The Other Shore Read Online Free PDF Page B

affords a glimpse of self-knowledge in the pursuit of an equilibrium between the self and the outside world. [0-36]
    Of course we are treading on dangerous ground in attempting to interpret the unity and the meaning of the play. It is as if each interpretation leads to another that is its contradiction, and there is always the risk of oversimplification. Perhaps it is better to just regard the play, as Gao Xingjian suggests, as a training exercise for actors. To our writer, The Other Shore is an experiment in pursuit of a modern theatre, using Eastern drama as a starting point. As with Peking opera, it is actor-centred, and communication with the audience is mostly derived from the directness of the actors’ performance. [0-37] The play is also the first piece of work by the playwright embodying his idea of the neutral actor:
     
    Crossing the river to the other shore is a key moment in the performance. After the rigorous movements of playing with the ropes and rapidly exchanging partners, the actors relax their bodies and lie on the floor to listen to the music. As they let the music evoke their feelings, their bodies are not motivated by ideas. This is a process of self-purgation. [0-38]
    From this moment on the actors will be able to “forget” themselves and to effectively focus their attention on observing their own body movements and listening to their own voices. And Shadow, Man’s super-ego, is the physical manifestation of the neutral actor on stage: he is there to observe, evaluate and even make fun of “Man” in the encounter of the self with his other.
     
    Between Life and Death 生死界 (Shengsijie) ( 1991 )
    In 1989, Gao Xingjian finished Exile ( Taowang 逃亡), which is set against the background of the 1989 Tiananmen incident. The play describes the stories of three characters, a young man, a young girl student, and a middle-aged writer, who are in hiding and running from the pursuing PLA (People’s Liberation Army) soldiers. It unmasks and examines the fundamental human weaknesses, such as fear and desire, and the naive idealism among the participants in the Democracy Movement, and casts doubts on the wisdom, and even the possibility, of the intelligentsia’s intrusion into politics. In the end, the only way out for all the characters, as for the writer in real life, is to go into exile.
    Between Life and Death , written two years after The Other Shore , can be seen as an attempt by Gao Xingjian to chastise the Chineseness in him (probably because of his displeasure with the adverse reactions to Exile in 1989) and pursue writing for a universal audience. The setting is unspecified and, except for the appearance of a Buddhist nun, there is no reference to anything specifically Chinese. The heroine, without any indication of her nationality, is just called Woman; she could be “everywoman.” She serves as the play’s narrator, describing her tortured life story, her fears and sensitivities, which are seen as typical of the female sex. In light of this, the play apparently champions feminism, especially women’s sufferings at the hands of men. As the narrator-heroine says, “In her life, a woman is destined to suffer five hundred times more than a man.” Even women help men to oppress other women, and they can be more vicious than men to their own kind. However, the play’s concerns are actually more ambitious, as the collectivist themes in Gao Xingjian’s previous works have been displaced by the more subjective question of the self and the existential.
    The story is about a woman who faces the end of her life’s journey in both mental and physical exhaustion. The various episodes in her monologue fall mainly into three categories. First there is her love-hate relationship with Man, who has no speaking parts but expresses his reactions to her monologue by performing pantomimes. She keeps nagging him, accuses him of infidelity and threatens to leave him. But when he disappears and eventually