Chinese Opera, Music and Shadow Theatre Puppets at Mentougou Museum

Mentougou Museum, outskirts of Beijing. July 2008.

Mentougou Museum, outskirts of Beijing, is an interesting place to see documents of Chinese Performing Arts history through a small province village's point of view.

A permanent exhibition of Mentougou's Performing Arts shows us Shadow Theatre Puppets (Xiaweidian Beijing West School), Chinese Opera objects (costumes, props, and music instruments); and historical photographs.

Video Mentougou Museum

Photographs of the permanent exhibition at Mentougou Museum:

SHADOW THEATRE PUPPETS


Shadow Theatre Puppet (Xiaweidian Beijing West School). Mentougou Museum.


Shadow Theatre Puppet (Xiaweidian Beijing West School). Mentougou Museum.


Shadow Theatre Puppet (Xiaweidian Beijing West School). Mentougou Museum.


CHINESE OPERA COSTUMES, PROPS AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

Chinese Opera costume. Mentougou Museum.


Chinese Opera props. Mentougou Museum.


Chinese Opera musical instruments. Mentougou Museum.


Chinese Opera Musical Instruments. Mentougou Museum.



HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS

Shadow Theatre Stage (First years of 20th Century). Mentougou Museum.


Chinese opera Troupe (First years of 20th Century). Mentougou Museum.


Street musicians and actors (First years of 20th Century). Mentougou Museum.


Chinese Opera troupe (First years of 20th Century). Mentougou Museum.




Comic Chinese Opera performance (Last quarter of 20th Century). Mentougou Museum.



Chinese Opera performance (Last quarter of 20th Century). Mentougou Museum.


Street Musicians performance (Beginnings of 20th Century). Mentougou Museum.

The same video in Vimeo:


Chinese Opera, Music and Shadow theatre Puppets Permanent exhibition at Mentougou Museum from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Street Theatre in Today China (Part 1)

The European street theatre tradition has grown into a fantastic development of acting and directing techniques, and dramatic structure as well, and those improvements have sprouted almost all over the world. Groups and companies like the Odin Teatret of Denmark, Tascabile di Bergamo and Teatro Potlach from Italy, have even created a new school within the theatre itself; La Fura dels Baus deserves a special chapter in this matter.

Latin America, Australia, the USA and Canada have joined their own traditions to these new ways of doing street theatre. Some oriental regions, like Kerala and Bali for example, have an enormous influence over these new ways of doing. The result has been stunning spectacles everywhere in the world: festivals, ceremonies, incursions in all kinds of mass-gathering, etc.

China is a different story. Chinese street theatre and all its performing arts have been hidden (and in one moment, during the cultural revolution, were almost erased) for many years; censorship and bans are common words in theatrical language here. Today, street theatre is fighting for its right to exist.

Street theatre is prohibited in China.

This is a strong sentence but also a misleading one. Well, not really, Street theatre is not banned in China; there is not one article in Chinese law banning street theatre, but we all know that not everything in law is written and clear. Chinese law prohibits any public demonstration without a permit from the police. Bad memories from the Tian’anmen square protest in 1989 are the origin of this ban, plus the usual censorship over any kind of public artistic expression. The Olympics and an impressive economic growth have not done anything for improving these conditions, and they’ve even pushed back any kind of improvement. (1)

There are no Chinese groups of street theatre in mainland China; groups and companies of traditional dance, commercial companies dedicated to creating mass spectacles, etc., yes, but nothing like the new street theatre I talked about.

Even with this dismal panorama, if we are lucky, we can find some ‘actions’ or ‘manifestations’ that we can call ‘theatre’. China is a huge country with dozens of cities with more that one million people and many things happen there, even that different kind of theatre.

My experience is centered on the two main cities, Beijing and Shanghai, as they are a good example of what is happening here.



Wangfujing and Chaoyang Park


Squares and streets can’t be taken by surprise and the police don’t give permission to perform to anyone without some link with the government; it is inside ‘special’ public places where we can find some kind of street theatre; talking about streets and squares, we have Wangfujing street, the most famous commercial street in Beijing, and Chaoyang park, which is also an amusement park.

The surprise that usually comes with the incursion of the theatrical play in the daily life of any street or square in the city finishes when the place is chosen for anyone and prepares the public for the spectacle, but it is also a common practice in the Western world: festivals have their own schedule and people know the who, where and when of performances and, of course there are laws that allow or not the spectacle to take place, depending of many factors, including security ones, of course. The difference in Beijing is that there are no other places to do it and you almost never find Chinese independent groups.

Till now (March 2008) I have not seen in Wangfujing any street theatre spectacle as we know them in Occident, but many touristic festivals and some dance group performances. I know by direct sources that some spectacles have been suspended because they didn’t have the right permits, and I have seen some foreign festivals taking place on this street.

Some photographs from Internet about events in Wangfujing:

St. Patrick's Parade at Wangfujing AP: Bands Music Parade at Wangfujing

Chaoyang Park (and its amusement park) is the main venue for festivals which use any kind of street spectacle; it has some squares just for performing arts and concerts. Foreign groups usually perform their street theatre here, and Chinese spectators react not much differently from a spectator from the Western world. I have never seen or heard about any Chinese groups performing here.

Video of Sychroswing by the Australian group Strangefruit:

Beggars in Shanghai


It is also possible to see some street spectacles from every day life: beggars playing music are the usual one.

In Beijing, begging is not permitted, but Shanghai is a slightly more liberal city and doesn’t care much about it, so I could find some examples of this street spectacle.

Video: blind musicians in Shanghai

Fairs: Liulichang and its Chinese New Year fair


On some special occasions as important holidays the government organize fairs; millions of people enjoy eating traditional food, buying regional art-crafts and seeing spectacles; these spectacles are always tinted with Chinese tradition and none of them are “contemporary”: traditional chinese dance, traditional Chinese music and singing, Chinese opera and traditional Chinese acrobatics.

Liulichang street in Hepingmen, a very traditional street area in downtown Beijing, hosts every year one Spring festival (or Chinese New Year festival) fair. This 2008 I found, among millions walking all around, two interesting street spectacles: the dance of the lion and acrobatics with stilts.

Dance of Lion at Liulichang Fair

Acrobats on Stilts at Liulichang Fair

Nuo Theatre and traditional open air theatre


Traditional theatre and dances are part of the touristic program of the Chinese government. Every part of China, every village, has one special program to attract tourists displaying their “cultural treasures”, many of them just recovered from their ashes after the cultural revolution in the 60s and 70s of the 20th Century, and many of these dances have also lost their religious origin.

Video of traditional Chinese regional dance:

Among these “cultural treasures’ we can find the Nuo theatre from Fujian province in the South of China, which is one of the last remains with religious-origin theatre. (2)

Video of Nuo theatre:

Now, two videos of Puppet theatre and Shanghai Opera both performed on Shanghai streets in 1927. These videos are invaluable documents about the way of perform Chinese theatre and how people used to see them.

Chinese puppet theatre in a Shanghai street (1927)

Chinese opera in a Shanghai street (1927)

(1) We have to see the reaction of the Chinese government to the riots in Tibet to understand that. Amnesty International has reported in March 2008 how the Olympics Games in China have also strengthened some forms of censorship in the country.
(2) Jo Riley in “Chinese Theatre and The Actor in Performance” (Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre. Cambridge University Press) explores ritual sources of Nuo Theatre and its similitude with Beijing Opera.

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Music and Dance while I was walking on the streets of London

London is a cultural city; there are on the streets or inside the subway stations performance spaces for those artists who can't pay for a rent of an usual commercial space. Listening and watching those musicians and dancers was a real moment of resting in my journey to anywhere.

I recorded several of them (here 5). The best way to enjoy them (if you don't care where they are performing) I think is watching every video in different moment, a little bit as I caught them.

It is a "playlist" on Youtbe, so you must chose which of them you want to see inside the window player.

- Hightown Crows at Portobello Market, one of the most colorful places in London.

- A street drummer playing with plastic drums (paint cubes), near the Thames riverside.

- A street Tap dancer, near the Thames riverside as well, but at night.

- An african origin musician, Mein-Gad-Sidjo, performing inside the "tube" (Subway) .

- Army Band performing outside the "Britain at War Museum".

Noridan. A big smile during the Singapore Arts Festival 2007.

Mi visit to Singapore lasted 6 days and I had planned to attend three events of the Singapore Arts Festival 2007 plus watching the Vesak parade (the celebration of Buddha’s enlightenment).

I knew I’d miss many events because of my short visit and the ticket prices (impossible to afford) and purposefully avoided them, but I made the mistake of forgetting the whole group of street spectacles, all of them free. But Singapore is a very small city, and walking around I found a few events.

So, while I was leaving the Esplanade after Tandun’s concert, at one of the terraces of this enormous cultural complex and among a crowd of curious spectators, my ears caught some music, the music of the Korean group Noridan, a singular company of musicians performers, some of them very young (I mean, children), who were playing musical instruments (my guess is they were made from recycled plastic and metal).

Companies like Noridan exist all over the world and of indisputable quality in their dance or music, but even then, after a mental comparison, Noridan, because of their short age, their timing on the stage, their rhythm and their energy projected towards the spectators, was a very good and big surprise.

The philosophy of the group is as simple as their music: entertainment with joy and energy, and they achieve their goal. Noridan’s members are talented and imaginative, practical, and that can be seen throughout the performance. Noridan doesn’t have the pretentious ideals of La Fura dels Baus or La Guarda, but they work with practical stage machines, they make music and play it, but only trying to make the spectator happy and show their talent (as with the drums); they dance and yell, play and do acrobatics but they don’t pretend to tell a story or even to show off their dramatic skills. Their work is simple and that simplicity enthralls, it is a pleasure to live their fluidity performing, fluidity which gives a breath to our journey.

Noridan (as Tandun), on the other hand, are still imprinted in my spectator memory. In the end I felt like approaching to say hello, to talk with them, to watch their machines and play those strange instruments, and they were glad about it. I felt like looking into their eyes with my best smile and saying “Gracias”.

Angkor: Street musicians, poetry and video.

During several of my travels I’ve found some groups of street musicians, I’ve listened to their music, sometimes videotaped a bit of it, and many times I thought about their job and their reasons to do it.

For a long time street performances have been part of my interest in performing art, but I’ve had little opportunity to do something concrete with it. However the experience in my travels of meeting this kind of groups has left an impression in my mind and I’m sure it will impact my future “observations” through the world. I can see music, dance, theatre, theatres, all profoundly linked. Asia is an enourmous group of performative mixture sometimes unthinkable in the Western world and accidentally present in that “middle” world where I come from, Mexico.

These musicians and their street performances open my imagination and my sensitivity, they take me deeper in the reasons for expression, over the impulses which drive us to expose ourselves to anybody. Sometimes I feel pain, my heart breaks, and then I realize I’ve cried, and after some minutes I start writing (not for stage; it’s one of those moments I’m sure I’m a poet too).

A few videos of these meetings will help to illustrate what I’m now writing, and one text written in an instant of explosive emotivity (Just Angkor could produce it), will be the pick of my idea of “sharing the experience”.


The crippled musicians of Ta Phrom(1)

I thought it’d be decades before I’d long for the words that speak about that within me wich is imposible to descypher; what a fool, as the wait was only of two ridiculous years;
the immense beauty of time that passed broke my sinless silence.

Cripples.

An apparition of crippled musicians, with tired eyes and smiles, their hands and instruments, their prosthesis lying on the side, resting and fed up.

No feet, no legs, no foot, no fingers, no hand, no arm, no sight, no eye, yes a bit of music, and a smile that will play for a dollar.

I sweat as I walked, I wanted to record them with the memory I carry in my pocket, that machine that keeps that which I see and then shows it to the world, a machine that lets me rest from what I was and am in passing.

You’ll see them, recorded, but words stay best with a pulse of soft crying, of that stinging pain in the chest, that smile that you see and that won’t imitate their pain.

Music was their dance, and their singing was their walking and their speech. Music wasn’t hate, not vengeance, it was another machine that only plays at the sound of a coin falling.

When I saw the tree that tears the temple apart, and its roots absorbing time, I saw my dead father, teacher and friends, I heard those musicians again with missing body parts. I went back to my obsession of wanting to register everything with my hand memory, but a pain in my chest and in my head stopped me.
I was left alone within the horde of tourists and herders, of warrior and priests carvings; for an instant I was a cripple, my almost useless hand also writing for a dollar no one would give me,
I was like a machine,
And my feet were only contraptions that lay on the side, dirty, waiting.

I was in the midst of a tree covering my beliefs, and those faces, and carvings, and wanting to silence dozens of women yelling. I turned my mind (already burning white) towards those towers that the day before showed me tens of proud faces.

I looked at the roots at my feet, I touched the fallen stone to my side, then I put a stop to the madness and my own scream, and kept from falling from insolation and tiredness.

There, the men without hands or feet kept playing.

There, the old temple, expired and useless, remained hidden by the roots of a tree thousands of years old.
There, in my hand, was the camera, recording everything, taking so little of what I’d seen…

A few months before I had seen some other musicians on the street, blind, playing and trying not to be recorded.
Years ago I saw some others at a Roman temple, offering tea with also playing, without feeling.
Yesterday night was my first encounter with the cripples… is there another word?
Today, I couldn't stand the vision of that new encounter,…

and in that temple-non-temple
I saw not a ruin, not some musicians, I cried poetry, dance, singing.

Gustavo Thomas
June, 2007
Siem Reap, Cambodia

Video of crippled musicians in Ta Phrom, Angkor, Cambodia:

Video of blind musicians in Shanghai, China:

Video of street musicians in Baalbek, Lebanon:

(1) Translated by Tadeo Berjon from the original in Spanish. Berjon thinks is important to say that he is not a professional translator of poetry and may not reflect properly the original poem in Spanish. I publish the original in Spanish here:

Los músicos lisiados de Ta Phrom.

Pensé que habrían de pasar decenas de años antes de volver a suspirar por las palabras que hablaran de aquello imposible de descifrar dentro de mí; como un iluso el lapso fue de tan pocos dos ridículos años;
la inmensa belleza de un paso por el tiempo rompió mi inmaculado silencio.

Lisiados.

Una aparición de músicos lisiados, con sus sonrisas y su ojos cansados, con sus manos y sus instrumentos, con sus aparatos a un lado descansando del hartazgo.
No pies, no piernas, no pie, no dedos, no una mano, no un brazo, no la vista, no un ojo, sí un poco de música, y una sonrisa que se toca por un dólar.

Sudaba y caminaba, quería grabarlos en la memoria que cargo en el bolsillo, esa máquina que guarda aquello que veo y que lo muestra después al mundo, máquina que me deja descansar de lo que fue y fui en el paso.

Tú los verás, guardados, pero las palabras quedan mejor con un impulso de suave llanto, de ese tintilante dolor de pecho, con esa sonrisa que no ves imitando su dolor.

La música era su danza y su canto, era su caminar y su discurso.
La música no era odio, ni venganza, era otra máquina que solo toca con el caer de la moneda.

Cuando vi el árbol que destroza el templo, y sus raíces absorbiendo el tiempo, vi a mi padre, a mi maestro y mis amigos muertos, volví a escuchar a esos músicos sin una parte de su cuerpo. Volví a mi obsesión de querer plasmarlo en la memoria de mano, pero un dolor en mi pecho y en mi cabeza lo evitaron.
Quedé solo en medio de la horda de turistas y pastores, de las formas de guerreros y sacerdotes; fui por un instante un lisiado, mi mano casi inservible escribía también por un dólar que nadie me daba,
era como una máquina,
y mis pies sólo aparatos que a un lado se quedaban, sucios, esperando.

Estaba en medio de un árbol tapando mis creencias, y esas caras, y tallados, y queriendo callar también a decenas de mujeres gritando. Volví mi mente (ya en brasas) hacia esas torres que un día antes me mostraban decenas de orgullosas caras.

Miré las raíces a mis pies, toqué la piedra caída a mi lado, entonces detuve la locura y el grito propio, evité también caer de insolación y cansancio.

Ahí los hombres sin manos ni pies seguían tocando.
Ahí el templo viejo, caduco e inservible, seguía oculto por las raíces de un milenario árbol.
Ahí en mi mano estaba la cámara, todo grabando, tomando tan poco tan poco de lo observado…

Pocos meses atrás vi a otros músicos en la calle, ciegos tocando y evitando ser grabados.
Años atrás vi a otros en un templo romano, ofreciendo té y sin emoción también tocando.
Ayer por la noche fue el primer encuentro con los lisiados… ¿hay otra palabra?
Hoy no soporte la visión de ese nuevo encuentro,…
y en ese templo-no-templo.
Vi, no una ruina, no unos músicos, lloré poesía, danza, canto.