From Chinese teaching to cross-domain aesthetics—drama as a method
Associate Professor Luo Shilong, Department of Chinese Literature, National Tsing Hua University
Chinese language proficiency is a basic quality for citizens, and Chinese language teachers and students trained by teachers’ training universities will be key figures in front-line Chinese language teaching in the future. Therefore, the thinking that teachers and students learn and are exposed to during the development process will determine their classroom practice methods and results. On the other hand, the content and teaching material design of the current national education also affect the way of thinking of teacher students to a considerable extent. After all, most students who choose teacher training courses at the university level have only graduated from high school in just a few years. For the Chinese Department of National Normal University, which participates in the Ministry of Education's cross-field aesthetic project, the biggest challenge and task is to find the endpoint that can be connected with art in the existing Chinese language knowledge of teachers and students. This article will use the experience of the Chinese Department of Tsinghua University in implementing a cross-field aesthetic project to illustrate the practices that can be tried in the Chinese language field of Normal University.
The distance between Chinese language and literature and art is actually not that far apart. In terms of the texts used in Chinese language teaching, the four most common genres are novels, poetry, drama, and prose. Among them, drama is a genre that spans language learning and artistic practice. It can be appreciated as a pure literary work or as a comprehensive artistic presentation, including physical performance, music and vocal performance, stage and costume art design, etc. In other words, if we expect teachers and students in the field of Chinese language to introduce artistic beauty into the Chinese teaching scene in the future, the easiest genre to enter in theory is drama.
In the second semester of the 2019 academic year, the author offers two drama-related elective courses at the Chinese Department of Tsinghua University, namely "Modern and Contemporary Chinese Drama" and "Selected Readings in Western Drama." In response to the government's bilingual education policy, "Modern and Contemporary Chinese Drama" is taught in English, and the texts used are Chinese dramas translated into English, such as Gao Xingjian's "Station", Cao Yu's "Thunderstorm" and other classics. "Selected Readings in Western Drama" is taught in Chinese, and the texts used are Western drama masterpieces that have been translated into Chinese, including the Greek tragedy "Medea", Shakespeare's "Macbeth", Ibsen's "A Doll's House", etc. These two courses are offered in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature. Students taking the courses are not limited to the Department of Chinese Language and Literature. They include students from the bachelor's class of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (regardless of department), the School of Education, the School of Science and Technology Management, and the School of Art, which also include Teachers and students in the field of Chinese language.
Generally, the courses in the Chinese Department focus more on the understanding and reading of words. They are training based on literature and strengthen students' use of words as a tool for ideological carriers. Because of the implementation of a cross-disciplinary aesthetic project, the author not only focuses on the literary value of drama texts, but also attempts to allow non-drama major students to discover the connection between Chinese courses and artistic expression through various course activities. The following sub-items describe the aesthetic experience activities planned by the above two courses in response to course needs and cross-field concepts.
1. Modern and contemporary Chinese drama
This course is taught in English. One of the main reasons is that we hope that students can consciously slow down their reading speed when reading non-native texts, and then think about the concepts and spiritual beauty behind the language. In other words, the author hopes that during this operation, I can work with students to find the literary and artistic beauty that transcends language surface and is hidden under the structure of Chinese and Western languages. On the other hand, the author also hopes that students will find other ways of interpersonal communication besides language, including body, expression, voice, etc., and this relies on the stimulation of imagination and the concretization of aesthetic images. Just like when we watch foreign dramas, sometimes we don’t necessarily need to be proficient in the language, but we can still achieve a tacit understanding of common communication through the actors’ bodies, expressions and voices. This tacit understanding depends on the relationship between the actor and the viewer. Sharing and exchange of aesthetic experiences.
In order to design drama teaching activities in English and provide students taking courses mainly in the Chinese Department and Humanities and Social Sciences field to develop aesthetic expression methods, this course cooperates with local theater troupes to conduct the following two English drama workshops.
(1) English as a Lingua Franca in Theater? (English as an international language in drama?)
This activity is led by Chongtham Jayanta Meetei, the artistic director and director of Miaoli EX-Asia Theater Company, and the course is held in the classroom of Tsinghua University. The core question of event design is: if we regard English as an international language, then what is the "international language" in drama? Is English the only way to understand drama from around the world? The answer is obviously not. Director Jiang Tanjiayan uses the "Essence Theater" training method developed by him and the troupe members in recent years to break down the dramatic actions into a coding method like a dance score, and accurately control the emotion and energy contained in each line. That is to say, performance is not just a creative process based on feeling, but also highly technical. This training method is similar to opera and classical dance. After careful reading of the text and analysis and judgment, the body is used as a carrier of encoding to accurately reproduce the conclusions deduced in the process of reading the text. For many Chinese language students, they used to interpret drama texts based on personal emotions or literary theory, and regarded drama as a purely literary creation. EX-Asia Theater Company's method allows students to use their bodies to create language that can convey the ideas of the text. Through such exercises, students clearly realize that the beauty of a drama text is not necessarily determined by words, but can be expressed through physical words.
(2) Energy on Stage and Sensory Experiences (Energy on Stage and Sensory Experiences)
This activity is led by Xiao Wenxin, a teacher from Hsinchu's "Otherwise. Plan B" theater troupe, and the course is held in the troupe's rehearsal and performance space. Mr. Xiao graduated from the Drama Department of Taipei University of the Arts. This activity uses basic body exercises, from lying down, walking, running, jumping, etc., to the use of sound and energy. For most Chinese students who have no drama performance experience, through the energy consumption and integration of the body, when corresponding to the lines of the drama text, they can more clearly understand the rhythm and speed of the drama text. A dramatic text is not just a series of words conveying ideas, but the words themselves are musical (speed, rhythm, volume, etc.). Through such exercises, students can transform text into imagination and aesthetic expression of three-dimensional space during the reading process.
From Chinese language learning to drama texts, and then from dramatic performance on the stage back to the text itself, Chinese students in non-art subjects also have the experience of cross-domain aesthetics, and this experience is based on the ability of Chinese language. Through the conversion between languages, students can develop their multi-level imagination about the beauty of language. Does language only have the function of conveying meaning? Can language also be used as a tool or carrier of beauty? If human communication and dialogue are musical, is the element of language also a musical note that can be used to convey emotions and feelings? These cross-media, cross-discipline, cross-language, and cross-genre exercises allow students in the Chinese Department to experience the "beauty of language" from another dimension.
2. Selected Readings from Western Drama
Compared with modern and contemporary Chinese drama, Western drama is a relatively unfamiliar field for students of the Chinese Department. However, whether it is Greek drama, Shakespeare, or even playwrights such as Beckett and Ibsen, they have deeply influenced the theater culture and performances in today's world. Through the reading of Western dramas, it helps students build a bridge between literature and artistic beauty. The school where the author teaches does not have a drama department, nor does it have a professional venue sufficient to provide drama teaching. Fortunately, thanks to the funding subsidy for cross-field aesthetic education, it is possible to plan a number of aesthetic activities based on drama for teachers and students. The following is a brief description of the sub-items:
(1) Clown performance and mime art
This course activity is led by Teacher Tan Tian, a lecturer at National Taiwan University of Arts, and the course is held in a classroom on Tsinghua University. Teacher Tan Tian studied in France and studied at the drama school founded by the famous mime master Jacques Lecoq for many years. Mime performances have a long history in human history. As early as the Greek era, there were so-called "mime" (mime) performances, which gave rise to the drama theory of "mimesis" (imitation). For students who are not in the Department of Foreign Languages or the Department of Drama, Western classics are an asset shared by mankind, and learning Western drama classics is one of the ways to broaden your horizons. However, before entering into the reading of language and characters, how do people communicate with each other? Why can people feel emotions such as humor, tension or fear without using words in certain situations? How do these "non-verbal" five senses and six senses come about? Teacher Tan Tian uses basic mime and clown exercises to allow students to create a set of communication vocabulary that can be understood by each other through body movements, expressions, movement, distance, etc.
For students who are accustomed to and good at text reading (especially Chinese students), can non-text methods also be effective in expressing meaning? Or can it create an "intentional" effect? In fact, in daily communication, we often need non-verbal methods (such as expressions, body movements, gestures, etc.) to assist the meaning of language. Even conversely, the same language content may be different due to non-verbal elements. The differences caused communication ambiguity. Teacher Tan Tian's clown and mime exercises provide students with opportunities to reflect on the efficacy of language based on non-verbal language. From language to non-language, thinking content needs to be transformed into various explicit images through artistic means. This creative process is enough to provide a cross-field aesthetic connection for students in non-art subjects.
(2) Oral expression and text practice
This course activity is led by Qiu Ling, a teacher from the Hsinchu "Otherwise. Plan B" theater troupe, and the course is held in the troupe's rehearsal space. Teacher Qiu Ling graduated from the Institute of Drama at Taipei University of the Arts. He is now a full-time actor and a lecturer in acting courses at Shih Hsin University. He has rich experience in drama performance and teaching. This course activity is mainly to help students understand the text and imagine the situation when reading drama texts, and then turn the text into expressive stage language. This is a common training in performance courses in general drama departments, but it is a relatively rare experience for students in non-arts departments. Why do the same dramatic texts often produce very different effects among viewers when read by different students? In addition to the emotion contained in the language itself, it also involves the frequency, speed, pauses, etc. of the sound, which can create different auditory aesthetics from the same words. In line with the progress of this course, the text chosen by Teacher Qiu Ling is the passage in the Greek tragedy "Media" in which the male and female protagonists quarrel due to changes in their feelings. The students presented in groups, in the empty space of the theater troupe, how to make full use of language effects to guide the audience into the dramatic situation without props and decorations? Through this practice process, students can not only better grasp the beauty of drama genres and bring drama texts into future teaching fields; on the other hand, they can also strengthen their understanding of the beauty of language, which will help them teach Mandarin in the future. When reading teaching materials, you can analyze the aesthetic power of the language itself.
It is worth mentioning that "Otherwise. Plan B Theater" is a sub-troupe of the local performance group "Corn Chicken Children's Theater" in Hsinchu. It mainly focuses on the creation and performance of youth dramas, and uses teenagers as the main performers, allowing Teenagers find their connection with the outside world during dramatic activities. This project plans to hold classes at the troupe twice in the 109 academic year. In addition to allowing students from Tsinghua University to enter the community and understand local cultural development, more importantly, most of the teachers and students participating in the courses are in the secondary education field. Through the interaction with the "Otherwise. Project B Theater Company", not only did I practice drama exercises in the classroom, but I also learned about drama as a connecting point between Chinese and art teaching, which laid the foundation for bringing drama into the country, high school Chinese and cross-disciplinary teaching fields in the future. The foundation was laid.
(3) Theater as a hub between "local" and "international" - starting from the cross-cultural journey of EX-Asia Theater Company
This course activity is jointly led by director Jiang Tanjiayan, artistic director of Miaoli EX-Asia Theater Company, and teacher Weng Dailian, an actor of EX-Asia Theater Company. The event takes place in the rehearsal and performance space of the theater company. With the financial support of the cross-disciplinary aesthetic education project, we were able to bring the entire class from Hsinchu to Miaoli through off-campus teaching, allowing the students to personally experience the feeling of rehearsing in a theater troupe. Although Miaoli is only a stone's throw away from Hsinchu, it is an area that most students (especially non-Hsinchu local students) have little contact with. This activity is in line with the progress of the "Selected Readings in Western Drama" course. The main question is about the company's transnational productions, especially the company's Shakespeare production: For a theater company located in a non-metropolitan area, why would it want to perform Shakespeare, a world classic? drama? How does local culture connect with Western classics? Does director Jiang Tanjiayan's background of growing up in India and studying in Singapore inject an international perspective into the theater company's production? What is international? What is locality? Interestingly, when the troupe performs Shakespeare plays, the audiences who come to watch are not limited to Miaoli, but include audiences in Taipei, Taichung and other urban areas. What is the reason that allows EX-Asia Theater Company to create a different aesthetic experience from other performance groups in terms of language, expression, etc.? This course activity allows students to cross over from words to body, and from drama text to theater space, making the aesthetic experience more three-dimensional and allowing them to better understand the correlation between Western drama and local culture. For teachers and students who are about to enter the teaching field of primary and secondary schools in the future, how to make full and effective use of regional drama resources will not only provide students with opportunities to participate in artistic activities, but also connect Chinese teaching through drama methods, and local theater spaces are the most Ideal field.
(4) The use of performance space and the presentation of dramatic aesthetics - taking the Performing Arts Center of Taipei University of the Arts as an example
In addition to connecting with local theater troupes in Hsinchu and Miaoli, this course also attempts to establish connections with drama departments to achieve the concepts of interdisciplinary teaching and interdisciplinary beauty. The author specially requested the assistance of Professor Zhang Qifeng from the School of Drama of Taipei University of the Arts to arrange a visit to the performance venues of Taipei University of the Arts so that students in non-art disciplines can learn about how art majors think and construct drama while studying drama art. Course teaching. Thanks to the support of the Ministry of Education's cross-disciplinary aesthetic project, this event was able to bring the entire class of students from Hsinchu to Guandu for a visit through off-campus teaching, and was led by Sun Binli, the venue manager of the Beijing University of the Arts Performing Arts Center The teacher guides the whole process. It is particularly worth mentioning that this visit not only allowed students to see the theater backstage, props room and costume room, but also visited the design of the theater mechanism, as well as the steel cable "catwalk" that allows students to stand above the stage, and Practically operate the lighting levers and learn about the technical aspects of the theater within a limited time. The Beijing University of the Arts' grand venue not only has professional standards, but also takes into account the teaching needs of art departments. For Tsinghua teachers and students, they can have a clearer understanding of the writing needs of drama texts and the various possibilities of their application in performance spaces. Drama is not only a text for reading, but also an operational text. It creates artistic effects through the manipulation of materials and technology. It is an extremely special aesthetic experience for students in non-art subjects.
The above-mentioned practice and creation of the two courses "Modern and Contemporary Chinese Drama" and "Selected Readings in Western Drama" in the Chinese Department of Tsinghua University in the 109th academic year involve the body, performance, technology, space and other aspects. It is nothing more than the hope that we can combine language and Establish more connection points between arts, thereby allowing Chinese teaching and learning to be reconciled with art, and at the same time, students can build a richer foundation of Chinese education in the process of appreciating dramatic art. For students and teachers in non-art fields, whether they use drama texts in Chinese teaching in the future or let middle school students access practical drama courses, I believe they can inspire more diverse and lively students through the above-mentioned various experiences. A cross-disciplinary aesthetic teaching method!
