A Study On The Explorative Drama In 1980s In The View Of Modernity

Faced with the sudden arising troubles and crisis as well as full-scale modernization and the Reform and Open policy, chinese drama in 1980s was forced to make changes, all of which had offered great opportunities for the Explorative Drama to pursue its own artistic creation with unprecedented unique features of chinese drama history. The age of 1980s is a valuable exploring period of Chinese new-era drama, with the Explorative Drama going through the whole time-span as its mainstream. Despite of their tremendous differences in spiritual pursuit and formative features, they has been categorized together as "Explorative Drama" because of their common researching concern upon the drama art in that particular social and cultural environment of 1980s. The "explorative"of the Explorative Drama realizes in two points of certain works:upon the society, the culture and the meaning of life as well as upon the dramatic methods and skills. The ones that have fulfilled these two points can be called the typical "Explorative Drama". Although most of these writings have not been mature enough to be called the classics, they have become the models of research upon drama of 1980s.The Explorative Drama began and grew in a modernized context of history which determined the acceptability of the point of view of the modernity upon its researches. Besides some splendid scattered discussion, the researching data of the Explorative Drama are still short of whole-scale study of drama from the validly visual angle of modernity. So we cannot do further analysis of some valuable topics, and even tend to just simplify some profound ones. Moreover, we cannot effectively perceive its achievement and deficiency in modern background, but used to go to extremes, good or bad, or be seemingly dialectical "one divided into two". Therefore it is necessary to analyze the spiritual pursuit and formative features of its modern pursuit setting at modernized context of history which can make up the blank part of the Explorative Drama researching and provide effective reference for drama development. Based upon the pluralist and embracing academic viewpoint, the paper tries to describe the spiritual pursuit and formative features of the Explorative Drama on account of its historically development and its horizontal relationship with western drama. With the criticism of reality as its enlightening spirit and native utterance as its modernism, the paper reveals its significance for the development of chinese drama and inspirations for future ones.The paper is composed of six parts including introduction, main part in 4 chapters and conclusion.The first chapter is dedicated to the description of modernity focusing on two aspects tightly related to the Explorative Drama:the first is the relationship between enlightening and emergence of modernity; the second is between modernism and inversion of modernity. Enlightenment had casted the temperament of the modernity, or the inherent motive or spirit, the enlightening spirit, or modern spirit was embodied in the Kant’s powerful statement about enlightenment based upon his summary of its spiritual achievement, and reflected in Foucaul’s creative interpretation and replication toward Kant’s point of view. Modernity is such a kind of belief that it criticizes our age and the historical existence of us. Modernism had evolved inner visual angle really, and it faced up to the alienated self with thorough despair.lt gave a sudden explosion to the whole tradition and wanted to create a series of ferocious works on the art ruins. There is huge gap between the modernism and the modern feature of society because of modernism’s contradiction to modernity, though modernism was the result of modernity. Based on the description of modernity, this paper explores some manifestation of the enlightening spirit and reasons for the modernism choice within the historical context of modernity pursuit of the Explorative Drama. Thus, the paper analyzes the drama’s extraction of western culture in 1980s from the perspective of enlightening spirit and modernism choice, reproducing the historical context of modernity, and also demonstrating the existence of the contradictions between enlightenment and modernism. Chapter two and chapter three try to explain the modernity from aspects of enlightening spirit and modernism factor.Chapter two generalizes enlightening spirit as social criticism, cultural criticism and modern anxiety according to its historical development. Social criticism is the theme of enlightening spirit on its first stage of historical development which mainly talks about its "anti-’left’" utterance including denouncing the distorted humanity, calling for personal freedom and reconstructing the morality; Cultural criticism, the theme of the second stage discusses the "anti-feudalism" utterance including closed situation, boss-flunkey personality and feudal moral principle; Modern anxiety mainly deals with troublesome problems of the course of modernization that had or being brought to us, such as the relationship between human being and nature, between material and spirit, between reason and emotion, between city and country, between the west and the east, all of which runs through the whole process of drama development.Chapter three studies the symbolism, expressionism, existentialism and absurd factor of the Explorative Drama from overall lateral comparison of western modernistic drama. In 1980s, symbolism has been the common goals of the Explorative Drama. The drama’s symbolism factor is mainly expressed in its pursuit of deep structure and artistic tension, and its use of symbolic means and symbolic thinking. The Explorative Drama begins its first step of modernism with its symbolic pursuit, openly but carefully. Expressionism factor mainly lies in its internal point of view because the Explore Drama chooses to describe the truth at heart with the methods like internal monologue and externalization of psychological activity. Drama’s study on inner world is unskilled, but it undoubtedly opens the gate to modern spirit. It also focuses on human existence telling its inclination toward existentialism, so some drama works devotes to voice metaphysical sense and experience of human existence enjoying the same theme and aesthetic as existentialism drama. The existentialism factor used to show its unique view of history and human life through the design of extreme circumstance as well as the portrayal of the character with right of choice. The expression of absurd factor tends to make a breach of perceiving absurd reality in psychological basis, which will be intensified by other creative absurd approaches. The drama’s absurd factor mainly lies in two aspects:one is the author’s personal experience and understanding of absurdism, and the other is the author’s attempt to build a new artistic form fit to his understanding of absurdism, which enriches the contemporary drama artistic style from aspects of language, plot, character, and stage property.Chapter four mainly expounds the trend of drama’s exploration in 1990s, analyzing the withering of enlightening spirit and the infiltration of post-modernism. On the one hand, beneath the new political, economic and cultural environment, the authors are inevitable divided:they lose their writing voice or even are missing. The diversification of the Explorative Drama in 1990s results from the withering of enlightening spirit. Closely related with political reform, economical wash and cultural replacement, seemingly, enlightening spirit inescapably comes to its historical end because entertainment and praising is the center of drama stage in 1990s while enlightening spirit loses its position. On the other hand, post-modernism makes experimental theatre full of noise and disturbance, demonstrating its obvious post-modernity which can be caught from its deconstructive spirit--deconstruction of value and denial of text, technique of collage and parody and game of language, so we say post-modernism within certain aspects of experimental theater is the part that cannot be neglected. The imitation of post-modernism makes experimental theater one pattern of modern drama and it also arouses sharp problems during the development of this drama. Drama exploration of 1990s subjected to commercial interests and lost itself among form experiment, it was faced with new crisis.We realize the valid endeavor the Explorative Drama has made. Its enlightening spirit is criticizing of reality and its modernism is native utterance, despite of its inborn, hard limitation and defect, it has testified that the art form appealing to modern spirit and aesthetic can last long, the art being invented among stirring life can enjoy true life force, which is the inexorable trend of the development of human art and has pointed out the ways for chinese drama to be out of crisis. Although full of troubles, drama enjoys a bright future instead of a dead end because in this paradise human and art can coexist freely.