2.4 The Theatre is oriental (Ariane Mnouchkine) [P.93-98]

Introduction (Adrian Kiernander)

• P.93 Ariane Mnouchkine's practice of referring to Asian theatre forms in her productions is nothing new in Western theatre; since the end of the nineteenth century, Asian theatre has been an explicit influence on many European directors, including Copeau, Brecht, Artaud and more recently Peter Brook and Eugenio Barba.
• Mnouchkine is also at pains to point out that her work does not involve any simplistic imitation of real Asian forms. The Asian influence is useful as a tool, but there is almost nothing authentically Asian in her productions, and the particular look of her work is drawn much more from the film of directors like Kurosawa than from Asian stage conventions. To imply, as some French commentators have done, that she is recreating the Kabuki, the Topeng, the Kathakali or Peking Opera is quite misleading, and far from the kind of claim she would want to make herself.

• P.95 What interests me [Ariane] in the Asian tradition is that the actor there is a creator of metaphors. His art consists of putting passion on display, of narrating the interior of the human being... and also stories, of course.
• When we decided to perform Shakespare, a recourse to Asia became a necessity. Because Shakespeare is located within the metaphor of human truths. So we seek ways of staging him which aviod the realistic and the prosaic (普通的) at all costs.
• P.96 We wanted to make Asian theatre a voyage of research, simply because Western theatre offers little in this way, and because realism has started to bore me.
• Everyone has their sources, that is to say something that sets their imagination to work. In the West we have classical tragedy and the commedia dell'arte (義大利十六、十七世紀的即興喜劇,藝術喜劇), which in any case comes from Asia. As far as I am concerned, the origin of theatre and my source is Asia. The West has led us towards realism, and Shakespeare is not realist. For actors who want to be explorers, the Asian tradition can be a base to work from.
• P.96-97 The stage of a theatre is a very beautiful emptiness. What fills it? It is not scenery. it is the imagination of the spectator who is invited to do so by the actors. The actor needs to have tools. Personally I can't do without them.
• P.97 I remembered recently that Artaud said: 'The theatre is Oriental." ......From Asia comes what is specific to theatre, which is the perpetual (長期的) metaphor which the actors produce - when they are capable of producing it. That is what we do: try to understand the metaphors that an actor can make use of . Asian theatre helps us. And it's a questions of going in the opposite direction from what happens in the West because of cinema and its traditions.
• We Western have only created realist forms. That is to say, we haven't created a form at all, in the true sense.
• The Asian theatre has always been our source. The Japanese theatres, Noh and Kabuki, have been very enriching.
• Theatre is art, and life is something different. More and more we want to perform what can only be told in the theatre. For me the theatre should be as theatrical as possible. Otherwise the cinema would beat us every time. Besides, the great cinema is theatrical.

Mnouchkine, Ariane (1996). ‘The Theatre Is Oriental’ in The Intercultural Performance Reader. Pavis Patrice (ed.). London and New York: Routledge. 93-98.