The 三枝橘制作 Théâtre des trois oranges’s performance 东宫西宫 "East Palace, West Palace" in Beijing in January 2009 brought with itself a common attitude within Chinese government, censorship.
China has always had a cultural policy focused on maintaining what for centuries has been called "the health and harmony of the Chinese people", even if those vague words have been interpreted in many different ways in their vaunted 5000 years of civilization, it is certain that Chinese artists have never enjoyed creative freedom until they started leaving their country since the mid-twentieth century. So whoever decides to become a creator in mainland China should then take the consequences of it and act in accordance to it; examples of this are the notes and stories, some of them painful, of dozens of writers and film directors, from which some work had gained recognition abroad while the Chinese government reacted by banning and censoring the artist for two, three or ten years because they believed that the artwork in question was a detrimental act to the image of China or the Chinese abroad and / or jeopardized the health and harmony of the Chinese people.
The day of the second premiere (the work premiered in this company's version in 2006) of 东宫西宫 "East Palace, West Palace," there was a confusion among people who had been invited, as they were being told at the theater (either by phone or at the ticket booth) that the play would not be presented and that that night the play on stage would be 火车带我去哪里, which would mean something like "Where does the train take me? ", another Chinese play. Given the strangeness of the situation, I decided to corroborate with Xavier Froment, the play's and company's director, and with a nice phrase in a text message from his mobile phone he clarified that the play would be performed that day as planned but without the actual name, as the censors (Xavier calls them "the government") had decided that it was not an appropriate subject and the piece should not appear on file as "performed." So the play was shown in the theater but under a different name (though I'm not clear whether it was to satisfy a command from the government representatives or if the play was actually being hidden from them). What is clear is that we did get tickets with the real name of the piece and that these tickets were immediately disposed of so that there would be no trace of this representation
(1). The photos below show some of that confusion.
东宫西宫 "East Palace, West Palace" is a piece written by playwright Wang Xiaobo in the 1990s and talks about a sadomasochistic homosexual relationship between a policeman and a man who seeks sex in park bathrooms near Tian'anmen Square. The piece was made famous by a movie of the same name (1996) and that caused the director to find himself under house arrest and banned from creating for several years by the Chinese government
(2) . I am not sure if the version of Trois Oranges is based on the film or the original text of Wang Xiaobo.
I understand that the censors do not visit the staging of the plays before reading a synopsis of the play or of the staging; in this case they did not need anything else but the name of the work to recognize it in its list of forbidden works. However, whether because of bureaucratic inertia or simply because they left it for the last moment and wanted to wash their hands someone proposed renaming the play.
Photographs of 东宫西宫 "East Palace, West Palace" (Beijing. January, 2009)
Note: If you have any problems viewing this set of slides, please click the link in the box and that will take you to the my Picasa homepage, where the photos are.
东宫西宫 "East Palace, West Palace" is an interesting and courageous play in the context of current Chinese Theater (and the history of film that is behind it); there are no nude scenes but there are clear sex scenes between men and a very clear homosexual sadomasochistic choreography, the texts are clear and hard about the words and phrases used, containing much slang used by Beijing's homosexuals. I already recognize a characteristic of director Xavier Froment's actors and their performance: an apparent bodily passivity, avoiding the traditional excesses of Chinese realistic performances, the actors seem to move in a very defined choreography, having most of the time clear and specific tasks to carry on stage and thus avoiding any game of improvisation. The images on stage, another crucial point in Froment, require a great deal of preparatory work on stage and, when they become defined, their climax shows strength and an overall penetration in the viewer. I can recall that in an exchange of phrases of almost five minutes, the police officer (acted by Kang Luqi) is tying a large rope around his counterpart, but that action has no direct relation to the text, only at the end of the text, in a violent and emotional moment does the preparation make sense (you can see the images both in the video and in the photographs). The final scene takes us to the passion unleashed by the police; him, who had not accepted the game and seductive ways of the man of the bathrooms, exploits and literally rapes the man ad nauseam.
Through my years of living in China I've learned that even when not written into law there are dozens of bans in the Chinese scene: it is forbidden to portray explicit sex, nudity, foul words, religious issues, political issues, to mention the current government, to address social issues, issues of general interest at the moment, scandalous issues, and a long list of etceteras. I've learned that it is better to stage pieces on the "accepted" list (that nobody seems to knows fully), which are generally called classical, before deciding to stage or create any new work. I also learned that street theater does not exist in its modern sense and is simply not done. I learned that in the world of art you can expect anything and you have to engage in a guessing game of what is acceptable or not, what is the trend and what not, what is the future I want for me and family and even colleagues and what not. The backlash to the "attacks" to the health and harmony of the Chinese people can be devastating to the creative (and biological life) of any Chinese artist.
I remember having witnessed several acts of this kind. Just after coming to Beijing in 2005 a gay-lesbian film festival that was going to take place in the industrial-arts Dashanzi 798, back then still an area of alternative art, was suspended; in 2007 a fair for practitioners Tattoo Artists and tattooed people was suspended after just one successful day, after the media had shown what must have been too many out of the ordinary people in a Chinese cultural space, the excuse for its cancellation was that the site could not support the number of visitors; in 2006 and 2007, two performative events were suspended by the police, a group of young people who wanted to surprise people on the street by giving hugs and affection, and an Irish dance group that had planned to do an improvisation at the Wangfujing shopping street.
The case closer to me (because it included a Mexican artist) was at the 2008 Biennial of Art in Beijing, which included several Mexican artists (I'll omit mentioning them). One of them was forced to erase part of his work to avoid being expelled from the biennial and the country
(3). His work consisted of a triptych with images of men hanging after an apparent execution, and on the three sections the declaration of human rights was written in Chinese. We were one month away from the Olympic Games and it seemed everything that seemed critical of policies was extremely sensitive for the Chinese government. I am not sure how negotiations took place, but it is certain that there negotiations and Mexican representatives (including the cultural counselor of the Embassy of Mexico in China) were there, but in the end the outcome was what at the time felt to me (and it still feels so) like a humiliation for artists, art and Mexican art in general: the Mexican painter "erased" the text in Chinese in exchange for a stay at the Biennale (what did they tell him? what made him lose respect for his work?). I understand that he asked that this deletion (with white paint) were made by a relative of someone killed in Tian'anmen; I don't know whether they complied, but the act of "erasing" was completed, and I saw the work, the white splotches were there over not so clear Chinese characters and, what can I say? the piece had lost all moral and aesthetic value. The piece took on a new context is true, but the act was, is and remains a disgrace.
东宫西宫 "East Palace, West Palace" is another example of the censorship game in China and 三枝橘制作 Théâtre des trois oranges are used to it. The play took place and we enjoyed it, with a different context, even though I think the space was not the best for it. We enjoyed the performances of its two actors, which I still deem as having a strange monotony ... along with the feeling I get from hearing Chinese on stage, and we also enjoyed the images, but even more the courage to continue making a free theater in Chinese and with Chinese under these conditions.
Final comments...I could not remove from my memory an interview that the BBC did with the Chinese writer, Liao Yiwu, who started creating again after 4 years' imprisonment and continuous censorship of his work for years because of his writings full of pain and fury, writings related to the 1989 events of Tian'anmen Square
(4). Him, in an extremely passive and detached manner spoke of having turned towards spirituality and forgetting hatred, rebellion and passion, and of how now, with a tinge of wisdom, he prefers to engage in playing the flute, which he learned to play while in prison, and in trying to get his writings read and keeping them from being destroyed. When the interviewer, at the end of the interview, asked him to expose his thinking as a way of ending the program, he chose to play the flute instead of speaking. I heard this music as a metaphor for impotence, as the tragic end of someone who has been defeated by the universal power of the state and its censorship, someone who awaits enlightenment as a defeated hero.
Liao Yiwu was a dumb playing the flute to keep talking.
