A Study Of LaiShengchuan’s Dramas From The Perspective Of Cultural Integration

This dissertation tries to explore the main ideas and values, the main drama resources between oriental and western in Lai Shengchuan’s dramas from the view of cultural integration. It also analyzes or summarizes the polyphonic structure and the theatricality of his drama, and his use of free and flexible ways to pursue the integration of performance and audience. The dissertation consists of seven chapters.Chapter one is divided into two sections. It mainly introduces the life and works of Lai Shengchuan under the background of cultural integration. Being born and growing up in America, American primary school education cultivates his interest in music and painting; in Taiwan, he received the middle school education and the Chinese traditional culture, during the period of the university, he read the Western literary novels and books about Buddhism in English department, this influenced his humanistic ideas and values; When he came to California and study the theatre in the university of Berkeley, the free and inclusive atmosphere, the professional education of theatre presented totally different experience, which leads to the cultural integration in his drama creation. When Lai Shengchuan returned to Taiwan from America, he was engaged in drama teaching and creation, he used the method of collective improvisation in playwright. His drama creation is based on the concern of the social and the human life, and has the cultural integration as its features. From 1983 till now, the process of his creation can be divided into four stages. And he and his collaborators created thirty original dramas.The second chapter is divided into four sections. It mainly explored the cosmic vision and the humanistic concern in Lai Shengchuan’s dramas. In 1960’s, Lai Shengchuan accepted the ideal values of hippie age, the rebellion against the mainstream values of western world prompted Lai Shengchuan to seek and construct the life values in oriental thoughts and philosophy. In the 1970’s he accepted Buddhism and was engaged in Buddhist practice. Buddhism thoughts make Lai Shengchuan to concern the spiritual world of human life and the essence of cosmic. The hippie spirit of rebellion is reflected in his artistic creation, and he constantly renews himself, subverts the traditional theatre, stick to the innovative exploration. Because of his gentle character and the influence of Buddhism, he accepted the positive and the ideal value of hippie culture, including the pursuit of freedom, equality and love, altruistic thoughts, the rebellion against material civilization. Many of Lai Shengchuan’s dramas reflected the integration of the Buddhism and the ideal values of hippie culture. Because of the profound and complete system of Buddhism, Lai Shengchuan reflects the cosmic vision and the concern of human life. For example, the eight-hour epic drama——A dream like a dream, it expressed the concern of the oriental and western civilization, the life of modern people; In Sand and a distant star, it expressed the time and life sense of cosmic; In Like shadows, it concerned the spiritual world of modern people from the view of "bardo" in Buddhism. Through interpretation of the theme in the above three typical dramas, we can understand and grasp the depth and breadth of humanism in Lai Shengchuan’s dramas.The third chapter is divided into three sections. It mainly discussed Lai Shengchuan’s reference from Chinese and Western comic art and his own creativity. Comic art occupied an important position in Lai Shengchuan’s dramas. Almost all of his dramas are tragicomedy which contains certain comic elements. He made use of the art of Chinese crosstalk——with the concept of modern theater, invented the new drama types——crosstalk show. He also draw inspiration and nourishment from the tradition of western comedy, such as Italy’s traditional comedy arts, including exaggerated body performances and the type characters of Harlequin, the arrangement of fantasy plot and the function of political satire in Dario Fo’s dramas also enriched Lai Shengchuan’s creation of comic dramas. With the magical city comedy Menage a 13 as an example, through the analysis of this comic drama, we can learned Lai Shengchuan’s manage of comic theme in contemporary life and the reference from the Western comic arts.The fourth chapter is divided into four sections.It mainly discussed Lai Shengchuan’s reference from the oriental and western static dramas and his own creativity. Combined with his specific dramas, static dramas provide the important and valuable resources for Lai Shengchuan’s drama creation. And there are two reasons for Lai Shengchuan’s deep interests in static dramas. First, they rebel against the traditional Western drama which has the plot as its centre; Second, they expressed the profound thinking or philosophy about the life. In Lai Shengchuan’s dramas, he not only draws reference from the play skills of Chekhov and Beckett, Harold Pinter and Japanese Noh, but also absorbed their respective artistic features, such as Chekhov’s tragicomedy art, the characters of division and broken in Beckett’s dramas, the view of death in Noh. At the same time, Lai Shengchuan also combined his own Buddhist thoughts and modern narrative techniques to create dramas, in order to attract and satisfy the audience’s needs, and formed his own artistic style of dramas.The fifth chapter is divided into four sections. This chapter mainly explores the polyphonic structure which is the main character of Lai Shengchuan’s dramas. And with the variation of Bach, Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land and a journey to the West as the typical examples, this chapter analyzes the main character of the polyphonic structure. Open mind, good music literacy and collective improvisation are the important reasons for polyphonic structure in Lai Shengchuan’s dramas. Most of his drama’s structure are just like polyphonic music, which have their own independent, intertwining, integrating voices or plot lines. This character makes his dramas accommodate diversified, different and even opposing themes, genres, styles and thoughts.The sixth chapter is divided into three sections. It mainly summarized the theatricality in Lai Shengchuan’s dramas by concrete analysis of A dream like A dream and journey in the dream as the two representative dramas. Theatricality as the nature of dramas, refers to the fact that the performance and audience share the same time and space. Lai Shengchuan pays more attention to exploring and creating theatricality.The last is the conclusion part, it is divided into two sections. Combining the era of globalization, the first section reviewed and summarized the experience or significance of Lai Shengchuan’s drama creation. In Lai Shengchuan’s dramas, he inherited and innovated the oriental and western traditional culture, and preserved the national collective memory; showing the cosmic view and humanistic concern beyond national borders; pursuit of cross regional cooperation actively and the theatrical practice in east and west, all this provides an important inspiration and significance to contemporary drama creation; the second is the comparison between Lai Shengchuan’s drama creation and the drama creation in the mainland, thus highlighting the characteristics of Lai Shengchuan’s drama and review the advantages or disadvantages of drama creations in the mainland. In Lai Shengchuan’s dramas, he balanced the originality, humanistic concerns and the individuality artistic expressions, the relationship between audience and performance better, enriched the drama creations in mainland, all these established his important position in the history of Chinese contemporary dramas.