| Antonin Aalto took the initiative to learn from the performance experience of Oriental theatre,and put forward the theatre of the cruelty,trying to bring "cruelty" to an abandoned and helpless life,providing people with a new perspective on creating drama and understanding life.He advocated that theatre should be "cruel",and the"cruelty" refers to the harshness,directness,and purity in theatre.The theatre of cruelty should express the desire of life,the grimness of the universe,and the irreversible necessity,which prove that theatre is not an imitation of the human life but reconstruction,and the renewal of audiences and actors.The theatrical idea and practice of the theatre of cruelty emphasize the body,language and a new relationship between viewing and acting.Although Aalto had only been exposed to Oriental theatre twice in his life,he quickly captured the unique expressive force of Oriental theatre and made an innovative interpretation on its metaphysics.The theatre of cruelty advocates the poetic space,a concept of space that is the extreme aggregation of physical presence,symbolic language,and relationship between audiences and actors,ultimately makes itself a ritual for spiritual liberation.The theatrical idea and practice of the theatre of cruelty show the delimitation meaning of Aalto,that is,"before Aalto" and "after Aalto".The various exploration of theatre of "After Aalto" just showed that Aalto asked the question about theatre,and the theatre of cruelty would continue to inspire new explorations of Western theatre.The theatre of absurd and the theatre of ritual are the representative theatres of "after Aalto".The theatre of absurd have developed the theatre of cruelty in disintegrating language and using symbols,and the theatre of ritual have corrected in implementing actor’s physical training.The theatrical idea and practice of the theatre of cruelty have a conversation between the theatre of cruelty and Oriental theatre.Aalto did not really draw on the body performance skills of Bali theatre,but he proposed the concept of "total theatre".It is worth noting that Chinese opera differs from the theatre of cruelty at three aspects:body,language,and domain.Chinese opera performance fully utilizes the extremely complicated aesthetic expressiveness of the song,speech,performing and acrobatic fighting and dance based on actors’ Tong-Zi-Gong,and actors and audiences remain alienated;in the theatre of cruelty,the actors have no effective physical training and the performance language is relatively poor,audiences and actors finally merged in a cruel and cold ritual.To sum up,Aalto’s Aesthetics in theatre challenge the traditional theatre based on imitation and the illusion theater that subverts the frame stage.As the pioneering theory and innovative concept of culture and life,the theatre of cruelty has been far beyond the narrow scope of the specific realization about its performance.But at the same time,it should also be noted that the theatre of cruelty has its own limitations in the lack of effective actor physical training,various themes,active participation of the audience,and clear aesthetic category. |
