Snow in August Read Free Page A

years. The names are also semantically significant, as they all point to Zen images and symbols. The song is followed by short sketches made up of koan questions: What is Buddha? Where is Buddha? The answers are implicitly provided by the ensuing scenes—Buddha is everywhere and resides in all things. Buddha can be found in moving and splitting bricks, carrying wooden planks, practicing martial arts, doing acrobatic tricks, performing “face changing,” squabbling with one another, singing songs, and doing crazy things. This is reinforced by Singsong Girl’s repetition of her song at the beginning of the Act, again invoking the names of Huineng’s disciples, the Zen masters who have become Buddhas. Then there is the cat-chasing and fire-setting farce, with many characters running around on stage, culminating in Big Master “chopping” (presumably) the cat into two halves, which is one of the manifestations of “craziness” in the Zen Buddhist repertoire. The finale consists mainly of songs sung by all the on-stage characters: Singsong Girl, Writer, all the monks and laymen.They sing of life and death, sickness and health, war and disaster, and the succession of the old by the new, in other words, all the conditions of being human. Life goes on as it should, and the best attitude is to carry on leading our lives as usual and doing the things we have to do. In this way, one will find Buddha and enlightenment. As Gao says, “Zen does not manufacture mystery; it is an understanding. It is eating, drinking, shitting, pissing, and sleeping as usual. It is only an attitude towards living, a thorough understanding of the world and of life.” (Gao 1992c: 195) The idea is not to strive; with non-action and no-mind, one will achieve enlightenment living in the human world and doing worldly things.
    Gao Xingjian always talks about the creative impulse in terms of an “inner pulsing”:
     
    The making of an artist is due to his ability to relate his shadowy feelings and impulses to observable images. The “aesthetic sphere”( yijing 意境), so valued in Chinese art and poetry, is entrusting one’s mental state to scenery and reaching the spirit by means of images.” (Gao 2001b: 189-90)
    The same principle informs Snow in August , i.e. the spirit of “big freedom” of Zen is revealed through the description of Huineng’s life, the indépendance totale which allows him to act as he pleases to achieve Buddhahood.
    To Gao Xingjian, freedom is of the utmost importance in life as in art. Thus the idea of complete abandonment and the latent anti-establishment inclination of Zen appeal to him tremendously. He values his freedom living in exile in France, and he talks about theatre and freedom in the same breath, hoping that the theatrical form, as performance, can enjoy the same kind of freedom as in fiction, poetry and other literary genres. In his view, the theatre is not free—it is bound by its inherent spatial and temporal limitations, the conventions of scene divisions and the “dead-end alley” of naturalism. In his pursuit of a new theatrical form, Gao strives for the kind of freedom that is not restricted by space or time, something akin to the freedom enjoyed by traditional Chinese opera and literature. When this is accomplished,
     
    all kinds of spatial and temporal relationships are possible in the theatre, interweaving fantasy and reality, recollections and imaginations, thinking and dreams, and symbols and narration. The result is multi-level visual imagery. And when this is accompanied by polyglossia, it will lead to multiplicity, which is more appropriate for the molds of perception and thinking of modern men. (Gao 1988a: 137)
    Gao’s idea of “omnipotent theatre” is associated with and defined by his idea of freedom. As director of Snow in August , he wanted everything to start from zero. He required his actors, who had been schooled in Beijing opera, to “set aside [their] traditional moves and