Study On Gao Xingjian’s Dramas

Gao Xingjian, a playwright and writer keeping writing as a profession, began hiscreation since the1980s. His Modern Fiction Preliminary Discussion on theoreticalwritings published in1981has aroused a great discussion on modernism in literarycircle, which has brought Gao Xingjian into the vision of literary criticism. He not onlymakes contribution in literary theory, but also succeeds in fiction and drama. In hisnovels of Soul Mountain and One Man’s Bible, there is a Chinese intellectual thinkingof the man-made disaster that China has experienced and questioning of human nature.In terms of theater, Gao Xingjian is brave in ceaseless challenging, with his everyattempt as a self-breakthrough. He tries to take traditional Chinese opera as a basis,mainly Peking opera, and vigorously absorbs the experience and lessons from Westerndramas, so as to achieve the integration of Eastern and Western dramas, thus introducingChinese drama to the world.Drama was introduced to China since the early1900s, and has gone through thecourse of a century. With the changing of social reality, dramas continue to regulatetheir own relations with the outside world. However, rapid development of TV andmovies brings huge impact on drama; therefore, drama, a former cultural center ismarginalized. Under such background, people engaged in drama such as Gao Xingjian,started the reform of drama. This article sets Gao Xingjian’s plays as the study object tostudy the art of Gao Xingjian’s plays from three respects of dramatic conflict, dramaticlanguage and dramatic acceptance. Firstly, Gao Xingjian’s dramatic conflict shall bestudied; through the analysis, I find that the intensity of the conflict of Gao Xingjian’splays is different from that of the traditional drama. In his plays, we see they are justordinary life stumbling rare survival or destruction of the type of conflict. Secondly, interms of dramatic language, Gao Xingjian has conducted a variety of experiments. Heintroduces multi-part and narrative into drama, thus providing dramas with musicfeatures, meanwhile, the narrative language also liberates theatrical time and space. GaoXingjian also establishes a new specification of the language, he believes that dramaticlanguage is the language of a sound, and the voices of the actors on the stage can becalled the language, so he introduces a number of verbal debris into drama, thus theperforming physical and psychological feelings that day-to-day language cannot be express. Finally, Gao Xingjian is a loser in dramatic acceptance. Although he plays arewidely appraised in the West, his works in Mainland China is not so accepted. Theauthor comprehensive analyses the Gao Xingjian’s own reasons as well as the dramaticaesthetic habits of the audience and finds that Gao Xingjian’s failing primarily lies inhis intellectual elites stand. His works require readers with deep cultural conservation toappreciate. For Chinese readers in1980s, failing to understand Gao Xingjian’s works ispardonable.