Stage fighting has been developed in China into an intricate art with many cut-and-dried conventions and a minimum of realism. The warriors fly at one another, but they never hit with their swords or spears. The art consists simply in making quick passes at the opponent, whirling about rapidly, throwing a weapon into the air and catching it again, or spinning a spear about much as a drum major does his baton. All the while the orchestra is playing wild and loud music, the kind that Thomas Moore’s Mr. Fudge would call the music of the spears, for every tone seems to go right through you. As neither of the contestants is wounded or falls down, the spectator learns the issue of the battle from the fact that the defeated warrior exits first, while his victorious opponent makes a sort of bow to the audience and then struts off with a dignified step. Sometimes a spear is thrown at a soldier who catches it and sinks to the ground clutching it to his breast, denoting that he has been pierced; then he runs off quickly, a dead man. In stage armies one man carrying a banner signifies one thousand men.

The stage in Peking theaters is lighted by daylight or by means of huge arc lamps that illumine the auditorium and the stage alike. Therefore darkness must be indicated by a conventional symbol, and the same one is chosen that we have selected in the West, namely, a lighted (sometimes unlighted) candle, lamp, or lantern. It is hardly necessary to recall here that even in our most realistically staged plays the darkness on the stage is only relative and never, except for very brief moments, absolute. The passing of time at night is indicated by the drummer of the orchestra, who beats the hours on his kettledrum while otherwise there is silence on the stage. As the Chinese divide their day into twelve periods of two hours each, this can be done more quickly than would be the case if our divisions of time were used and the entire gesture is fairly inconspicuous.

High military officers can be recognized readily by the four pheasant feathers, sometimes as long as six feet, which form part of their headdress. The Chinese call them “back-protecting feathers”, because they are supposed to ward off the blows of the enemy swords. In the same way the painted faces of the warriors can be traced to originally utilitarian purposes; about a thousand years ago a famous Chinese warrior whose scholarly face had a very unmartial appearance painted his face in a gruesome manner in order to inspire fear in the hearts of his enemies.

The manner in which the faces of traditional heroes of war are painted is an attempt at a conventionalized reproduction of the facial expression of these terror-inspiring men as they are described in the books of history or in novels. Therefore it is not possible to give a definite color or color scheme for warriors. But in some other respects there is a definite custom. A face painted pure white denotes a wicked person, while no color on the face means a good character. Pure red designates an honest and faithful man, gold a heavenly being, and several colors applied unevenly a robber. The white nose is the mark of the clown. It is interesting to note that in Chinese clown has likewise the three connotations given for the word in Webster’s dictionary: rustic, ill-bred, and buffoonish.

Gods and spirits can be recognized by the horsehair switch they carry whenever they appear and by the slight tapping of the gong as they enter the stage. The ghosts of the deceased wear black veils over their heads, or bundles of strips of paper under their right ears. Whenever any character from the world beyond, god or ghost, appears, fireworks are set off by a stage hand; usually this takes the form of large flames emitted repeatedly from an oil lamp. Monks and nuns carry the same horsehair switch, perhaps because of their “spiritual” lives. A bride can be recognized by the red veil she wears on her head. Good officials wear square hats, while wicked officials wear round ones. The wicked jailer in his round hat is a frequent figure on the Chinese stage.

A strong wind is indicated by the waving of flags, which recalls the fact that the flags used in our operatic performances are not made of silk as are ordinary banners, but of stiff material, giving them the appearance of banners flying in the wind. A snowstorm is produced by flakes of paper tossed into the air by a stage hand in full view of the audience. A sick person is designated by a yellow cloth which covers his face. When a character has died his face is covered with a red cloth. The head of a decapitated person is symbolized by some object about the size of a human head, wrapped in red cloth. Sometimes an execution is portrayed by making a sword thrust at the victim who then runs off the stage, after which his head is brought on.

For new or exceptional situations new symbols must be invented. There is a play called “Chu Fang Ts’ao” taken from the novel “The Three Kingdoms.” It is the story of a guest who hears his host sharpening a butcher knife and, as he fears the worst, runs off under somewhat amusing circumstances. However, his host was the very reverse of a robber; he was in fact slaughtering the fatted pig in honor of the visitor. The business of slaughtering the pig is done in the following manner: an actor with a black cloth thrown over his head and back walks on the stage in a stooping posture, driven forward by another actor’s stick and making the various deviations from the right path by which a pig in real life exasperates the swineherd. The actor-pig finally walks up to a chair on which he can rest his hands in comfort, while the business of slaughtering is given in pantomime. After this has been done the cloth is removed and the man, now neither pig nor actor, walks off the stage erect.

The above conventions, which have come under my observation in the course of my attendance in Chinese theaters, do not by any means exhaust the list, nor do they represent anything permanent. Changes are continually occurring. One that I have been observing is that the long conventionalized beards no longer hang down from the upper lip, covering the mouth; probably because this was found to be inconvenient for purposes of speaking or drinking tea, and some one hit upon the idea of having the beard only below the mouth and of painting in the moustache to match. Incidentally, only good characters have a moustache, while the villains of the Chinese stage have no hair on the upper lip. One ought to note, too, that these conventions are not so arbitrary as they might seem at first glance, but are generally founded on some real element in Chinese life. The yellow dress denoting the emperor, the red veil marking the bride, and the black costume signifying the poor man have their basis in everyday Chinese custom. A mourner on the Chinese stage appears in white, and the long beards of old men naturally enough have the same color, both quite as in real life. The symbols are an imitation of real life more or less stiffened into conventions. Of course, the origins of the conventional signs are sometimes a bit difficult to trace, especially in the case of ghosts and gods.

From the instances cited above it is plain that the Chinese theater contains much that from our point of view tends to “destroy the illusion.” Another factor in this process is the “property man”—made known to Americans through “The Yellow Jacket”—who is ever on the stage in the midst of all action. When the heroine must kneel before the judge a coolie in a dirty blue cotton gown rushes forward to place a pillow on the floor lest the actor’s costly embroidered gown be soiled. An actor is frequently handed a cup of tea by another such attendant; some actors to-day even equip their servants with thermos bottles for these occasions. A general preparing for combat by removing his outer coat is aided in this operation by ordinary stage hands, not by servants forming part of the dramatis personae. From all the above it would seem that human nature does not demand any particular kind of realism on the stage, but is quite able to adapt itself to any illusion whatsoever.