The creation of Krystian Lupa’s Mo Fei (adapted from Shi Tiesheng’s works): A co-operation of Polish theatre in the Chinese theatre industry

Abstract

In this article, the author analyzes the dramatic work Mo Fei, adapted from several pieces by the contemporary Chinese writer Shi Tiesheng by Polish director Krystian Lupa in 2017. The analysis pays particular to exploring the creation from the original text to the stage work. Mo Fei has been regarded as a successful adaptation, which brought about metaphysical, spiritual content rarely seen in the contemporary Chinese theatre. Lupa adapted Shi’s works based on existentialist philosophy, using unique theatrical methods and techniques of expression not presented in the original work. As an experienced international director, Lupa’s adaptation reflected his characteristic and preferred aesthetic. His directing methods and artistic taste were reflected in his adaption of Mo Fei, including the practice of laboratory rehearsal and pursuit of inner life (similar to Grotowski). These aspects of Lupa’s work have essential inspirations for the Chinese theatre industry.

Keywords:

• Krystian Lupa
• Shi Tiesheng
• Polish theatre
• Chinese theatre
• ‘laboratory rehearsal’
• ‘to be the master of time.

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

The author holds that Polish theatre director Krystian Lupa’s works and practice in China in recent years are beneficial cooperations. It is necessary to investigate his Mo Fei, an adaptation of Chinese writer Shi Tiesheng’s texts, which is significant to the development of contemporary Chinese theatre. Lupa’s profound philosophical thoughts, exploration of the inner life and spiritual journey, and experimental approach to the Polish theatrical tradition can be seen in his works of textual interpretation and stage performance. It inspires contemporary Chinese theatre in the form of experiment and content innovation. This collaborative work, which can be regarded as ‘cross-cultural’ to some extent, fully demonstrates the universal humanistic significance of artistic exchange beyond cultural essentialism and orientalism. This work can only be produced based on loose creative soil, just as Chinese theatre has been open to absorbing the world’s theatre treasures.

1. Introduction

The introduction of western theatre in China began in the early twentieth century, around the period of the New Culture Movement (1910–1920). China studied and researched theatrical works and theories worldwide in the following century. The exchange between Chinese theatre and outstanding dramatic arts worldwide was carried out to varying degrees. However, in specific periods of history, such as the 1990s, the focus of dialogue about cultural forms became overwhelmed by discussions on film and television arts, including their commercialization, leaving theatrical arts needing to be addressed.

Taking the experience of Chinese theatre receiving foreign theatre in the New Culture Movement as a reference, Chinese researchers Tian (2016) suggest that the First Wave of Western Culture of theatre recommenced in the 1980s along with the Reform and Opening Up. The second Wave of Western Culture of theatre refers to the boom in foreign theatre performed in China in the past four to five years (since 2010). After entering the 21st century, artistic exchange in theatre has been further prompted in part by China’s increasing globalization. More foreign theatre is coming to China, with the cooperation shifting from Chinese directors leading performances of western theatre to that of western theatrical companies coming to China to perform. Some theatre festivals with international influences have become important venues for the Chinese theatre industry to introduce western theatre, including, for example, Lin Zhaohua Theatre Invitational Exhibition, the Modern Drama Valley in Shanghai, Wuzhen Theatre Festival, and Caoyu International Theatre Festival. Between 2010 and 2020 alone, many western theatre companies have come to China and given performances, including:

• Eugenio Barb: Tree (2019)

• Peter Brook: Clothes for Lovers (2012), The Valley of Astonishment (2015), Why? (2019)

• Yury Butusov: The Seagull (2018) and The Three Sisters (2019)

• Oskaras Korsunovas: Hamlet (2014), The Seagull (2018), Le Tartuffe (2019)

• Gregory Litzenov: Silent Don (2019)

• Krystian Lupa: Persona. Marilyn (2014), Heroes Square (2015), Woodcutters (2016)

• Suzuki Tadashi: Dionysus (2015), Alectra (2016), The Spring of the Northern Kingdom (2018)

• Rimas Tuminas: Eugene Onegin (2017), The Masquerade (2018), The Three Sisters (2018), Imperial Envoy (2019)

• Robert Wilson: Krapp’s Last Tape (2014), Lecture on Nothing (2017), Sandman (2018)

This list needs to be completed, as many other directors have recently brought their work to China, including Herbert Fritsch, Jan Klata, Grzegorz Jarzyna, and others.

Chinese theatre researchers have a strong interest in contemporary western theatre directors and their work, reflected by the many seminars and discussions conducted and the number and diversity of performance reviews published. One of the most noteworthy exchanges was in 2017 when Polish director Krystian Lupa created his work Mo Fei in China. Mo Fei, based on the work of Chinese contemporary Chinese writer Shi Tiesheng has greatly interested Chinese researchers and audiences alike. Its performances are considered an exemplar of teamwork between western and Chinese theatre. As the Chinese contemporary theatrical industry develops, this cooperation provides a reference point for successful, broad-based collaboration and exchange.

The study is divided into the following sections, namely, section 1 “genesis of Lupa’s coming to China and doing Shi Tiesheng,” section 2“processing of original texts,” section 3 “the way of directing and performing,” section 4 “master of space, time and life,” section 5 “the inspirations of Mo Fei on Chinese theatre.”

2. Genesis of Lupa’s Coming to China and Doing Shi Tiesheng

Krystian Lupa first came to China in 2014 to attend the Lin Zhaohua Theatre Invitational Exhibition, during which he introduced his Persona. Marilyn. In the years following, exchanges and cooperation developed between Lupa and the well-known Chinese theatre director Lin Zhaohua (Lin Zhaohua is a director of Beijing People’s Art Theatre and served as the vice-president from 1984 to 1998. He established Lin Zhaohua Theatre Studio in 1990, one of China’s independent theatre groups. He created many avant-garde theatre-style stages, worked in the studio, and was also invited to perform overseas), leading Lupa to bring additional productions to China, including Heroes Square (2015) and Woodcutters (2016).

In 2017, Lupa created an adapted stage play, Mo Fei, combining several works by author Shi Tiesheng. Mo Fei premiered as the original play in the Tianjin Grand Theatre during the Lin Zhaohua Theatre Invitational Exhibition. In the following two years, the work was staged in Beijing, Shanghai, Harbin, Hangzhou, Xiamen, and other cities and has attracted significant attention as a landmark cultural event because it was a work directed by a western theatre director who adapted contemporary Chinese literature and premiered the work domestically, in China. The actors are all Chinese, except that the journalist Sandra is played by a foreign actress. The play has had nearly 30 performances since its debut in 2017 in China. The high-quality stage production of Mo Fei has been extremely well-received by both audiences and critics. It is seen as a contemporary work allowing Shi’s literary spirit to transcend his cultural and national boundaries.

Shi Tiesheng (1951–2010) was a Chinese writer and essayist. He served as a member of the National Committee of the China Writers Association, the vice-chairman of the Beijing Writers Association, and the vice-chairman of the China Disabled Persons’ Federation. He was paralyzed in both legs in 1972 and later developed kidney disease and uremia, requiring dialysis thrice a week. Shi jokingly claimed that his profession was illness and that he wrote in his spare time; he died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage on 31 December 2010, aged 59. The complete works of Shi were published by Beijing Publishing House in January 2018 and comprised 3.5 million words. They were divided into 12 volumes by genre, including novels, essays, plays, poems, letters, and interviews. In the contemporary literary world of China, Shi’s literary creations are considered to embed more profound ideological implications because of his unique life experiences that led to his examination and spiritual explorations of the meanings and predicaments of life. He is generally regarded as “the novelist with the most spontaneous philosophical temperament in contemporary China.”(Zhou Guoping, p97)

Mo Fei was adapted from Shi’s writings, including elements of Guanyu yibu yi dianying zuo wutai Beijing de xiju zhi shexiang [About a Play Which Uses a Film as Its Backdrop] (1996, henceforth About a Play), Wo yu ditan [The Temple of Earth and I] (1991), Yuanzui· Suming [Sin · Fate] (1988), Hehuan shu [Persian Silk Tree] (1985). Most of these works are in prose. For example, the author expresses his memory and remembrance of his mother in the Persian Silk Tree. At age twenty, his mother cared for his diseases and encouraged him to write. These sentiments can also be found in Lupa’s Mo Fei. The Temple of Earth and I is also a reminiscence prose, containing Shi’s enlightenment and perception in the Temple of Earth (Beijing), the regret and endless memory of his mother, the author’s inseparable emotion. In Sin · Fate, Shi fictions two novels, both of which involve the life experiences of paralyzed patients.

They could be regarded as autobiographical accounts of the author, but they are relatively limited. A special one is About a Play. Although close to a theatre script in form, it is not a professional complete one and tries to integrate film elements. To some extent, the successful development of Chinese theatre and film art in the 1990s inspired Shi to write film scripts such as Si shen yu shao nv [Death and the Maiden] (1987, directed by Lin Hongtong) and Bian zou bian chang [Life on a String] (1991, directed by Chen Kaige).

In 1996, About a Play was published in Zhong Shan magazine with a postscript to Chapter 14: “I believe,” Shi (2006, p. 132) wrote, “it is unlikely to rehearse it. It had better be willing to stay in the form of novella lonely. The immediate cause for the difficulty in rehearsing may be financial and technical”. The main reason why Shi thought it would be difficult to rehearse is that, for the Chinese theatre stage in the 1990s, there were relatively few attempts to use film elements in dramatic performances, most of which used physical objects as stage sets. After the 21st century, the application of film to the theatre stage can be realized theoretically in terms of technology and finances. Still, such artistic attempts and practices are relatively rare seen.

Additionally, most of Shi’s works are mainly reminiscing prose or essays with solid lyricism and monologue rather than plots and conflicts, which may challenge local directors in adaptation and stage performance. Adapting literary works into theatre requires first literary and philosophical in-depth reading and interpretation, then combining, embedding, arranging, and creating text, and finally, stage art presentation. This is not because local theatre directors are not talented enough to do so but because the trend of adapting literary works into plays only emerged in the 1990s. In the Chinese theatre industry, the director and screenwriter are generally not the same people. Local theatre directors’ scripts mainly come from their original scripts, selecting suitable writings for rehearsal or cooperation with playwrights.

Despite the difficulties of rehearsal, Lupa turns Shi’s idea into reality. The stage performance of Mo Fei contains prominent film elements, based on a vast film screen as the background, with grey and white as the primary colors, while there are two red frame lines. In the movie screen on the stage, memories and mental activity clips of the protagonist Mo Fei are played to show his spiritual world and consciousness flow. The image and the actor’s stage performance cooperate, making the dramatic performance of Mo Fei shuttle between the real and the spiritual world.

Lupa set About a Play in a theatrical context following an invitation from the Chinese theatre director Lin Zhaohua. Almost 20 years after About a Play had been published, in 2016, the Dean of Tianjin Grand Theatre, Qian Cheng, sent an email to Lupa, inviting him to adapt About a Play into a work for performance, a play. Before that, Qian Cheng had asked several Chinese theatre directors to take on this task, but all had declined, saying that the work was difficult to rehearse. Director Lin Zhaohua expressed that he felt Lupa had the vision and experience to adapt and direct Shi’s works. Before agreeing to the project, Lupa watched a documentary and read Shi’s works. Mu and Lupa, (2017) said, “Shi Tiesheng’s works are extraordinary and personal.” Shi thought it would be difficult to adapt this work, while Lupa took the two media (film and theatre) as freedom. His response to his introduction to Shi’s works indicated that he believed the project would allow him to explore the inner world of Shi through developing images and dramatic performance.

Collaboration between Chinese and western theatrical companies certainly could only have happened with support and promotion from the Polish government, cultural institutions, and other external entities. Many Polish groups and institutions have encouraged this cultural interchange recently, including the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland, Adam Mickiewicz University, the Cultural Office of the Polish Embassy in China, and various Polish theatrical troupes. Interestingly, (A)Pollonia of Poland’s Kana Theatre was the first to participate in Lin Zhaohua Theatre Invitational Exhibition in 2011. However, Lupa attracted the attention of the domestic audience in China. Lupa’s previous works had gained a positive reputation among Chinese audiences. Suppose he could successfully adapt the work of Chinese authors to Chinese actors in China. In that case, the effort could improve Chinese audiences’ understanding of theatrical aesthetics and help improve Chinese theatrical productions, which are generally favored by contemporary Chinese audiences.

3. Processing of original texts

The starting point of Lupa’s production of dramatic works has always been to carefully study and understand original literary text, whether by German, Austrian, French, or Chinese authors. This approach to directing reflects a fundamental respect for the original authors and an authentic intention to capture the original works’ spiritual dimension. Lupa watched documentaries related to Shi Tiesheng, spoke with Shi’s wife, and went to the Temple of Earth (a place frequented by Shi) - three times to experience the views that Shi had experienced enjoyed—the twilight, the shadow of trees and the memories that Shi only wanted with the Temple of Earth (Beijing).

Mo Fei tells the story of an alcoholic named “Mo Fei” who looks back on his life after death in a dreamy, imaginative way, reunites with his relatives and lovers, and shuttles between his past and future. The story’s plot is not particularly important in this work, which focuses on presenting Mo Fei’s drunken ravings, memories, dreams, fantasies, and other content that can be best described as spiritual and was, many believe, actually about a spiritual journey of Mo Fei. In Lupa’s adaptation, he combines dramatic performance with projected images, enabling the performance to convey Mo Fei’s spiritual world and allowing audiences to see his secret inner life directly. Lupa saw the influence of personal history in Shi’s works, using that theme to integrate fragments of plots from Sin · Fate, Persian Silk Tree, The Temple of Earth and I into About a Play. For example, the alcoholic character comes from About a Play, while the name “Mo Fei” comes from the novel Sin·Fate, and the appearance of a wheelchair was regarded as an allusion to the author.

Nevertheless, the adaptation of these aspects of the character has become a controversial point. It is interesting to note that there are objections to using images of disabled people as biographical descriptions of Shi. According to an interview with Lupa (Sun Lingyu, 2018), Ye Tingfang, a Chinese translator, thinks that the film and image production of the work is very successful, but “the experience and image of Shi Tiesheng should not be included because it means no one, no special characteristics, the whole play is the product of Shi’s thinking.” Also, the depiction of alcoholism is not biographical to the author. Shi himself was not an alcoholic, while Lupa believes that “the idea of the alcoholic is that of Shi Tiesheng,” “Although his wife said that he did not drink too much, I felt that this work was his monologue.” (Ibid.)

So why did Lupa do that? He tried to use the alcoholics’ monologues, dreams, and fantasies to shed his personality mask and face the self and inner life. Because of his empathetic imagination combined with in-depth reading, Lupa developed a deep understanding of Shi’s loneliness as an individual. Lupa saw in Shi’s literary work an image of self that merged an inner vacancy with an absurd sense of destiny that he developed as a disabled person. Besides, Shi’s characters are often a mixture of autobiographical and fictional; many suffer from physical trauma—not to cry and beautify the suffering, but to explore the meaning of life, thus winning the admiration and respect of readers. Hu (2022) borrows the concept of “intertextualité” to suggest that there is an intersection of Shi’s works in Lupa’s Mo Fei (also in Lupa’s adaptation of Lu Xun’s work A Madman’s Dairy, 2022), which is the reread, update, enrichment, shift and deepening of Shi’s texts. Lupa once lamented the difficulty of adapting and rehearsing Shi’s work. Still, he did it ultimately: Mo Fei is closely related to the original works of Shi but, at the same time, is uniquely distinct.

Lupa revealed that he experienced the same loneliness and escaped as Shi did. There are two things worth pointing out in Lupa’s adaptation of Shi’s text. One is that Carl Gustav Jung influenced his presentation and exploration of human mental disability. At the beginning of the first act, Mo Fei wakes up from a dream and begins his monologue by saying: “I have a disease. The doctor is not clear about what the disease is. A rare disease. I always have no strength.” In the play, Mo Fei shows the problematic relationship between humans and “self-being” in a profound spiritual realm, the inner world of a lonely individual. After a car accident in his youth, Mo Fei began to imagine that he had lost his legs and drank all day to escape the reality of the physical freedom he had lost. The imagination of his leg paralysis and addiction to alcohol is a seemingly physical disability, while on a deeper level, it is a kind of mental disability or spiritual problem. As Lupa puts it (Zhang Yue, 2017), ‘Disability is to some extent the same as alcoholism. Everyone is disabled in the heart. Mental disabilities isolate people from society. Mo Fei shows us how mental disabilities block someone’s everyday communication with the world.

Mo Fei’s psychological problems are reminiscent of Jung’s theories of psychology. As Darius (2016, p. 380) puts it in History of Polish Theatre, “Jung and his conception enabled him [Lupa] to rework the various aspects of reality as profound cultural, religious and spiritual transformations from a metaphysical perspective.” Michel (2014, p. 717) also notices that in Lupa’s theatre, “the characters are dealing with de-personalization, the absence of sacred, personal and historical responsibility, and the myth of modernism. The audience has a mystical experience, a revelation that, although it deals with decadence and emptiness, it also deals with the post-Nietzschean superman.”

Another theoretical perspective that may help us understand Lupa is existentialism. Shi’s spontaneous philosophic temperament and experiential suffering led him to an existentialism that resonated deeply. The influence of existentialism on his works mainly lies in his profound understanding of the relationship between humans and the world, his intensive experience of human’s absurd situations, and his brave fight in the face of absurdity and nihility. Neither Shi Tiesheng nor Lupa explicitly mentions “existentialism” in their work, as is typical of many other authors, nor does either seem to intend to use their work as footnotes to existentialism. However, the problems they were trying to deal with were addressed by existentialist philosophers: the problem of human existence and inner life.

Different philosophers have taken a variety of approaches to existentialism. By putting “being all alone” at the center of his explorations, the existentialist philosopher Kierkegaard was the first to take “individual’s existence” as the central problem of philosophy. Heidegger believes that when a person is left in the world to be with others, that person feels that others and the world are distant and strange, and so lives in a lonely and homeless state. Sartre believes that man is a mystery who can never be what he is until death. Although views on these existentialist philosophers vary, they all point out the mysterious and isolated characteristics of the individual. As for the relationship among individuals, other people, and external objects, Jean-Paul (1998, p. 132) summarizes the human relationship as “hell is the other people” in his play No Exit. That is to say, each person will always face others as conflicting obstacles that must be overcome in realizing the true self. The relationship between individuals and others is interdependent but also mutually antagonistic and conflicting.

In making his adaptation, Lupa faced the challenging and exciting task of grasping the complicated relationships between the characters in Shi’s original work. The intricate relationship between Mo Fei and his parents is obscure. Lupa connected the relationship between Mo Fei’s parents in About a Play, and the relationship between Mo Fei and his mother in The Temple of Earth and I deduced that the source of the tension between his mother and him in About a Play was a false love or even the absence of love between the parents. Compounding that absence was Mo Fei’s father, who seemed to be acting all the time, either manic or feeling good about himself in a schizophrenic state. These codes and depths are the source of the sufferings of understanding and are closely related to the tragedy of China’s patriarchal society and perhaps even humankind. Blind worship, power, arrogance, servility, hypocrisy, and other human vices derive from the father.

4. The way of directing and performing

As an experienced international director, Lupa’s works have a distinctive personal aesthetic style, which has inspired many in the Chinese theatre industry and is reflected in the production of Mo Fei.

One aspect of Lupa’s style is his “laboratory rehearsal,” an organic approach to dealing with characters and actors. Chinese actors tend to perform according to the definition of roles given to them by directors and writers. Lupa’s style contrasts with that traditional approach as he purposefully avoids predefining roles before rehearsal begins. He holds that the actors should not only play their roles in the rehearsal room. In his view, actors do not need to present the prescribed lines and behaviors on stage but rather should perform through spontaneous improvisation in real-time to develop an authentic, organic, and in-depth understanding of the spirit of each role.

In his work, Lupa employed a very different approach to acting than the script-acting method commonly used in the Chinese theatre industry. He asked that two of Shi’s works, Sin·Fate and Persian Silk Tree, be translated into Polish and studied a large body of Shi’s works (more than 40,000 characters of the original novels) and reviewed a documentary of the writer’s life. In developing Mo Fei, Lupa did not work from a particular script, per se, and then rehearse from predetermined lines. Instead, when working with a company, Lupa asked that the actors bring their own life experiences and insights to rehearsal, having no definite timetable or constraints on each rehearsal schedule. In Lupa’s method, actors should enrich the role with their life insights before the rehearsal. In developing Mo Fei, as scheduled performance approached, Lupa would lead the actors calmly forward, weaving work on the play together through connections to philosophy, psychology, and art history. In rehearsals, Lupa would coach actors by saying, put all the ideas about the character in the trunk and then go on a trip…We put our hands into a bottomless bag, and what we can pull out every time is unexpected. We must explore ahead with issues in a relaxed and alert state. (Tianjin Grand Theatre, 2017)

Lupa did not create situational theatre but introduced actors to topics, objects, and tasks. At least two months before formal rehearsals commenced, Lupa asked the actors to read and discuss Shi’s novels and share their drunken experiences. Lupa also asked actors to write diaries and dialogue to feel out and inhabit the role for themselves. Usually, members of the Chinese theatre industry pay attention to efficiency and certainty rather than leaving time for those involved in a production to saturate themselves in the creative theatrical process. A situation where the script was still being revised the day before rehearsal, as Lupa allowed and encouraged, is rarely seen in the Chinese theatre industry, except perhaps in avant-garde theatres. In addition, in the Chinese theatre industry, once a piece is rehearsed and successfully performed, the production team will usually solidify the existing performance experience to be closely reproduced in subsequent performances. In Lupa’s view, however, creative work is always “unfinished,” and even works performed are still experimental. After the premiere of Mo Fei, Lupa said, “We ran out of desire and imagination on the day of the premiere. Now we need to revive them, not repeat what we did before. We need to re-stimulate ourselves and find new vitality for the details of the performance.” Lupa’s idea of theatre is an ongoing spiritual exploration, not just a task.

Although Lupa encourages actors to improvise, at the same time, he also strictly controls props and equipment. For example, he might prescribe that garbage piles up in a certain way on both sides of the stage, or that specific sound effects be used when a mouse transforms into a human. In addition, in his direction, he handles every line in a script with deliberate attention, ensuring that the actor controls and conveys the meaning of every sentence. This attention to detail in script direction creates productions that are riveting and wholly capture the attention of audiences throughout the entire production.

Lupa’s directing aesthetics have profoundly affected the Chinese actors he has worked with. His concept of “realism” requires actors to enter a tranquil state before they go live on stage because once triggered out of this meditative state, it is easy to fall into “reading” rather than “speaking” lines. Actor Wang Xuebing seemed to have thoroughly understood Lupa’s requirements. As Mo Fei, Wang Xuebing conveyed a deep authenticity indicating he was fully present and was not overplaying the role. Lupa and the actors decided on their lines as a collective creation, which ensured the smooth progress of this concept of performance. Even the characters’ breathing is consistent with the rhythm of the language. Guo Shixing, a Chinese playwright, said frankly, “Lupa has raised our actors to a higher level. Previously, our actors only yelled and acted and rarely sank like this. Surprisingly, our actors have settled down on the stage, and their sense of time goes deep into their blood.” (Sun Lingyu, 2018)

The cooperation between Lupa and Chinese actors tapped and revealed the potential of Chinese actors. “When rehearsing, I told the actors to improvise. They were initially afraid and strange and preferred to act according to the established pattern. However, after a while, they showed an outstanding improvisation ability”, Lupa said (Tianjin Grand Theatre, 2017), and expressed his appreciation for his actors, mostly Chinese actors except for a Polish actress. In the production process of this work, Lupa created the experience of a reciprocal trust-based relationship between actors and directors, a connection exemplified by the strong bond of admiration that grew between Wang and Lupa.

However, there were still problems with the performance. For example, in the third scene of the second act, three unidentified fashionable women come on stage smoking, talking, and laughing. Drunk, Mo Fei regarded them as three goddesses in ancient Greek mythology, namely “Three Beauties.” They took Mo Fei to their mysterious base, where there were Buddha statues, white wedding dresses, and black wizard robes. Mo Fei danced with the women on the stage, spinning in ecstasy, and then collapsed, exhausted. This dreamlike passage is not found in any of Shi’s texts but in Lupa’s way of exploring the subconscious through illusion. However, in general, the three Chinese actresses who played Three Beauties did not convey in their performances that they fully realized this intention. Instead, they followed the script by rote and performed the role of the goddess without seeming to understand the underlying meaning. The performance of this section was weak, and the actresses were not believable in their roles.

5. Master of space, time, and life

In terms of “space aesthetics,” Lupa realized the combination of stage performance and film screenplay required by Shi Tiesheng. When Shi first published About a Play, he was unsure whether the Chinese theatre industry was developed enough or had the technology or funding to rehearse or bring the play to the stage. However, this proved not to be the case; the resulting performances were good. The excellent images were all created by Łukasz Twarkowski, who had worked with Lupa for several years, including on performances of Heroes Square and Woodcutters.

The images and set design used in Mo Fei expanded the stage space, making it multi-dimensional. The stage background is a square electronic screen with a red edge. The light on the stage is also square, followed by regular benches, sofas, dining tables, beds, large and high buildings, and small and square lattice windows. Along the edge or diagonal of these regular outlines, people perform irregular psychology, thoughts, actions, and stories that strongly conflict with the former. The images used showed Mo Fei’s inner world more than a traditional “monologue” and included fantasies, dreams, and spiritual roaming that would be difficult to convey without imagery.

It is particularly noteworthy that the screen behind the stage can interact with the actual actors on the stage. There is a door at the bottom left of the screen. Mo Fei’s friend, a mouse, and his wife appeared on the screen in images originally, but they could open the door from the screen and walk to the stage. The plane space and the three-dimensional space realized an interaction. The stage lighting is generally dark, with black, white, and gray as the primary color. The same dark tone is shown on the screen behind the stage, which shows Mo Fei’s imagination, memories, and dreams. Few props are used on the stage, and the minimalism is reminiscent of Grotowski.

Like other works of Lupa, Mo Fei has a long run time − 5 hours for the entire performance. This length challenges the patience of many Chinese audiences. In the Chinese theatre industry, the performance time is usually between 1 hour and 2.5 hours to consider the audience’s feelings and the market, while the performance time of Mo Fei is longer than this convention. At the beginning of the second half, impatient spectators were leaving, but this did not shake Lupa’s insistence on dominating time, it is very natural for me, and my feeling and understanding of time is just like this. I like small details best, and I hate that a story is like an action movie. It is told too fast and should be much more deeply. I also do not want to make the theatre too simple and direct, so I do not need to explain my theme to him like a child or say all the important things. It is like something happened on the street; four people saw it. However, everyone’s understanding was different because everyone who saw it would bring their own life in, and then the final understanding and perception came into being. Art needs possibilities in different directions for its inherent complexity. If everyone likes my work, it just means it is nothing new. (Tianjin Grand Theatre, 2017) Lupa has directed many international actors, produced many excellent works, and shown that he can create fast-paced narratives. Nevertheless, in the case of Mo Fei, he chose not to do so.

Despite the controversies, Lupa remains appreciated and admired by many theatre lovers in China and many in the Chinese theatre industry, which shows that his aesthetic style is of great significance to us. “To be the master of time” is also Lupa’s consistent expectation for the actors. He repeatedly told the actors, “You do not want to be a slave to the audience. You are independent of time and hurry, independent of the script! Contact with imagination, touch with emotion, contact with the happy birth of thoughts unfold with the beat of the music, swing in the rhythm of the music. Do not be a slave to ‘performing tragedy.’” (Ibid.) The story presented in Mo Fei is tragic, but the actors’ emotions are quite restrained in the performance, with many places of silence and stillness. At the end of the performance, the actors do not bring the audience a so-called “climax” like in traditional theatre.

There is a noteworthy detail, Yang Qing (the first-class National Theatre actor who plays Mo Fei’s mother) holding the stocks and staying quiet for two minutes on the stage. Wang Xuebing said, What impressed me most about the director is that his feeling and understanding of the theatre and performance in time differs from other directors. He thought our performance should be slower, not too fast, and not let go of any little thinking. I was asked what you learned from director Lupa. My most obvious feeling is that I have learned to walk and think silently on the stage, which is the greatest help to me. (Ibid.) Lupa’s highest goal for actors is “to be the master of time.” “If actors succumb to the fear of being in a hurry, they will shrink their heads and tails, not knowing what they want to perform. They do not understand their lines at all. What is their performance for? The simplest quiet time can best express a person.” (Ibid.)

In the 1980s, critics thought that what Lupa was most interested in the theatre was the relationship between the characters. He describes the relationship subtly on the stage, in the form of a slightly shadowy psycho-theatre and a combination of emphasizing the complex motives of the characters. Critics also point to his exact division of the screen and his ability to interpret moments of silence precisely. At the same time, the director’s tendency to repeat some episodes consciously and purposefully slow down the pace of performance and the overall experimental nature of theatre events are also widely discussed. Lupa liberated the theatre from literature and revealed it in the purest form, a non-narrative theatre about the situation between people and the hypnotic psychological state. (Mokrzycka-Pokora, 2015) Eleonora (1997, p. 176) described Lupa’s plays by saying, they are a world using the contrasts of light and shadow, similar to Caravaggio’s paintings, a world filled with motion and silence as in the movies. He has brought together subjects of various sorts and prepared one essential work of an artist distinct from post-modern aesthetics. He creates a spiritual universe from the performances philosophical roots, not being subordinated to rational rules. He is said to be a contemporary alchemist of the theatre.’ These ideas and methods with Lupa’s aesthetic label are displayed in Mo Fei, which is as much an original creation as an adaptation.

However, it should be pointed out that Mo Fei is different from other works of Lupa, including the three that had previously been performed in China. Persona. Marilyn, Heroes Square, and Woodcutters are about historical problems in Eastern Europe, while Mo Fei is distinctly about Chinese struggles and challenges. After the performance, the deputy director of Mo Fei mentioned that the ruins park of the image appears to be where the Tianjin Tanggu Explosion happened and where new construction began again. Explosion accident in Tianjin Binhai New Area On 12 August 2015, a fire and explosion occurred at the hazardous material warehouse of Ruihai Company in Tianjin port, Binhai New Area, Tianjin, killing 165 people. (Ripley et al., 2015)

It seems that Lupa wanted to make some reference to contemporary Chinese contexts. However, perhaps because the original work seemed to minimize historical and political contexts, Lupa did not make too many references to current days happenings and focused more on showing a universal exploration of the individual spirit. He has always been concerned about this issue. Monika Mokrzycka-Pokora said of Lupa’s work, His plays show the exhaustion of this ancient continent and all its descendants destined to decline. There is no essential difference between being Polish, German, or Austrian. In Lupa’s view, what matters is the spiritual environment in which we live and act, not the national or historical political environment. (Mokrzycka-Pokora, 2015). Lupa regards theatre as a kind of “salvation”; living an artistic life can help people find the right feeling. He illustrates Shi another possibility in his life, “What if he had not been hit by a truck at that time?” In his view, tragedy and happiness are linked, and art makes people experience this combination; theatre is not about showing off but a bridge to the land of spirit. It seems that from this work, Lupa is also looking for his personal “temple.”

6. The inspirations of Mo Fei on Chinese theatre

Lupa’s background in Polish theatre has led researchers to focus on his connection to Grotowski. This work may recall the mainstream Chinese method inspired by Stanislavsky rather than Grotowski’s minimalist aesthetics and “poor theatre.” Nonetheless, the fact that some of Stanislavsky’s approaches were later continued and developed by Grotowski has been pointed out by many scholars. For example, Richard (1997, p. 1) notes that Grotowski’s connection to Stanislavsky is often not considered, while Grotowski has not forgotten his predecessor.

Maria Shevtsova has also reiterated this view in recent years. She holds that in Grotowski’s “poor theatre was, above all, the theatre of actors who, while they made actions, were undergoing an internal journey—in something that we could call an ‘internal life.’” (He and Shevtsova, 2019) This is what Grotowski found and shared profoundly with Stanislavsky. Grotowski believes that art is not to teach people anything but to fill the inner void to give full play to one’s talents and explore the inner life in a modern society dominated by rational thinking. Grotowski believes abandoning all stage scenery, props, and lighting would not make or break a theatre. However, the relationship between actors and audiences, the presence of communication, and the sense of sacredness are what matter.

In this sense, the afore-mentioned analysis of Mo Fei seems to be sufficient proof of Lupa’s inheritance with Grotowski, linked his dramatic art to the Polish literary tradition, and was equally concerned with the experimental rehearsal and training of actors. The performance the actor makes while performing and the spiritual journey the audience is invited to make while watching this “divine actor” whose movements take him/her towards the divine or “beyond.” (Maria Shevtsova, p8) As a “master of time,” Lupa made his work into a “spiritual journey” that shared Grotowski’s interest in the spiritual journey.

Why is this collaboration unique or different from previous collaborations between foreign and local theatre producers? Firstly, Mo Fei has a unique way of collaborating. In the past, most of the cooperation between foreign and local theatre producers was foreign directors or troupes invited to China to bring their works to China (Lupa’s work in the past few years was also of this type). Another way is local directors’ rehearsal of foreign playwrights, especially world literature classics such as Ancient Greek plays, Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Goethe’s Faust, which Chinese directors have rehearsed. Lupa was one of the foreign directors who produced Chinese literary works in China with Chinese. After this work, he also staged Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary in 2022.

Secondly, the content of Mo Fei has depth. On February 12 and 13, 2022, it was performed in Shanghai for the third time. A seminar on Mo Fei (Yun Feng, 2022) was held in Shanghai on 14 February 2022. Huang Changyong, president of Shanghai Theatre Academy, said, “It is important to learn and explore the spirit and concept of Lupa’s theatre.” Gong Baorong, a professor at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, thinks Mo Fei is about “self-disclosure.” Unlike traditional local theatre, Lupa requires the audiences to have a spiritual dialogue with the writer, actors, and audiences, as he did during the creative process. Hu Zhiyi, a professor at Zhejiang University, said Lupa “inherited Grotowski and had a sense of divine, and his concerns are life and death, soul and suffering.” Xia Bo, a professor at the Central Academy of Drama, regards Mo Fei as a philosophical theatre that explores the question of “how human existence is real.”

Thirdly, Mo Fei gives Chinese audiences a different experience. Lupa brought to the Chinese audience parts of the experience of European theatre, or Polish theatre, as well as his aesthetic style of theatre. This difference may strike some as unique and others as unpalatable. Professor Ding Luonan believes Lupa’s interpretation of Shi is a gesture of exploration and dialogue. Peng Tao, a professor at the Central Academy of Drama, said Lupa was humble and respectful to Shi’s works, with no cultural superiority, and that Mo Fei is a work that could only have appeared in a modern, open China. (Ibid.)

Still, it is interesting that adaptations of Chinese literary works by foreign directors are so popular, while some recent adaptations by Chinese directors have caused great controversy (a prominent example is Meng Jinghui’s version of Teahouse adapted from Lao She’s work). The cultural or symbolic capital of foreign directors may have played a particular role in the success of the adaptation and performance of Mo Fei. However, more of the audiences and researchers who have read Shi’s works believe that Lupa’s philosophical thinking and interpretation of Shi’s works are relatively reasonable, which is the success of Mo Fei. No matter how much cultural capital plays a role, this is a beneficial cross-cultural artistic experiment and cooperation. Chinese theatre audiences and researchers are happy to keep an eye on the interpretation and rehearsal of Chinese literary works by foreign directors.

Lupa does not ignore the limitations of his understanding of the Chinese cultural context as a foreigner. One example is the Chinese character “Mo Fei,” which Lupa thought mysterious was interpreted by him as a “possibility” and “contingency” of human existence and destiny, and the “existence” in the philosophical sense. For him, Chinese culture is still something to be explored and understood. However, this is not the same as Orientalism, which regards Eastern culture as unknowable and mysterious.

Another example is to add a character—Sandra, a female foreign journalist that had not appeared in Shi’s texts. Mo Fei’s English is poor, and the journalist’s English is not much better. Both have a vague notion of what the other is saying, yet nonetheless have a long conversation driven by their curiosity and inexplicable attraction. Although verbal communication is not smooth, they understand each other’s feelings and aspirations by watching images and paintings. The female foreign journalist can be regarded as a version of Lupa. After all, he is a foreigner, and he also realized that he could not fully understand Chinese culture just through the works of a contemporary Chinese writer, so he set the role of female foreign journalists in his works, which is a metaphor for his attempt to understand Chinese culture. The character can also be seen as a metaphor for communication between different cultures, where an exchange is challenging but does not diminish the core desire to connect and exchange.

What are the differences between Lupa’s experimental methods and local theatre producers such as Lin Zhaohua and Meng Jinghui? Lin Zhaohua has been keeping his experimental theatre with an attempt to make subtraction in performance, choreography, and music. It is worth mentioning that Lin tried to pursue the performance and stage aesthetics of traditional Chinese opera in modern theatre performances. In terms of text, he maintained his reverence for literary classics. Comparatively speaking, Meng Jinghui’s avant-garde theatre colluded more with secularization and commercialization. The collision of the theatre industry and consumerism culture has become a mode of cultural, commercial capital operation and a famous carnival. Teahouse imitates the large-scale installation of contemporary foreign theatre, and its deconstructive attitude toward classics has been criticized to some extent. The different aesthetic development paths of the two local theatre makers seem to reflect the dilemma between art and commercial and the tension and balance between cosmopolitan and national nature. Chinese theatre also looks forward to Richard Scheckner’s (1981, pp. 48–63) “formalistic experiments transformed into content” of avant-garde theatre. The inspiration for Lupa’s work for Chinese theatre is that local theatre producers should not simply imitate foreign theatre in form.

What needs to be clarified is that this article is not intended to demonstrate Lupa as a pioneer of China’s theatre innovation but mainly takes Mo Fei as a specific case to demonstrate the openness that the Chinese theatre industry has shown in recent years. Recognizing Lupa’s creation does not mean ignoring or denying the achievements of local creators. We certainly see Shi’s texts and spiritual journey in Mo Fei; at the same time, we are aware of Lupa’s creation—his philosophical ideas, life thinking, aesthetics, and stage style.

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Yongmei Tan

Yongmei Tan is a Ph.D. at Zhejiang University, College of Media and International Culture. She has been working on issues related to theatre arts.