Mei Lanfang: A Case against and a Model for the Occidental Stage

Abstract

Shimamura, a character in Kawabata Yasunari's Snow Country, continued studying dance while refusing to see it-the reality of this remote dance, he said, would only destroy the dream his study had created. A European theatre artist, however, must see Asia. The artist becomes eloquent about the Chinese, Japanese, or Balinese actor not from the neutrality of intellectual knowledge but from rapt observation. The Western director responds to concrete encounters with the Oriental stage-the material reality of which discloses to him a foreign, unimaginable art.1 The early part of this century was punctuated with decisive encounters of this nature: Sada Yakko in 1900, Hanako in 1904, Ichikawa Sadanji in 1928, and Balinese theatre in 1931.