Before it begins, Zhang Guangtian's play "Mr. Lu Xun" looks more like a concert than a dramatic work.
Musicians fill the stage, along side a choir, leaving the audience to wonder if they've come to the right event.
But a closer look reveals a collection of instruments - piano, violin, cello, sanxian (three-stringed plucked instrument), qudi (bamboo flute), electric guitar, drums and keyboard - that would never be used in a standard concert.
No, this is no ordinary concert and neither is it an ordinary dramatic performance. Instead, the story of Lu Xun told in the form of what Zhang calls a "folk oratorio epic play."
Lu Xun (1881-1936), a great writer, thinker and revolutionist, is considered by many to be the father of modern Chinese literature and the foremost representative of the nation's conscience.
Partly because of the greatness and complexity of his importance, Lu Xun had never been the main subject of a biographical film or drama, until Zhang began to work on his play.
The play actually began as a movie script. In 1993, Zhang wrote a film script about Lu but found it difficult to describe what a man Lu was by telling his story in a realistic way.
To Zhang, Lu's life story is not very important. What is important is his spirit.
"If you ask a common person about Lu's life, he might not know a thing," says Zhang, "but if recite the line: 'At first, there was no road in the world. When more and more people walk the same way, there is a road,' every one could tell you it was Lu Xun who wrote it."
The script was never filmed, but Zhang kept his ideas in creating the play.
His experience as a poet helped him to build the play with a poetic structure.
Divided into six parts (a prelude, four acts and an epilogue), the play develops on the thread of three articles ( "A Madman's Diary", "In Memory of Miss Liu Hezhen" and "Commemoration for the Purpose of Forgetting") and two incidents ( "Five Lectures in Beiping" and "The Death of Lu Xun").
"Oratorio" means that the lines of the play are sung by the performers, who don't wear make-ups and don't really act. Four singers - Zhang, Liu Lan, Chen Xuefei and Kong Hongwei - sing different roles while playing the guitar, cello, violin and piano.
The plot is told by a narrator.
"Mr Lu Xun," which plays at the Children's Art Theatre in Beijing through May 8, adopts many elements of traditional theatre, yet it is still thoroughly unconventional as a dramatic work.
In performance form, Zhang absorbs the characteristics of zaju, or "miscellaneous drama," which is a traditional Chinese art form that combines various types of stage-based entertainment.
In traditional Chinese theatre, performances are usually comprehensive creations, consisting of "singing, speaking, dance-acting and combating."
The theatre is not only opera, dance or drama, but a mixture of numerous elements.
For Zhang, this mixture was important, but inadequate and outdated in an age of multi-media. To compensate, he used a number of modern media forms in developing the epic.
Intertwined throughout "Mr Lu Xun" are the elements of verbal narration, music from an orchestra and an electric band, singing, quyi (traditional Chinese ballad-singing and story-telling), documentary film and photography.
One of the most notable narrative moves by Zhang was to cast traditional quyi performers in the roles of the four negative characters - Chi, Mei, Wang and Liang.
On the other side are Zhang and the other folk singers, who perform in a comparatively open style and represent the force of the new.
Zhang claims he did this to illustrate the battle between old and new that has been raging in China ever since Lu Xun first began writing.
"Without development, quyi, like any old stuff, will only become corrupted and antiquated," he explains.
"Mr Lu Xun" bears some narrative similarities to last year's "Che Guevara," a work Zhang did in co-operation with several other artists. But it also takes a step forward.
In neither play is the hero actually presented on stage. Guevara appears as an off-stage voice that gives the soldiers spiritual guidance, while Lu is portrayed through side narration and through audio and video projections.
Music plays a more important role in "Mr Lu Xun" than it did in "Che Guevara," which contained only six songs.
In "Mr Lu Xun," Zhang, who is known by most people as a musician, displays his versatility.
Folk songs, traditional Chinese music, orchestra music, chorus, rap and fusion are all part of the symphonic play.
In several scenes, actor Liu Lan, who represents Lu's wife Xu Guangping, hums "Wu Ye'er," a traditional folk tune from the lower reaches of the Yangtze River area. The tune is a perfect evocation of the peaceful world of Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, where Lu was born.
The mixture does not always work, however. At times, the move from one musical genre to another makes it difficult for people in the audience to maintain a train of thought.
The complexity of music also decreases its melodiousness. Whereas "Che Guevara" delivered a few memorable songs, "Mr Lu Xun" stands out in retrospect as a kaleidoscopic mix of indistinguishable sounds.
Flawed though it may be, "Mr Lu Xun" stands as an important second step in the development of Zhang's "epic theatre movement," which he says will ultimately consist of 10 works.
The movement began in April 12, 2000 with the premiere of "Che Guevara." Zhang promises that on every April 12 for the next eight years, he will launch the premiere of another epic theatre work.
(China Daily 04/19/2001)
