Gao Xingjian’s Pursuit For The Modernity Of Dramas

In the new era of Chinese drama history, Gao Xingjian, the explorer in theatre arts, played as an indispensable role within the period, who both made great accomplishment in dramatic theories and practice. As a drama theorist, the perceptions and concepts he advocated was an innovative and fresh breeze for China’s drama field in1980s; As a playwright, lots of his works stimulated mass discussion and public topics and had profound influence at the time. In Gao’s play composition, he tried hard to make dramas go back to their essence and help them regain their long abandoned skills and means. He spotlighted theatricality, emphasized falsity of dramas, and underlined the stage performance so as to allow dramas return to their core:action. In addition, Gao drew from western dramas and took in nutrition from them. He developed the notion of theatricality from Ibsen’s and Bernard Shaw’s melodramas. Chekhov’s dramas and particularly, from Bertolt Brecht’s epic theatre. He probed in the essence of dramas from the distinction and contrast between Sitanevski’s dramatic theories and traditional Chinese operas. He also traced back to the conventional folk dramas in Bali and Japanese Kabuki to define the broad sense of drama. The innovative and groundbreaking attempts that Gao made for the exploration of new dramas, in themselves, are meritorious and transcendent, which, in the meantime, brought profound influence on Chinese contemporary dramas.The introduction part of the dissertation made a generalization on Gao’s practice in theatre exploration, and simply talked about the present foreign and domestic research situation on the modernity of Gao’s dramas and the significance of the theme of the paper as wellThe first chapter of the paper analyzed various theatre thoughts advocated by Gao and which reflected the modernity of dramas. Gao called for breaking down "the forth wall" so as to allow mutual and direct communications among actors, roles and audiences, which jointly brought about the realization of artistic creation. He removed the restrictions from the principle of "Three together" and focused on the falsity of dramas. He also developed traditional theatre perceptions from motion and process to transformation, contrast and amazement, etc.The second chapter mainly focused on Gao’s works to make an analysis on the modernity characteristics of his works. The modernity was reflected by the topics and themes of his works, pluralistic stage elements in theatre performance, and the polytonality in his works as well.The third chapter discussed some defects in Gao’s theatre practice, including the trend to put form over content in his latter playwriting and the constraints in drama marketing as he ignored the reception ability of audiences so that the stage performance of plays was getting hard to take place or the market response of them was just average.The conclusion part analyzed Gao’s positive influence on vanguard theatre in1990s, and made objective comment and summary on Gao’s practical pursuit for the modernity of dramas.