Brecht and the Current Transformation of 
the Theatre in China 
 
 
Chen Yong 
 
 
 
 
     As we all know, Brecht was influenced by East Asian arts, 
 especially those of China and Japan. He evolved an anti-mechanical 
 process of thinking. He did not represent things in the theatre as 
 accomplished facts but as a process to be observed as developing and 
 capable of being questioned. 
     Western empiricism polarized and simplified the relationship 
 between man and nature. It emphasized that man must overcome 
 nature. It ignored the constraints that nature placed on man. It 
 fragmented the world and overlooked its overall coherence. It saw the 
 structure of knowledge as prefabricated. Brecht's epic theatre and 
 theory of alienation was an opposing force to nineteenth century 
 European philosophy and the Aristotelian poetics which had dominated 
 Western theatre for over 2000 years. His theatre challenged the 
 imagination, as well as the mode of social analysis. It transformed, 
 transposed and replaced a whole system of principles of the theatre. 
     Another well known fact is that spoken drama came to China 
through Japan and the West about four decades ago at a time when the 
Western stage was dominated by Naturalism. It was a transitional stage 
which saw rapid changes in the modern theatre. The vanguard of the 
Chinese new cultural movement used spoken drama as a weapon 
against feudalism and the old culture. This movement reflected 
changing currents of thought and social analysis. But it did not pay 
much attention to theatrical representation as such. The May 4th 
Movement opened up new vistas. What we witnessed moving across 
the Chinese stage in rapid succession were classical, expressionist, 
realist, symbolist, and art-for-art's-sake drama. Every kind of theatrical

mode, style and theories exerted varying degrees of influence on the 
development of Chinese spoken drama. In China to-day, political choice 
is undeniably a strong factor. In a society plagued with political 
problems, plays with social political themes take root readily. Naturalist

and Expressionist drama, with their concern for topical problems, were 
natural vehicles for expressions of class struggle and the struggle for a

people's consciousness. That explained why Naturalism and 
Expressionism held sway over several decades. In the Fifties, 
Stanislavsky's method gained popularity in China. Perhaps it was a 
partial understanding of the Stanislavskian method which added to the 
propensity to develop in a certain fixed direction. Most playwrights and

directors adopted and vigorously pursued the method of complete 
identification. Thus they were placed at the periphery of the quest for 
total conversion. 
 
 
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