Interview | Volume 1

An Interview with Professor ZHAO Jingbo of National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts

LIU Lu

中文

        Stories are the way in which humans co-exist and socially interact. People use stories to store and transmit knowledge and to create meaning, and meanwhile stories are shaped by the commonly recognized meaning in the stories. As a form of traditional Chinese drama, Chinese opera Xiqu tells stories of life through singing, dancing, poetry, and music, reflecting unique aesthetic characteristics, cultural characters, and realistic values. At the same time, because of its artistic uniqueness, Chinese opera also shows differences against Western drama in the training of talent. What needs to be noted here is that Chinese opera is diverse in form with different levels in development. Many operas are closely integrated with local folk activities and are not inherited through modern education. Therefore, the aim of this interview with Professor Zhao Jingbo of the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts (NACTA) was not to explore the various educational elements of Chinese opera from the perspective of modern pedagogy, nor to conduct a systematic comparative study of Chinese and Western drama education — different scholars and artists have already made rich explorations in these areas — but hopes to provide overseas readers who do not know much about Chinese opera with a "sketch" of the important commonalities of Chinese opera education in a humanistic context.

        The interviewee, Professor Zhao Jingbo, has been engaged in the performance and directing, educational research, and management of Chinese opera for decades. His broad vision and profound thinking are widely recognized. After understanding the purpose of this interview, Professor Zhao expressed his insights on the process of running a school, teaching methods, educational values, cross-cultural communication, and contemporary development of Chinese opera, taking Peking Opera and other mature operas as examples together with a reflection on his personal experience with NACTA. This article is a summary of his views. 

LIU Lu: Professor Zhao, when did you start working on opera education?

ZHAO Jingbo: I was enrolled in the Chinese Opera School to learn Peking Opera at the age of 11. In 1965, I graduated and stayed at the school as a faculty member. Since then, I have been working in this industry for nearly 60 years.

LIU Lu: What kind of school was the Chinese Opera School at that time? How does it relate to the current National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts (NACTA)?

ZHAO Jingbo: The Chinese Opera School was established in January 1950, right after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It was a vocational school with secondary education established on the basis of the original new-style opera school, the predecessor of the current NACTA, a university dedicated to traditional Chinese arts. The so-called new-style opera schools were compared to the traditional form of opera education called keban, the apprenticeship training in private troupes. From the early 20th century to 1949, some Chinese intellectuals began to establish a number of opera schools. During that period, new-style opera schools coexisted with traditional forms of opera education such as keban, group leading classes, and the master-apprentice system, and made pioneering explorations for opera education’s integration into the modern education system with new concepts of teaching and educating of talent introduced. In 1950, the Chinese Opera School was founded. In 1978, it was upgraded to NACTA, and in 1995, it started to recruit graduate students. So you can see that Chinese opera education has been developing as time progresses.

LIU Lu: Before we get to opera education, some of our overseas readers may need to know what Chinese Opera is. Could you give us a brief introduction?

ZHAO Jingbo: Chinese opera Xiqu is a traditional form of drama in China. It includes many types of operas. So far, there are about 348 types of operas in existence and being performed. Among them, the well-known ones include Peking Opera, Kunqu Opera, Yuju Henan Opera, Pingju Opera (popular in the northern part of China), Yueju Opera (popular in Shanghai and areas nearby), and so on. Some overseas friends may mistake Chinese opera as Chinese Peking Opera, but in fact Peking Opera is just one type of opera. Like some drama forms from other nations in the world, Chinese opera tells stories through singing and dancing, but the "singing and dancing" in Chinese opera is expressed through a set of relatively conventionalized physical and vocal techniques that are refined from real life, which we call chengshi (formulas), so Chinese Opera is also a formulated art.

LIU Lu: Can you specifically tell us more about what the formula is? How is opera is a formulated art?

ZHAO Jingbo: Simply put, a chengshi is a norm and standard. Guan Zi, a representative of the Legalists in the pre-Qin period, had a saying in Ming Fa Jie (Explanation of Wise Edicts): "The law is the formula of the world, and the appearance of everything." In this sentence, the law is seen as a large program or formula, the rule and criterion for governing the country, and it stipulates the code of conduct for all people. Opera formulas are also the yardsticks and criteria that regulate not only the action, but also the scripts, music, and singing. Different from Western drama, Chinese opera is regulated by various formulas. Life would become an aesthetic form of art when refined and performed in opera formulas with natural forms removed. As speech in life transformed into opera singing and reciting, action in life transformed into opera moving and dancing, which is when the impressiveness and virtuality of Chinese Opera begins to unfold.

LIU Lu: Since formula is a set of fixed norms, and artistic creation is essentially free, how do opera actors deal with the relationship between norms and freedom? How can they develop such an ability?

ZHAO Jingbo: It starts with the similarities and differences between Chinese opera performance education and Western drama. Chinese opera is an art of imagery. When opera actors learn opera, they first learn about types of characters, or hangdang (the role types). Taking female performers in Peking Opera as examples, performers of huadan (the vivacious young female role), qingyi (the demure female role), laodan (the old lady role) are instructed separately by their own teachers. They will follow these specific teachers starting as teenagers to learn particular postures and footwork. We emphasize “the category” and commonalities of the categories. Each role type follows a relatively fixed formula and common actions to present aesthetics, which must be learned and practiced first, then later comes the personalized performance. While different from Chinese Opera, Western drama emphasizes “this one,” in that the actors will, based on Stanislavsky's method, create the roles as individuals through life observation and experience and then perform the roles precisely on the stage. Hence “the category” is expressed by “the one” in the role-creation process of Western drama.

Therefore, the mastery of formula skills is important in Chinese Opera learning. Actors use formulas to shape characters and express emotions and achieve aesthetic goals through formulated expressions. Every role type or hangdang has its own skill system called gong. Only when the performance reflects the mastery of gong that expresses the formula and aesthetics can the opera audiences recognize this performance. For example, Liu Lihua, one of the characters in the Peking Opera Sancha Kou, Crossing Sancha Kou, plays a martial arts clown, so he needs to practice light, fast, and floating footwork. When he hits his foot on a table leg in the dark, his reaction to the pain should be different from our instinctive reaction of jumping around in pain. Hence in Sancha Kou, the actor would change this jumping into a formulated skill – tiemenkan Jump, that is, lifting his left foot with his right hand to form a circle and jumping the right foot into and out of this circle, back and forth, for more than ten times continuously in a light and agile way. Then the audience would appreciate and applaud naturally for such a special “foot pain” performance.

Therefore, we emphasize that practicing skills and gong is the first step to learning Chinese opera. The formulated skills are the basis of Chinese opera performance education, and actors should practice much and extensively, learning both singing and martial skills. Performers need to learn basic skills of all role types at the beginning of their career starting as teenagers, which is also called learning tongzi gong (child skills). When practicing, opera actors or practitioners should put aside their personal physical habits and reshape themselves by formulated standards. The actors will feel free and comfortable after the formulated actions become subconscious actions. Then they will start to create personalized roles using formulated skills, which we call “flexible application based on fixed rules.” The more rules we learn, the more skillful and creative we are. This is also a dialectical way for performers to deal with norms and freedom.

All drama performances involve problems of how to deal with psychological experience and external performance, and China and the West differ in dealing with such internal and external relationships. As mentioned earlier, Chinese opera requires performers to refine feelings from reality. Therefore, performers should first conceive of an external, fixed form of expression or a technical expression, and then enrich their internal psychological experiences on the basis of or within the framework of behavioral expressions. Fixed actions are hence activated and transformed into personalized, vivid characters. In short, the external form drives the psychological experience, and the psychological experience activates the external form. This is why opera actors attach great importance to practicing the formula, as it is the doorway into internal reflection and inner experiences. New discoveries and insights can come up in the process of repeated training, and actors carry intensive psychological labor while they introspect to gain improved skills and performance. However, Western drama is opposite in this respect. Stanislavsky’s theory, for instance, first emphasizes the internal psychological experience, which then drives the external natural expression, generally in an opposite order from the inside to the outside.

LIU Lu: As you mentioned, although education approaches are different — Chinese opera seeks individuality from commonalities while Western drama seeks commonalities from individuality — they both regard the typical expressions of life in performances as their final goals. So in the contemporary era, is there any common ground between these two art education approaches bred in the two different cultural traditions of the East and the West?

ZHAO Jingbo: Chinese opera emphasizes imagery, while drama emphasizes realism. Differences between the two performance systems result in different methods and emphases in the two kinds of art education. Chinese opera pays more attention to basic skill training, practicing formula, role analysis, and psychological training. Various opera schools also offer different performance theory courses, courses for psychological and life experience training, and courses for singing practice, dancing, stage performance skills, and even courses for biao (performing) some opera excerpts. As early as the beginning of the last century, Ouyang Yuqian, the first president of the NACTA, advocated that Western drama should learn from Chinese opera training methods and technical formula as well as the vivid presentation of mental imageries. I also remember seeing American students taking Tai Chi classes when I visited an art institute in California. I was told by their president that it was a required course for drama performance majors, with the aim of helping students learn standardized formulas, get trained in proper rhythm and movement, and better express their mental imageries in performance.

LIU Lu: Although the formula regulates the artistic creation of actors, it is acknowledged that the same play varies when performed by different actors. How do the actors' personalized factors, including their outlook on life and values, affect the characterization?

ZHAO Jingbo: We often say that the Chinese opera is the art of famous actors or juer. In general, Chinese opera audiences would pay for the play even though they are familiar with the plots and have seen the stage arrangements many times. They actually come to see the famous actors, usually the leading actor juer, as his/her charm, skills, and intelligence bring the audience a special artistic pleasure. The charm of an actor includes the pleasant voice of singing and stage manners. Much has been said about the gong skills of an actor that determine the quality and aesthetics of the performance and whether audiences are attracted to this or not. While the intelligence of an actor is reflected in his/her personalized interpretation of the characters, each actor has a personalized understanding and way of approaching the characters depending on their respective skill, expertise, education, life experiences, etc. Take actors Zhou Xinfang and Ma Lianliang as an example: they were both experts playing the leading character Song Shijie in Si Jinshi (the Four Scholars), but their performing styles were so different that they even created two schools of thought for the character Song: Ma School and the Qi School. Ma interprets Song as someone who believes in justice and wisdom when challenging the feudal bureaucracy, and performs Song as someone wise, witty, and tactful, while Zhou interprets and performs Song as someone courageous and resolute in fighting against the feudal bureaucracy. Both ways of acting, each with its own characteristics and charm, are loved by the audience. And the actors’ personalities and performances are united and consistent with each other.

We know there were four greatest actors playing female roles in Peking opera in the 20th century, namely, Mr. Mei, Shang, Cheng, and Xun. Mei Lanfang prefers to play fairies, Cheng Yanqiu plays martyrs, Shang Xiaoyun plays chivalrous women, and Xun Huisheng usually plays damsels. Their preferences for different characters are connected to their respective outlook to the world and life experiences. For example, Mr. Shang was always ready to fight against injustice throughout his life, so he created many chivalrous characters, and of course, his good martial art skills constitute another important factor. He practiced martial arts roles and was good at both martial arts and singing. Similarly, Mr. Cheng performed well in the anti-civil-war play Chungui Meng (the Dream of a Boudoir in Spring), and the anti-exorbitant-taxes play Huangshan Lei, (the Tears of Barren Mountain), because he is a person with a strong sense of social responsibility who even paused opera performing to take up farming during the war. His personality and temperament explain his preference for these types of characters. There are many other examples, which will not be listed one by one.

LIU Lu: Since you mentioned the unity or consistency of actors’ personalities and their performances earlier, I think of the edification function of Chinese opera. Chinese opera has distinct Chinese cultural characteristics, and its content highlights ethics, family, and patriotism, and every move and style reflects the dialectical thoughts of harmony. So, from the perspective of culture, how can we understand the educational function of Chinese opera?

ZHAO Jingbo: The edification function of Chinese opera is a form of education through culture. The three basic characteristics of opera have determined opera’s educational potential to promote people's reflection on life through multi-sensory stimulation. Therefore, in addition to undertaking the social responsibility of high-level education, opera also shapes the spirit of practitioners and the entire industry by way of cultural immersion and experience. Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness, the core values in Chinese culture, are enduring themes of operas. For example, though opera is for entertainment most of the time, when in war times when mountains and rivers are broken, the country is ruined, and the family is destroyed, the actors, with an amplified cultural awareness, will naturally choose plays that praise loyalty and bravery, performing national heroes in history such as Shi Kefa and Wen Tianxiang. At the same time, such operas played an important role in society during specific historical periods, and their educational purpose exceeds the aesthetic purpose at this time. As one important quality valued by the opera industry, virtue is what masters value most when selecting apprentices and students in the past, as virtue is long-lasting while talent could fade away. Another important quality is righteousness. I once listed, in one of my articles, righteous deeds of several opera actors in times of social change and national crisis, which is just a short list compared to the countless deeds; many unknown actors have actively participated in performances for charitable purposes such as disaster relief, helping peers, or supporting their old masters, all of which manifest righteousness in varying degrees and forms. 

As I said in my previous lectures, there have been two ways through which Chinese culture has been passed down. One is through official education, which is often interrupted by the change of dynasties in history, and the other is through folk traditions, which is an education carried out in continuous cultural immersion and experience with a powerful and far-reaching influence. During the long period of agricultural civilization in China, Chinese operas in various regions provided cultural immersion and experience in the process of teaching through entertainment and telling stories.

LIU Lu: It's a fact that body experience is one of the teaching methods of Chinese opera because many performance skills cannot be taught or learned via language expression. Is this the origin for the Chinese opera teaching method of “oral teaching that inspires true understanding within”?

ZHAO Jingbo: “Oral teaching that inspires true understanding within” is a teaching method that uses the body as a medium for learning arts such as drama, music, and dance. It emphasizes the real-time communication between people to imitate postures and manifest mental imagery, which could not be achieved through reading textbooks or writing, or even watching instructional videos. It could be possible for some students with certain performing abilities, but still, you cannot get crucial tips through only observation without a teacher’s oral instruction, physical demonstrations, or even some psychological information that is unintentionally unveiled. For instance, when we are physically close to each other going through a script face to face, what you could perceive is not only what I say, but also a lot of psychological information, such as my attitude and feelings towards people and things implied by my tone, stress level, facial expressions, and body posture. What is deposited in this information is the personality, which is a not-so-obvious but important part of Chinese opera education. The teaching process is completed only when teachers and students have achieved a tacit understanding through oral teaching. Speaking of the tacit understanding, I would like to mention another saying that relates to learning opera — the learning-by-being- daxi (combat performance) in the past. You should not misunderstand this “hit,” thinking that teachers are very violent, as after all, the learning of many formulated movements involves breaking through some physical limits by strict and systematic training, similar to dance, gymnastics, and martial arts. Being hit is not necessarily a punishment, but a kind of instantaneous body-mediated teaching method. For example, in various somersault training, the teacher will apply a pole on a certain muscle part of the student, and it is at this moment the student flipping somersault gets to realize "it is here to exert force." This is much more accurate and effective than talking about where to exert force and how to exert force.

LIU Lu: The last two questions will go beyond teaching and learning in Chinese opera to the topic of dissemination and cross-cultural communication. Some people think that Chinese opera tells mostly ancient Chinese stories and that the form is relatively abstract. The performance is difficult to understand for Chinese people — is it even more difficult to be accepted in a cross-cultural context?

ZHAO Jingbo: No, I don’t think so. Chinese arts evolve as time goes on, and so does Chinese opera. Mr. Wang Yaoqing, one of the greatest Chinese opera artists and educators in the last century, once stated clearly that Chinese opera should advance with time. Take Peking opera as an example, it matured at the end of China’s feudal era with its value and aesthetic orientation mirroring characteristics of that time. Later, with the rise of the New Culture Movement, the influence of the eastern spread of Western learning was also reflected in the artistic creations of a large number of artists such as Mei Lanfang, Shang Xiaoyun, Cheng Yanqiu, and Xun Huisheng, ushering in the second major development of Peking Opera. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Peking Opera naturally took on a new look and experienced a third major development and change. We could say it has a capacity for self-renewal as time changes since the essence of Chinese opera art is in reflecting real life. Of course, there are indeed contradictions in Peking opera between traditional role types and modern characters, traditional formulas and modern life reality, which is also an unavoidable topic that requires continuous research. Speaking of the overseas dissemination of Chinese opera, I think that since opera is an art of the people and for the people, the commonality in human nature provides the perfect access point for people from different cultural backgrounds to approach opera. For example, in operas Baishe Zhuan (the Legend of the White Snake), and Bawang Bieji (Farewell My Concubine), the themes of loyalty, love, and family ties are shared manifestations of human nature regardless of the nationality and culture. As a result, these plays are also the most frequently performed and popular Chinese operas on the international stage. I remember when I once led the troupe to perform Guifei Zuijiu (the Drunken Concubine), in Hokkaido, Japan, in one of the scenes Concubine Yang turned around, flicked her sleeves and left after learning that the emperor would not come. The Japanese audience smiled heartily, because they understood the meaning of the formulated action from the perspective of human nature and knew that Concubine Yang Guifei was unhappy in her temper. I believe cross-cultural communication is attainable if Peking opera, and Chinese operas, can always express human nature, and continue to enhance its forms and skills and its connection with the times.

LIU Lu: The last question is about opera directors. Directors originated from the drama industry at the end of the 19^th century, and later there was a director system in Chinese operas, which also shows that Chinese opera performance becomes more complicated as time progresses. What kind of role do directors play in Chinese opera?

ZHAO Jingbo: There were no directors in traditional Chinese opera, but there was someone equivalent performing the role of a director. It could be a playwright or a theorist, such as Guan Hanqing or Li Yu, or some famous actors who could provide detailed guidance to the arrangements on the stage. Later, directors first appeared in the reform of some opera genres. After the founding of New China in 1949, more people advocated for opera directors, though voices of opposition exist even to this day. With the help of directors, stage performance of Chinese opera has become more complete and well-arranged than before, as attention to personal skills such as singing tones and movements has now turned to focus more on themes of a play, the unified stage arrangement, and choices of skills and elements, all requiring the role of a director. The primary role of an opera director is to steer the aesthetic orientation as audiences in different periods have different aesthetic standards. A good director could not only contribute to a successful play but also improve the aesthetic quality of an opera genre. Theories of drama directing may provide beneficial new ideas for opera directing, however, they sometimes do not conform to the law of Chinese opera performance. There are many disputes in this regard. In short, the studies of Chinese opera directing are still developing.

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