중국 근대극의 입센 수용과 극복

Abstract

Masen(馬森) summarizes the history of Chinese modern theater as “Two Waves from the West”. The first wave that he speaks was the acceptance of modern realism play in the May-Fourth period, and the second was acceptance of modernism and postmodernism play in the 1980s. It looks very remarkable that Henrik Ibsen is related both waves, so the purpose of this paper is to explain the reason why he has become the most disputed point at every turning point of Chinese modern theatrical history. In the May-Fourth period, Ibsen was accepted not only as a spirit of modern literature but also as a model of the realism spoken play(話劇). Since this acceptance, for about 60 years, Chinese modern theater could not overcome the Ibsen paradigm. In 1980s, the dictatorial political powers had been disappeared both in China and Taiwan, Chinese modern theater was regarded as a backward again, like in the May-Fourth period the Chinese traditional theater was found behind. In contrast to the intellectuals in the May-Fourth period who accepted Ibsen to catch up the Western European realism play, the intellectuals of 1980's wanted to catch up the post modernism theater by denying and overcoming Ibsen. As a result, the main stream of the Chinese modern theater in 1980s was a kind of anti-realism, and it was regarded as a nationalization of spoken play(話劇民族化) by those who had made the theatrical stream so. Even if many Chinese theater historians say this nationalization is very similar to the Chinese traditional theater, it does not look like a pure artistic phenomenon, but looks like a conservative nationalism movement.