Towards a theatre of the tragic: a new critical trajectory for Gao Xingjian’s (post-exile) dramaturgy of the riven self

Abstract

Although the theatre of Gao Xingjian has been widely researched, the tragic potential of his dramaturgy has hitherto received little attention. Scholars have hinted at the possibility of interpreting certain plays by Gao from the perspective of tragedy; however, this suggestion was never developed into a full-fledged theory. Both his pre and post-exile work has been variously categorized as experimentalist, absurdist, grotesque, and Zen, but never as tragic. Existing scholarship focuses mainly on issues of transnationalism and transculturation with regard to dramatic aesthetics and dramatic technique, whereas Gao’s intentional engagement with tragedy as both an art form and a philosophical outlook—which can be traced back to Escape (Taowang1995), inspired by the Tiananmen Square events of 1989—has generally been overlooked. This paper aims to present a new and fresh critical perspective on Gao Xingjian’s (mainly post-exile) dramaturgy of the predicament of modern man through a reexamination of two of its most salient elements: the dramatic technique of shifting pronouns and the performative concept of the “other shore”. By elaborating on Gao’s transhistorical definition of tragedy as the eternal confrontation between the individual and his own Self (“About Escape” 1990), and drawing on selected scholarship on tragedy and the tragic, this paper ultimately characterizes Gao’s plays as “thirdspace tragedies”, owing to the presence—at a subtextual level—of an interstitial psychological field dominated by multiple tensions, lacerations, subjugations and divisions which affect the characters and their relationship to external reality and/or the realm of imagination.