“Eugene O'Neill in China” (Publication, 1988)
Year
1988
Text
Liu, Haiping. Eugene O'Neill in China. In : Theatre survey ; vol. 29 (1988). (One42)
Type
Publication
Contributors (1)
Liu, Haiping
(1944-) : Professor and Chair of English, Nanjing-Universität
Mentioned People (1)
O'Neill, Eugene
(New York, N.Y. 1888-1953 Kap Cod bei Boston) : Dramatiker, Nobelpreisträger
Subjects
Literature : Occident : United States of America
/
References / Sources
Chronology Entries (21)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1903-1953 |
Eugene O'Neill allgemein. The Eugene and Carlotta O'Neill Library. Special Collections. C.W. Post Campus / Long Island University, Brookville, New York http://www2.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/sc/oneill/holdings.htm. Ackerman, Phyllis. Ritual bronzes of ancient China [ID D28786]. [Signed Carlotta Monterey O'Neill, 28.12.1945 New York]. Binyon, Laurence. The flight of the dragon [ID D28761]. [Signed Eugene O'Neill]. Bland, John Otway Percy ; Backhouse, E. China under the empress Dowager [ID D2870]. Boerschmann, Ernst. Picturesque China [ID D446]. Brinkley, Frank. Japan and China [ID D28783]. Chuang Tzu : mystic, moralist, and social reformer. Translated from the Chinese by Herbert A. Giles [ID D7731]. Creel, Herrlee Glessner. The birth of China [ID D9969]. Crosby, Oscar Terry. Tibet and Turkestan [ID D2766]. [Signed Carlotta Monerey, 1927]. Fung, Yu-lan [Feng Youlan]. A history of Chinese philosophy [ID D10069]. [Signed by Carlotta Monterey O'Neill, Boston Dec. 2 1952]. Douglas, Robert K. China [ID D2443]. Grantham, A[lexandra] E[thelred]. Hills of blue [ID D28779]. Hill, A.P. Broken China [ID D28792]. [Signed Eugene O'Neill & Carlotta Monterey, Shanghai 1928]. Hobson, Robert Lockhart. Chinese art [ID D28784]. Hsiung, Shih-i [Xiong Shiyi]. Wang Pao-chuan : Lady precious stream [ID D28788]. Lao-tzu. Tao-tê-ching : Lao-tzu's tao and wu wei. Transl. by Dwight Goddard [ID D28778]. Johnson, Reginald Fleming. Twilight in the forbidden city [ID D3330]. Li, Po. The works of Li Po, the Chinese poet, done into English verse by Shigeyoshi Obata [ID D13279]. Lin, Yutang. The importance of living [ID D14759]. [Mr. & Mrs. Eugene O'Neill – compliments & warmest regards from Ling Yutang, Nov. 25, 1937]. Lin, Yutang. My country and my people [ID D13801]. Mowrer, Edgar Ansel. Mowrer in China [ID D8748]. [To Mr. & Mrs. Eugene O'Neill, this slight testimony of a great admiration. Edgar A. Mowrer]. Norton, Henry Kittredge. China and the powers [ID D28455]. [Signed Carlotta Montery, April 27 1927]. Nott, Stanley Charles. Chinese jade throughout the ages [ID D28785]. [[Inscribed : To Carlotta - with all my love ! Gene, Lafayette July 37]. Payne, Pierre Stephen Robert. Forever China [ID D28781]. [Signed Carlotta Monerey O'Neill, New York Febr. 19th]. Reid, John Gilbert. The Manchu abdication and the powers, 1908-1912 [ID D28780]. The sacred books of China : the texts of Taoism. Transl. by James Legge [ID D2559]. Sherap, Paul. . Tibetan on Tibet [ID D28782]. [Signed Carlotta Monterey, 1927]. Smith, Arthur Henderson. Chinese caracteristics [ID D2512]. [Signed Carlotta Monterey, Oct. 1st 1921]. Sze, Mai-mai. Silent children : a novel. (New York, N.Y. : Harcourt, Brace, 1948). [Inscribed by the author : from Mai-mai, New York, March 3, 1948]. Werner, E.T.C. Myths and legend of China [ID D27281]. The wisdom of China and India. Ed. by Lin Yutang [ID D28787]. [Zhao, Ziyong]. Cantonese love-songs. Transl. by Cecil Clamenti [ID D28790]. [Signed Eugene O'Neill]. Sekundärliteratur 1982 / 1992 James A. Robinson : Any treatment of O'Neill's relationship to Oriental mysticism must begin with the catholic faith in which he was raised and confirmed. His indoctrination as a boy in the dominant religion in the Western world inadvertently prepared his for his interest as a man in Oriental mystical faiths. In the sacred texts of Taoism, O'Neill not only found confirmation of his own mystical intuition that a dynamic universal force (Tao by Laozi) united man and the universe but also discovered an encouraging variant of his own dualistic tragic vision as well. 1988 / 1992 Liu Haiping : 1949-1979, O'Neill's works were little read and there were no performances or new translations of any of his plays. O'Neill's name was almost forgotten in China. To Chinese scholars and critics, O'Neill represented an unexplored mystery ; his life and career, as well as his individual plays, all crammed and crowded with drama, seemed inexhaustible subjects for interpretation and reinterpretation. The knowledge that O'Neill attached great interest to Chinese history and culture and that Orientalism, especially Taoism, formed a distinctive aspect of his art further endeared him to Chinese readers and critics. As a result, the 1980s saw no fewer than one hundred-and fifty articles on O'Neill and his plays carried in various kinds of literary and theatre magazines. 1992 Virginia Floyd : The most significant single factor in O'Neill's early life, in that it affected his development personally and dramaturgically, was his rejection at age fifteen of Catholicism. His natural mystical nature was nurtured in later years by his selective reading of and developing understanding of Taoism. In the period when O'Neill sought a replacement for his lost faith, he turned to and found a meaning for existence in Laozi. The Chinese mystic continued to influence the author in the early 1920s, while he was recording notes for plays made prior to the period of his early research in 1925 for the projected work on Shi Huangdi. Recording new information on Taoism, O'Neill became fascinated by the female and male forces, the 'yin' and 'yang' principles, as they related to Taoism and by the way Laozi 'fused mysticism and pragmatism into a philosophy' through 'which he believed all men could discover their lives to be peaceful, useful and happy'. Although O'Neill never completed a scenario for 'Shi Huangdi', he continued his exploration of Taoism, working sporadically on this material from 1925 to 1934. 1992 Long Wenpei : I. The period between the 1920s and 1940s witnessed the first crest of popular interest in O'Neill in China. Among the plays translated and published, some fifty critical essays written about O'Neill appeared in Chinese newspapers and periodicals. Several critics looked upon him as 'a poet, an observer of human nature', who 'inspires man in his striving upward and to seek light even in crimes and insults'. Other critics observed that his plays were different from those written by Ibsen and Shaw, who portrayed their characters in terms of social relationships while O'Neill depicted his as isolated entities. Still others regarded O'Neill as 'an important promoter' in the history of American drama, who 'has smashed many of the set rules of the stage, but never violated the fundamental principles of drama. II. The second period, the 1950s through the mid-1970s, saw O'Neill's popularity in temporary suspension in China. Because of the international political situation in the 1950s, the channels of cultural exchange between China and the West narrowed, and criticism of Western literature became biased. All contemporary Western writers whose works were not obviously directed against capitalism were largely ignored. O'Neill's plays were laid aside and neglected. None of his later plays were translated, nor were his critical essays published, to say nothing of producing his plays on the Chinese stage. III. The third period, the late 1970s to the present, constitutes the second crest of O'Neill's popularity in China. During this period great changes took place in our objective and subjective worlds. The policy of openness and reform adopted by the Chinese government since 1979 has put an end to the period of a closed society and ushered in a new stage. Since then, China has been a scene of bustling activity in literary and art circles. With the improvement in Sino-American relations, cultural exchanges between the two countries, after more than twenty years of stagnation, have been revived. O'Neill fans once again have access to most of his plays and to research literature by scholars from various parts of the world. Riding the waves of this Sino-American rapprochement are a great number of Chinese artists and scholars who have either visited America or taken part in O'Neill conferences and symposiums. American experts and scholars also have visited China. O'Neill has been included in the curricula of Chinese universities. Wherever there is a course in American literature, there is a chapter for O'Neill ; and some universities offer 'O'Neill and contemporary American drama' as an elective course. 1994 Lee Sang-kyong : At the beginning of the 20th century a number of intellectuals of the Western world discovered the spiritual world of the East. They started to look for spiritual regeneration in the mysticism of Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism. O'Neill was no exception. Even in his youth he felt quite attracted by this spiritual direction and under the influence of theosophy he turned more and more towards Eastern mysticism. He became increasingly interested in philosophers and poets who had been inspired by the Eastern ideas and literature such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Jung, Emerson, Strindberg, Yeats, Maeterlink, and Lafcadio Hearn. To deepen his knowledge in Eastern religions he began in the twenties to read books like 'Buddha and the gospel of buddhism' by Ananda K. Coomaraswany (London 1916), 'Six systems of Indian philosophy' by Max Müller (London 1919), and 'The texts of taoism' by James Legge. His deep interest is reflected in the content and form of his plays of the twenties, such as 'The fountain', 'Marco millions', 'The great god Brown', 'Lazarus laughed', and others. O'Neill's popularity in the Orient was probably due to the fact that structure and content of his dramas were strongly by Taoist spiritualism. The Orientals felt especially moved by the sensitive presentation of feelings, by his mysticism and the tragical conflict situations of his dramas. |
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| 2 | 1923 |
Hong, Shen. Yama Chao = Zhao Yanwang. In : Dong fang za zhi ; vol. 20, no 1-2 (1923). = In : Hong Shen xi qu ji. (Shanghai : Xian dai shu ju, 1933). [Geschrieben 1922]. Performance of The Yama Chao = Zhao Yanwang by Hong Shen. Adaptation of The emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill. Hong Shen played the main role. In the newspaper 'Ching bao' reported that the performance was a failure because the audience couldn't understand it and even regarded the actor as a maniac. Hong Shen : "Zhao Yanwang is intended to show that society should be held responsible for the sins of the individual. No one in the world is born morally good or bad. Both the good and the bad are products of their environment. Nor is there anyone who is perfectly good or absolutely bad, for human behavior is rather complicates. But why is Zhao like this ? If we can study his life story and the stories of people like him, we will find they might all have suffered seriously from maltreatment and unhappy experiences, especially when they were too young to resist." "The first scene is somewhat splendid – the language, in particular, is condensed and the dialogues are full of vitality. From the second scene on, he borrows the background and facts from Eugene O'Neill's The emperor Jones, such as circling in the forest, becoming delirious and seeing hallucinations and being chased with people beating the drums, and so on. Apart from the meaning of its subject matter, nothing else in the play is worthy of mention" Cheng Fu-tsai : Although Hong Shen is fiercely attacked for his imitation of O'Neill's play, his adaptation is undoubtedly a creation of his own rather than a mere mimicry of the American prototype. He has not just incorporated the expressionistic devices into his own play, but has striven to make the play represent and reflect the social and political situation of China in the 1920s. His attempt at externalizing the psychological fear of an escaped convict in modern Chinese drama is unmatched. Thus, the creation of The Yama Chao has achieved a certain degree of success in early modern Chinese drama. From one of Hong Shen's admissions it ensues that for eight scenes of the drama he utilized the 'background and the facts' from The emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill, and only the first scene, according to him, 'is essential, its style is cohesive and selective, the dialogue is impressive', hence, only this part of the drama is really original. The Yama Chao borrowed from its American prototype the theme of money, the division of scenes, the use of soliloquies and the psychological treatment of hallucinations in a forest setting. Act three is an adaptation of the forest scenes from The emperor Jones. The Yama Chao follows in scene division, motif, and technical devices. Hong Shen found O'Neill's symbolic treatment of social and individual ills in The emperor Jones congenial to his own purpose of staging social reform : the predominantly male cast in O'Neill's play attracted Hong Shen. Hong, Shen : "I am extremely disgusted at the male's impersonating female characters. It is perhaps because I have read too much of Freud's works on abnormal sexuality. Every time I see a man putting on the make-up of a woman, I really feel like having goose-pimples all over me. But I still want to stage a play, and consequently the only thing I can do is to write a play which does not require female characters at all. This is one of the reasons why I made up my mind to borrow the form of Eugene O'Neill's The emperor Jones when the subject-matter of The Yama Chao was decided upon". [In : Zhongguo hua ju yun dong wu shi nian shi liao ji. Tian Han [et al.] zhu. (Beijing : Zhongguo xi ju chu ban she, 1958). 中国话剧运动五十年史料集]. |
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| 3 | 1928 |
Wang, Duqing. Guo qing qian yi ri. In : Chuang zao yue kan ; vol. 2, no 4 (1928). [Before the national day]. 国庆前一日 The play is indebted to Eugene O'Neill's Before breakfast. The main difference between this play and its American model lies, as their titles suggest, in motifs : while O'Neill's play treats a domestic theme of love and hate between a married couple, its Chinese adaptation deals with a social and revolutionary subject. The basic form is exactly the same as that of Before breakfast : a monologue addressed to a non-speaking, unseen character in the next room. It borrows the form but tells a different story, and it lacks the passion, irony and psychological insight we find in O'Neill's play. |
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| 4 | 1928.11.06-1928.12.12 |
Eugene O'Neill in China. Eugene O'Neill went together with Carlotta Monery, (who later became his third wife, July 22, 1929), first to Europe and then to the Far East, following Marco Polo's route of 1271. They arrive in Hong Kong Nov. 6 and reach Shanghai Nov. 9. They kept their arrival in Shanghai as a secret, but a few days later, Nov. 22, 1928, Alfred Batson, reporter of the North China daily news wrote : "Arriving in Shanghai with his characteristic aversion to publicity, Eugene O'Neill has been recuperating in a local hotel from a severe indisposition contracted recently in Singapore by underestimating the force of the sun's rays while bating". After discussing Strange interlude as 'daring innovation' in playwriting, Batson talked about a few earlier play, briefly sketches O'Neill's career, and concluded : "The world trip was taken to establish new contacts and see more of life under varied conditions. While in Shanghai he is anxious to live quietly and to regain his health…" He registered at the Astor House Hotel. One report held that he announced to his fellow drinkers that he was Eugene O'Neill the playwright and didn't care who knew it. He was sick and tired of traveling and was missing for about two weeks. When he was found, he was deathly ill from alcohol and a bad case of bronchitis. O'Neill was taken to a hospital of Shanghai for treatment and placed in the hands of Dr. Alexander Renner, an Austrian psychiatrist. On December 10, news of his illness was flashed around the world. The New York Times reported on Dec. 11 that he was 'improved'. By this time, he was undergoing treatment in his hotel room in the Astor House. A Chinese student visited him in the hospital and brought him a wooden statue of a Chinese goddess as a gift. O'Neill kept this figurine as a talisman for the rest of his life. O'Neill described the trip to China as 'the dream of his life', and as 'infinitely valuable' to his future work. The China experience had 'done a lot for his soul'. Forty, he said, was the 'right age to begin to learn. I have regained my sanity again'. He did not find the expected 'peace and quiet' in Shanghai, and the trip, he felt, left in his mind 'a million impressions' that were hard to digest. He was 'deadly ill of being a public personage' and being written about by 'the murderous reporters'. He left the Astor House on December 12 and was traveling as 'the reverend William O'Brien' on the German steamer 'Koblenz'. |
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| 5 | 1929 |
Zhang, Jiazhu. Aoni'er [ID D28772]. Editor's introduction : "O'Neill, the greatest modern American playwright, came to Shanghai on a tour recently. He was interviewed several times at his residence in a hotel by Zhang Jiazhu, who was kind enough to write for us the following article. It is basically a translation from B[arret] H. Clark, from which we can get some basic ideas and facts about the American playwright. It is our intention to include another article on O'Neill in the next issue of this magazine." [This article never appeared]. Zhang related how he had taken advantage of Eugene O'Neill's visit to China and interviewed him at his hotel in Shanghai for several times. Basing his article on B.H. Clark's essay, he gave a thorough introduction of the playwright, dealing with his life, his character, his artistic creation and his plays. In Particular, Zhang mentioned the role that O'Neill played in the Provincetown Players as well as the staging of some of his early plays, such as Bound East for Cardiff and Thirst. He also made mention of O'Neill's reputation in Europe and the production of his plays in Japan. Zhang asserts that Hong Shen's The Yama Chao is an adaptation of O'Neill's The emperor Jones. Zhang Jiazhu a rencontré Eugene O'Neill vraisemblablement à plusieurs reprises, au cours du séjour à Shanghai en 1928. C'est à la suite de ces rencontres qu'il rédige son article. L'influence d'O'Neill s'est alors déjà largement répandue parmi les hommes de théâtre chinois. Après une description d'O'Neill, dépeint comme un personnage très observateur mais peu enclin à se livrer, Zhang se consacre à l'artiste et à sa biographie. L'artiste est présenté comme un poète, un observateur de la nature humaine qui conçoit la vie tout à la fois comme une tragédie et une aventure extraordinaire. O'Neill est aussi un auteur qui place ses exigences en matière de création au plus haut niveau. Son expérience de la vie et ses recherches constantes dans le domaine de l'expression théâtrale sont les deux points sur lesquels Zhang insiste plus particulièrement. Zhang ne place O'Neill dans aucun mouvement littéraire, considérant qu'il est en constante évolution. En cela, il suit l'opinion d'O'Neill lui-même qui dit à l'époque avoir encore beaucoup à apprendre. Pour preuve de l'inventivité du dramaturge, Zhang cite sa comédie Marco millions, qui vient d'être jouée en Chine pour la première fois avec succès, alors que la plupart des critiques dramatiques américains considéraient à cette époque O'Neill comme incapable d'écrire une comédie. Après une brève introduction admirative de Zhang pour l'homme et ses talents de dramaturge, l'article retrace de façon circonstanciée l'existence d'O'Neill (naissance, environnement familial, formation), mettant l'accent sur son parcours dans le monde dramatique et sa formation, de ses premiers essais en tant qu'acteur au prix Pulitzer accordé à Beyond the horizon, en passant par son travail avec les Players de Greenwich Village. Zhang s'attache surtout à montrer la recherché constant d'O'Neill ou les thèmes dont il traite. Ce qui l'intéresse, c'est O'Neill en tant qu'individu et surtout en tant que dramaturge, la façon dont il s'insère dans la société, son rapport aux hommes et au monde. |
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| 6 | 1929 |
Bei xin ; vol. 3, no 8 (Shanghai : Bei xin shu ju, 1929). Bei xin carried an account of Eugene O'Neill's life and creative career which had a brief editor's note connecting it with his recent visit to China. From then on, O'Neill's name bagan to appear in Chinese newspapers and magazines with increasing frequency. His plays were translated and published both in magazines and in book form, and were performed by both professional and amateur theatrical groups. |
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| 7 | 1931 | Performance of In the zone by Eugene O'Neill by an amateur drama group at Laodong University in Shanghai. |
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| 8 | 1932.03.20 |
Huang, Ying. "On O’Neill's plays". In : Qing nian jie ; March 20 (1932). "These plays show that there exist two different worlds within each nation, one being heaven, the other hell, and people living in hell usually deserve more of our respect and love.” |
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| 9 | 1934.01 | Performance of Beyond the horizon by Eugene O'Neill in Shanghai under the direction of Zhao Dan. | |
| 10 | 1934-1937 |
Cao, Yu. Lei yu = Thunderstorm. In : Wen xue ji kan ; vol. 1, no 3 (1934). = (Shanghai : Wen hua sheng huo chu ban she, 1936). (Wen xue cong kan ; 1). [Uraufführung in Nanjing 1936]. 雷雨 Cao Yu writes in the preface to Tunderstorm : "Critics have regarded me as a disciple of Ibsen, or conjectured that certain parts of the play are inspired by Euripides' 'Hippolytus' or Racine's 'Phedre'. I am still myself, be so small as I am. I cannot fathom the profundity of the masters, just as the beetle in the dark wonders about the brightness of the day. Over the past decade I have read several plays and have performed in them. However hard I try, I still wonder which part of the play I have deliberately imitated. Perhaps at the lower stratum of my subconsciousness, I have deluded myself : I am an ungrateful servant. I have stolen thread by thread the golden yarn of my master's house, and woven my ugly garment out of the stolen threads and deny the discolored threads (now in my hands) remain the master's." Cao, Yu. Ri chu = The sunrise. (Shanghai : Wen hua sheng huo chu ban she, 1936). 日出 Cao Yu writes in the postscript to The sunrise : "It is a novel attempt, which I have seen in O'Neill's plays and I know it has been successful." Cao, Yu. Yuan ye. = The wilderness. (Shanghai : Wen hua sheng huo chu ban she, 1937). 原野 Cao Yu writes in the postscript to The wilderness : "I had trouble writing the third act. I have adoped two techniques that O'Neill uses in The emperor Jones – the drums and the gunshots in two of my scenes. At first I didn't think he exerted any influence on me, but after I finished writing and read it twice, I felt I was unconsciously influenced by him. The two techniques, to be sure, belong to O'Neill, and if they are aptly used, they are created out of O'Neill's ingenuity, not mine." Sekundärliteratur Cheng Fu-tsai : Cao Yu is fascinated with Greek drama, Aeschylus and Euripides. Several of Shakespeare's plays have influenced him considerably while in college and he was influenced by Eugene O'Neill. Cao Yu's plays, especially The wilderness and Thunderstorm bear a striking resemblance to O'Neill's plays in many aspects. Both of them, for example, employ the expressionistic technical devices to enhance the dramatic effect on the stage. There are also similarities in characterization, the connection between the individual and the race or society and the use of symbols. One remarkable similarity is the treatment of the conflicts of the inner world. In The wilderness Cao Yu adapts O'Neill's The emperor Jones to a Chinese background. Cao Yu does not merely borrow the structure, theme and expressionistic devices from The emperor Jones. He has successfully blended the expressionism of O'Neill with his own realistic portrayal of Chou Hu's regression into a delirious state. Liu Haiping : All these plays are indebted in different degrees to O'Neill in terms of characterization and stagecraft. We find striking parallels between Abbie in Desire under the elms and Fan Yi, the heroine in Thunderstorm, who is also a stepmother with an incestuous longing for her stepson. Robert in Beyond the horizon parallels Zhou Chong in Thunderstorm, also a younger brother with a touch of the poet and a longing for beauty beyond the horizon. Anna in Anna Christie and Chen Bailu, the heroine in Sunrise are both prostitutes hurled into intense suffering by the evil forces of life. Like O'Neill, Cao Yu uses the hallucinatory scenes not only to externalize the haunting memories of the character and explain the source of his tragedy, but also to present a brief, panoramic review of the nation's past. Joseph S.M. Lau : The wilderness resembles the American prototype in 'its bold and inventive use of grotesque images, disconnected plots, contrived symbolism, and deliberate pauses between the already sparse dialogues to create tension'. Chen David Y. : Wilderness adopts the form and technique from its prototypes with so much flexibility that it works out a pattern of its own. Wilderness seems to follow The emperor Jones in the artistic pursuit, lending itself to the expressionistic treatment of emotion through advanced stagecraft and extensive use of symbolism. Horst Frenz : The main character Zhou Fanyi in Thunderstorm is modeled upon Abbie Putnam in Desire under the elms. Like Abbie, Fanyi longs for her stepson. Their incestuous passion becomes a most eloquent and powerful expression of their defiance of traditional morals. |
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| 11 | 1934.06 | Performance of The emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill, produced at a special drama festival to celebrate the formation of a league of university and college drama club in Shanghai. |
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| 12 | 1934.10 |
Xie dai ; vol. 5, no 6 ; Oct. (Shanghai 1934). "Of all the present-day literatures in the world, the American is the only one, besides that of the Soviet Union, which can be called 'modern' in the true sense of the word. Today's United States is an example of the possibility of establishing an independent national literature in the 20th century. What a great encouragement it is to our Movement [New culture movement] which has cut off all its ties with the past tradition and is struggling to form a new and independent literature." In addition to Hong Shen's criticism of Mourning becomes Electra, O'Neill's Rope was considered 'flat' by its translator Yuan Changyin for employing 'surprise' rather than 'dramatic irony' as its main device. |
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| 13 | 1936 |
[O'Neill, Eugene]. Qi yi de cha qu. Wang Shiwei yi [ID D28718]. Zhang Menglin writes in the preface that one of the constant themes in Eugene O'Neill's plays is the conflict between a man's inner and outer selves, and that tragedy occurs when the protagonist becomes aware of the conflict, acts to resolve it, and realizes in the end his inability to do so. |
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| 14 | 1936.05 | Performance of Before breakfast by Eugene O'Neill by Zhongguo lü xing ju tuan (Chinese Touring Drama Troupe) in Nanjing. Performed by Bai Yang, translated by Fan Fang (1927). |
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| 15 | 1936 |
Xiao, Qian. Aoni'er. [O'Neill]. [ID D28774]. "Never caring what theme or style is in vogue, O'Neill moves on persistently to create an art of his own. Everything he wrote smells of nothing but O'Neill. Though nearly every one of his plays is realistic in appearance, the basic tone is always romantic. In his plays an inexplicable feeling of poetry is mingled with serious contemplation of life." Xiao Qian, while praising O'Neill for the grit, seriousness and originality displayed in his dramas, stated explicitly that he did not consider the playwright's view of life acceptable and that those with different social and cultural backgrounds should have their own view of life. |
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| 16 | 1937 |
Yuan, Changying. Shan ju san mo. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1937). (Zhongguo xian dai xiao pin jing dian). 山居散墨 The resemblance between The emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill and Zhao Yanwang by Hong Shen was first discovered, studied and made public by Yuan Changying. There followed a hot debate between Yuan and Ma Yanxing, a student and friend of Hong Shen, who tried to deny the kinship between the two plays. |
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| 17 | 1947 | "O'Neill and The iceman cometh". In : Wen yi chuan jiu ; Febr. (1947). Article about the production of The iceman cometh on Broadway in October 1946. |
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| 18 | 1957 |
Wai guo wen xue can kao zi liao [ID D28810]. Includes mostly essays translated from critics in the Soviet Union. Eugene O'Neill was labeled 'a corrupted element in the American literary circle' and his plays were said to be 'full of totally decadent ideas of life, inhuman and one hundred percent fascist'. |
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| 19 | 1984 | Performance of Tai yuan = Beyond the horizon by Eugene O'Neill. |
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| 20 | 1988.05.05-07 | National conference on Eugene O'Neill for graduate students in Tianjin. |
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| 21 | 1988.06.06-14 |
International Conference 'Eugene O'Neill – world playwright' for his hundredth anniversary of his birth, co-sponsored by Nanjing University and the Eugene O'Neill Society at Jinling Hotel in Nanjing, June 6-9. O'Neill theatre festival June 6-14 in Nanjing and Shanghai ; initiated and organized by Liu Haiping. The festival belonged to a composite project that included the international symposium and a book exhibit, with over a hundred scholars, critics and theater professionals from China, Japan, India, United States, Britain, Germany, Belgium and the Soviet Union. Co-sponsored by the Nanjing University, the Jiangsu Culture Bureau, the Nanjing Television Network, the Jiangsu International Culture Exchange Center and the non-government Amity Foundation in Nanjing ; the Shanghai Culture Bureau, the Fudan University, the Shanghai Academy of Drama and the Shanghai Culture Development Foundation in Shanghai. The festival consisted of ten professional and two amateur productions of O'Neill's plays. Cao, Yu. Letter of greeting from the People's Republic of China to the Conference. Dear Professor Haiping Liu, Thank you for your kind invitation to the international conference in commemoration of Eugene O'Neill's centennial. I would indeed like to attend, yet I very much regret to say my poor health prevents me from coming to Nanjing. I hope you will understand and forgive me. I am so glad to learn that the conference is extremely well planned and prepared. I can imagine how much time you and your colleagues must have put into it. But you can be assured that the conference will be a great, unprecedented event in the history of the exchange of drama and theatre between China and the United States. It will, I am sure, win glory for the academic and theatrical circles. As for the papers to be presented at the conference, I hope they can be collected and published later as a book, so that other people, either O'Neill scholars or those merely interested in him, might also benefit from the conference and have a better understanding of this great dramatist's work. I avidly look forward to such a publication. Thank you for inviting me to be an honorary adviser to the conference. I accept the honor with gratitude. Best wishes for the success of the conference. Sincerely, Cao Yu, President Chinese Dramatists' Association. Speech by Huang Zongjiang at the Conference : "I am not an expert or scholar on O'Neill like you. I am only a fan of Eugene O'Neill. When a high school student, I read the early translations of O'Neill's plays and Beyond the horizon by Gu Yuocheng. How I dreamed of going beyond the horizon ! Then I went to college but did not finish it, just like Eugene O'Neill. I went onto the stage, became a professional actor, then a sailor, again following in the footsteps of Eugene O'Neill. There was World War II, of course. Patriotism. But I became a sailor mainly because of Eugene O'Neill. When the war was over in 1946, I went back to college, but was still unable to finish. I got TB, just like O'Neill. When my first play was published and performed, I thought I was a Chinese O'Neill. Then came the liberation in 1949. We were isolated. You call it iron curtain or bamboo curtain ; anyway there was a curtain. So, I accused and condemned Eugene O'Neill in this or that way. Then came the Cultural Revolution. I was persecuted, of course, as you can understand. The chief crime I was accused of was my worship for Eugene O'Neill. Then, when the Cultural Revolution was over, I was invited to visit the United States. It so happened that the sponsor of my trip was the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in Connecticut. You might wonder what we accused or condemned Eugene O'Neill of in those years. The first thing was his fatalism. The second was his pessimism. But it seems to us now, whether a fatalist or not, whether a pessimist or an optimist, O'Neill depicted life sincerely. I think the most important thing we have learned from Eugene O'Neill is that we are still learning. Another accusation was that O'Neill is not a realist in his art. Probably you cannot even understand why that was a problem in China. You know we advocated revolutionary realism. If you were not a realist, you were not a revolutionary ; you were a counterrevolutionary. I think O'Neill used expressionism, symbolism, modernism, even absurdism, to make the reality he presented more real. Again, what we have learned from O'Neill is the fact that we are still learning. That is my, or our, long voyage home from beyond the horizon, my life's journey into day. It is such a bright day now that we can have this bright international conference. I think you know what it means to me, to you, and to the whole world." Ile as an adaptation in Western-style opera by the Shanghai ge ju yuan (Shanghai Opera Company). Mourning becomes Electra by the Shanghai yue ju yuan (Shanghai Yue Opera Company), directed by Jiao Huang and Lou Jicheng in Beijing ; Jiao Huang as Brant and Orin, Lou Jicheng as Mannon, Lu Shichu as Lavinia. A group of students from the Shanghai Academy of Drama staged a less realistic version of the performance under the direction of Zhang Yingxiang. Beyond the horizon as performance ; under the direction of Xiong Guodong in Nanjing. Xiong announced in the program : "The communication between O'Neill's dramas and us can easily be established. The stories and the dramas seem to be happening around us. We ourselves even seem to be the very characters in the dramas. How successful we produce the play Beyond the horizon finally depends on how profound we can understand our life and the humans." The production was reset in the 1920s in a Southern Yangzi river village near Suzhou. The architecture, furniture, costume and cultural idiosyncrasies of the locale and the time lent realistic, even naturalistic, details to the nativized adaptation. The setting employed woodenware from farmhouses in Jiangsu countryside. Some of the Chinese audience reacted to the adaptation divergently, while some welcomed its Chinese consciousness and enjoyed its portrayal of the Chinese rural life, others criticized it as having gone to an extreme. Speech by Xiong Guodong at the festival : "For the cast and staff, this is our first experience with an O'Neill play. I should say we had a spiritual meeting with Eugene O'Neill. In staging this play, we found not only O'Neill but also ourselves. Whenever I read the play, I always had a strange feeling as if I saw O'Neill standing beyond the horizon looking at me, and sometimes as if I were standing over there looking at him. I came to see that each of us stands at once on both this side of the horizon and beyond it. From this revelation, I decided to adapt the play to a Chinese background, by putting it in the milieu of a rural village in the low reaches of the Yangzi river and let each of the characters bear a Chinese name. I hope that by doing so, it can help eliminate the distance between my Chinese audience and the American play. It is my understanding that although the play is entitled Beyond the horizon, the real emphasis is laid on this side of the horizon. It portrays successfully many true-to-life characters. So, I said to my cast and staff that we should do likewise on the Chinese stage. We strive to represent quite realistically Chinese rural life. That is why we use so many authentic stage properties and costumes. In fact, the cast and staff spent several weeks in a village in the Yangzi Delta experiencing daily life before we actually began rehearsals. People in different cultures behave differently. The ways to show love and hatred vary from culture to culture. So, we have made a lot of changes from the original script. We read each scene in O'Neill's play again and again and tried to make out what O'Neill meant by this or that, and then figured out ways to render it in the language of the Chinese theatre." The emperor Jones in form of a ritualistic dance by the Jiangsu Drama Troupe, under the direction of Feng Changnian, literary advisor Liu Haiping, choreograph Su Shijin, designed by Wang Zhengyang in Nanjing, Cai Wei as Brutus Jones. Second production of The emperor Jones by the Chinese Dramatists' Association in Beijing. Feng decided to bring into a single work elements of spoken drama, mime, music, dance, plastic arts and gymnastics. The production reduced the play's spoken language and psychological elements to the minimum and applied a ritual-like performance combining dance and pantomime instead. The dance chorus wore black or white leotards and featureless masks of the same color in order to 'give prominence to the main character and augment the production's style'. Speech by Feng Changnian at the Conference : "I have always been an admirer of Eugene O'Neill. I had the idea of producing The emperor Jones even when I was a student at a drama school. So, this production has fulfilled my long-cherished dream. The emperor Jones is a play with a long production history both in China and in the West. So the crucial thing for me is to find a new theatrical approach. Whenever I read the play, I am always struck by the horror of the dark, primitive forest, the suffocating drumbeat of the African tom-tom, the mysterious atmosphere and the simple grandeur of the play. I am also fascinated by the play's deep probe into the psyche of its characters, the elaborate sets of symbols, and the philosophical and psychological ramifications of the play. It seems to me that a realistic, conventional theatrical approach is absolutely inadequate. So, I felt I had to use more expressive means to do the play justice. Hence the new form – pantomime-dance – of this production. Another consideration in choosing this form is the Chinese audience. Since the form is a good mixture of action, pantomime, music and dance, it is in a sense similar to the form of Beijing opera, though our performance is much more abstract and modern than the traditional art. I think, therefore, it is an effective way to bring O'Neill to the Chinese theatregoers. To put it in a nutshell, the main emphasis of our performance is the overall mood and atmosphere created by the pantomime-dance based on the psychological truth of the protagonist Emperor Jones, which can be very different from the logic of our day-to-day life. For example, in certain scenes, we see human bodies or clotheslines hanging from tree branches. This is used to reflect Jones' state of mind. It is expressionistic, rather than realistic. The second emphasis of our production is the symbols ; for instance, the use of the cross in two scenes. The third emphasis lies in the treatment of time and space. At times, we try to blur the line between reality and illusion, or to juxtapose the real and the illusory, so as to effectively show the reality in Jones' illusion and the illusion in his reality. An example comes from the scene in which the Emperor is encircled by the natives running at a dizzying speed, each with a flaming torch in hand. Another point is that throughout the performance we try to maintain a delicate balance between pantomime and dance, relying on the traditional language of the theatre and our real life." The great god Brown by the Shanghai Youth Drama Troupe, under the direction of Hu Weimin, designed by Li Rulan in Shanghai, Zhang Xianheng as William Brown, Ren Guangzhi as Dion Anthony and Song Ruhui as Cybele. The production had opened at a university auditorium on May 28 and had eleven performances at the Changjiang Theater. With full use of symbolic masks. The actors wore plastic masks covering only part of their own features. The masks should 'represent the duality of human mind and disclose the truth of human nature'. Macro millions under the direction of Jackson Phippin. Long day's journey into night by Qian xian hua ju tuan (Drama Theatre of the Nanjing Military Subarea of the People's Liberation Army), under the direction of Zhang Fuchen, in the translation by Jiang Hongding. Speech by Yao Yuan at the festival : "We feel proud that this is the first American play ever done by our company, and it also marks the premiere of Long day's journey into night in China. I believe the Nanjing/Shanghai O'Neill theatre festival and this production will have great impact on Chinese life. With his integrity and insight as a true artist, O'Neill helped create the American drama and thus won high respect from people all over the world. Though China and the United States have different social systems and different political faiths, the Americans and the Chinese belong to the same human race. We are all thinking of ways to solve our common problems. Human beings have always been seeking light in darkness. It is the good artist, intellectuals, and so on, who hold the torches to light the human path. And Eugene O'Neill is one of them. It is based on this knowledge that we present O'Neill's masterpiece on the Chinese stage." Mourning becomes Electra in Yue opera, an interpretation of Hugie by the Shanghai Youth Theater in Nanjing. Hugie by the Shanghai Youth Drama Troupe, under the direction of Hu Weimin, in the translation by Liu Haiping in Shanghai. The Shanghai production differs from the American one not only in costume and language, but also in theme and style. Taking place in 1928 as the original play, the Chinese version of O'Neill's one-acter underwent transplantation from New York to Shanghai. The settings, costumes and sound effects contribute to a sketch of the mesmerizing Chinese city in the 1920s. Jiao Huang and Lou Jicheng cast as night clerk and gambler, appeared in traditional attire and adopted comic devices of the Chinese folk art of cross talk. Ah, wilderness. Student productions by Nankai University in Tianjin, Fudan University in Shanghai and Beijing University. |
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Sources (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1936 | Xiao, Qian. Aoni'er. In : Guo wen zhou bao ; Nov. (Tianjin 1936). [O'Neill]. | Publication / One61 |
Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2000- | Asien-Orient-Institut Universität Zürich | Organisation / AOI |
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