Rolando Villazón, tenor: "Una furtiva lagrima"

Rolando Villazón, tenor.

Not a theatre subject, but I've always loved this song, and I'm very proud it is a Mexican tenor whom is singing it.

Rolando Villazon Mp3

Rolando Villazón: Una furtiva lagrima

In China we are in a whole week holidays, so... see you later.

Images from "La Maraña" performance In Mexico City

La maraña. A Esférica Ludens production. (June, 2008)

As I reported last May 2008 (1), Esférica Ludens came back to life with the production of La Maraña (text by Antonio González Caballero) during the national homage to A. González Caballero; a few weeks later they sent to me some photographs and videos from one of their performances.

Of course I'm not able to criticizes their work (they are friends, collagues, and, of course, I have not seen the performance...), but I can say that it is my hope that the new Esférica Ludens keeps working and making new productions.

La Maraña was directed by Francisco Camacho, have no idea about stage design (which seems very simple) and about music, I only can say that the musical piece you listen to is created especially for this production.

So, I edited one video and one slideshow to share...

Introductory video of La Maraña


Photo Slideshow of La Maraña

The same videos on Vimeo.com:

Introductory video of La Maraña

Photo slideshow of La Maraña




(1) Post of 5/12/08: La Maraña. Esférica Ludens is back.

Temple-Theatres of Pingyao Ancient City

Pingyao Ancient City. Main Street.(July 2008)

There is a common idea in Chinese culture that is almost impossible to find (literally) in the North of the country, the idea of theatre and religion as one architectonic entity. Theatre in China is not any more something sacred but many of its subjects came from religious stories; it is said some theatre buildings are built where used to be temples (1) , but at least in Beijing (and other cities on the North) you don't see anyone where people worship and see theatre.

So, last July 2008 when I visited the ancient city of Pingyao in Shanxi province (one hour-flight from Beijing) I was very surprised of finding three theatre buildings not where used to be a temple but built inside the temple itself!, and temples where people keep worshiping.

Every temple (taoist temples) in Pingyao has its own stage, usually the same stage than any other Chinese Opera theatre, but not with the same style Court Qing dynasty theatres have (2); many Pingyao's temple-theatres where built during Ming dynasty when Pingyao was an important financial city in China. Details from Ming and Qing style can be seen in any of them.

Caishen Temple-Theatre. Pingyao, Shanxi. (July, 2008)

Pingyao is a very important sight because it is a place almost entirely preserved as an early 18-19th Century Chinese city was, with a big wall surrounded it and houses, palaces, temples, and shops inside. Built around 1200 A.D. its glory was during last years of Ming Dynasty (around 1600 A.D.). In early 19th Century, when the ancient financial system failed in China, (due to the incursion of Western banks in the country), Pingyao was literally abandoned, and during more than hundred years there weren't significantly changes in the city. It was after the 90's of 20th Century, that UNESCO and other organizations took part in the preservation of this treasure.

The city now have one modern theatre and one Tea house-style (3) where usually are performances for tourists of local dances, songs and local opera (Shanxi Opera), but those theatre-temples I'm talking about are unused most of the time.

Cuohou Temple-Theatre. Pingyao, Shanxi. (July, 2008)

One curious singularity of this stage buildings are their main entrance, down stage; people, priests and anyone entered to the temple square through a tunnel situated exactly down the stage.

Chenghuang Temple-Theatre in Pingyao

Chinese Opera Theatre Stage at Chenghuang Temple (Pingyao) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.



Caishen Temple-Theatre in Pingyao

Caishen Temple-Theatre in Pingyao Ancient City from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.



Cuohou Temple-Theatres in Pingyao

Cuohou Temple-Theatres in Pingyao Ancient City from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

(1) Zhenyici theatre in Hepingmen (in Peking's downtown) is one of them. Today totally rebuilt.
(2) See my post of 24/April/2007: "China:Court Theatres in the Qing Dynasty"
(3) I have a special post for the performance I saw in one of this tea house-theatre.

“El gran Teatro del Mundo” in Beijing (fourth part). The shame of being part of a propaganda theatre.

Closing Ceremony at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (photo by Gustavo Thomas)

I’m walking under a beautiful blue sky, the temperature is pleasant and I breathe softly, deeply, I feel how the clean air enters. We’ve had only a few weeks like these and it feels like it could always have been like that, I wish it had always been like that.

The imposing buildings are still the frame of a grandeur that is not to come, but has already arrived, and that wants to stay long.

I’m living witness of a two week celebration, a celebration that was prepared by the governors of what will become the most powerful nation of my time. And today, once more, I dare discuss about it and, maybe, like all symbols of power, fear it.

China wanted to transform the perception the world had of her through the two weeks of the most important event (a sporting celebration) of our times, and in many ways she achieved it. The whole world became a spectator of her new Gran Teatro del Mundo that, like in the Baroque of the West, transformed the known landscape to give way to a symbolic idea of universal order on Earth (or of the new universal order).

Swamps became imposing gardens, country houses became gigantic palaces, small abbeys became gold-gilded monasteries; the king as the centre of the human universe, with everything revolving around him and, along with him, the rest of the characters of this great theatric play that god had imposed unto humanity. A philosophy of power.

Luxurious stagings, actors at their best, the presentation of an apparently new order with the pretext of an event like the Olympic Games, it was something we hadn’t seen since 1936 with Nazi Germany; a nation that presented itself as the upcoming imperial power and using the games to publicise it. I’m not confused, the differences between today’s China and the Germany of 1936 are extreme and evident, but the small similarities make me look at the blue sky and realise it’s the deceiving sky of an invented Beijing, like in a theatre play, planning the coming of a new game of lies that you must learn to decipher.

When, in college, I argued about the death or survival of theatre, I didn’t appreciate fully its usefulness in the life of nations and ideologies; I saw the propaganda, but not the setting on stage as an evident medium for assimilating it. Like in the Baroque, where it wasn’t the christian god who dictated the universal order but men, it’s not the omnipotence of the Chinese communist government (or that strange idea of the government of the people) who dictated the order, but a few men who hold power; those are the authors of a new play planned for two weeks, to tell the world “it’s us who’s coming, believe in us, enjoy with us, realise what we can and what we want!”. I’m tempted to say that their way of reacting to surprises like violence in Tibet, the Sichuan earthquake and the protests and threats before the games, were part of that great planning. It’s not completely true, of course, but improvisation is also the art of planning.

James Reynolds, a BBC reporter, wondered about the strange way local Chinese leaders transmitted the news of upcoming events, with absolute preparation: at the last event of the olympic torch relay at the Great Wall, reporters received a communiqué at 6 am with a summary of the events, written in the past tense, related to things that would happen hours later; it talked not just about events, but also about the way the people reacted, their shouts and impulses; what’s most surprising is that hours later, when everything had happened, it had happened as it had been written: not just the order of events, but the assurance of the planning of the people’s spirit, their impulses, their passions. The fears of science fiction have always been present here.

The last day of the games I had the luck of having a ticket for the closing ceremony, a ceremony I had dreamt of going to since I was a child (it didn’t matter whether it was Beijing, Paris, London...); but once there, with all the lies weighing heavily after 3 years and 2 weeks of living the Olympic Beijing, it seemed too much, the last disgusting spectacle of an enormous amusement park which I should have never entered to.

Like a naive mortal in the Versailles of the 17th century, I wandered around that huge olympic dragon-shaped park, amongst lakes, walkways, singing fountains and immense and unique buildings; I entered the olympic stadium and readied myself for watching the spectacle prepared by the Chinese Vatel (or, worse, the Chinese Leni Riefenstahl, as some people call him), Zhang Yimou. Nothing new, performance-wise, everything had already been seen in Barcelona, Seoul, Atlanta, Athens, but here it was more fabulous, gigantic, immense; not five, not ten, but one thousand, two thousand performers per act; a thousand here, another thousand there; apotheotic images, like in a film for masses; the problem was not what to imagine, but how much to spend.

Gustavo Thomas (this blog’s author) at Beijing’s olympic stadium during the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games (August 24th, 2008)

Me, like the other 90 thousand spectators there (including dozens of foreign dignitaries and people from the Chinese government), missed the true performance that was shown on TV; prepared with TV in mind, the closing ceremony was lacking in a theatric way (that is, live): it lacked a unifying structure, there was too much attention to changes and movement, but on TV there were no mistakes; me and thousands of spectators sitting on my side couldn’t see the flame extinguishing itself, but everyone on TV saw it; we were too busy lighting our torches at the right moment and ready to cry right there; this, like other details of that ceremony, were available for me to watch only two days after, at home.


Then, I started thinking again, and ire came: I was part of the show, a theatrical show created for the TV screen, to become an image through the media; I was another actor within that great theatre of the Chinese world, not a spectator like my ticket said, or, in any case, my role was that of a foreign spectator coming to praise in awe the new Chinese dream machine. Yes, when I got to the stadium, I got a bag, not with olympic souvenirs, but with props to be used during different parts of the show; a group of masters of ceremony appeared before the beginning of the TV transmission and gave us indications of what to do, when and how to do things with our props, all in a very Chinese way, smiling and inviting us to share. It was probably already written in the news bulletin, my shouts, my smiles, how I would react to the show and its surprises; someone had already told days or months before what we’d all do and what we’d all feel during the games, during the closing ceremony.

I enjoyed being there, no doubt, I enjoyed seeing proud Chinese singing their anthem, I enjoyed seeing a tower build itself and get filled with thousands of minute beings as in a Griffith film, creating a babel tower (a torch, in fact), I was moved thinking about the likeness of those masses on the stage-stadium with those of the first version of King Kong in the thirties of the 20th century, but it was (as it is now) extremely unpleasant to have been part, without being aware of it, of a repugnant propaganda theatre.

With this I finish my writing about the Olympic Beijing (the Baroque parties also had to finish, and were later forgotten). I still live in China, I still enjoy its culture and achievements, I keep spending all my money in this country eating, traveling and enjoying; therefore, I’ll keep sharing my personal creations, China’s performing arts, and what happens around these.

Video with my view within the stadium during the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games.

The last day. My view from inside the stadium. from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

"El Gran Teatro del mundo" in Beijing (Third Part). The preparations for that setting on stage

Coming to Beijing and living the Olympic Games in this city was supposed to become the materialising of a child’s broken dream. Forty years later, my personal experience relived the myth of a harmonious spirituality for the games; I saw the new reality that broke down into a number of critical ideas that, I must admit, were seeped in the total mistrust of its organisers, the International Olympic Committee, the government of the People’s Republic of China and the enterprises that supported them.

The persistent news about the way Beijing was preparing for the Olympics and the stories of friends that had lived in the city for many years introduced me completely into just the atmosphere the Chinese government didn’t want us to feel (the Chinese government has a way of indicating what must be thought, to whoever and wherever).

The plans for the party were impressive and included all the aspects of life, if not in all of China, at least in Beijing: the infrastructure of the city, the weather, the people, the athletes, safety and culture.

The City

You had to turn Beijing, before the start of the games, into a first world spot: transport, housing, stadiums, gyms, hotels, malls, and buildings that should become icons of Chinese progress. A long list of transformations were supposed to take place in an already existing city.

In three years I saw huge housing complexes from the communist era fall, and saw the rise, in their place, of new, luxurious and modern complexes where it was not the inhabitants of the old buildings (where 3-4 families were crowded in the same apartment) who would live there, but the new. emerging middle and high classes of the new China. In less than 3 years some 10 enormous shopping malls were built, with thousands of shops from all over the world. I saw the inauguration of an airport, three subway lines, the National Centre for the Arts (know as “the Egg”); I saw the construction of the wonderful CCTV tower (the offices for the official Chinese TV station), of the Olympic Green with the National Stadium (the Bird’s Nest) and the Swimming Stadium (the Water Cube), the 81 floor World Trade Centre tower; I watched how hutongs were renovated (and how many were destroyed), and how streets were renovated and reinvented through an imperial past (Qianmen); I saw how the Forbidden City was painted anew, as well as the Temple of Heaven, the hallways and towers of the Summer Palace, the Academy of Confucius, and dozens of smaller touristic spots.

The noise from machines, from explosions at construction sites, the voices of the workers themselves accompanied me for at least two years and a half.

Today I marvel at the speed of that transformation, at the architecture of some buildings, and at the same time I ask myself about the future of the thousands that were displaced as well as the thousands I saw work in deplorable conditions. Coming from a country like Mexico, I can recognise those conditions perfectly.

The staging of the performance, of the great theatre, would be sumptuous, unrivaled...

The Weather

China promised ecological games, with pure and clean air, with buildings made from non polluting materials and renewable energy. Achieving that would prove possible on one hand (in the case of the buildings) and impossible on the other (the clean and pure air).

I remember my reply to an employee from the Embassy of Mexico in China, when she asked how Beijing looked when I first arrived: gray. Coming from Beirut, where sun and clear skies are the norm 300 days a year, the pollution of the Chinese capital was more than evident to me. With polluting factories in a valley of just some hundreds of square kilometres, with millions of cars and an indiscriminate use of coal for heating and energy, it seemed impossible that the organisers could deliver their clean and pure air promise. It sounded like there had to be some deceiving solution, and there was.

Even when preparations for avoiding pollutants were programmed in the government’s plans, the progress for the summer of 2008 were minimal; growth was, inevitable, the top priority. Then the somewhat logical solution appeared: if the celebrations were going to last two weeks (or a month, if you include the paralympic games), cutting down the number of vehicles on the streets by half, closing factories in a 30km radius around the city and stopping all building within the city should help achieve the theatric goal, the deception.

During the first week of the olympics we had blue clean skies the like of which we’d never seen, no excessive tiredness due to pollution, even a temperature considerably cooler than previous years.

It seemed this “temporary” solution provided the “temporary” frame needed for the theatre to come.

The People

The government launched an enormous campaign to try to make Chinese more educated and civilised. Campaigns against spitting have existed in China since the arrival of communists to power, at least, but this habit was as ingrained as other hygienic and civil customs which differed from the west (like queuing to enter a place, for example), the race against time seemed lost without better education and without the feeling of humiliation that such acts represent in other societies.

Beijing, with a local population favoured by economic growth and by the civic responsibility of being the host city for the olympics and the representative of the whole of China during the games, needed just a bit of that campaign to achieve the required attitude, but the real problem were the millions of immigrant workers, Chinese as well, with their legal residence in other provinces, yet who live permanently in the capital. The lack of education, of social contact and civic responsibility (their main worry being finding a job to send money back to their families living in misery) made it practically impossible to achieve such a radical change in their social conduct. The solution to that, like for the weather, had to be temporary as well, with another theatric deception: the government decreed the exit of them all, of absolutely everybody without legal residence in Beijing, and those millions had to disappear for a month, like the factories and the ongoing constructions.

The casting for the extras for the great performance had been successful.

The Athletes

Even though the preparation of athletes for the Olympic Games would seem like a contradiction to my idea of a stage performance created for just two weeks of competitions, in reality there are two sides to it, as in that which is built with an express purpose. It is an investment that will give the country a concrete result long term (medals and gold medals and glory for the Chinese, of course), but it is also a medium for exalting ideas and images required by the government and its policy in this exact moment of its history.

The politics of media for presenting Chinese athletes was charged with an undisputed sense of nationalism and exalting of the Chinese as a race: every one of the athletes was carefully photographed to look handsome, strong, big, powerful; they wore make-up, they were dressed with the best sports attire, shown half-naked and showing their muscles; their profiles were praised, as well as their effort and their chances for winning. Without knowing it for sure, I dare say that no negative news or criticism was allowed; everything was hope, a desire for winning, the praising of their capabilities.

The athletic-nationalist propaganda was fruitful, the Chinese were at the top of the medal tally, with the only mistakes being the waste of time and money on stars that didn’t deliver (Yao Ming and Liu Xing), and the terrible surprise that what the world would remember Beijing as the glory of swimmer Michael Phelp’s 8 medals and the three medals of Bolt, the Jamaican runner.

Safety

Living in China means living in a safe country: crime is minimal and, in general, terrorism hasn’t made its appearance, with the exception of some well defined regions. The media are mostly controlled by the state, the government gives the guidelines for what not to say and, sometimes, of what to say, and sometimes what to say in a very precise way, or what to stop seeing. The same applies to art and education, and even more to politics and religion. Freedom exists within the causeways the government, legitimate holder of national sovereignty, dictates; and that’s when security reaches further.

I had never seen so many security measures (and I must say I’ve been in London and New York at times of great paranoia due to terrorism). The city was under siege by security forces, who didn’t let anyone enter or leave without express permission, knocking on every door to check we had all our papers in order (I had to leave for Thailand to get a new visa); nightclubs had to be safe, without drug-dealers or prostitutes for others to see.

Once more, the performance would last two weeks (or a whole month) and everything had to run smoothly, without conflict; and so it was. There was no street violence (except for an unfortunate incident of an American stabbed to death), no political violence (there were minimal demonstrations), and no terrorism (at least not in Beijing).

My way to the olympic stadium on the day of the closing ceremony was clearly indicated by three security lines: the volunteers that told me which way to go and which not to go; the police that would stop me if I was going the wrong way; and the army that, like toy soldiers, stood stern, firm, in their places at the back. Even though you were free to express your joy, it was impossible not to feel intimidation towards your freedom of action, and I wondered, how far within the legality these people had dictated was I? when would I cross the line? At least, until the end of the games, I wasn’t a danger for security, and I’m glad I wasn’t.

Culture

China created its present cultural policy due to the events of 20th Century’s last years, Tian’anmen the main of them. After the rebirth, experimenting and opening of the arts during the era of Deng Xiaoping, the Tian’anmen massacre marked the whole of the Chinese cultural sphere. Most of the initiators and supporters of the movement had been artists, poets, writers, and stage performers who worked towards a dream millions had had in 1968, a dream that reached China more than 20 years late and with clear particularities.

The answer to that all, among others, of course, was an impressive control over every “message”, be it direct or hidden, within an artistic piece. As mass media, the arts had a non-written code where the government censored based on the piece itself.

The Chinese government has taken part in the liberty and punishment game when that freedom is taken too far. The artist must be sensible and sensitive enough to know what he writes, films, edits or paints, and to tread up to where sight and eye allow and live with that.

The preparations covered two spheres, what was allowed, and what was not allowed. Within what was allowed were traditional arts, TV, dance, visual arts, comic theatre and musicals, as well as commercial films which praised Chinese history and the Chinese nation. Zhang Yimou was chosen as the stage director and creator of the opening and closing ceremonies, and he was chosen for being redeemed by the new China; famous for his first inroads in cinema, and accused by the government of that time for poisoning China’s image abroad, thanks to the new cultural policy he becomes close to the government and begins a glorious career of praising the Chinese nation, its history and achievements, and is “accused” by many today for being the Leni Riefenstahl of the Chinese communist party’s new philosophy (“the glory of Chinese past”).
And within what was not allowed... everything else (think about it).

*

So many preparations and in so little time had turned the daily life of a citizen of Beijing into something truely surreal; that which stood one day disappeared the next, what had been censored out of the blue weeks before was allowed during the two olympic weeks (my blog was one of those surprises); with no immigrant workers around, Beijing became a clean city, civilised, educated, pleasing; the air was breathable and there were plants everywhere; everywhere was safe, with no excesses, protests, alterations of order, without accessible hookers nor gay saunas; yes, the surprise was driving me mad. The were going to make it... for two weeks.

Could I stop thinking about theatre, and in particular about the kind of theatre that transformed the “visible” world of the great capitals of the Baroque?

The idea kept coming back to my mind, the idea of that "Gran Teatro del Mundo" of the Baroque, which transformed cities, was forging Beijing. (1)





(1) Of course the Chinese possess a long tradition of theatricality in their social life, with an obsession for showing, in an artificial way, their best face to visitors, and hiding or erasing any trace that could lend itself to criticism.

"El Gran Teatro del Mundo" in Beijing (Second Part). Those marvelous buildings as a stage design.

It is said that Romans built large avenues and triumph arcs for welcome their victorious armies; it is said that Renaissance and Baroque European kings adorned their cities and built marvelous monuments only for 5 or 10 day-festivity; it is also said that a Chinese Emperor liked to travel through Yangtse river accompanied by 2000 members of his court and transformed the landscape of every part the procession passed by.

Now we can say... It is said that at the beginning of the 21st Century Beijing astonished the World , the city was transformed for a two-week sport party and many marvelous buildings were built for the occasion.

This is an only visual post, showing those buildings created as stage design for two weeks of a glorious theatrical production.

(Every one of these videos were recorded by the author's Blog)

National Centre for The Performing Arts ( The Egg). Day view.



National Centre for The Performing Arts (The Egg). Night View.



CCTV Tower and the CBD

National Stadium (The Bird's Nest)

Nada from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Swimming National Stadium (The Water Cube)