2. Brecht and Asia (Sjaak Onderdelinden) [P.25-42]

• P.26 The basic assumption that is made here applies to all Brecht's work. For instance, with regard to the plays showing Asian influence, the Chinese or Japanese elements are never used exclusively to be made subservient (卑屈的) to Brecht's own system. That system is the main, the most visible, component, but it does not preclude the Asian element from being taken seriously in its own right.
• By contrast, the Epic style of acting that he chose to develop was closely and consistently linked to the Japanese and Chinese theatres, especially after Brecht's meeting with the great Chinese actor Mei Lanfang in Moscow in 1935.
• P.35 Asian theatre actually impelled Epic Theatre in other ways. Of particular importance was the meeting Brecht had in 1935, during his exile, with the Chinese theatrical phenomenon Mei Lanfang. In Mei Lanfang's accomplishments as an actor, Brecht found not only inspiration, but also an affirmation of his own ideas about theatre, primarily in regard to acting style and in part to the role of the spectator.
• With Qi Rushan as theoretician and Mei Lanfang as brilliant performer, the Chinese had evolved a style of acting from the proposition that a symbolic style of performance - a sublimation (昇華) of reality - was the most suitable for penetrating to the essence of reality. This insight was important to Brecht because his own view of reality tended in the same direction and helped him to formulate an artistically indispensable opposition to the socialist realism that was then emerging.
• P.35-36 Circumstantially as well there were basic principles in the Chinese theatre that must have appealed to him. The musical nature of the use of the voice corresponded to the stylized locution (語言風格) that Brecht propagated (傳播) both in speech and in song texts. The choreo-rhythmic movement patterns in the Chinese theatre were reflected in the meticulously (一絲不苟地) studied gestural language of Epic Theatre.
• P. 36-37 But more important is the favourable interpretation that Brecht attributes to Mei Lanfang's demonstrative style of acting. He describes it as follow under the title 'Das doppelte Zeigen' [German] In other words, in the performance of a Chinese actor one sees the actor, the actor in his role, and the role itself. This description corresponds exactly to the theory of the ' gestische Spielweise' that Brecht was formulating at the time based on his own vision of theatre. Mei Lanfang was consequently not a completely new discovery for Epic Theatre, but did support and intensify Brecht's period of growth.
• One point in which the traditional Chinese theatre was more advanced than anything Brecht saw around him was the level of the spectators, the demands the play was able to make on the audience. In a memorandum, "Uber die Zuschaukunst", Brecht was astonished by the unbelievable number of agreements and conventions to which the Chinese theatre subjected the audience.
• P.39 Once again these views make it evident how Brecht used Chinese theatre: he borrowed what he could from it for his own use, defended those parts by reformulating them in his own terminology, and then structured them into his own conception of Epic Theatre. Therefore there can be no question of a substantial Far Eastern influence on Epic Theatre. Rather it is a matter of affirmation and support, and at best of complementary inspiration.
• ....Brecht used the impressive acting talent of Mei Lanfang in his arguments in support of the Epic style of acting.
• P.40 .....the 'alienation package' is only convincing because there are many Chinese elements interwoven into the piece.....However, one point should be mentioned in this connection: what was impressive about Mei Lanfang's women's role, among other things, were the traditional pantomime (演啞劇;用手勢示意) scenes typical of Chinese theatre.
• P.41 As far as the question of the Asian influence on Epic Theatre is concerned, one inescapable conclusion must be that Brecht's concept of theatre, no matter how ideological , is exceptionally multifaceted (多方面的) and artistically complex.