The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern

Western Theatre: The Displaced Mirror

Min Tian
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 PA L G R AV E S T U D I E S I N T H E AT R E A N D P E R F O R M A N C E H I S T O RY

The Use of Asian

Theatre for Modern
Western Theatre
The Displaced Mirror

Min Tian
Palgrave Studies in Theatre
and Performance History

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Emeritus Professor
Brown University
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 Min Tian

The Use of Asian

Theatre for Modern
Western Theatre
The Displaced Mirror
Min Tian
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA, USA

Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History

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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97178-0

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For my twin daughters
 Acknowledgements

I want to thank the anonymous readers of Palgrave for their comments on

my manuscript and their recommendation for publication. I am particu-
larly grateful to two editors at Palgrave, Tomas René and Vicky Bates, for
their kind and enthusiastic assistance during the whole process of review-
ing, editing, and publication of my book.
Chapters “Theatre of Transposition: Charles Dullin and East Asian
Theatre,” “‘Welding the Unweldable’: Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Refraction
of Japanese Theatre,” and “How Does the Billy-Goat Produce Milk?
Sergei Eisenstein’s Disintegration and Reconstitution of Kabuki Theatre”
were previously published, respectively, in Comparative Drama (vol. 48,
no. 4, 2014), Asian Theatre Journal (vol. 33, no. 2, 2016), and New
Theatre Quarterly (vol. 32, no. 4, 2016). I want to thank the editors and
publishers of the three journals for their permission to use my work in this
book.
Translations into English are all mine if not noted otherwise.

vii
 Contents

Introduction: The Displaced Mirror  1

I nternational Dramatic Prospecting: Aurélien Lugné-Poe’s Use

of Asian Dramas 15

 In Our Two Selves”: Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig on

“
Japanese Theatre 43

 Sea-worthy must put to sea”: W. B. Yeats’s “Nō ” and the

“
Japanese Model 69

 Free Transposition”: The Use of Nō by Jacques Copeau and

“
Suzanne Bing 99

 heatre of Transposition: Charles Dullin and East Asian

T
Theatre129

 IT IS WE WHO ARE SPEAKING”: Antonin Artaud and

“
Balinese Theatre153

ix
x CONTENTS

 Welding the Unweldable”: Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Refraction

“
of Japanese Theatre177

 ow Does the Billy-Goat Produce Milk? Sergei Eisenstein’s

H
Disintegration and Reconstitution of Kabuki Theatre211

 The ‘Asiatic’ Model”: The Brechtian Art of Refunctioning of

“
Japanese (Asian) Theatre239

Conclusion: A Haunting Legacy263

Bibliography275

Index303
 Introduction: The Displaced Mirror

With ever-expanding economic and cultural globalization, intercultural

theatre in the last decades of the twentieth century and the early twenty-­
first century has become an international phenomenon even more far-­
reaching than it was in the first decades of the twentieth century. The new
century saw a flourish of new studies of intercultural theatre. These new
studies represent a growing movement to distance the current century
from the last one. The new century’s reactional movement that has gone
so far as to reject the concept of “intercultural theatre” and has produced
some new variants of theories or models in the theorization of intercultural
theatre, such as hybridization of intercultural performance, “interweav-
ing” or “networking” of performance cultures, and a variety of “new”
interculturalisms (Lo and Gilbert 2002; Knowles 2010; Lei 2011; Fischer-­
Lichte 2014b; Mitra 2015; Cabranes-Grant 2016; McIvor 2016). These
new theories or models advanced as a displacement of those developed in
the late twentieth century propose new utopian visions for the practices of
cross/trans/intercultural theatre in the new century. However, by and
large, this new movement or displacement remains theoretically Eurocentric
and geopolitically Western-centred, and the historical divide remains
between the East and the West. Such being the case, it must be placed in
the historical context of the Western (Eurocentric) modernist interest in
Asian theatre and must be understood historically as an integral part of it.
The Western modernist interest in the traditions of Asian theatre began
at the turn of the twentieth century and was reinforced in the ensuing

© The Author(s) 2018 1

M. Tian, The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre,
Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97178-0_1
2 M. TIAN

decades, during which a number of Asian theatre artists—such as Sada

Yacco, Kawakami Otojirō , Hanako, Michio Itō , Ichikawa Sadanji, Tsutsui
Tokujirō , the Balinese troupe, and Mei Lanfang—travelled to the West
and gave performances of different kinds of Asian dramas and dances. This
modernist interest was shared by the founding fathers of modern Western
theatre, who were the leading figures of a plurality of anti-naturalist avant-­
garde movements, such as Aurélien Lugné-Poe, Adolphe Appia, Gordon
Craig, W. B. Yeats, Jacques Copeau, Charles Dullin, Antonin Artaud,
V. E. Meyerhold, Sergei Eisenstein, and Bertolt Brecht. With the excep-
tion of Lugné-Poe, all these European and Russian artists, featured in this
book, saw at least one of those Asian artists perform or demonstrate.
The first full-length study of this phenomenon of intercultural theatre
is Leonard C. Pronko’s seminal and influential work, Theater East and
West: Perspectives Toward a Total Theater (1967). Pronko was, first and
foremost, a student of the French avant-garde theatre before becoming
one of the leading twentieth-century Western interpreters and practitio-
ners of Japanese theatre (Kabuki). Pronko’s work was preceded by his
equally seminal study of French avant-garde theatre (Pronko 1963). As
Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei has reminded us, “In considering how Pronko
became one of the earliest and most influential postwar Asian theatre spe-
cialists, it is essential to recognize his significance as a scholar of French
theatre” (Sorgenfrei 2011, 375). According to Sorgenfrei, Pronko’s
“unique perspectives on Asian performance clearly derive from his pro-
found appreciation and understanding of European (especially French)
theatre and culture” (376).
Pronko’s points of view on Asian theatre were most profoundly influ-
enced by Antonin Artaud’s theory of the theatre and by the latter’s inter-
pretation of Balinese theatre. In his Avant-Garde: The Experimental
Theater in France, Pronko spoke of Artaud’s interest in Balinese theatre as
“the embodiment of his ideal, pure theatre” (Pronko 1963, 15) and
Artaud’s view of the Balinese actor-dancers as “animated hieroglyphs”
(16). The Artaudian influence is most clearly reflected in Pronko’s view of
Kabuki. As Samuel L. Leiter has noted, according to Pronko’s anti-­
Cartesian viewpoint, “kabuki is Dionysian, a theatre of mythos, while
Western realism is Apollonian, a theatre of logos” (Leiter 2002/2003, 2).
For me, Pronko’s view represents a virtual “double” of Artaud’s binary
differentiation of “Oriental theatre” from “Occidental theatre,” as
­
­dem­onstrated in Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of Artaud’s anti-logo-
centric position. According to Pronko, “attending kabuki, one is often
 INTRODUCTION: THE DISPLACED MIRROR 3

reminded of Artaud’s admonitions regarding the non-intellectual use of

words and sounds in his idealized concept of total theatre” (Pronko 1982,
43). In Pronko’s view, Kabuki “certainly comes closer to realizing his
[Artaud’s] dreams than any other theatrical construction the world has ever
devised” (Pronko 1967, 143), and “Much of what Artaud says of the
Balinese dancers might well apply to kabuki” (Pronko 1982, 55, n. 7).
Pronko’s perspectives towards a total theatre derive from European
avant-garde theatre and its use of Asian theatre, in particular, that of
Artaud. Following Artaud, Pronko argues that “total theater meant magic
and immersion, the renunciation of the logical faculty in favour of some-
thing ‘deeper, higher, more real’” (Pronko 1967, 63). In my view, “total
theatre” was fundamentally a European modernist idea; it was not a uni-
versal necessity, but rather, a local (European) determination, a counter
movement against, or a reactional displacement of, the dominance of
nineteenth-century European naturalism and realism. E. T. Kirby’s critical
documentation on “total theatre” is fundamentally Eurocentric in both its
historical and modernist approaches (Kirby 1969). It locates the genea-
logical roots of “total theatre” in ancient Greece through the European
Renaissance heritage, its foundations in Richard Wagner’s and Appia’s
ideas, its essence in Craig’s idea of the actor, and its models of practice in
Meyerhold’s and Max Reinhardt’s staging. It approaches the “Oriental”
stage as an instance of total theatre, not in the totality of the historical
context of each individual form, but in the “universality” of its exotic
“hieroglyphic form” as imagined by Eisenstein (Kabuki) and Artaud
(Balinese theatre). The Eurocentric placement of this approach is exposed
by the mere fact that for early-twentieth-century Chinese and Japanese
modern reformers, traditional Chinese or Japanese theatre was nothing
but a total theatre, precisely because of its lack of dramatic literature, real-
istic scenery, and psychology, all elements deemed by those Asian modern
reformers to be essential, but rejected by European avant-gardists as extra-
neous to the art of theatre. What the Asian reformers desired for their
“new theatre” were the masterpieces Artaud disavowed, but not the “total
theatre” that he and his Occidental followers dreamed of and projected
onto Asian theatre.
Ultimately, Pronko’s study remains Euro-centred in its affirmation of
the European avant-gardist use of Asian theatres as a displacement and
destruction of the centre of dominance of nineteenth-century European
naturalism and realism. At the beginning of his study, Pronko states that
his book does not attempt “a historical study of Oriental theater,” but
4 M. TIAN

rather, tries to show, by the example of the impact of Asian theatre on

modern Western theatre, “what fresh approaches are available to Western
theater through a better understanding of the great theaters of the East”
(Pronko 1967, 6). At the end of his study, Pronko returns to the Artaudian
concept of the “Oriental” theatre and underscores its use for Western
theatre:

The Oriental theater of metaphysical dimensions, often a revelation of the

absurd, the irrational … takes us into areas beyond the grasp of the intellect.
By creating these new areas of sensitivity, the Oriental theater invites us to
enjoy the feast of total theater from which we have been excluded for too
long. (199)

According to Nicola Savarese, Pronko’s study was “a decisive turning

point” in shaping Western attitudes towards Asian theatre, and has influ-
enced and guided his own studies (Savarese 2002/2003, 129). Indeed,
like Pronko, “writing from a European perspective,” Savarese, in his own
impressive work, Eurasian Theatre, “tries to penetrate particular aspects of
Asian theatrical cultures” in his construction of “the exchange between
actors of their body techniques” as “the basis of ‘Eurasian theatre’, the
interpenetration of two major geographical realities—that of Europe and
that of Asia” (Cremona 2010, 9). Savarese’s historical account attempts to
trace a transnational and cross-cultural movement of “Eurasian theatre”
from classical antiquity to the twentieth-century intercultural theatre that
culminates in Eugenio Barba’s work on “Eurasian theatre” (Savarese
2010, 557–60). Savarese defines “Eurasian theatre” as “a region of theatre
knowledge where the iridescent traditions of the classical theatre of Asia—
nō , kabuki, the dances of India and Bali, the Peking Opera—intertwine
with the traditions of the European and Western theatres” (Savarese
2002/2003, 132). In his view, “this region has become explicit in the
twentieth century” and “Eurasian theatre becomes an objective and com-
mensurable territory of ideas and practices, a patrimony of cultures”
(132). In my view, however, this historical movement of “Eurasian the-
atre” necessitated a dynamic displacement of historically and geographi-
cally differentiated theatrical forces (Asian and Western), and this
constructed territory of “Eurasian theatre” constituted by a matrix of dis-
placed and re-placed theatrical forces remains Eurocentric as a patrimony
that the founding fathers of modern Western theatre bequeathed to con-
temporary Western theatre.
 INTRODUCTION: THE DISPLACED MIRROR 5

The genealogical affinity of contemporary Western intercultural the-

atre, in practice and in theory, with that of the twentieth century is exem-
plified in Erika Fischer-Lichte’s approach to the history of twentieth-century
intercultural theatre. Her approach shows that the “new” aesthetic of
interweaving performance cultures, notwithstanding its conceptual dis-
tancing and differentiation, is a natural heir to the patrimony of that his-
tory, and is, ultimately, an integral part of it. In fact, Fischer-Lichte has
attempted to apply the concept of interweaving performance cultures to
the whole history of what has been described as “intercultural theatre” in
the twentieth century (Fischer-Lichte 2014a, 116–40). Thus, in her
reconstruction of that history, Asian performance cultures were looked at
not in their historical contexts, but from the perspectives of European art-
ists (Max Reinhardt, Meyerhold, Eisenstein, Copeau, Brecht, and Eugenio
Barba), who appropriated and interpreted Asian forms and techniques in
conformity with their own practices and theories. Indeed, it was from “a
European perspective” that Fischer-Lichte views the European avant-­
gardist search for an anti-naturalist “new theatre” of “retheatricalization”
as a “productive” reception of “Far Eastern theatre” (Fischer-Lichte 1997,
115–32). The idea of interweaving performance cultures as a “new” trans-
formative aesthetic, a displacement of non-European and non-Western
traditions from Fischer-Lichte’s predominantly European perspective,
remains Eurocentric as it did not transcend but was firmly rooted in
European traditions—in particular, European anti-naturalist and anti-­
realist traditions.
More than a decade earlier, in my study of twentieth-century Chinese-­
Western intercultural theatre, I offered my critique—in the form of “the
poetics of difference and displacement”—of the theories and practices of
twentieth-century intercultural theatre (Tian 2008). I believe that my cri-
tique still applies to the “new” theories or models proposed in the new
century and that my theory applies equally to my current study of the use
of Asian theatre by the founding fathers of modern Western theatre.
The idea of displacement has been often associated with postmodern
and postcolonial theories, especially Jacques Derrida’s theory of decon-
struction. Derrida’s idea of displacement can be traced back to Sigmund
Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. In Freud’s theory, displacement and
condensation are the two operations of distortion or refraction by the
dream-thoughts represented in the dream-work. “In its implications,”
Freud states, “the distortion of a text resembles a murder: the difficulty is
not in perpetrating the deed, but in getting rid of its traces” (Freud 1964,
6 M. TIAN

43). Thus, according to Freud, the word “Entstellung” (distortion) should

be lent “the double meaning” of deformation/disfiguration and displace-
ment/de-positioning:

It should mean not only ‘to change the appearance of something’ but also
‘to put something in another place, to displace.’ Accordingly, in many
instances of textual distortion, we may nevertheless count upon finding
what has been suppressed and disavowed hidden away somewhere else,
though changed and torn from its context. (43)

Drawing on Jacques Lacan, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak notes that

“condensation” and “displacement” may be “rhetorically translated as
metaphor and metonymy” (Spivak 2016, Ixvi–Ixvii). Spivak speaks of
“Derrida’s often implicit Freudianism” that surfaces in his use of meta-
phor and metonymy: “Metaphor and metonymy are rhetorical translations
of ‘condensation’ and ‘displacement,’ two major techniques, as Freud
pointed out, of dream-distortion” (Derrida 2016, 371, n. 18). Derrida
once acknowledged that he used the word “deconstruction” with the
sense that he “was translating and deforming a word of Freud’s and a
word of Heidegger’s” (quoted in Rapaport 1989, 8). Indeed, Derrida
maintains that metaphor is “the analogical displacement of Being”
(Derrida 1978, 27) and that “The history of metaphysics, like the history
of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies” (279).
Thus, for Derrida, universal history is a history of metaphorical displace-
ment of Being. In Emmanuel Levinas’s critique of Edmund Husserl’s phe-
nomenology, Derrida finds “a displacement of concepts”—a displacement
of “the concept of history” (88). In Levinas’s critique of G. W. F. Hegel’s
phenomenology, Derrida observes “the displacement of the concept of
historicity,” which constitutes “the necessary condition” for the fulfilment
of Levinas’s “anti-Hegelianism” (94). Likewise, in Georges Bataille’s rein-
terpretation of Hegel’s own interpretation, Derrida discerns “a barely per-
ceptible displacement” that “disjoints all the articulations and penetrates
all the points welded together” by the Hegelian discourse (260). When
Derrida speaks of the generation of “the ghostly” in the movement of
European history (“Kant qui genuit Hegel qui genuit Marx”) (Derrida
1994, 3, 9), he underlines, in effect, the movement of its very déplace-
ment, a movement I describe in the direction of Marx qui déplaça Hegel
qui déplaça Kant. In general, Derrida observes “a metaphorical displace-
ment” in “the history of the concept of structure” that is as old as Western
science and Western philosophy (Derrida 1978, 278).
 INTRODUCTION: THE DISPLACED MIRROR 7

Now, as part of the history of Western thought, Derrida’s deconstruc-

tive approach was driven by a discursive displacement of Western meta-
physics. Drawing a distinction between “dissemination, seminal
différance,” and “polysemia,” Derrida opposes displacement to dialectics.
For him, “a teleological and totalizing dialectics” that must permit “the
reassemblage of the totality of a text into the truth of its meaning” annuls
“the open and productive displacement of the textual chain” that forbids
“an exhaustive and closed formalization of it” (Derrida 1981, 45).
Derrida’s observation equally applies to intercultural performance. The
open, and at once, productive and destructive displacement of a perfor-
mance text makes impossible the dialectical reassemblage of the totality of
it into “an exhaustive and closed formalization” of it in any particular satu-
rated theory or model.
Ethnology, which has a particular relevance to the theory and practice
of intercultural performance, is one of the human sciences that Derrida
thinks occupies a privileged place in the history of Western thought.
Derrida argues that “the critique of ethnocentrism—the very condition of
ethnology—should be systematically and historically contemporaneous
with the destruction of the history of metaphysics” (Derrida 1978, 282).
Without such a decentring displacement and destruction and as long as
ethnology as a scientific discourse “borrows from a heritage the resources
necessary for the deconstruction of that heritage itself,” there is no escap-
ing ethnocentrism (Eurocentrism as ethnology is “primarily a European
science”), and thereby, the necessity that “the ethnologist accepts into his
discourse the premises of ethnocentrism at the very moment when he
denounces them” (282). For Derrida, “this necessity is irreducible; it is
not a historical contingency” (282). For me, however, “irreducible” as it
is, it is at once discursive/metaphoric and historical in the sense that it is
historically conditioned.
Like Derrida’s deconstructive approach, Michel Foucault’s ahistorical
and counter-humanist approach to the history of Western thought was
underpinned and driven by a mechanism of discursive displacement under-
lying the historical movement of Western thought. In his investigation of
the Western order of things, Foucault discovers an epistemological break or
discontinuity in the history of Western thought between the eighteenth
and the nineteenth centuries, “a minuscule but absolutely essential
­displacement, which toppled the whole of Western thought” in terms of the
relation of representation to being (Foucault 1970, 238–39). In his view,
the “Kantian critique” or “Kantian doctrine” that marks the threshold of
8 M. TIAN

Western modernity is “the first philosophical statement” of “this displace-

ment of being in relation to representation” (242, 245). With what he calls
“this displacement of the question of transcendence,” Foucault subse-
quently performs “a fourfold displacement in relation to the Kantian posi-
tion” (323). In fact, as Foucault later acknowledged, in his “historical” and
“philosophical” investigation into the “histories” of Western thought from
the archaeology of knowledge to the history of sexuality, “a theoretical
displacement” was necessary for him to analyse and problematize what he
calls “the games of truth” played out in the domains of knowledge, power,
and subjection (Foucault 1984, 12).
In the domain of theatre, the Foucauldian order of things represents a
displacement of the Western classical idea of the theatre as mimesis and
representation. For Foucault, in the theatre, there is no representation,
only what he calls “liberated simulacrum” (Foucault 1977, 171). The
Foucauldian theatre is a theatre of heterotopia. It is a theatre of difference
that stages, without the past and the future, “the present as the recurrence
of difference, as repetition giving voice to difference,” affirming “at once
the totality of chance” (194). It is a theatre of displacement that “brings
onto the rectangle of the stage, one after the other, a whole series of places
that are foreign to one another” (Foucault 1986, 25). Foucault’s spatial-
ized view of history and society (Flynn 2005, 125) is in accord with his
idea of theatre. For Foucault, like theatre, the space in which we live “is
also, in itself, a heterogeneous space … a set [ensemble] of relations that
delineates sites [defines emplacements] which are irreducible to one
another and absolutely not superimposable on one another” (Foucault
1986, 23, 1994, 755). In Foucault’s spatialized—not temporalized/histo-
ricized—imagination, this “ensemble of relations” is not historically con-
ditioned and defined; it is purely spatial and non-hierarchical. The
Foucauldian theatrical take on the order of things has an uncanny affinity
with our postmodern (Foucauldian) turn to the performativity (fictional-
ity) of representation in theatre. For me, however, displacement is not only
spatial and takes place in an open (not self-enclosed and autonomous)
network (“ensemble of relations”) that is at once heterogeneous and hier-
archical, but also temporal and takes place in a historical context. This is
especially true with the in-between space of hybridity and heterogeneity of
intercultural theatre and performance. Thus, the postmodern notion of
displacement that denies a dialectical sublation or a syncretic universalism
that transcends the performance of difference must be historicized: aes-
thetic and cultural differences and identities and their (inter/cross/trans)
 INTRODUCTION: THE DISPLACED MIRROR 9

displacements and emplacements are historically grounded and their theo-

rization must be historically contextualized in the rootedness as well as the
alterity and hybridity of cultures.
As in the histories of Western thought, there was a dynamics of dis-
placement underlying the historical movement of Western theatre. Before
the turn of the twentieth century, when intercultural theatre began to take
shape, it was constituted by an internal displacement and emplacement of
historically different theatrical forces and trends in theory and practice.
Around 1930, writing of “The way to a great contemporary theatre,”
Bertolt Brecht, whose Marxist idea of history was drastically at odds with
Foucault’s, provided a Foucauldian reading of the history of European
bourgeois theatre, which was marked by a movement of reactional
displacements:

In the sphere of variants, there is no tradition; there are only action and
reaction, that is, there are only reactions. The pendulum swings back and
forth. What appears to lead is the opposition, and it owes its existence to
oversaturation (Übersättigung). Classicism and Romanticism, Impressionism
and Expressionism are reactions. (Brecht 1992, 379)

In Brecht’s view, these “reactions” or trends were merely “variants” intrin-

sic to the system of European bourgeois theatre, to be consumed by “this
oversaturated and appetiteless body,” the bourgeois superstructure based
on its “economic system of variants,” as the bourgeoisie “no longer have
the possibility to design entirely new basic plans or to discuss them”
(377–78). Thus, for Brecht, these “variants” were not truly revolutionary
or consequential.
In contrast, Brecht argued, “tradition is necessary” for his idea of the
epic theatre as it was concerned with “true, revolutionary continuation”
(Brecht 1992, 379). “If we extract the epic style of representation among
the many trends out of the dramatic literature of the last hundred years
(1830–1930),” Brecht maintained, “we do so in search of a tradition”
(379). Thus, for instance, by bringing the great bourgeois (French and
Russian) novels to the stage, “naturalism transported some epic elements
into the drama,” albeit “very much against its will” (379). In spite of his
attempts to find the tradition of the epic style of representation in European
literature, including naturalistic novels and dramas, Brecht was keenly aware
of the need to find, as far as form was concerned, models, not merely to
extract and transport (displace) some epic elements, for his revolutionary
10 M. TIAN

theatre. Realizing that such models certainly cannot be found “in our spa-
tial or temporal surroundings,” Brecht turned to Asia and felt the need to
prove that he had “the ‘Asiatic’ model” (379–80).
In fact, at the turn of the twentieth century, European avant-garde
theatre turned to the East in its reactional movement against the domi-
nant trends of naturalism and commercialism. As early as 1916, W. B.
Yeats spoke of “the circle” many European arts ran through, and thereby,
of the pressing need for the Europeans “to copy the East” (Yeats 1916,
IX). This movement, or rather displacement, continued decades into the
twentieth century. During the last three decades of the twentieth century,
intercultural theatre as part of this movement reached a historical cre-
scendo. As a reaction to the practices and theories of the late twentieth
century, new theories were put forward in the new century. Notwithstanding
their different spatial and temporal detours, these theories present, ulti-
mately, a predominantly Occidental approach to the condition of the
Occidental-centred globalization of theatre and performance that is driven
by an inevitable displacement of the differences and identities of culturally
and aesthetically differentiated theatrical traditions.
Ultimately, to use Freud’s psychoanalytical analogy, the distortion (in
any form) of a text (dramatic, performance, as well as cultural) in intercul-
tural performance resembles a “murder”: the difficulty lies not in perpe-
trating the sacrilegious and violent act of deforming/disfiguring a text,
but in displacing it out of its context, disintegrating it as a whole, effacing
its difference and identity, and integrating or interweaving it, tracelessly, in
the in-between text. The in-between text cannot escape the haunting of
the ghostly afterlife of the “murdered” text, whose ineffaceable traces lead
inevitably to the deconstruction of the act or process of hybridizing or
interweaving and to the unweaving of the fabric(ation) of the in-between
text that is supposedly traceless and teleologically productive, capable of
creating “new” places or identities. The intercultural act or process of
hyphenating a text necessitates displacement; the matrix and dynamics of
displacement render impossible any syncretic, sublational, transforma-
tional, or transcendental approach to such acts or processes. This is exactly
the underlying condition for the twentieth- and twenty-first-century
Western (or non-Western)-dominated intercultural theatre and the
twenty-first-century emplacements of the “new” aesthetics of intercultural
performance and of the variants of “new” interculturalisms in theatre.
This book is a historical study of the use of Asian theatre for modern
Western theatre as perceived and practised by its founding fathers, such as
 INTRODUCTION: THE DISPLACED MIRROR 11

Lugné-Poe, Appia, Craig, Yeats, Copeau, Dullin, Artaud, Meyerhold,

Eisenstein, and Brecht. It investigates the theories and practices of these
leading figures in their transnational and cross-cultural relationship with
Asian theatrical traditions and their interpretations and appropriations of
Asian theatre in their reactional struggle against the dominance or the
oversaturation of naturalism in Western theatre. It constitutes an attempt
to reassert the historical, cultural, as well as aesthetic identities and differ-
ences inherent in the different theatrical traditions. Looking from the his-
torical and aesthetic perspectives of traditional Asian theatres, not from the
dominant perspectives of modern Western theatre or from the perspective
of a predominantly Occidental-centred theory, it approaches this intercul-
tural phenomenon necessarily as a culturally and aesthetically Euro-centred
process of (inter/cross/trans)displacement of the aesthetically and cultur-
ally differentiated Asian theatrical traditions and of their inherent histori-
cal, cultural, as well as aesthetic differences and identities. Looking into the
displaced and distorted mirror of Asian theatre, the founding fathers of
modern Western theatre saw, in their imagination of the “ghostly” Other,
nothing but a (self-)reflection, or, more precisely, a (self-)projection and
emplacement, of their competing ideas and theories preconceived for the
construction—and the future development—of modern Western theatre.

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International Dramatic Prospecting: Aurélien
Lugné-Poe’s Use of Asian Dramas

Albert Camus once famously remarked: “In the history of French theatre,
there are two periods: before Copeau and after Copeau” (Camus 1974,
1700). The problem with Camus’s often cited and accepted statement is
the simple fact that before Jacques Copeau, there was Aurélien Lugné-­Poe.
What Copeau accomplished to make him the “sole master” in Camus’s
mind was essentially what Lugné-Poe had done or pursued more than a
decade earlier: the struggle against commercialism and naturalism in the-
atre; the emphasis on the primacy of the author and the text over the direc-
tor, the actor, and the designer; and the pursuit of an art theatre (Lugné-Poe
1893, 185, 1896a, 96–98, 1896b). Lugné-Poe’s importance as one of the
founding fathers or masters of modern French theatre was recognized by
his contemporaries who had worked closely with him. Camille Mauclair
spoke highly of the great intelligence, energy, and skill with which Lugné-
Poe, an excellent actor and judicious administrator, directed the series of
beautiful performances at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre. In his view, Lugné-
Poe’s great influence and many contributions to dramatic art made possi-
ble the creation of the Théâtre des Arts, one of the first art theatres in
Europe, and of the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier that enshrined Copeau in
the annals of modern French theatre, as his work at l’Œuvre had prepared
the Parisian public for such theatrical enterprises (Mauclair 1922a, 110).
Edmond Sée, who was indebted to Lugné-Poe’s support when he was
a young playwright, maintained that after André Antoine and for nearly
half a century, Lugné-Poe was “indisputably the most militant, the

© The Author(s) 2018 15

M. Tian, The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre,
Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97178-0_2
16 M. TIAN

most eclectic, the most generous dramatic ‘prospector’ from whom two or
three generations of writers could benefit” (Sée 1946, 17).
If we speak of the historical relationship of French theatre with
European theatre and of its intercultural relationship with Asian theatre as
an integral part of its history, Camus’s statement becomes even more
problematic. Camus wanted us to “remember solely that Copeau consid-
ered dramatic work as a phenomenon of culture and of universal culture,
where all men could meet” (Camus 1974, 1699–700). More than a
decade before Copeau ever took an interest in Japanese theatre, however,
Lugné-Poe had studied and staged before the French public Hindu,
Japanese, and Chinese dramas. Edmond Sée underscored Lugné-Poe’s
“mission of international dramatic prospector,” noting that the French
actor-director, “boldly but with a rare eclectic insight,” revealed to the
French public the masterpieces of other major European playwrights and
the works still unknown among the Europeans or whose importance and
whose ethnic and sometimes global influence the French had strangely
disregarded (Sée 1946, 18–19). Although Edmond Sée spoke nothing
specifically of Lugné-Poe’s productions of Asian dramas, they formed
unquestionably a significant part of his mission and accomplishment as an
international dramatic prospector.

Intercultural Symbolism at the Théâtre de L’Œuvre

Lugné-Poe’s productions of Asian dramas must be understood historically
in the theoretical and performance context of the Théâtre de l’Œuvre as it
had become one of the major forces of the early European avant-garde
movement at the turn of the twentieth century. In his 1893 manifesto for
the founding of l’Œuvre, Lugné-Poe declared that the mission of his the-
atre was “to do in the theatre, in every way possible, Work of Art or at least
to stir up Ideas” (Lugné-Poe 1893, 185. Emphases in original). Three
years later, Lugné-Poe remained steadfast with his position on a theatre of
ideas, arguing that all theatrical creations, without regard to which school
they belong to and what techniques they necessitate, “should be oriented
toward new and unexplored thought” (Lugné-Poe 1896c). Likewise, in
his manifesto in 1893, Mauclair, one of the founders of l’Œuvre, defined
two parallel but distinct orientations for l’Œuvre: the first was to “create
currents of ideas” to rebel against the inertia of the minds, and the second
was solely artistic (Mauclair 1893, 191).
 INTERNATIONAL DRAMATIC PROSPECTING: AURÉLIEN LUGNÉ-POE’S USE… 17

Unable to find dramas of ideas on contemporary French stage that was

dominated by naturalism and commercialism, Lugné-Poe and Mauclair
turned to those dramas of ideas from foreign countries. For Mauclair, the
ideal model was the theatre of Henrik Ibsen, “the master psychologist of
crowds, of the instigator of energy, of the synthesizer of modern expres-
sive beauty,” who realized “our vision of a human drama in which each
one can satisfy his moral education or his artistic joy, his libertarian ideas
or his taste of aestheticism” (Mauclair 1893, 191). For both Lugné-Poe
and Mauclair, the work of Ibsen was one of “the ablest and most active
conductors of Ideas” (Lugné-Poe 1893, 185. Emphasis in original). It
was, therefore, not surprising that Lugné-Poe acknowledged emphatically
l’Œuvre’s debt to Ibsen: “It is to the glory of Ibsen that our foundation is
attached, and if Rosmer or Solness had not been written, l’Œuvre could
never have existed” (Lugné-Poe 1896b). Nor was it particularly shocking
that as early as the second season of l’Œuvre, he chose to stage Victor
Barrucand’s adaptation of Le Chariot de Terre Cuite and that Mauclair
associated the performance of Le Chariot de terre cuite with the contem-
porary libertarian plays, especially Ibsen’s plays:

We are far away from King Sudraka [Sudraka]. In reality, we are not so far
away from him. L’Œuvre appears to me to have only one raison d’être: it is
to illustrate, through its special performances, the margin of a comparative
history of dramatic literatures. It adds curious vignettes, it shows analogies,
and it is in this sense that the performance of Le Chariot de terre cuite ties
itself up very closely to the libertarian plays that roused, last year at l’Œuvre,
by their violence and their entire external apparatus, the acclamations of
young people and the protests of the bourgeoisie. There is a public reunion,
in the old Indian drama, as in The Enemy of the People, and indeed, the senti-
ments manifest themselves in it are very contemporary with ours. (Mauclair
1895a, 42)

The concept of a theatre of ideas shared by Lugné-Poe and Mauclair

was intertwined with their concept of symbolism in the theatre, which, as
opposed to naturalism, defines the constituent elements of theatre as sym-
bols incarnate of ideas. Of all Lugné-Poe’s contemporaries, Mauclair
offered the most valuable first-hand account and in-depth examination of
symbolism as it was practised in French theatre, particularly at l’Œuvre.
Mauclair traced the essential elements of symbolism in Western literary
and artistic traditions (Mauclair 1892, 315). He looked at symbolism as a
18 M. TIAN

direct product of German idealism. In his view, the intervention of

Wagnerism, with its conceptions of a heroic, synthetic, and legendary the-
atre presenting abstract characters of symbolic signification and with its art
of transposition and synthesis,1 went directly against the naturalist theories
and trends that deny imagination and idealism and aim only at the “imme-
diate truth” instead of the symbolist pursuit of the inner, eternal, and
universal truth (Mauclair 1897a, 675–80). According to Mauclair, French
symbolism was the natural result of a modification of French sensibility
under the impulse and influence of a number of thoughts coming from
abroad, particularly German, and “symbolism was only the literary sign of
a synthetic evolution of the [French] race” (689–90).
Mauclair then dealt with the role of l’Œuvre in the French symbolist
movement. According to Mauclair, the founding of l’Œuvre contributed
to the centralization of symbolism, in direct opposition to André Antoine’s
naturalist theatre. From the beginning of l’Œuvre, Mauclair noted, “the
opposition of the [French] press abandoned its worn-out grievances of
‘decadentism,’ abandoned its quarrels over free verse … and threw itself
entirely on its accusation [against l’Œuvre] of importing in France the
foreign spirit” (Mauclair 1897b, 93). With the outburst of anarchism, he
continued, “the Symbolists were accused, with ridiculous injustice, of
being the instigators of the [anarchist] propaganda”:

The vexation at having had to accept Impressionism, Wagnerism, Ibsenism,

Tolstoyism, free verse, the music of [César] Franck, all these heads of the
hydra Novelty exasperated the partisans of the routine and made them con-
sider the symbolists, zealots of all this, as antipatriotic and dynamiters.
(Mauclair 1897b, 93)

While keenly aware of the fatal flaws of symbolism, Mauclair defended

the internationalist leanings of symbolists. Affirming that French symbol-
ism was “only a fleeting reflection” of the foreign (primarily European)
influences that remained alive, having settled within the French “national
soul,” Mauclair underscored the French special gift of assimilating foreign
influences:

France modified all that it seems to go through; it is like the filter clarifying
all European conceptions. Ideas pass through its sensibility and return to
their homeland in a more accessible aspect. It is constantly open to foreign
currents, and its personality is made of this special gift to measure out the
blends and to whittle away the materials. (Mauclair 1897b, 96)
 INTERNATIONAL DRAMATIC PROSPECTING: AURÉLIEN LUGNÉ-POE’S USE… 19

Therefore, Mauclair insisted, France “needs to welcome home all these

symptoms, all these tests” and wait to decide whether symbolism and all
other dependent ideas are “useful or harmful” to the French spirit
(Mauclair 1897b, 96). Mauclair’s “filter” analogy may strike familiar to
some of the twentieth-century intercultural theoreticians who have pro-
posed such models of intercultural exchange as Patrice Pavis’s
“hourglass.”
At the beginning of the 1897–1898 season, both Lugné-Poe and
Mauclair broke with the symbolists. It should be emphasized that although
opposed to the extreme positions of the French symbolists, Lugné-Poe
and Mauclair did not reject symbolic drama in general: Maurice Maeterlinck
was an exception in Lugné-Poe’s attack on the school of the symbolists
(Lugné-Poe 1897, 185); Mauclair admired Richard Wagner and Stéphane
Mallarmé as two “great geniuses” of the symbolic drama (Mauclair 1892,
309). Moreover, the influence of symbolism on Lugné-Poe’s productions
of Asian dramas and on Mauclair’s critical perception of them was pro-
found and lasting. This is particularly true with the productions of the two
Hindu plays during the heyday of symbolism at l’Œuvre.

Le Chariot de Terre Cuite: A Symbolic Incarnation

of Anarchism

In January 1895, l’Œuvre—under Lugné-Poe’s direction—staged at the

Nouveau-Théâtre Le Chariot de Terre Cuite, an adaptation in five acts by
Victor Barrucand, based on Mricchakatikâ (The little clay cart) by the
Indian King and playwright Sudraka. According to Barrucand, true trans-
lation entails both sympathy and imagination on the part of the translator
or imitator:

It is not merely a literary task, and to search with good fortune the mysteri-
ous life of things past, he must still be pushed by some sympathy. However,
I could cite the example of the great imitators, Shakespeare, Corneille,
Racine, Molière, La Fontaine. This is because they knew how their s­ ensibility
acquired a rare quality by grafting themselves on to foreign inspirations that
they consecrated their creative imagination to their imitations. One of the
greatest Indian poets, the one to whom the tradition attributed Mahabharata
bears a name, Vyasa, which means the compiler; from which we can con-
clude that our serious questions regarding literary property are also bou-
tique affairs. (Barrucand 1895, 24)
20 M. TIAN

In his adaptation of Mricchakatikâ, Barrucand underscored the moral,

political, and ideological contemporaneity of the Hindu play. Disagreeing
with the belief that “this languishing art [Indian theatre] no longer
addresses to our literary curiosity,” Barrucand contended: “Without run-
ning down Sophocles, we might think that the characters of the Indian
theatre are in their complexity much closer to move us than the ‘Greek
profiles’” (23). According to Barrucand, eager to make the French audi-
ence interested in some masterpieces of the dramatic art of the Hindus, he
chose Mricchakatikâ because, for him, “the old drama of Buddhist propa-
ganda” still retained “a militant spirit of current interest, very well receiv-
able in our organized, hierarchical society based on privileges and
monopolies, as it was the Brahminical India” (25).
Barrucand’s modern approach to the Hindu play in an effort to identify
its affinity with modern humanism, libertarianism, and anarchism proved
to be highly controversial. Naturally, it was applauded by the French sym-
bolists and anarchists. Having received the adaptation from Barrucand,
Mallarmé thanked him for “such a talisman” that evoked his experience of
the performance. “A marvel,” Mallarmé admired the play and wrote thus
of its “miraculous relevance”:

I admire the appropriateness of the unexpected echo that this immemorial

and future poem has against our times where, because of you, it resonates. I
do not mean that this poem is eternal, because a hundred years ago, for
example, it would not have whispered and thundered with the same miracu-
lous relevance. To believe the truth, it was written twice, the second time by
you, oh, translator, adapter, who adapted it to our souls, dear friend!
(Mallarmé 1982, 227)2

Gustave Kahn, French symbolist poet and art critic, was delighted to see
“the beautiful heroes of the most human of Hindus dramas revive through
the adaptation or rather the happy and elegant imitation” by Barrucand,
who “would not conform himself to the idea of the priestly and sacred
India” (Kahn 1895, 269). Firmly believing that Barrucand “has obeyed
his libertarian sympathies,” Mauclair, however, was not concerned that
Barrucand “settled the ancient play of Hindu rhapsody a little too much
in social drama” (Mauclair 1895a, 43). For A.-Ferdinand Hérold,
Barrucand’s adaptation was “faithful and ingenious”; and even when he
was not particularly faithful, for instance, in the development of the role of
Çarvilaka (Sarvilaka), what Barrucand did was “a beautiful type of revolt,”
 INTERNATIONAL DRAMATIC PROSPECTING: AURÉLIEN LUGNÉ-POE’S USE… 21

and in fact, his way of understanding the character of the Brahmin revolt
was not illegitimate. “If we reflect on Çûdraka’s [Sudraka] play,” Hérold
added, “we can only praise the heroic and noble speeches that Mr.
Barrucand gave to Çarvilaka” (Hérold 1895, 351–52, 354). For Jules
Lemaitre, Çarvilaka, “a delicious philosopher thief,” reminded him of
“the romantic insurgents,” “the Ibsenian individualists,” and “certain
well-educated anarchists” (Lemaitre 1895a, 2). Barrucand made it clear
that he did not intend to “direct the arrows of Sudra against Western insti-
tutions” (Barrucand 1895, 25). However, for Romain Coolus, it was pre-
cisely “this admirable moral” of the play—the elevation of the humiliated
over the powerful and the triumph of justice—that “still explodes like a
defiance turned against our institutions and our egoistic and hard hearts”
(Coolus 1895, 183). Some critics tried to associate the humanity of the
play with Christianity (Lemaitre 1895a, 1; Fouquier 1895a, 6; Claretie
1895, 41). One critic perhaps had the best summary of the different mod-
ern views of the play that contains “a great number of ideas that today still
appear new”: “It is mystical, Wagnerian, symbolist, anarchist. All this
makes an interesting mélange where, as the saying goes, everyone finds
something to drink and eat” (Bernard-Derosne 1895, 3).
While Barrucand was applauded by some critics for his modernizing—
in particular, his anarchist—approach, he was criticized by others precisely
for the same approach. For example, according to Jacques du Tillet, what
is only secondary—the anarchist or individualistic aspect of the play—in
Sudraka’s play assumes “an essential importance” in Barrucand’s adapta-
tion, and thereby, “the interest” of the original play is “totally displaced”;
although Barrucand may not have added a word to the text, “the isolated
tirades he has let survive explode like bombs … instead of being dissolved
in the whole” (du Tillet 1895, 154–55). Henry Céard, novelist, ­playwright,
and critic, argued that Barrucand, not being faithful to the original text,
pushed Sudraka’s work “arbitrarily” towards “an elegant anarchism
applauded by some noisy dilettantes” and that Barrucand’s “modern
methods” with a skilful search for style sometimes outweighed “the archaic
truth” and destroyed “the naive simplicity” of the original text (Céard
1895). Art and theatre critic Paul Gruyer simply dismissed the revolution-
ary language Barrucand put in the mouth of the characters as being “of
utmost ridiculousness.” For him, Çarvilaka steals out of love, not at all
because he is anarchist; likewise, Tcharudatta [Chārudatta] will help to
overthrow the tyrant because he wants a just king, not because he takes an
interest in all of the Declaration of Human Rights, as Barrucand appeared
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