August Phoenix Mercantile

This is Part III of a series of articles that is part theater history, part personal retrospect, from a time long ago when I was known in medieval society as Lao Tao-sheng – “Old One, Born to Tell Tales.” My own story started with performances of Waley’s “Monkey” at medieval themed feasts, and culminated in a “One Monkey Show” – a solo presentation of the first seven stories from “The Journey to the West” over the course of seven hours, one August day circa 1983-85 (memory fails as to the exact date). A synopsis of my resume is included in Part I of this series. Text in bold indicate research notes that I applied to my performances. My personal comments are in italics where I need to differentiate them from my research.

You may recall from my previous post that Chinese drama evolved from the tales told by street storytellers, into a very stylized art form during the medieval period. Emotional expression was emphasized. Stage movement was related to dance; it was rhythmic and symbolic. Every movement had meaning, and no movement was used that did not further enhance the words spoken by the actor.

Character Roles

Chinese actors trained from the age of 8 or 10, and were taught by masters or older actors, who handed down their roles, choreography and music by tradition. Actors were trained in a certain role type that they would play for the entire career. Once a role was chosen for them, that was the only type of role that actor would study and perform.

Roles fell into four basic categories, each with it’s own signature set of movements and gestures:

• Men – scholar, statesmen, patriot, warrior, tramp, thief, servant. An old man was identified by his long, slow and deliberate steps, his hand on his back, his body bent slightly forward. A warrior would take long, high, stomping steps.
• Women – elder noble, coquette, good wife, war heroine, unmarried girl. Women characters walked with tiny steps, barely placing one foot in front of the other, and on the ball of their foot which would cause them to sway a bit, as though their feet were bound. When a female character runs, they do so in curves rather than in a straight line, with body bent slightly towards upraised hands.
• Painted Face – warrior, bandit, official, and gods, both good and evil. Painted Face roles could be portrayed with swagger and exaggerated strength.
• Comic – servant, soldier, mother-in-law, matchmaker and other common folk. Comic roles were often the most recognizable as common folk.

Gestures and Movement

There were 7 basic hand movements, 20 pointing gestures, and 12 proscribed leg movements. Gestures and movements were dictated by the role of the character as well as the mood and situation.

• Pointing was done with your first two fingers held together and pointing, your thumb bent on your ring finger, and your pinkie finger bent.
• Pointing to a city gate was signified by pointing three times in succession to each of the three characters over a city gate, while repeating the characters outloud, often performed in rhythm to music.
• You could also point with your closed fan.
• Of the hand gestures, one of my favorite ways of showing contemplation was to “tap my temple alternately with two fingers and to walk about anxiously” (shown at right) though I often forgot to curl my other hand behind my back at the same time.

Hand gestures also made use of “rippling water sleeves” – the silk sleeves to your undershirt that extended several inches beyond your fingertips:

• To repulse someone, you literally threw your sleeve towards them with an angry glare before turning your head away.
• Bending forward slightly and holding your water sleeves at face height, quivering them, is a sign of fear.
• Water sleeves can also be used as a curtain – suspended between two actors as one turns to the audience or an accomplice to deliver a side comment.
• Weeping can be indicated by bending your head slightly and holding the tip of a sleeve in the other hand and bringing it near your eye, as though you are dabbing tears with a handkerchief.
• Holding your hands together at lip level, as though in prayer, with your sleeves hanging to the outside, and then physically moving forward three times (with a drum beat) signifies ‘giving thanks’ or extending an invitation.
• Standing with your water sleeves hanging straight down at your sides, indicates that you are a ghost. So unless you have died on stage, never do that!

Pantomime also factored in heavily in the absence of stage sets, and included expressions still used by modern day mimes:

• Extending your hands in front of you to ‘open or close a double door’
• Raising your foot to step ‘over a threshold,’ or raising your foot repeatedly to indicate ‘climbing stairs or a mountain.’
• Suicide was played out by jumping off a table and landing on your back.
• An actor exiting the stage in a long leap might indicate a drowning, or a defeat in battle.
• A long journey was symbolized by circling the stage.
• Entering the stage and then standing on a chair at center stage symbolizes riding on a cloud.

Hand props and banners

• A single banner indicated 1,000 soldiers. A blue cloth painted as a wall could indicate a fort or a mountain pass. A pair of yellow flags painted with wheels served as a chariot or a wagon. A banner painted with fish indicated a river. Streamers carried by an actor who was running, indicated wind.
• Carrying a whip indicated that the actor was mounted on horseback.
• In stage fighting, weapons never touched an opponent’s body. War was carried out as acrobatics with weapons made from bamboo, rattan or wood. A spear could be thrown and caught by the actor who was ‘killed’, and both actors would run off the stage. A corpse could be indicated by a paddle wrapped in a garment.
• Tables and chairs indicated indoor scenes but could also be used to indicate things like a cloud or Monkey’s Iron Bridge. A pair of chairs back to back could indicate a wall, a single chair the door of a prison.
• A curtain hung from a bamboo pole could symbolize a general’s tent or an emperor’s bedroom.
• A fan held beside your face showed that you were standing bareheaded in the sun
• A parasol signaled a monsoon, white paper falling from a parasol indicated snow.

...On two sides were posted scores of celestial sentinels,
Each of whom, standing tall beside the pillars,
Carried bows and clutched banners.
All around were sundry divine beings in golden armor,
Each of them holding halberds and whips,
Or wielding scimitars and swords...

Mimicry and Repetition – my recollections

I was living in Steilacoom, WA at the time, just me and my first husband in a house of many rooms. We converted one of those rooms into a gym, and I covered an entire wall with mirror tile so I could apply my learnings to my rehearsals. I was limited on the amount of staff work I could do for lack of a higher ceiling, but I could work on most other things. Over and over again, 2+ hours a day with more on weekends, practicing hand movements, postures and choreography. All in all, my One Monkey Show took about a year and a half to prepare for.

I remember spending Saturdays watching Chinese costume dramas on the International Channel. They were in Chinese, and rarely had subtitles but the writing was so formulaic you could get the jist of the plot after having seen a dozen or so films. Warrior monks spun sideways through the air and off of impossibly high buildings as they fought their opponents. Generals stomped around with serious facial expressions, growling voices and fierce gestures. Concubines peeked coyly from behind their water sleeves, speaking in lilting high pitched voices and laughing in tones that sounded like falling water. Young scholars walked with determination and a whiff of naivety. Heroes did what heroes do, and fools were downright vaudevillian. Each role had specific vocal intonations, physical movements, gaits, and gestures that defined their characters.

I tuned in to a couple of martial arts competitions, where several of the entrants (both male and female) performed “Monkey-style” kung fu, both with and without staff work. My library would expand over the next several months with booklets that would detail the basic movements of houquan (Monkey-style), zuijiuquan (Drunkard’s Boxing) and hung chia (Double-end staff) which I would practice mid-week with a friend whose name was Draggi, and by myself on weekends, whenever I could find an open field while camping with the medieval society.

“The Dragon King took Wu-k’ung to the sea treasury, where there was a huge pillar, some twenty feet long…Near one end was an inscription which read: “Golden Clasped Wishing Staff: weight 13,500 pounds…” All the inhabitants of the palace watched Monkey display his magic staff, making thrusts and passes as he walked along…

One lucky weekend, the Chinese Peking Opera Company of Chongqing made Seattle their third stop on their first North American tour, and gave four performances at our Opera House which included “Sun Wu Kong, the Monkey King, probably the most appealing Peking Opera character for Westerners…” The story they presented was the “Banquet in the Peach Garden” which was one of my favorite tales. The reporter for the Seattle Times wrote: “The Monkey King sounds like W.C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin and Shakespeare’s Prospero all wrapped up in one character.” It as a traditional performance, leaning heavily on costume, makeup, stylized movement and acrobatics, against a curtained backdrop and augmented with a few banners and hand props. I would never gain the acrobatic skill and fine-tuned gestures and expressions that this Monkey showcased, but it was pretty wonderful to see a live performance..

Altogether, these resources provided a veritable live-action library that I could learn from through mimicry and repetition.

Materials I referred to in this chapter include:

• The Journey to the West: Volume I, translated by Anthony C. Yu, University of Chicago Press, 1977
• The Classical Theatre of China by A.C. Scott, Greenwood Press Publishers, Westport, Connecticut, 1957
• Chinese Theater by Kalvodova Si s-Vanis, Spring Books, London, 1957
• “The Art of Spectacle” – a review of the Chinese Peking Opera Company at the Seattle Opera House, by Wayne Johnson, Times drama critic, The Seattle Times (date unknown).
• Various Chinese costume dramas and martial arts competitions aired on International TV (dates unknown)

“What I would learn next along this way, will be explained in the next chapter…”

• 

• 

This is Part II of a series of articles that is part theater history, part personal retrospect, from a time long ago when I was known in medieval society as Lao Tao-sheng – “Old One, Born to Tell Tales.” My own story started with performances of Waley’s “Monkey” at medieval themed feasts, and culminated in a “One Monkey Show” – a solo presentation of the first seven stories from “The Journey to the West” over the course of seven hours, one August day circa 1983-85 (memory fails as to the exact date). A synopsis of my resume is included in Part I of this series. Text in bold indicate research notes that I applied to my performances. My additional comments are in italics where I need to differentiate them from my research.

A Big Gift of a Small Book

You will recall that my introduction to the “Tales of Monkey” took the form of a 5″x7″ book, containing 305 fragile pages of Arthur Waley’s translation of a much larger work attributed to a 16th century poet by name of Wu Ch’eng-en. The Waley book has no copyright or publishing information and my only clue to it’s age is the introduction written by Dr. Hu Shih, dated December 15, 1942.

It began with the following passage:

“There was a rock that since the creation of the world had been worked upon by the pure essences of Heaven and the find savours of Earth, the vigour of sunshine and the grace of moonlight, till at last it became magically pregnant and one day split open, giving birth to a stone egg…”

Excerpts from this first chapter of Waley’s book formed the framework of my first Monkey Tale performance.

A few months later, another gift arrived. It was “The Journey to the West” by Wu Ch’eng-en, translated by Anthony C. Yu. It was the first full translation of the original work, which took Dr. Yu six years to complete, and which filled four volumes and nearly 2,000 pages.

The poetry in the Yu translation, that Waley had eliminated from his, was absolutely enchanting:

...Soaring peaks arise from the Sea of the East. 
There are crimson ridges and portentous rocks.  
Precipitous cliffs and prodigious peaks.
Atop the crimson ridges, Phoenixes sing in pairs;
Before the precipitous cliffs, the unicorn singly rests...
Green pines and cypresses keep eternal their spring...
Within a single gorge the creeping vines are dense;
The grass color of meadows all around is fresh.
This is indeed the pillar of Heaven, where a hundred rivers meet...

The stories were filled with such lyrical text and descriptive poetry, that it would inspire me to start committing them to memory, performing them as single stories at medieval events, and then, eventually, seven stories, back to back, during that day-long One Monkey Show.

About “The Journey to the West“

“The Journey to the West” is considered one of the four most famous classic folk novels in Chinese literature. It is a 100 story allegory based on the travels of a monk who traveled west from China to India in search of Buddhist scripture. It is a mix of high fiction and religious doctrine, which some scholars believe was written with the intent of teaching morality and virtue. Although the monk, who would later become known as Tripitaka, was born into a Confucian family and became a Buddhist, many of the allegorical references in Wu Ch’eng-en’s work are based on Taoist philosophies which sometimes wander down mystical paths. Those who are familiar with the Eastern philosophies of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism will not be surprised by this intermingling of doctrines.

As I stated in Part I of this series, authors of Chinese literature often built upon the stories handed down through generations. Keeping the traditions of the Song Dynasty storytellers, authors further embellished these stories with their own prose and poetry, based in lyric styles of rhyming quatrains of 5-7 syllable lines (which is why I also ended up studying Chinese lyricism during my preparation of these stories). “The Journey to the West” combines prose and a great deal of beautiful poetry. Poetry was used as the more descriptive vehicle, while prose tyed the poetry together and supported the narrative.

To get into why a set of fictional animal characters came to be the protectors of a Buddhist monk, and why those characters have become more popular than the real-life person the tales are based on, would take us deeper into the rough than I want to go in this synopsis. For those readers who are interested, I refer you to the 62 page Introduction in the first volume of Yu’s translation.

Putting literary analysis aside, I enjoy the flow of Wu Ch’eng-en’s narrative style and the incredible beauty of his poetry, as well as the touches of magic and alchemy that thread through his tales. I hope that’s what held my audiences to these stories as well.

A column of rising white rainbows,
A thousand fathoms of dancing waves---
Which the sea wind buffets but cannot sever,
On which the river moon shines and reposes.
Its cold breath divides the green ranges;
Its tributaries moisten the blue-green hillsides.
This torrential body, its name a cascade,
Appears truly like a hanging curtain.

About Wu Ch’eng-en

Although there have been several versions of “The Journey to the West” written by multiple authors over a number of centuries, the most famous version (and the version I work from) is attributed by most literary experts to Wu Ch’eng-en.

Wu Ch’eng-en was a novelist and poet, educated as a Confucian. He was born in Jiangsu Province in about 1504, and died there in 1582. He spent some of his life in the lower echelons of civil service, never including as a resident scholar at the University of Nanjing. In addition to “The Journey to the West” he wrote several poems and other works in prose, some of which were critical of society’s corruption. He became dissatisfied with the political climate and lived his later years as a hermit artisan.

About Tripitaka, on whom the work is based

The “Journey to the West” is loosely based on the pilgrimage of Hsuan-tsang, a 7th century monk who disobeyed Emperor T’ai-tsung, and left China in the dead of night to travel West to India in search of Buddhist scripture. He returned to the Chinese city of Chang’an after a trek that took 16 years and covered 10,000 miles.

Hsuan-tsang was 27 years old when he started out from Chang’an, hiding by day and traveling by night on horseback. He crossed the Taklamakan Desert and passed through the Jade Gate that marked the furthest edge of T’ang Dynasty China, and onto the Northern Silk Road, along the base of the T’ien Shan Mountains. He would pass through Samarkand and other cities with his small caravan before crossing the T’en Shan mountains into India. Like Marco Polo would do centuries later, Hsuan-tsang recorded his impressions down to the most minute detail. He spent two years in Kashmir studying Buddhist doctrine under the tutelage of a sage, before spending a dozen or so years circumnavigating the entire Indian continent. He studied Sanskrit at Nalanda Monastery, a famous enclave for Buddhist monks. He met with kings, khans and leaders of his faith, and at times served as an emissary. He became one of the greatest metaphysicians in medieval Buddhist history.

He left India after 14 years, returning to China in 645 CE. He arrived with several statues of Buddha in a variety of sizes and materials, and a library of 657 books. He recorded his travels in the “Record of the Western Region” which took him a year to write. He would leave behind a legacy that included contributions to Indian history, archaeology, Chinese literature, and his translations of Buddhist scripture. His travels would become glorified and handed down as folktale and legend, culminating in one of China’s most famous works, and the evolution of The Monkey King as a national folk hero. His own name would be replaced with “Tripitaka” – which translates into “the three baskets of Buddhist wisdom.”

Gold Cicada was his former divine name.
As heedless he was of the Buddha's talk.
He had to suffer in this world of dust,
To fall in the net by being born a man...
...Declining office, he wished to be a monk,
To seek at Hung-fu Temple the Way of Truth,
A former child of Buddha, nicknamed River Float.
His religious name was Ch'en Hsuan-tsang.

About my own journey with “The Journey”

As the stories in the Yu translation are quite lengthy, I edited them to shorter versions, retaining as much of the poetry as I could, with just enough narrative to tie the poetry together and keep the plot intact, while removing the repetitive phrasing that Wu Ch’eng-en utilized. I also kept audience attention span in mind. I had learned early on that it is better to keep an audience wanting more, than to bore them with a single story that runs too long.

I worked to commit the scripts to memory, 2-3 hours a day, one page at a time, by sheer repetition. I would repeat it over and over on my daily commutes, moving on to the next page only after I could recite the previous page, literally in my sleep. Sleep itself became a secret weapon…I recorded script onto a pocket dictaphone, which had a place on my pillow and which would continue to play even after I had fallen asleep. It’s amazing how much you can memorize when you let your sub-conscious do the heavy lifting…

…While Monkey King was fighting his way out of the city, he was suddenly caught on a clump of grass, and stumbled. Waking up with a start, he realized that it was all a dream…

The Journey to the West,, Chapter Three

Committing each story to memory took 4-6 weeks. Those who attended the One Monkey Show may recall that I read some passages. Wherever the story had a character reading from a book, register, summons or invitation list, I worked that into my performance. So out of those 7 hours, I estimate that I committed just under 6 hours of script to memory.

Materials I referenced in this chapter include:

• The Journey to the West: Volume I, translated by Anthony C. Yu, University of Chicago Press, 1977
• Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road, by Sally Hovey Wriggins, Westview Press, 1996
• China Travel Depot and Wikipedia.com (for the biographical information about Wu Ch’eng-en).

“What I would learn next along the way, will be explained in the next chapter…”

In the early 1980’s, Master Payne introduced me to a medieval society known as the SCA. About a year in, and leaning on my strengths in Shakespearean soliloquy from my high school days, I decided to develop a persona as a 13th century storyteller. I began telling Tibetan creation stories at feasts and bardic competitions before my brother Payne gifted me with a copy of “The Adventures of Monkey“ by Arthur Waley. It whetted my appetite and I started to search for the source material for Waley’s translation, which segued into a deep dive into the study of Chinese street theater and associated art forms that would coalesce in the 16th century into what is know known as “Beijing Opera.”

This is Part I of a series of articles that is part theater history, part personal retrospect, from a time long ago when I would become known in medieval society as Lao Tao-sheng – “Old One, Born to Tell Tales.” My own story started with performances of Waley’s “Monkey” at medieval themed feasts, and culminated in a “One Monkey Show” – a solo presentation of the first seven stories from “The Journey to the West” over the course of seven hours, at a medieval event called Ducal War, at a park in Oregon, on a weekend in August circa 1983-85 (memory fails as to the exact date…). I would continue to present singular stories for “A Winter’s Court” for KCTS TV in Seattle in 1985, and at the World’s Fair in Vancouver BC in 1986, and at a living history demonstration at the “Nomads of Eurasia” exhibit in Los Angeles in 1989. I shelved my actor’s arts in the mid 1990s in favor of other, less arduous pursuits.

Text in bold indicate research notes that I applied to my performances. My personal comments are in (italics) where I need to differentiate them from my research.

An Exceedingly Brief History of Drama in Medieval China, and how it inspired me to tell the Tales of The Monkey King.

Theater in China evolved, as it did in many cultures, from the masked song-dances of religious festivals. The earliest documented examples in China date to about the 3rd century BCE. Dance was always combined with spoken verse and song, and were considered to be inseparable.

During the T’ang Dynasty (7th-10th century) short stories called marvel tales evolved. Often written as one-act dialogs. the marvel tales added to the development of narrative techniques, and later served as the material on which the plots of full dramas were based. The earliest form of what we now identify as drama, is attributed to Emperor Hsuan Hsung, known as Ming Huang (712-54 AD). He founded the “Academy of the Pear Orchard,” in his pear garden in Ch’ang-an, where actors and singers were trained to perform at Court. Ming Huang is regarded as the patron saint of theater in China; it is said that even now, before going on stage, actors burn incense in front of his image that hangs in greenrooms in playhouses across China.

By the Song Dynasty (10th-13th century) the components of full drama were well established. Stories had dramatic plots and included singing with instrumental accompaniment. Dialog, dance, costume and makeup became essential elements of storytelling.

My specific field of study was the Yuan Dynasty (13-14th century) when the Mongols ruled China under the reign of Kublai Khan, and later Tamerlane. By this time, opera was was starting to replace dance as the popular form of performing art. Medieval Chinese Opera was evolving into a composite of drama, music, dance, martial arts and acrobatics which told stories of love, court intrigue, histories and fables.

It was during this time that the “tsa chu drama,” or miscellany play, evolved. These plays were based on well known tales and legends told by the balladeers and storytellers of the streets and marketplaces. Working with the audience’s familiarity of a story, the playwright would elaborate on the plot for dramatic effect. Audiences in turn, would be both highly receptive and demanding (not unlike the audiences who would attend the plays of William Shakespeare and Ben Johnson two centuries later).

Many of the Yuan tsa chu plays were written in and around the Mongolian capital of Khanbalik (modern day Beijing). Scholars theorize that when the Mongols invaded China and Kublai Khan replaced Chinese government officials with his own people, the displaced scholars – now forced into retirement – channeled their time and education into developing the two literary forms that would become the hallmarks of artistic achievement in China during the Yuan Dynasty – the novel and the drama.

The novel developed from the oral traditions (which I assume includes the marvel tales) of the storytellers. Each chapter began with “honored reader, you will recall how…” and ended with “honored reader, if you want to know what happens next, please listen to the explanation in the next installment” (a variant of this is how I ended nearly every Monkey story I told to my audiences.)

The Yuan tsa chu dramas formed the basis of what would become the modern day Beijing Opera. Plots for these dramas were drawn from historical sources both real and legendary. Ancient Chinese history was written with fact and myth combined (a thing held in common with the Arthurian legends of the British Isles). Classic themes were always historical in nature, tended towards the fundamental conflicts in life, and were used as an educational tool to teach both history and virtue (similar to the morality plays of ancient Greece). Plays were not categorized as comedies / tragedies, but fell under two categories: 1) civil themes of love, court family life, with spoken verse interlaced by songs that were accompanied by stringed instruments, and 2) plays devoted to themes of war, with acrobatic dance battles and duels, accompanied by percussion instruments.

Two distinctive styles of drama evolved. Northern dramas were often tragedies, with simple music played predominantly on lute. Southern plays were written in a series of shorter acts which resulted in productions that could be several times longer than their Northern counterparts. Duets and choruses were introduced in the Southern version, and plays had happy endings, with the actors accompanied with soft and melodic music played on flute. These plays presented as a series of fairy tales, and made storytellers prevalent.

Southern style Tsa chu dramas would often take 6-7 hours to perform. Rather than presenting one work in its entirety, a selection of scenes from several plays would be performed. Costumes were based on palace dance costume and court clothing. Makeup included substances such as chalk powder, ink and soot. Stage sets were minimal; action took place on a stage which was dressed with a painted backdrop, and an occasional table or chair. Hand props included fans, banners, fly-whisks and stylized weapons.

Medieval Chinese drama evolved around the skill of the actor, and audiences would often go to a playhouse to see a particular actor rather than a specific story. The most important actors were those who played heroes, generals or imperial officials. Women’s roles were not considered important prior to the 20th century.

Playhouses in China began as simple raised stages, surrounded on three sides by the audience. Beginning in temple courtyards, the theater later fell under the the patronage of the Royal Court (I assume sometime after Emperor Ming Huang’s ‘Pear Orchard Academy’ during the T’ang Dynasty). Traveling troupes (not unlike Europe’s troubadours) would travel from town to town and perform at festivals in the towns, on stages of wood and bamboo that could be disassembled quickly. Permanent theater structures seem to have evolved closer to the 16th century and were born from teahouses, where patrons would eat, drink, and chat with friends while watching the drama of the day. In fact, they weren’t called theaters, but rather ‘tea gardens.’

The theater was attended by both the educated class and the general populace. The starkness of the empty stage served to contrast the makeup, costume and acting style of the performer. Every gesture, facial expression, vocalization and gait, and by extension, costumes and makeup were symbolic. Medieval Chinese drama evolved from the tales of the early street storytellers, into a formal and stylized art form by the 16th century, which is where my brief history ends.

One of the aspects of my One Monkey Show that I tried to impress on attendees, was that they were not expected to stay for the entire production. I encouraged them to bring food and drink, and converse with friends, and come and go as they pleased. I was frankly pretty surprised when just over half of the audience stayed put for the entire performance.

My sources for this installment include:

• “The Classical Theatre of China” by A.C. Scott, Greenwood Press Publishers, Westport, Connecticut, 1957, which I recommend highly to any student of medieval Chinese drama.
• “The History of Chinese Dance” by Wang Kefen, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing,1985.
• Personal notes from sources I did not note and which I can no longer remember…

“Honored readers – if you want to know how this story progresses, please patiently wait for the next installment…”