Meng Jinghui’s adaptations of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s plays

Abstract

Vladimir Mayakovsky’s dramatic heritage has had a great impact on Chinese avant-garde director and playwright Meng Jinghui. The study traces the stages of Mayakovsky’s presence in Chinese theater art to focus on Meng Jinghui’s three productions of “The Bedbug” (2000-2017). The dramatists share the same desire for theatrical innovation and a similar understanding of theater art. However, they have different worldviews and aesthetic approaches. Meng Jinghui modernized the original Russian pretext and turned to some theatrical principles, first stipulated by Vsevolod Meyerhold. His remakes are stylistically original textual interpretations that have gained a prominent place in the modern Chinese avant-garde fringe theater. Meng Jinghui followed Mayakovsky in a number of formal techniques and the overall satirical orientation only to reshape and deconstruct the basic ideas of the original play, thus creating a different temporal and cultural chronotope. Authentic as it may seem, Meng Jinghui creativity results sprouted from a dialogue and polemics with the Soviet poet and playwright.