The Other Shore (6 page)

Weekend Quartet
周末四重奏
(Zhoumo sichongzou) (
1995
)

Gao Xingjian believes in the constant renewal of his craft. With
Weekend Quartet
, his latest play, he appears to have made a determined effort to try his hand at something different—a realistic play devoid of the rituals and magical spectacles of his recent works. Whereas the previous plays are not keen on characterization,
Weekend Quartet
is peopled by characters with names and individualizing traits. With their varied backgrounds and personalities, they react differently to the dramatic situations in the plot, functioning like the different musical instruments in a quartet ensemble.

There is very little action in the four scenes (“quartets”), and there are no crises pushing the characters to the brink of their sanity as in
Between Life and Death and Nocturnal Wanderer
. The story is made up of the kind of everyday happenings one finds in real life—an elderly couple, owners of an old farm in the country, is visited by a young couple whose relationship is as unstable as their older counterparts, and the uneventful plot revolves around their romantic entanglements which, like all of their lives, lead nowhere. Bernard is an old and famous painter. Increasingly weary of living, he is nonetheless afraid of loneliness and of growing old, and he tries to prove what remains of his virility by chasing after the young girls he employs as models. His companion Anne, a more sober and worldly type, has been an aspiring writer all her life, and she is equally obsessed with ageing and dying. To compensate for the lack of attention from Bernard, she flirts with their guest Daniel, a middle-aged writer. Daniel is at the end of his writing career—he has run out of things to write. A lost soul without any commitments, whether it is in ideology or love, he has nothing left in his life except his cynicism. Among this insipid bunch, Cecily, Daniel’s girlfriend, is like a breath of fresh air, even though her liveliness could easily have been contrived. An ordinary girl except for her attractiveness, she does not hesitate to use her charms to her advantage. She has no lofty goals but wishes to find a mate to provide her with food and a roof over her head. Towards the end of the play even she grows tired of her role as the
femme fatale
. Her outward liveliness can hardly contain the same death in spirit as that of the other characters.

As with most of Gao Xingjian’s plays,
Weekend Quartet
is not made up of external actions but of the interior landscapes of the soul. It is a play about characters and also about their self-examinations: they are likened to musical instruments playing life’s sorrowful tunes. Unlike the other plays in this collection, its concerns are not so much existential in a philosophical sense as the fears and worries of ordinary living, the realities of how to accommodate oneself to the banalities of day-to-day living. There are no real crises but trivial conflicts and verbal squabbles which, as in a musical quartet, make up the changes in the mood of the play. Quartets 1 and 2 are expositions and complications, while Quartet 3 is made more sombre with the expose of the characters’ dark inner secrets, and the final Quartet is spirited and gay, ending with a game of disjointed words and phrases in an acceptance of life’s impossibility of meaning. It is as if the play has finally come to terms with life in exploring into the truth of man’s existence.

While the characters are built up in the traditional manner, the audience, in a typical Gao Xingjian manner, also gets to know the truth of their private selves through their monologues, comprising dream sequences, hallucinations, and memory flashes. These lapses into the subconscious punctuate the realistic setting and situations and resonate with a disharmony that characterizes the world of the play. The characters’ self-examinations are unprovoked and are mostly unrelated to the action—as if the play willingly and deliberately suspends itself, forfeiting its illusion of reality and forcing the actors to neutralize their roles under the watchful eyes of the audience. During these monologues, the actors speak in the second or third person to carry out an “indifferent observation” of the characters they are portraying. Despite its realistic subject matter and characters,
Weekend Quartet
purposely flaunts its mechanical nature and achieves an artificiality which, coupled with the seemingly contradictory demand for real-life emotions, approximates the playwright’s concept of a modern dramatic performance.

Annotation

[0-1]Gao Xingjian 高行健, “Lun wenxue xiezuo”<論文學寫作>(On Writing Literature), in his Meiyou zhuyi《沒有主義》(None-ism) (Hong Kong: Cosmos Books Ltd., 1996), p. 57.

[0-2]Gao Xingjian 高行健, “Lun wenxue xiezuo”<論文學寫作>(On Writing Literature), in his Meiyou zhuyi《沒有主義》(None-ism) (Hong Kong: Cosmos Books Ltd., 1996), p. 59.

[0-3]Gao Xingjian, “Geri huanghua”<隔日黃花>(Day-old Yellow Blossoms), in his Bi’an《彼岸》(The Other Shore) (Taipei: Dijiao Chubanshe 帝教出版社, 1995), pp. 86-87.

[0-4]Zhao Yiheng 趙毅衡, “Gao Xingjian chuangzuolun”<高行健創作論>(On Gao Xingjian’s Creative Writing), unpublished manuscript, p. 34.

[0-5]Gao Xingjian, “Bali suibi”<巴黎隨筆>(Random Thoughts in Paris), Guangchang《廣場》, Feb. 1991, p. 14.

[0-6]Zhao, p. 43.

[0-7]Gao Xingjian, “Chidaole de xiandaizhuyi yu dangjin Zhongguo wenxue”<遲到了的現代主義與當今中國文學>(The Late Arrival of Modernism and Contemporary Chinese Literature), in Meiyou zhuyi, p. 102. First appeared in Wenxue pinglun《文學評論》, No. 3, 1988.

[0-8]Gao Xingjian, “Ling yizhong xiju”<另一種戲劇>(Another Kind of Drama), in Meiyou zhuyi, p. 191.

[0-9]Gao Xingjian, “Wo zhuzhang yizhong lengde wenxue”<我主張一種冷的文學>(I Advocate “Cold Literature”), in Meiyou zhuyi, pp. 18-20. Also in Zhongshi wanbao《中時晚報》, 12 Aug. 1990.

[0-10]Gao Xingjian, “Lun wenxue xiezuo”<論文學寫作>, p. 54.

[0-11]Gao Xingjian, “Wo zhuzhang yizhong lengde wenxue”<我主張一種冷的文學>, p. 20.

[0-12]Gao Xingjian, “Meiyou zhuyi”<沒有主義>, in Meiyou zhuyi, pp. 8-17.

[0-13]Gao Xingjian, “Meiyou zhuyi”<沒有主義>, in Meiyou zhuyi, p. 9.

[0-14]Gao Xingjian, “Lun wenxue xiezuo”<論文學寫作>, pp. 34-35.

[0-15]Gao Xingjian, “Ping Faguo guanyu dangdai yishu de lunzhan”<評法國關於當代藝術的論戰>(The Controversy on Contemporary Art in France), in Meiyou zhuyi, p. 281.

[0-16]Zhao, p. 72.

[0-17]Gao Xingjian, “Chidaole de xiandaizhuyi yu dangjin Zhongguo wenxue”<遲到了的現代主義與當今中國文學>, p. 104.

[0-18]Gao Xingjian, “Chidaole de xiandaizhuyi yu dangjin Zhongguo wenxue”<遲到了的現代主義與當今中國文學>, p. 105.

[0-19]Gao Xingjian, “Wo zhuzhang yizhong lengde wenxue”<我主張一種冷的文學>, p. 20.

[0-20]Gao Xingjian, “Juzuofa yu zhongxing yanyuan”<劇作法與中性演員>(Dramaturgy and the Neutral Actor), in Meiyou zhuyi, p. 254.

[0-21]Gao Xingjian, “Yao shenmoyang de xiju”<要甚麼樣的戲劇>(The Kind of Drama I Prefer), Lianhe wenxue《聯合文學》, No. 41, 1988, p. 133.

[0-22]Gao Xingjian, “Yao shenmoyang de xiju”<要甚麼樣的戲劇>(The Kind of Drama I Prefer), Lianhe wenxue《聯合文學》, No. 41, 1988, pp. 136-37.

[0-23]Gao Xingjian, “Wode xiju he wode yaoshi”<我的戲劇和我的鑰匙>(My Plays and the Key to My Writing), in Meiyou zhuyi, p. 238.

[0-24]Gao Xingjian, “Wode xiju he wode yaoshi”<我的戲劇和我的鑰匙>(My Plays and the Key to My Writing), in Meiyou zhuyi, p. 238.

[0-25]Gao Xingjian, “Meiyou zhuyi”<沒有主義>, p. 14.

[0-26]Gao Xingjian, “Wenxue yu lingxue: Guanyu ‘Lingshan’”<文學與靈學・關於《靈山》>(Literature and Spiritualism, About Spiritual Mountain), in Meiyou zhuyi, pp. 174-75.

[0-27]Gao Xingjian, “Juzuofa yu zhongxing yanyuan”<劇作法與中性演員>, pp. 262-63.

[0-28]Gao Xingjian, “Ling yizhong xiju”<另一種戲劇>, p. 191.

[0-29]Gao Xingjian, “Wenxue yu lingxue: Guanyu ‘Lingshan’”〈文學與靈學・關於《靈山》>, p. 175.

[0-30]Gao Xingjian, “Guanyu Bi’an”<關於《彼岸》>(On The Other Shore), in Bi’an《彼岸》, pp. 68-69.

[0-31]Gao Xingjian, “Wenxue yu lingxue: Guanyu ‘Lingshan’”〈文學與靈學・關於《靈山》>, p. 175.

[0-32]Gao Xingjian, “Wenxue yu lingxue: Guanyu ‘Lingshan’”〈文學與靈學・關於《靈山》>, p. 174.

[0-33]Gao Xingjian, “Liuwang shi women huode shenme?”<流亡使我們獲得什麼>(What Have We Gained from Being in Exile?), in Meiyou zhuyi, p. 128.

[0-34]Gao Xingjian, “Guanyu Bi’an”<關於《彼岸》>, p. 69.

[0-35]Gao Xingjian, “Guojia shenhua yu geren diankuang”<國家神話與個人癲狂>(National Mythology and Personal Lunacy), Ming Pao Monthly《明報月刊》, Aug. 1993, p. 117.

[0-36]Zhao, p. 88.

[0-37]Gao Xingjian, “Guanyu Bi’an”<關於《彼岸》>, p. 69.

[0-38]Gao Xingjian, “Bi’an daoyan houji”<《彼岸》導演後記>(Written After Directing The Other Shore), in Meiyou zhuyi, p. 225.

[0-39]Gao Xingjian, “Meiyou zhuyi”<沒有主義>, p. 13.

[0-40]Kong Jiesheng 孔捷生, Xiao wutai he da shijie: Yu lu Fa dalu zuojia Gao Xingjian duitan”<小舞台和大世界: 與旅法大陸作家高行健對談> (Small Stage and Big World: Dialogue with the Dramatist Gao Xingjiang, a Chinese Expatriate in France), Minzhu Zhongguo《民主中國》, No. 16, July 1993, p. 86.

[0-41]Gao Xingjian, “Duihua yu fanjie daobiaoyan tan”<《對話與反詰》導表演談>(On Directing and Acting in Dialogue and Rebuttal), in Meiyou zhuyi, p. 208.

[0-42]Gao Xingjian, “Duihua yu fanjie daobiaoyan tan”<《對話與反詰》導表演談>(On Directing and Acting in Dialogue and Rebuttal), in Meiyou zhuyi, p. 194.

[0-43]Gao Xingjian, “Meiyou zhuyi”<沒有主義>, p. 13.

[0-44]Gao Xingjian, “Duihua yu fanjie daobiaoyan tan”<《對話與反詰》導表演談>, p. 196.

[0-45]Kong Jiesheng, “Xiao wutai he da shijie: Yu lu Fa dalu zuojia Gao Xingjian duitan”<小舞台和大世界: 與旅法大陸作家高行健對談> , p. 86.

[0-46]Gao Xingjian, “Ling yizhong xiju”<另一種戲劇>, p. 191.

[0-47]Gao Xingjian, “Ling yizhong xiju”<另一種戲劇>, p. 191. ….

The Other Shore

Time: The time cannot be defined or stated precisely.

Location: From the real world to the nonexistent other shore.

Characters:

(The play can be performed in a theatre, a living room, a rehearsal room, an empty warehouse, a gymnasium, the hall of a temple, a circus tent, or any empty space as long as the necessary lighting and sound equipment can be properly installed. Lighting can be dispensed with if the play is performed during the day. The actors may be among the audience, or the audience among the actors. The two situations are the same and will not make any difference to the play. )

The Other Shore
. The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Hong Kong. Directed by Gao Xingjian. 1995.

The Other Shore
. The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Hong Kong. Directed by Gao Xingjian. 1995.

Actor playing with ropes:

Here’s a rope. Let’s play a game, but we’ve got to be serious, as if we’re children playing their game. Our play starts with a game.

Okay, I want you to take hold of this end of the rope. You see, this way a relationship is established between us. Before that you were you and I was I, but with this rope between us we’re tied to each other and it becomes you and I.

Let’s try running in opposite directions. See, now you’re pulling me, but then again I’m also holding you back, like two locusts tied to the same string, neither of us can get away from each other. Of course, we’re also like husband and wife. (
Pauses
.) But that’s not a good metaphor. If I were to pull the rope real hard towards me, then we’d have to see who’s stronger. The stronger one pulls and the weaker is being pulled. It becomes a tug-of-war, a competition of strength, and there’ll be a winner and a loser, victory and defeat.

Now if I carry this rope on my back like this and pull even harder, you’ll be like a dead dog; likewise if you manage to gain control of this rope, I’ll be like a horse or a cow, and you’ll be able to drive me around like cattle. In other words, you’ll be running the show. So you see, our relationship is not at all constant, it’s not at all unchanging.

Or we can establish an even more complex relationship. For instance if you revolve around me, I’ll be the centre of your orbit, and you’ll become my satellite. But if you don’t wish to revolve around me, I can rotate on my own, thinking that all of you are revolving around me. Are you revolving or am I the one who’s revolving? I could be revolving around you or you could be revolving around me. Who knows? Perhaps we’re both turning at the same time, or maybe we’re both revolving around other people, or maybe those other people are revolving around us both or maybe all of us are revolving around God—maybe there isn’t a God after all, maybe there’s only a universe rotating by itself like a millstone—now we’re touching on philosophy. Never mind, we’ll leave philosophy to the philosophers, let’s just continue to play our game.