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Chinese interpret Sartre in "Death Without Burial"
Under the cross-shaped iron weband on the torture desk, the blood-red bottom light illuminates everyone tortured, facing their choices at the moment and for therest of their lives. "The cross-shaped properties stand for the crossroads in one'slife," director Diao Haiming said in the Experimental Theater ofthe Central Academy of Drama (CAD), China's number one dramacollege. Diao used the crosses in one of French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre's "plays of situation," "Death Without Burial," to conveySartre's philosophy that everyone is free to make choices. The play marked the centennial of Sartre (1905-80), and wasplayed in CAD from June 18 to Monday. On the eve of World War II's end, five French guerrillas arecaptured by the fascists and later their leader Juan isanonymously imprisoned into the same jail. Confronted with theenemy's various torture instruments, everyone makes his or herchoice. Saubier cannot bear the torture and keeps the secret by jumping out of the window to commit suicide, and Canori is calm andintends to seek for life by making a false confession in light ofJuan's idea. Francois mentally collapses and is choked to death by hisassociate after planning to confess, and Hanry is so angered byhis associates' doubt that he kills Francois out of indignation. Lucie, Juan's lover and Francois' elder sister, intends to dieafter being raped and her brother's death, but chooses to livefinally; and even Juan is harassed with the choice between thelife of Francois and other 60 guerrillas. "Death Without Burial" is Sartre's first play after WWII.Except Francois, in his opinion, the jailed guerrillas are heroesof existentialism, because they make the right "free choices" inthe "extreme situation." In Sartre's "plays of situation," the playwright is inclined at the beginning to place characters in an "extreme situation," which is full of crises and predicaments, and force them to choose their actions and be responsible for their choices. The point is todemonstrate the bitter courses of making choices and feature theconflict between characters' actions and the environment. "There's no grief to die without burial, which is the choiceand answer of the guerrillas," said director Diao, who held thatthe play has real-life significance today when people around theworld celebrate the 60th anniversary of anti-fascist war's victory. "As material life becomes increasingly better, people cannotevade examining themselves about their life value. They need thesublimation of life and sustenance of soul," he said. When the play debuted in France in the 1950s, the audiencescould not stand the screams during the torture; and when it wasperformed in the National Theater Company of China in late May,the stage effect of blood was also almost too lifelike. Diao's stage, however, was so concise that a leaning iron weband two wooden platforms constitute the main part, with the audio- visual effect moderate. He pursued human nature's full expression. Saubier is an irascible character. He chooses to die aftercoming to know he cannot bear the torture. "The director asked me to show the figure's psychologicalgradation and not to be excited all the time. But I didn't do well in the episode of jumping out of the window when the thoughtchanged too quickly," said Song Hongyi, who acted as Saubier. The director also added a dance of Lucie and Juan in prison toredo the play. "The dance should have been imaginative to servedas a foil to the tribulation and desperation of the characters,"Diao said.
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