Abstract
Charles Dullin incorporated the ideas of East Asian theatre in his productions, and more importantly, in the formation of his theory of “theatre of transposition.” Dullin may have perceived the Japanese theatre he saw—although it was not given in the tradition of the old Japanese theatre—and the example of Mei Lanfang as a confirmation of the ideas that had long been fermenting in his mind: his ideas of a theatre of transposition that imaginatively evokes East Asian theatre. However, the examples of East Asian theatre were useful in so far as they were instrumental in Dullin’s struggle against naturalism, in his pursuit of a theatre of transposition that was firmly rooted in Western tradition, or more naturally, in the French tradition, and in his efforts to find in the sources of Western theatre the natural inspiration for the renewal of modern Western theatre.
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Notes
- 1.
Le Figaro, January 31, 1908, 4; Comœdia, January 31, 1908, 3.
- 2.
Les Annales du Théâtre et de la Musique, vol. 34 (1908), 163–64.
- 3.
Ibid., 162.
- 4.
See also L’illustration, February 15, 1908, 123; M., “Courrier des Théâtre,” Le petit parisien, February 15, 1908, 4.
- 5.
For Antoine’s productions based on Oriental materials, see Sanders 1978, 216–20.
- 6.
Prior to his production of L’Avare chinois, Antoine had staged in 1906 Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in which Dullin played the poet Cinna. According to Charles Charras, Antoine’s mise-en-scène came very close to reality, but meanwhile, “for the first time perhaps he abandoned the prosaic truth for searches for effects in the order of the imagination.” It was to this extent alone, Charras continued, that Dullin, who saw Antoine work meticulously on his mise-en-scène, would retain something from Antoine because, by nature, he was far away from verism and felt the need for transposition (see Charras 2006, 71). Antoine’s productions of Shakespeare, including Julius Caesar, at the Odéon were geared towards scenic simplicity and stylization (see Chothia 1991, 143–54).
- 7.
Les Annales du Théâtre et de la Musique, vol. 37 (1911), 481–82.
- 8.
Ibid., 486–87.
- 9.
Elsewhere, Rouché mentioned Laloy’s work on the Chinese play (see Rouché 1958, 303–06).
- 10.
See Edmundson 1958, 65–66. Edmundson notes incorrectly that “Dullin had visited several collections of Eastern art in order to acquaint himself on the Oriental postures desirable for the role of the king in Le Chagrin dans le palais de Han” (65).
- 11.
See chapter “‘Free Transposition’: The Use of Nō by Jacques Copeau and Suzanne Bing.”
- 12.
Dullin’s letter was included in Copeau 2000, 122.
- 13.
- 14.
For Craig’s objection to the reform in Japanese theatre, see Craig 1913–1914a, 90–91; 1919, 233. Eisenstein deplored the efforts by “the most progressive leaders of the Japanese theatre” in their “adaptation of the spongy shapelessness of our own ‘inner’ naturalism” (Eisenstein 1949b, 44). Having observed Mei Lanfang’s performance in Russia in 1935, Eisenstein advised Mei and his Chinese colleagues against any effort to modernize their traditional theatre (Tian 2008, 159).
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
“Enquête sur le renouvellement du décor et de la mise en scène et l’évolution du théâtre,” Revue Critique des Idées et des Livres, vol. 35 (1923), 228.
- 18.
- 19.
Dullin quoted in J. C. 1927, 7.
- 20.
See chapter “‘Welding the Unweldable’: Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Refraction of Japanese Theatre.”
- 21.
For Cheng Yanqiu’s early fame on the Chinese stage, see Kuhn 1923, 1–2; “An Evening at a Chinese Play,” The North-China Daily News, October 15, 1923, 6; “A Famous Chinese Actor,” The North-China Daily News, October 15, 1923, 14.
- 22.
Laloy spelled Cheng Yanqiu’s name as “Ch’en (sic) Yen-ch’iu.”
- 23.
“Un grand acteur chinois: Mei Lan Fang,” Excelsior, April 23, 1930, 5.
- 24.
“L’acteur chinois Mei Lan Fang vient de triompher à New York,” Comœdia, April 23, 1930, 1.
- 25.
See “Zhu Fa dashiguan tongxun, di wu hao” (Dispatches from the Chinese embassy in France, no. 5), Waibu zhoukan (The Foreign Ministry weekly), vol. 69 (1935), 4; Xiao 1935.
- 26.
“Enquête sur le renouvellement du décor et de la mise en scène et l’évolution du théâtre,” Revue Critique des Idées et des Livres, vol. 35 (1923), 228.
- 27.
Dullin’s essay was written probably during 1920–1925 (see Surel-Tupin 1984, 624).
- 28.
See chapter “‘Welding the Unweldable’: Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Refraction of Japanese Theatre.”
- 29.
See chapter “‘In Our Two Selves’: Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig on Japanese Theatre.”
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Tian, M. (2018). Theatre of Transposition: Charles Dullin and East Asian Theatre. In: The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97178-0_6
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