In 1935, Bertolt Brecht witnessed the performance and private demonstration of Mei Lanfang in Moscow. This encounter birthed his seminal essay ‘Verfremdung Effects in Chinese Acting’, in which Brecht famously asserts that Chinese acting is inherently estranging: ‘The artist’s object is to appear strange and even surprising to the audience. He achieves this by looking strangely at himself and his performance. As a result everything put forward by him has a touch of the amazing.’Footnote 2 Brecht also claims that ‘the star places himself at a distance from the role he plays in the manner just described. He guards against making the audience feel exactly what the character is feeling.’Footnote 3
Brecht’s essay, introduced to China in 1951 by theatre director Huang Zuolin, significantly influenced Chinese theatre scholars and practitioners.Footnote 4 Initially met with reverence and an eagerness to integrate Brecht’s ideas into xiqu (traditional Chinese theatre) to counterbalance Stanislavsky’s influence,Footnote 5 a shift had occurred by the late 1990s as scholars began to note inaccuracies in Brecht’s understanding. Tian Min, among others, contends that ‘Chinese acting in fact does not generate anything identical with, or even similar to, the Brechtian A-effect’.Footnote 6 He suggests that Brecht had already developed his estrangement concept prior to encountering Mei, who simply served to reinforce Brecht’s existing ideas.Footnote 7 This observation is partly endorsed by Silvija Jestrovic, who discovers that the idea of estrangement evolved through three stages, with the encounter with Mei being pivotal in developing Brecht’s acting theory.Footnote 8 Intriguingly, Brecht himself recognized potential misinterpretations, once musing in the early version of his essay, ‘On Chinse Acting’ translated by Eric Bentley, ‘we must not allow ourselves to be disturbed at the fact that the Chinese performer creates an impression of mystery for a quite different purpose from any that we can envisage’.Footnote 9 Possibly to mitigate its self-contradicting implications, he removed this sentence in the edited version, which was translated and collected in Brecht on Theatre, edited by John Willet.
Scholarship reveals several critical misconceptions by Brecht regarding xiqu. First, concerning the acting method, xiqu actors may at times empathize with their characters, albeit not necessarily mirroring Stanislavskian psychological realism, contrary to Brecht’s perception that they maintain an emotional distance from their roles.Footnote 10 Second, audiences are often engaged and captivated, not merely detached observers, thus experiencing aesthetic illusion.Footnote 11 Third, Brecht’s inadequate knowledge of xiqu results in misinterpretations of Mei’s performance specifics.Footnote 12
Krabiel suggests that Brecht’s analysis of xiqu with V-effect was not about acquiring authentic theatrical understanding, but rather about refunctioning practical techniques for his epic theatre, especially as a counter to Stanislavsky’s prevailing influence.Footnote 13 Likewise, Tian posits that Brecht, like other Western figures of his time, utilized xiqu primarily as a means to bolster and legitimize his own theoretical pursuits.Footnote 14 Despite these considerations about Brecht’s motivations, the importance of his essay for understanding global theatre history remains undiminished, as it offers valuable insights into the interplay between different theatrical traditions and the evolution of modern theatre. In his essay, Brecht intriguingly writes, ‘The artist’s object is to appear strange and even surprising to the audience.’ What perplexes me is his use of the words ‘strange’ and ‘surprising’. Elsewhere in his writing, one can find more examples, especially relating to actors:
The actors go straight for the effect; that is a healthy goal, they attempt to surprise.Footnote 15
When reading their parts the actors’ attitude should be one of a person who is astounded and contradicts.Footnote 16
In order to establish laws you need to perceive natural incidents with astonishment, as it were; you have to stop treating them as ‘self-evident’, in other words, if you want to gain an understanding of them … The theatre is able to induce this astonished, inventive and critical attitude in its spectators by means of its V-effect …Footnote 17
Brecht’s linguistic choices – ‘surprising’, ‘astounding’ and ‘strange’Footnote 18 – subtly echo an aesthetic dimension of estrangement, mirroring Victor Shklovsky’s belief that art’s true purpose is ‘to create the sensation of seeing, and not merely recognizing, things’.Footnote 19 His concept of ostrannenie, a source of inspiration for Brecht, also paralleled the early twentieth-century Chinese theatre scene, where luminaries like Mei Lanfang endeavoured to mesmerize and challenge audiences through groundbreaking, distinctive performances that embraced aesthetic defamiliarization. Even Stanislavsky’s theatre, according to his critic, Brecht, shared this goal:
[Stanislavsky’s] conceptions are often admirable, the executions almost always astounding. I choose the word ‘astounding’ because his theatrical thoughts, his ‘ideas’ always have an element of the unexpected … It seems to me that he loves to play off the way things really are, against our shallow notions of them; they achieve something surprising because they contrast with theatrical clichés.Footnote 20
What differentiates Brecht’s concept of estrangement from Shklovsky’s, observes Jestrovic, is that Brecht inclines to ‘manipulate the reception … to trigger the audience’s intellectual engagement and communicate a socio-politically charged message’, whereas Shklovsky ‘allows for a freer interplay of sensual, intellectual, and even metaphysical experiences in the reception process’.Footnote 21 This particular contrast, it will be argued, also delineates the differences between Brecht and Mei Lanfang.
Seen from a larger perspective, the thematic resonance of ‘surprise’ is not unique to Brecht; it pervades the narratives of early twentieth-century visual arts, particularly cinema. Chaplin’s silent film, observes Henri Lefebvre, also features surprise: ‘Always surprised, always delighted by the strangeness and richness of things, always awkward when faced with ritualized practices (essential behaviour, necessary conditioning), Chaplin captures our own attitude towards these trivial things, and before our very eyes.’Footnote 22 Interestingly, Chaplin not only inspired Brecht’s theory on theatre and cinema,Footnote 23 but also admired Mei Lanfang’s art after seeing it in 1930. Likewise, Sergei Eisenstein, who had ‘a colossal effect’Footnote 24 on Brecht and was himself influenced by xiqu,Footnote 25 writes about shock in his famous essay ‘The Montage of Attractions’:
An attraction (in our diagnosis of theatre) is any aggressive moment in theatre, i.e. any element of it that subjects the audience to emotional or psychological influence, verified by experience and mathematically calculated to produce specific emotional shocks in the spectator in their proper order within the whole. These shocks provide the only opportunity of perceiving the ideological aspect of what is being shown, the final ideological conclusion.Footnote 26
Eisenstein, like Brecht, also envisions the coexistence of aesthetic and ideological estrangement in attractions that shock the audience.
These artists’ works highlight transmedial and transcultural connections. Chaplin’s shift from vaudeville to filmmaking, Eisenstein’s transition from theatre to cinema, and Brecht’s engagements in both fields illustrate their transmedial explorations. Koutsourakis underscores this by positioning Brecht as a ‘multimedia theorist’,Footnote 27 akin to other modernist artists. Furthermore, the left-leaning ideologies of Chaplin, Eisenstein and Brecht unite them in their diverse artistic pursuits across different cultures. Their convergence aligns with Joseph B. Entin’s concept of ‘sensational modernism’, which describes how these modernists used experimental forms to express the jolts of class, racial and ethnic differences.Footnote 28 This idea underlines the significance of shock not only as a transmedial element but also in its social and political implications.
While the experience of shock was nothing new, the advent of new media amplified and popularized it, giving it a critical role to epitomize ‘the extremes of the modern age’.Footnote 29 Mei Lanfang’s formative years in the 1910s and 1920s also witnessed a vibrant and diverse media landscape in China. In an environment where ‘a collective urge for new sensational experiences of the self through the manipulation’ of new visuals prevailed,Footnote 30 Mei actively embraced this shift to exert a larger influence on his audience. However, as will be shown later, his responses and goals differed from Brecht’s due to distinct conceptualizations of theatre in relation to their respective societies and artistic legacies. Given that Brecht ‘never tried to justify or explain his own relationship to China or Chineseness’,Footnote 31 Hayot maintains that for Brecht ‘China never becomes an idea, a desire, a dream. It remains, even when he misunderstands it, a more or less irrelevant fact.’Footnote 32 This is only partly true, for Hayot overlooks the transmedial and transcultural resonance, which will further explain why Brecht misunderstood Mei, and why Chinese theatre embraced Brecht, despite plenty of mutual misunderstanding.
Cinema, the experience of astonishment and artistic innovation
All the artists mentioned above witnessed the visual turn from the late nineteenth century, with the emergence of photography and cinema reshaping the public’s interaction with both art and life. Walter Benjamin, in ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, highlights the loss of an artwork’s unique aura in the face of reproducibility, while acknowledging the democratization of art access. The advent of new technologies reshaped art’s presentation and its audience interaction, often utilizing elements of shock or awe, particularly in visual expressions. Benjamin astutely contrasts the experiences of viewing a painting and a film. While a painting encourages contemplation and personal association, cinema, with its rapidly changing scenes, disrupts this process. He emphasizes the ‘shock effect’ of film, a result of its constant visual shifts, requiring a heightened awareness from the viewer.Footnote 33
Concurring with Benjamin’s and Eisenstein’s observations, film historian Tom Gunning identifies this shock as ‘not only a mode of modem experience, but a strategy of a modem aesthetics of astonishment’.Footnote 34 Gunning discovers that early twentieth-century cinema audiences were captivated by the medium’s ability to unveil the hidden aspects of life and its semblance of reality, which ignited ‘visual curiosity’ and offered exhilarating spectacles.Footnote 35 He terms this early cinematic style ‘cinema of attractions’, characterized by a focus on visual exhibition over narrative cohesion. Gunning points out that, despite its dominance in cinema’s nascent years – particularly before 1907, which marked the onset of ‘the true narrativization of the cinema’ – its impact lingered,Footnote 36 influencing later works, including possibly those of Chaplin and Eisenstein.
The moving picture with attractions indeed challenged the literary and art communities to rethink their creative techniques. David Trotter, in Cinema and Modernism, articulates that literature and art, influenced by cinematic techniques like montage, delved into fragmented, non-linear narratives, and adopted self-referential and metafictional approaches, which echoed the disorienting and multifaceted nature of early film.Footnote 37 Artistic movements such as Dadaism, Futurism and surrealism thrived, to represent the filmic quality through revolutionizing artistic techniques and philosophy.Footnote 38 The transformative impact of early cinema on the media landscape and public perception brought themes of shock and sensation to the forefront for many artists and art movements.
While Gunning draws upon Eisenstein for his theory of attraction, he does not embrace Eisenstein’s overt ideological leanings, particularly the goal of creating ‘an intellectual cinema that would teach the worker to think dialectically’.Footnote 39 Put simply, attraction may or may not function as a tool for ideological estrangement – a notion equally applicable to cognitive estrangement. Gunning acknowledges that attraction can possess ‘illusory power’,Footnote 40 but at the same time, Bukatman suggests that it shares ‘something of the Brechtian alienation effect’.Footnote 41 This contradiction is rooted in the audience’s experience. Attraction, as a unique kind of enthralling artifact, can, according to Wolf regarding aesthetic illusion, trigger ‘a more or less rational and detached or also a participatory and re-creative interest’.Footnote 42 Thus attraction does not align exclusively with either side of the illusion–estrangement spectrum, but rather intersects with both.
In terms of attraction’s connection with estrangement, Gunning postulates, ‘Attractions are a response to an experience of alienation.’Footnote 43 Essentially, the audience’s initial engagement or attraction is necessary before they can experience estrangement. When faced with the unexpected, this estrangement then leads to renewed attraction. Attraction and estrangement are thus inseparable and intertwined in the spectatorial context. This observation echoes John Fuegi’s emphasis on the oxymoronic but dialectic coexistence of estrangement and attraction in Brecht’s theatre: ‘the “alienating” or “distancing” connotations of [Verfremdung] have virtually squeezed out its oxymoronic connotations of attraction and identification. The term itself … has two complementary though diametrically opposed meanings.’Footnote 44 As will be revealed later, the oxymoronic characteristic of the V-effect would underlie Brecht’s understanding of Mei Lanfang.
According to Brecht, ‘We will be forced to speak through increasingly complex media, to express what we have to say with increasingly inadequate means.’Footnote 45 Given his ‘ongoing and explicit experiment’ with ‘different presentational modes’ provided by new media,Footnote 46 let us reinvestigate his idea of estrangement through the lens of cinema, which has drawn significant scholarly attention in recent years. Despite Brecht’s limited attempts at cinematic productions, which were ‘never all that satisfactory’,Footnote 47 his engagement with cinema was a lifelong devotion.Footnote 48 As a new medium easily accessed by the masses whom Brecht targeted, cinema not only became a major preoccupation before he made his name as a poet and after his exile to the United States, but also infiltrated his theories and practices. Various film sources inspired Brecht, including his own experiences in film-making, Weimar cinema, Soviet avant-garde cinema and American cinema, particularly the work of Chaplin. They not only enriched Brecht’s characterization and choice of subject matter, but also shaped his formal style of storytelling. As Nenad Jovanovic summarizes, ‘Most of the points in Brecht’s texts on cinema written after 1930 … discuss film in relation to the precepts of epic/dialectic theater, usually emphasizing that the latter are equally applicable to the newer medium.’Footnote 49 Jestrovic further asserts that ‘cinematic thinking’ defines Brecht’s theatre of estrangement,Footnote 50 which indicates that cinema was a significant reference point in Brecht’s theatrical reflections.
Since it is beyond this essay’s scope to summarize how Brecht perceived, utilized and participated in cinema throughout his career, here I will stay focused on cinema’s impact on Brecht’s estrangement devices, as he acknowledged: epic theatre ‘owes not a little to the cinema. It made use of epic, gestic and montage elements that appeared in films. It even made use of film itself by exploiting documentary material.’Footnote 51 First, Brecht drew from silent cinema’s exhibitionist tendencies, favouring stylized performance and direct address. As Silberman observes, Brecht adapted silent cinema’s genre conventions, such as sensationalism and eccentric characters, and infused them with humour and irony.Footnote 52 Second, film-makers like Chaplin, his ideal actor for epic theatre,Footnote 53 shaped Brecht’s concept of gestus, which expresses social attitudes through isolated fragments. Brecht acknowledged this influence, stating, ‘The gestural manner of acting owes much to silent film, with elements of it reintegrated into the art of acting. Chaplin … approached the shaping of human behaviour in a novel manner.’Footnote 54 Third, Eisenstein’s montage techniques inspired Brecht to disrupt narrative unity and create shocks through ‘interruption and collision’.Footnote 55 But unlike Eisenstein’s sensory approach in his early works, Brecht aimed for intellectual provocation, which fostered thought and reflection.Footnote 56 Other borrowed techniques from silent film include project titles, expressive acting, a documentary approach to reality and a reduced emphasis on psychology.
Brecht’s vision of theatre spectatorship is deeply entwined with the evolving landscape of media technology. As Silberman remarks, innovations like the emergence of radio broadcasting in 1924 significantly transformed not just artistic creation but also what audiences craved – a craving that increasingly leaned towards the sensational.Footnote 57 Brecht, believing that the theatre ‘is able to induce this astonished, inventive and critical attitude in its spectators by means of its V-effect’,Footnote 58 also followed suit in his new theatre to create shock. As for the significance of shocking the audience, Benjamin states that ‘astonishment is the means whereby epic theatre, in a hard, pure way, revives a Socratic praxis. In one who is astonished, interest is born: interest in its primordial form.’Footnote 59 Amidst tumultuous events in his life, including the 1930s global economic crisis, the collapse of German democracy, the rise of National Socialism, a prolonged exile, the Second World War and the disintegration of the Weimar-era cultural milieu, Brecht felt compelled to ‘repurpose the medium of film’ in his theatre to produce reality.Footnote 60 His progressive theatre, which both attracts and estranges its audience, thus aimed to promote thoughtful contemplation as opposed to mere entertainment or shock, with the ideological goal of inciting intellectual involvement and social intervention.
Attraction and estrangement: early cinema and Brecht’s interpretation of Mei Lanfang
Having linked Brecht’s theory and practice to early cinema’s attraction-oriented approach, I argue that Brecht’s interpretation of Mei drew heavily from early, especially silent, cinema,Footnote 61 which favoured exhibitionist physicality and visually stimulating spectacles over in-depth character development or emotional engagement. Brecht observed that Mei distinctly separates himself from his characters, which leads to two notable points. First, such separation is evident in his reserved facial expressions and reliance on physical gestures for emotional conveyance. Second, Mei’s technique of ‘double showing’ – presenting the content and simultaneously revealing the act of presentation – serves to estrange audiences, encouraging critical thinking. These methods resonate with early cinema, particularly Charlie Chaplin’s works, where his comedies can be viewed as ‘documentaries of “Chaplin being the Tramp”’,Footnote 62 which illustrates the actor–character dichotomy.
Brecht’s scrutiny begins with non-psychological acting. He insists, ‘The Chinese artist’s performance often strikes the Western actor as cold.’Footnote 63 Such coldness pertains to facial expression, as he perceives, ‘The artist has been using his countenance as a blank sheet, to be inscribed by the gestus of the body.’Footnote 64 In other words, it is not the expression but the gestic body that reveals the actor’s attitude, which underpins his theory of epic acting. In a later note, he comments that ‘this does not mean that if he is playing passionate people he himself must be cold. It is just that his feelings should not in principle be those of his character.’Footnote 65 This testifies to his typical emphasis on the actor–character distance: ‘The coldness comes from the actor distancing himself from the character portrayed, along the lines described.’Footnote 66
Brecht’s comments seem contradictory considering Mei’s reputation for nuanced facial expressions. Carola Neher, Brecht’s colleague and co-spectator in Moscow, admired Mei’s facial expressions, describing them thus: ‘The face is as delicate and transparent as porcelain and vividly renders even the tiniest reactions and agitations with model mimic perfection.’Footnote 67 Neher’s appreciation of Mei’s ‘perfect match of pathos and theatricality’ casts a shadow of doubt over Brecht’s critique.Footnote 68
Brecht’s cinematic influences clarify his views on Mei’s acting style. He likens Mei to silent-film actors like Chaplin, and emphasizes an ‘almost complete lack of facial expressions and cheap psychologisms’.Footnote 69 Describing Chaplin’s performance in The Face on the Bar Room Floor (1914), Brecht admires the ‘impassive’ face that achieves artistic purity through simplicity.Footnote 70 This connects to his description of Mei’s ‘blank sheet’ facial expression. Similarly, discussing how the V-effect could occur with actor–character separation, his description of ‘white face’ and mechanicalness sounds like depicting the white-faced, mechanical Charlie: the V-effect ‘does occur if the actor at a particular point unexpectedly shows a completely white face, which he has produced mechanically by holding his face in his hands with some white make-up on them’.Footnote 71 Such separation creates a perceived transmedial link between Mei and Chaplin,Footnote 72 which explains why after treating xiqu as a paradigm for the epic style of acting in his essay, Brecht immediately writes that ‘among modern actors Chaplin is one of its masters’.Footnote 73 This notion is not baseless; the automatic, detached expression seen in their performances emerges from repeated performing conventions. As Flaig formulates it, ‘The epic actor is distracted, performing as if it has been through the motion too many times.’Footnote 74 Such repetition leads to the development of characteristic conventions in both Charlie the tramp and the xiqu actor, which resonates with Brecht’s preferences.
When discussing how theatre could borrow from cinema, Brecht suggests, ‘All motivation from within a character is excluded; the person’s inner life never provides the principal cause of action and seldom its principal result; the person is seen from the outside.’Footnote 75 This further indicates audiences’ objectification of the stage event, with the actor as an observed object, which mirrors the scientific era and silent cinema’s approach. Brecht comments, ‘As soon as the human being appears as an object, the causal connections become decisive. Similarly the great American comedies depict the human being as an object and could have an audience entirely made up of reflexologists.’Footnote 76 This aligns with film scholars’ observations that classical Hollywood cinema favoured an objective, omniscient narration, often limiting itself to external descriptions.Footnote 77 Brecht’s stance encourages a clear separation between the actor’s inner emotions and their outward performance, in order to prevent empathy.
Such emphasis on exteriority applies to performing arts before or beyond psychological realism, including Elizabethan theatre, xiqu or silent cinema. However, not all of them eschew interiority. Taking Chinese acting as an example, the seeming remoteness between real-life individuals, who might be ‘heated’,Footnote 78 and a xiqu actor/character, who is ‘cold’, when confronted with strong emotions does not really fit Brecht’s description. Such discrepancy arises from the traditional use of coded but ‘decorously expressed’ ‘outer signs’ for emotional expression,Footnote 79 and ‘its emphasis is mainly on being beautiful, or aesthetically pleasing’.Footnote 80 Brecht cites an example, probably from Fei Chen-o and the ‘Tiger’ General (Cihu), where excitement is shown by an actor chewing a lock of hair, a controlled, almost ritualistic action.Footnote 81 This restrained style, far from eliciting a dispassionate response, often garners admiration for its skill and emotional resonance. Exaggerated actions in xiqu, like water hair and water sleeves,Footnote 82 powerfully convey interior states and create an emotionally charged, lyrical engagement with the audience. Contradicting the notion of ‘cold acting’ leading to ‘cool’ responses, the affective actor–audience connection blurs easy subject–object distinction.
To further discriminate between Brecht’s perception and the reality in Chinese theatre, we continue with his interpretation of Chinese acting being self-reflexive. He notes that Mei looked strangely at himself and occasionally looked at the audience to invite them to be an observer. Take the description of Mei’s hand in The Drunken Beauty (Guifei Zuijiu) as an example:
Thus if he is representing a cloud, perhaps, showing its unexpected appearance, its soft and strong growth, its rapid yet gradual transformation, he will occasionally look at the audience as if to say: isn’t it just like that? At the same time he also observes his own arms and legs, pointing them out, examining them and perhaps finally praising them … In this way the artist separates mime (showing observation) from gesture (showing a cloud), but without detracting from the latter, because the body’s attitude is reflected in the face and is wholly responsible for its expression.Footnote 83
However, Brecht misunderstands the content of the episode, because instead of representing a cloud, Mei was performing the convention of yunshou (‘cloud hand’).Footnote 84 That aside, Brecht calls Mei’s acting ‘double showing’, which concerns ‘how actors demonstrate the gestures of people in their own way’.Footnote 85 Again, ‘double showing’ resonates strongly with the perception of the cinematic camera. Acknowledging connections between Chaplin’s films and Brecht’s V-effect, Naremore proposes that ‘comedy undermines our involvement with the characters, barely maintaining a dramatic illusion … it does so in a way that invites us to observe plot machinery as machinery’.Footnote 86
In the same vein, Brecht maintains that the audience ‘identifies itself with the actor as being an observer, and accordingly develops the attitude of observing or looking on’.Footnote 87 This corresponds with his idea of spectatorial objectification. Nevertheless, Mei’s ‘observation’ of his body aimed not at estrangement; rather, such suggestive acting encouraged the audience to imagine the objects Mei handled, hence an aesthetic illusion that Brecht believes to be absent in Chinese acting. Knowledgeable spectators familiar with xiqu’s conventions would easily grasp Mei’s suggestion and understand the character, but Brecht, unaware of these nuances, mistook Mei’s observation of his objects for an observation of his body.Footnote 88 As Koutsourakis asserts, ‘the body in early cinema is not taken for granted, but evokes processes of mediation; the Brechtian Gestus intends to achieve an analogous effect and present the body as a medium’.Footnote 89 By extension, Mei’s body is perceived by Brecht as a medium that can be objectified and observed. But he fails to take a further step, for Mei’s suggestive acting actually invites the perceiving spectator into an imaginative realm, which defies the boundary between the subject and the object.
Moreover, Brecht perceives Mei as being akin to a self-aware on-screen character who breaks the fourth wall, looking at the audience, functioning as a prominent interpreter between the represented world and the audience’s perception, producing ‘a double perspective on events and actions’,Footnote 90 hence estranging them from the stage event. Rather than being a character, according to Brecht, the self-conscious actor ‘quotes a character’,Footnote 91 acting as a conduit or vehicle to present and reference established theatrical conventions. This remark echoes Chaplin as well. In his analysis of The Circus (1928), which features several moments of the Tramp directly making eye contact with the audience by staring at the camera, Alex Clayton concludes, ‘Comedic performance crucially exploits the duality of actor–character coexistence in a single embodied figure’.Footnote 92 Such duality works effectively on the audience as a means of direct address; thus Brown, following Clayton, maintains that ‘comic performances are often characterised by a frontal performance style and, as we have seen, are often willing to acknowledge the act of filming’.Footnote 93 Brecht’s words resonate with these observations. He might be correct if the piece was metatheatrical or comedic parody, but none of the plays Mei presented in Moscow was of such a kind.
In Moscow Mei successfully and selectively exhibited the quintessential attractions of xiqu to expert audiences, who were enchanted due to xiqu’s beautiful unfamiliarity. Unbeknownst to many, the rise of visual media in the late nineteenth century had heightened the focus on visual elements in xiqu, a trend that Mei’s Moscow performance further emphasized. Needless to say, the fact that a man played beautiful women, reminiscent of English Renaissance theatre, with or without costume, further functioned as a mysterious spectacle that encouraged the audience’s gaze. This strategy sparked a sense of unfamiliarity in Brecht and affirmed his approach to understanding xiqu within a cinematic framework. However, Brecht’s theoretical and somewhat misconstrued interpretation largely overlooked the societal roles of xiqu. This oversight draws attention to the specific social and historical context that shaped Mei’s artistry.
Attraction as artistic expression: Mei Lanfang’s visual turn
Mei Lanfang’s career, akin to Bertolt Brecht’s, necessitates examination through a transmedial perspective. Emerging from a distinct artistic heritage and social milieu, Mei adapted to the evolving media environment. His work, infused with innovative and sometimes exhibitionist elements, revitalized xiqu for both domestic and international audiences. Generally speaking, Mei shifted xiqu’s emphasis from auditory to visual allure. As Dong Xinyu posits, Mei’s invention of tradition reflected the broader influence of ‘a thriving new visual culture that significantly involved cinema’.Footnote 94 Indeed, cinema shaped Mei’s theatrical techniques, and he recognized the synergy between his film and stage work, noting, ‘For me, my film life and stage life are inseparable’.Footnote 95 Moreover, he was also fascinated by film: ‘I was a regular patron of the cinema over forty years ago. I progressed from watching it on silent films to talking films … I watched films and was influenced by the art of film acting, which enriched my stage art.’Footnote 96
In practice, Mei collaborated with film-makers at various points to document and preserve xiqu, which mirrored the practices of his contemporaries. Foreign films were already being showcased in China as early as 1896, and subsequently domestic film production flourished, including cinematic documentation of xiqu performances. Due to the significant importance of aural effects in xiqu performances, the absence of sound in these early works limited their popularity among general xiqu audiences, who preferred live performances or audio recordings featuring their favourite xiqu stars. Theatre practitioners, too, did not view cinema as a serious platform for experimentation, but rather appreciated its value primarily as a documentary tool. As a result, apart from the extravagant fusion of film clips and theatrical performances on the Shanghai stage, the full potential of combining cinema with xiqu to discover new artistic possibilities remained largely unexplored.
Despite Mei’s claim that his foray into film mainly aimed at documentation, namely giving audiences from remote areas a chance to see him on the screen,Footnote 97 altogether he personally starred in fifteen cinematic productions of his works, among which eleven were shot before 1935.Footnote 98 While Mei’s reception of cinema was not as explicit as Brecht’s, it did have a notable impact on his acting style, which mainly pertained to gesture and facial expression. In terms of gesture, Dong convincingly demonstrates how Mei translated ‘cinema’s choreographic potential’ into his perfection of stage art,Footnote 99 which reveals a subtler reframing of xiqu performance with cinema. In terms of facial expressions, the medium of film required adaptations in acting techniques due to the camera’s close-ups and the need for more subtle expressions compared to the exaggerated gestures necessary in traditional stage performances. As Mei recounts, ‘I watched films and was influenced by the art of film acting, which enriched my stage art. In the early days, I found the facial expressions of film actors to be inspiring.’Footnote 100 As he gained experience in film production, Mei recognized the distinct use of facial expressions and gestures in various media forms:
When shooting black-and-white silent films, it is not only different from stage performances but also distinct from shooting colour sound films today. For facial expressions and actions, one must undergo a refinement and adaptation process for silent films. It involves readjusting the rhythm of inner emotions from everyday life … [and] enhancing the depth of inner performance.Footnote 101
Given Mei’s acute media awareness, it seems natural that he would use cinema innovatively. Seen from a transmedial perspective, Mei’s reception of film stemmed from the larger epochal agenda of the visual turn. Like many other actors, he stressed exhibitionist visuality in stage performances and thus challenged the traditional emphasis on the auditory dimension. But unlike Brecht, who aspired to transform passive bourgeois theatre audiences into active agents capable of changing the world through shocking estrangement, Mei subscribed to visual freshness and novelty to broaden his audience base, which reflects both the influences of his time and his individual artistic choices.
As a teenage apprentice, Mei encountered audience disapproval due to his stony face and stiff body.Footnote 102 This motivated him to diligently refine his visual performance. Eventually, he became renowned for his expressive physicality and captivating stage presence.Footnote 103 Throughout his career, Mei embraced varied roles to leverage his strengths. As a young actor, he innovated theatre to meet cultural and societal needs, creating socially engaged shizhuang xinxi (‘new plays with contemporary costumes’) that attracted urban female audiences, thanks to his unique stage presence. However, he soon ceased these due to their limited artistic value. In the 1920s and 1930s, Mei concurrently led his troupe and served as a cultural ambassador, in order to introduce his art globally. He developed guzhuang xinxi (‘new plays with antique costumes’) to enhance jingju and cater to Shanghai’s visually focused theatre scene. Internationally, especially in the USA and the USSR, where his music and falsetto were less appreciated, Mei accentuated his physical performance.Footnote 104 This dimension, gaining acclaim and scholarly interest from people with cultural capital, reinforced Mei’s preference for visual presentations. He also used photographs of his stage poses for publicity, which bolstered his status as a visual star and a leading performing-arts figure.
As a celebrity and ‘the foremost actor in China’,Footnote 105 Mei never shied away from his responsibility to promote and defend xiqu, especially against sustained criticisms from westernized intellectuals, who viewed him and traditional xiqu as feudal relics needing overhaul or eradication. These intellectuals sought a theatre that would uplift society and its people – a mission Mei initially pursued but eventually set aside.Footnote 106 Instead, aligning with Western modernists, Mei rejuvenated traditional Chinese visual art in his performances and tapped into the growing focus on visual aesthetics. He toured internationally to enchant foreign audiences and critics, in order to counter the negative domestic critiques influenced by foreign views. Under such circumstances, Mei’s continual enhancement of his visual presentation barely aimed at immediate ‘social purposes’ as Brecht envisioned for estranging attractions.Footnote 107 Rather, it mirrored what Brecht termed ‘charm, novelty, finesse, and formalistic frivolity’.Footnote 108 As Ronnie Bai aptly summarizes, both Brecht and Mei sought to stimulate thought, yet Chinese audiences predominantly ‘think more about the form’.Footnote 109
The gap between Mei’s supreme art and perceived lack of sufficient social engagement sparked criticism among some international leftists. Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, a Soviet advocate of socialist realism, insinuated in 1935 that Mei’s art was overly formalistic and disconnected from pressing realities, for according to the doctrine of socialist realism, art thrived on aspirations for a better life.Footnote 110 Brecht echoed similar sentiments: ‘at first sight this superb art seems to offer nothing applicable to a realistic and revolutionary theatre. Against that, the motives and objects of the V-effect strike us as odd and suspicious.’Footnote 111 Brecht was aware that his critique was a projection of his own theatrical ideals onto Mei. In fact, in early twentieth-century Germany and elsewhere in Europe, many audiences were attracted by fairgrounds, which, unlike works by Eisenstein and Brecht, were by no means intended to ‘“shock” the audience into revolutionary awareness and action’, but rather offered programmes to be ‘experienced as pleasant to be popular’.Footnote 112 Indeed, contemporaneous xiqu exemplified by Mei shared closer ties with German popular forms than with the works of Eisenstein or Brecht. As a practitioner who assimilated ‘the open-air circus, and the augsburg fair’,Footnote 113 Brecht was not alien to such connections.
Conclusion
The issue of attraction and estrangement centres on audiences. Brecht and Mei, while addressing vastly different audiences, faced unique challenges: Mei sought to broaden his audience in the face of cultural elites’ criticism, whereas Brecht was exploring his audience for his innovative art. Operating in vastly different cultural and political landscapes, both tackled the task of redefining their theatrical heritage in a new media environment. Brecht, alongside modernists like Eisenstein, employed cinema for transgressive experiments. In contrast, Mei aimed at preserving and modernizing traditional xiqu amid the new media and cultural environment. Brecht sought revolution, while Mei focused on reform; Brecht emphasized ideological estrangement to jolt the audience, while Mei’s performances were designed to enchant artistically. Mei’s unresolved challenge of merging aesthetic excellence with progressive ideology continues to inspire xiqu practitioners, who, drawing lessons from Western theatre, including Brecht, have been striving to modernize traditional xiqu through a blend of innovation and tradition.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
