In Anton’s Garden. The letters from Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper.

(Translated from Spanish by Tadeo Berjón)


Anton Chekhov

"Who envelops you, beautiful Anton?"


More than 15 years ago I wondered about the mystery of his person and his writing, and at the same time I wrote:

¿Quién te envuelve, bello Antón?
Tu misterio se escribe en la cara.
Tus lentes, reflejo ríspido de soledad;
de ambición desmedida por la nada.

(Who envelops you, beautiful Anton?
Your mystery is written on your face.
Your glasses, rough reflection of loneliness;
of unbridled ambition for nothingness.)


I continuously looked at the only photo available in those times of no internet, I observed it trying to discover its hidden secrets behind the colourless image; his life came to my in small bits, all I knew about him were his theatre plays translated into Spanish.

Then I found some letters, very few short sentences about his life as a writer, advices for his brother, comments of his disgust towards certain freedoms the Moscow Art Theatre was taking with his plays.

And I kept coming back to that photo, and writing about it...

Sonrisa que no existe.
Monalisa rusa de color sepia.
Hombre-mujer. Impresión de pasividad.

(Smile that exists not.
Sepia coloured Russian Monalisa.
Woman-man. Impression of passivity. )


Yes, I didn’t see a sexual Chekhov, I didn’t seem him as open, or loving, or loved. He was just one image and chosen words for saying something; a strange combination of ideas superimposed on each other in my mind. And I still saw him as beautiful, him, the man.

¡Ay, bello Antón!

(Oh, beautiful Anton!)


And his plays...


Cada palabra desluce mis ironías;
tus diálogos desnudan mi alma,
su alma,
y la de los demás...

(Every word dulls my ironies;
your dialogues disrobe my soul,
his soul,
and that of the others...)

Cada palabra tuya espera,
se alarga en hermosos silencios;
cada palabra tuya también grita
si deseamos hacerla gritar.

(Each of your words waits,
elongates into beautiful silences;
each of your words also screams
if we want to make it scream.)


I was fascinated by the mystery, of course, of his work, of his secrets, of his immense fame. I ask myself, why, then, did I also see him as part of a failure?

¡Ay, Antón, que lloras y glorificas tu fracaso!

(Oh, Anton, you cry and glorify your failure!)


I knew of his repulse, of his continuous illness, of his remote life in a southern port of the then Russian empire.

I wrote poems dedicated to him and based on small stories and impressions from his work; little by little my reading repeated itself, his plays again and again, his stories again and again, his few letters once more; and when languages (English and French) made their appearance in my life, the different visions that translations into other languages bring to us, and with that the doors they open.

On December 2004 I decided to take a week to submerge myself completely in the French theatre of the moment; I had six apotheotical nights of theatrical performances, Le Cirque Antoine, three Peter Brook’s productions, Théâtre du Soleil and Arianne Mnouchkine, among others. I went to the theatre on the second floor of the Théâtre de Champs Élysées to watch, not without emotion, in a production directed by Peter Brook, Natasha Parry and Michel Piccoli, “Ta main dans la mienne”, a play based on the letters that Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper wrote to each other for 6 years.

Video of Theatre des Champs Elysees: Ta main dans la mienne (December 2004)

“Lui : - Je prends votre main dans la mienne -
Elle : - C’est ainsi qu’il les a signées - ses lettres - ses lettres à Olga -
Lui : - 400 lettres. -
Elle : - 412 pour être exact - d’abord en amis -
Lui : - ensuite en amants -
Elle : - ensuite en mari et femme -
Lui : - une vie de passion en six courtes années -
Elle : - Il était écrivain -
Lui : - elle était actrice -
Elle : - et ils se sont rencontrés - comment se sont-ils rencontrés ? -
Lui : - J’ai oublié ! -
Elle : - C’était à une lecture - une lecture de La Mouette. Avril 1898 - tu t’en souviens?” (1)

The play presented to me, for the first time, a Chekhov in love, almost passionate about a woman (that was a surprise for me, of course), it presented, too, a Chekhov as an ordinary man, talking with less “Chekhovian sense”, well, not completely. For some (apparently obvious) reason, it was decided that the play be spoken mostly in the past tense; that made it Chekhovian, that made me lose he recently found man, it was as if it were a Chekhov written by Chekhov. But that didn’t keep me from enjoying it tremendously.

Something else from this mise-en-scene by Brook remained in my memory, Chekhov was old, very old; Michel Piccoli could barely stand, he was a man of wasted voice, an old man, and when he played a young man he seemed like an old man trying to feel youthful; Natasha Parry was also an older woman but, once you forgot her beautiful wrinkles, when she expressed her love, her adoring of the great author, with great subtleness, you forgot everything, she was Olga Knipper, who reminisced about those letters in her memories.

Anton Chekhov was then split into two in my memory’s image: a photo of a young man, maybe mature, with an air of loneliness and simplicity; and an acting of an old, live, loving man, who I’d seen die on stage.

An old Chekhov...?

In 2007, when retaking the text of the acting method of Antonio González Caballero, with all that part devoted to the naturalist current of modern acting proposed by Chekhov, I had to go back to the artist and the man, and to delve more deeply I ordered two books, “The Moscow Art Theatre Letters” and “Dear writer Dear Actress” (2), both compilations by Jean Benedetti. It was (as it remains) also the era of the flood of information and images that internet provides.

The book about the letter from the Moscow Art Theatre didn’t but corroborate my opinions and information about the opinion Chekhov had of his plays and of Stanislavsky himself, but it was “Dear Writer Dear Actress” which, along with the letters exchanged between Chekhov and Olga Knipper, that created a revolution in my perception of the man that wrote one the the most important groups of plays belonging to the universal theatre.

Love Letters of Anton Chekhov & Olga Knipper

Having turned forty, I would wake up almost before dawn with a strange feeling of apparently endless youth; confused, I’d look at myself in the mirror and was surprised by what nature, genetics and exercise maintained in my body and face; that was the time I read that Chekhov felt old at the same age... at forty, at my forty... Ill with tuberculosis he saw life leave while love arrived with all its power; locked in a boring, uneducated and lonely Yalta, his writings enjoyed a success he himself simply could not enjoy.

Only irony saved his mind.

“My little doggie” (“¡Mi perrita!”, how rude that sounds in Spanish!) was how he called, amongst dozens of other ridicule pet names, Olga Knipper, his beloved wife. In a 6 year-long love they met just a few times, and I strongly believe that that’s what kept their love alive while it lasted. Little sex, yes, but intense when it happened, sex that left them expecting a son, miscarried, who was supposed to be called Pamphil.


Letters upon letters show us how strange it was to depend on mail in those times; between Yalta, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, between Nice, Naples and Rome. Letters that arrive weeks late, some that arrive earlier than others, answers to others from weeks before...

-Why haven’t you written?-
-But I’ve sent you letters twice a day!-,
-Don’t be sad.-,
-I’m not sad, I wrote that in a different letter; now I’m happy-,
-I hear you’re ill-,
-I don’t have any health problems now-,
-Don’t send letters to Rome, send them to Naples; I haven’t been able to receive any from you.-


... A wonderful world of sentimental misunderstandings that never become a vaudevil, as it doesn’t happen either in his “comedies”.

Letters that presented a delicious Chekhov that washes little, that washes his hair even less, but who changes clothes somewhat more often; who enjoys a friendly dog until the dog prefers to sleep in his mother’s room. Chekhov, the man, lives the strange and tragic love of a young man that lives like an old one, who can’t go up the stairs, who suffers from colds, indigestion, continuous diarrhea, and an actress wife who parties and miscarries his son. A man who loves flowers, who devotes himself to a garden that sometimes goes crazy with tropical flair and other times remains as boring and dry as his neighbours in Yalta.

Those letters showed me also a Chekhov friend, worried for the health of Tolstoy and for the folkloric shirts of Gorky, for the lack of talent of his dear Nemirovich Danchenko and his wife’s worries; he is a man that dreams with a dacha near Moscow and with enjoying the silly and intellectual nights of a big city. Chekhov is a man of national fame but completely ignored internationally, who can travel through Europe and go to the theatre and not be recognised by anybody; he jokes with his wife for her being an actress that, thanks to a soon-to-be contract, would become as famous as Sarah Bernhardt.

Chekhov in his letters is a forgotten man in a small and remote world, old, sick, a smiling and ironical man that takes pleasure in seeing how people live while his wife reads or sings at his side. A man who constantly loses faith in his writing and suddenly becomes big with confidence once he finishes a play.


Chekhov, from what I read and I can read, was a man who, when he died, said a sentence in German and had a bit of champagne...

*

And today, watching his photograph again, I can write:

En el jardín de Antón

¿Quién te envuelve, bello Antón?

Tu misterio se escribe en tu cara.
Tus lentes, reflejo ríspido de soledad;
de ambición desmedida por la nada.

Sonrisa que no existe,
como una Monalisa rusa de color sepia.
Eres un hombre-mujer,
impresión de eterna pasividad.

¡Ay, bello Antón!

Cada una de tus palabras desluce mis ironías.
Tus diálogos desnudan mi alma,
su alma,
y el alma de los demás.

Cada una de tus palabras espera,
se alarga en hermosos silencios.
Si queremos las hacemos gritar.

Grita diciendo uno o dos...

¡Ay, Antón que lloras y glorificas al fracaso!
¡Revolucionario de 40 años que a nadie mató!

In Anton’s Garden

Who envelops you, beautiful Anton?

Your mystery is written on your face.
Your glasses, rough reflection of loneliness;
of unbridled ambition for nothingness.

Smile that exists not.
Sepia coloured as Russian Monalisa.
You’re a woman-man,
Impression of eternal passivity.

Oh, beautiful Anton!

Every word dulls my ironies;
your dialogues disrobe my soul,
his soul,
and that of the others...

Each of your words waits,
elongates into beautiful silences;
if we want we make it scream.

Scream saying one or two...

Oh, Anton, you cry to and glorify failure!
40 year revolutionary who nobody killed!





(1) Original text of "Ta main dans la mienne"
(2) “Dear Writer Dear Actress” The Love letters of Anton Chekhov & Olga Knipper. Selected, edited and translated by Jean Benedetti. Methuen. U.K. 2007.

Strindberg photographer

August Strindberg (Auto-portrait)

Strindberg walked his life researching, he found similitudes and coincidences between matter and energy, he wondered about others' discoveries in fields like psychology, occultism and natural science. August Strindberg, a poet, a scientist, a thaumaturg, ill with an obsessive desire for being recognized as a renovator and a sage; in his obsession he penetrate secrets of many disciplines; he was an erudite but also had terrible mistakes, he was considered by many as pernicious and suffered humiliation; the prototype of a genius, he was only capable of recognizing his own reality and truth.

Walking through his marvelous life he talked about Bohemia, in which he found flowers which seemed images he recognized from his photographic plates; he observed streams of water similar to chemical products he worked with; he perceived above the wind the light from which everything comes from; he intended to penetrate bodies and discover their real interior.

“Je sais très bien que les psychologues ont inventé un vilain nom grec pour définir la tendance à voir des analogies partout, mais cela ne m’effraie guère, car je sais qu’il y a des ressemblances partout, attendu que tout est en tout, partout”. (Inferno) (1)


If we try to understand his genius only through his theatrical career, then we will miss an enormous field of precious information.

Strindberg was also an alchemist who looked for the origins of objects, throughout an internalization process he worked with substances to penetrate any matter and discover its secrets. Strindberg the photographer used photography as a ”medium”, chemical combinations didn’t work, so images, photographic plates, experiments with light, could do the job then. He photographed his face, his rooms, his family, he tried to find the soul in the portrait with a special technique.


“J’ai préparé dans ma tête une histoire qui contient le maximum d’humeurs differentes. Je me raconte l’histoire tout en exposant la plaque et en regardant fixement la victime. sans suspecter ce que la force à faire, sous l’influence de la suggestion, il est obligé de réagir à ces influences qui le pénètrent. Et la plaque fixe l’expression de son visage. Le tout dure exactament trente secondes - mon histoire est minutieusement calculée pour cette durée. En trente secondes j’ai capté le sujet dans sa totalité!” (Quoted by Per Hemmingson)

Looking for the soul in portraits (Strindberg with his wife and sons)

Strindberg photographed the sky, the clouds, the stars; he used to leave his plates during the night under the effect of the moonlight and the next morning came back to look for changes and tried to explain what he saw there: images of the night, images of what we are not able to see with our eyes, images of the invisible. He subscribed to the crazy idea of extracting part of the soul of others through photography (what other thing could a photographic image be but part of the soul?). He trusted in X Rays as a philosophical way of understanding matter and energy. He detested the delusion of our eyes but he was amazed by them and he used to penetrate that delusion and imagined stories; gelatin plates were a field of illusion, a way of wonders.


“Je suis retourné à mes formations de cristaux que je photographie directement en les copiant de la plaque de verre où la cristallisation se trouve. Ces agrégats, des fleurs de glace, m’ont ouvert des perspectives dans les secrets de la nature qui me stupéfiaient” (Quoted by Per Hemmingson)

Photographic experiments of "cristalization" (August Strindberg)

My heart always breaks when reading his honest letters, his petitions, his explanations and his furious claims over the incomprehension of others; I have also cried watching his photographs of dark skies and clouds over Stockholm.

As for the soul, when Strindberg discovered psychology, he called it “the unconscious”, and during his long walk of life he bases his research on the supra-natural; having rolled in the sick pleasures of realism and naturalism, his hunger for more pleasure led him to look even deeper or more downward or more inward; later “the others” would call it surrealism: supra-natural was his word.


“C’est donc à moi de jeter la pasarelle entre le naturalisme et le supranaturalisme en proclamant que celui-ci ne constitue qu’un devéloppement de celui’la” (Quoted by Eric Renner)


When he came upon camera theatre where, through actions and words he exposed the world of the soul, of the supra-natural, of the unconscious, the road had been already been traversed by the avatars of exploration; his theatre was and (still is) revolutionary because it came to him as an inevitable result of those failed encounter with alchemy, astronomy, science, philosophy and photography.


“Je cherche la vérité dans la photographie, intensément, comme je la cherche dans beaucoup d’autres domaines.” (Inferno)


Today more than ever I’m fully convinced that to know (and to enjoy even more) Strindberg’s work we have to see and read his “images”.

*

I received, as a birthday gift from someone who loves me, a small book edited in 1994 by Actes Sud, “L’expérience Photographique d’August Strindberg”, written by Clément Chéroux, with a delicious “anexo” including some short extracts from texts written by Strindberg himself about his photographic experience. At the beginning the book seemed to me a little bit conventional, but when I started to read and to feel Strindberg’s powerful experiences with Photography and his research, those words caused real admiration for Chéroux’s work to awake in me.

Now I can understand why, some years later, and after the book was published, The National Stockholm Museum and Le Musée d’Orsay exhibited a large part of Strindberg’s photographic and painting work (2), without any preamble to his literary and theatrical work but as a unique painter and photographer.





(1) I’ve decided not to translate those texts ( some are translations from Swedish to French themselves) because I thought I could make terrible mistakes trying to put Strindberg’s ideas in English (or Spanish). I’m sure there are some versions of this texts in your language.
(2) The exhibition was mainly known thanks to the book that was published about it: “August Strindberg Painter and Photographer”, edited by Yale University and Stockholm Museum.

"The Little Prince" in a Chinese production, in Beijing.

Le Petit Prince (2008)

Xavier Froment is a French stage director who came to Beijing seven years ago and made it his base for making theatre, in Chinese, for Chinese spectators.

Cases of foreigners coming to Beijing and establishing themselves to do the same thing as Xavier has these seven years are few. Many come to study, Beijing Opera in particular, but they soon go back to their countries. There is only one foreigner, and his is a very special case: Ghaffar Pourazar, a British citizen of Iranian origin, who came to study Beijing Opera and established himself in the city, and he is still working as any other Chinese traditional theatre player; even more so, he is an important figure at some of the main Beijing Opera companies in China.

In general, in Beijing, we find some English speaking directors, having fun (or money) with some theatrical productions for expatriates or Classical Western plays for Chinese people; there are very few cases of other languages or nationalities; but nobody, absolutely, like Xavier Froment.

Xavier Froment and Théâtre des Trois Oranges

Xavier is living his life in Beijing and earns his money by doing theatre and selling his productions to anyone who wants to pay for them. His company, 三枝橘制作 Théâtre des trois oranges, produces, since 2003, plays by Chinese as well as by French writers, but all in Chinese and addressed to Chinese public. The company has a group of actors coming from different Chinese acting schools but most of them educated in what is called "Huaju" or Spoken Theatre, Western Theatre. Every production is usually performed between 4 and 5 times for season, as is common in China.

"Théâtre des Trois Oranges" (2008)

At the beginning of September I received Xavier's invitation for the premier of "小王子" "Le Petit Prince". Being one of the most universally known French texts the simple idea of listening to it in Chinese was kind of morbid. It was also the first time I could observe Xavier's work, so my curiosity had some professional level.

The Little Prince was adapted (remember that it is a short novel) to theatre as a monologue, so no evident characters are displayed on stage and the whole group of dialogues is played by one actor alone, Gen Shaoye. That singularity of the performance made it more difficult for me to get a total comprehension of the text. I decided then to listen to the rhythm and to the musicality we all remember well of Saint-Exupéry's words, but that idea brought another problem: the Chinese language has a special musicality, its 4 different tones give it its own immanent music, so no simile with French pronunciation at all... I'd rather not talk more about what I listened to there and leave it to your own experience listening to the video.

The image of the spectacle, in contrast, fluctuated between gray and colourful moments, between light and shadows; at some moments I saw mythic dreams on stage: one big elastic piece of cloth worked like that famous coat Saint-Exupéry drew for his main character, but it also was the snake's body, and worked as the sky on Earth itself. Those images are now in my memory and I think they will be there for long time.

Théâtre des Trois Oranges is working on a new production (for the end of October, 2008); they invited me again and this time I will have the opportunity of seeing some rehearsals also, so I hope my comprehension after the premier will be a little bit more extensive.

Video of "Le Petit Prince", a Théâtre des Trois Oranges production.

The same video in Vimeo.com:

A Chinese production of "Le Petit Prince" (小王子) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

"The Roses of Heliogabalus" and inspiration through painting.

"The Roses of Heliogabalus" (1888) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

“The Roses of Heliogabalus” (1)

Let me paint flowers and men, some death and joy.
No! Let me listen to soft music and write about it.

I also want to see my naked eyes, without colours,
without eyelashes that float and envelop me;
I want to see men running to save themselves, and then... to sleep.

Let me feel a smile for what they say about you,
and see those flowers that they say you let drop from heaven.

I want to see your painters and poets,
I want to listen to those narrators that don’t know how to sing.

I want to see kerchiefs and roses!

...millions of roses falling.

Let me see your flowers, your men and your stories,
and so I can inspire myself on death and the past.

Let me see your painting coloured in shades of red,
and of pink and violet,
then lick your dirty hands,
then lick your mind too,

... is that possible?

I have eyes no more, don’t be afraid,
I will only be able to hear your sketching,
I will only feel your breath while painting.

I want to write some more, but my hands become tense!

Without you,
... I walk like a handicap on the passage to the mythical world.

So let me stay here, since I don’t harm,
I only want to see what I cannot see without you

*

About half a year ago the modern art museum of Beijing hosted an exhibition of the collection of Pérez Simón: “Masterpieces of the 19th Century European Paintings at the Pérez Simón Collection”. It was the first time I was going to look at, with some awareness, some of the originals of the most famous paintings by the so called pre-raphaelites and classical victorian artists. Tales, novels, simple stories and myths, cinema itself, legends from old Europe, all of them gathering before me as images. The experience of the exhibition became a feast of figures, colours and textures, and I was overwhelmed by the beauty and finesse of the paintings and the stories flowing from them.

Walking along the exhibition I remembered some words my teacher, a writer as well as a painter, once said to me about those victorian painters: that they were immensely famous in their time and Oscar Wilde (who was an art critic as well) dedicated whole pages to them, but once the impressionists made their appearance, they all disappeared from the map. I didn’t know what to think, I love impressionists and I simply could not compare; what I saw now, in those forgotten artists of the 19th century, was completely different; I was discovering a new world, a world that inspired me to action, theatrical action.

Lovers of history and detail, the victorian painters of the 19th century were closer to photography and the soon-to-come cinema than to the theatre of their time (in fact, what they were close to was to literature and the myth that derived from it); their epic was atmospheric, their action was dream-like. In their paintings what is shown is the before or the after, not the decisive moment; the massacre doesn’t take place, it’s the road leading to it that is important, it’s the preparatory action to the brutal action, as if Chekhov had wanted (and he did it) to write a poem about a scene taking place before his most dramatic scene...

That’s why I enjoyed it so much, because, being a stage-oriented person, I could still perceive the dramatic action in unbearably beautiful surroundings, in this case in a delayed dramatic action, submerged in silence, a most beautiful subtle action.

“The Roses of Heliogabalus” was etched unto my mind, I’ve dreamt about it and I’ve woken up many mornings looking at it and trying to write a play thanks to the inspiration it’s left me; flowers that kill the guests, tragedy in an empire, passions and indulgence. Petals, soft gestures, music and incredibly beautiful textures (2)... Some scenes have surfaced, still few, but it doesn’t matter, something more complete will arrive when the time comes.

For the time being, a poem is what came from it, and is now my best memory and my best way of sharing.

(1) Translation by Tadeo Berjón. The original is in Spanish:

Déjame pintar flores y hombres, un poco de muerte y de gozo.
¡No!, déjame escuchar música suave y escribir sobre ella.

Quiero también ver mis ojos desnudos, sin colores,
sin pestañas que floten y me envuelvan;
quiero ver hombres corriendo para salvarse, y después... dormir.

Déjame sentir una sonrisa por lo que cuentan de ti,
y ver esas flores que dicen dejas caer del cielo.

Quiero ver a tus pintores y poetas,
quiero escuchar a esos narradores que no saben cantar.

¡Quiero ver pañuelos y rosas!

... millones de rosas que caen.

Déjame ver tus flores, tus hombres y tus historias,
y así inspirarme en la muerte y en el pasado.

Déjame ver tu cuadro pintado en rojos,
y en rosas y en violetas,
entonces lamer tus manos sucias,
entonces lamer tu mente también,

... ¿es posible?

Ya no tengo ojos, no temas,
sólo podré escuchar tus trazos,
sólo sentiré tu aliento al pintar.

Quiero escribir un poco más pero, ¡mis manos se tensan!

Sin ti,
... camino como un lisiado en el pasaje al mundo mítico.

Por eso déjame estar aquí, que no hago daño,
que sólo quiero ver lo que no puedo ver sin ti.


(2) Contrary to many other paintings where photography improves on the colours or dimensions of the original painting, in this case, the original of “The Roses of Heliogabalus” is truely impressive. Take the photograph I’m publishing as a simple visual reference point.

Beijing Opera Lessons 1: A Clown Scene

A few months ago a new series of educational VCDs appeared in stores in China, those digital videos were designed for teaching Peking Opera (Beijing Opera) to Primary and High school teachers: "中小学京剧进课堂必学唱段名师欣赏与教学". (1)

Chinese government decided Chinese Opera should be taught in many regions of the country as a way to introduced children in one of the treasures of traditional Chinese culture. This program has been badly criticized by many art specialists and pedagogues, and the reasons for it are simple: How teachers can transmit something they don't know? Beijing Opera (and Chinese Opera in general) is not only a very difficult Performing Art, it is simply unknown in the new China, only specialist can talk and teach about it, teachers are simply not prepared for it.

Well, these videos seems being an effort to resolve this problem, and it could help yes, but the problem is much wider I guess.

Let the Chinese government resolves this question and we can step forward taking advantage of its "products".

We are not Chinese high school teachers but we are almost in the same level of knowledge about Chinese opera (much less, of course), so we can also use them for learning this ancient and special art and we can do it with practical exercises!

I was very surprised these videos were performed by very young actors, but all of them professionals and currently teachers in professional Opera Schools in China.

Seeing it from this point of view it is a very important step to open Beijing Opera to anyone in the world, trying to show some hidden secrets on acting in this kind of theatre. I'm pretty sure that being a very codified and elaborate Performing Art, Peking Opera needs this kind of products to show how is performed and how its acting technique is without myths or second tales in between.

Of course for Westerners (actors or not) it is a real exotic curiosity but I'm sure it could be a big help to anyone interested in Asian Performing Arts and Acting techniques. Even if the videos are very basic and only spoken in Chinese, they could be understood by anyone interested just making a small effort: movements, rhythm, tempo, everything (I believe) is understandable without knowing the meaning of the speech. Of course any knowledge on Chinese language would be a great help.

The first video I want to share explains how to perform a Chinese Opera clown character, a Chou type (or Xiaohualian), in a scene called “报灯名” or Bao dengming (reporting the lights) from the opera 《打龙袍》Da Longpao (Beating the Royal Robe).

Video of Beijing Opera Lessons 1


*

(1) You can find information about this video at: www.tt-art.com (It is a Chinese site of course, but you can automatically translate the page and get the information in your language).

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.