The “modernization” of Chinese culture began with the literary revolution of 1917 and the consequent May Fourth Movement of 1919. This first great cultural revolution in modern China, aimed at making Chinese culture more international, was led by men like Hu Shi, who had studied in the United States and Japan. Traditional Chinese drama came under attack as an “entertainment” representing the conventional culture. Peking Opera in particular was regarded as a stronghold of such culture, despite the experiments of Mei Lan-fang, who tried vigorously to modernize Peking Opera un productions using modern costumes and to reevaluate the Peking Opera from a modern viewpoint.

Traditional Chinese drama, which was usually sung, was to be replaced by a “spoken drama” (Hua-chu), based on the naturalistic Western plays introduced into China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Communist China now exercises probably the most rigid form of theatre censorship in the world. Today, five years after the start of the Cultural Revolution, the traditional Chinese drama is still forbidden on the stage, as are all Western works in dance, drama, and music. Since 1966 not a single nonrevolutionary play or song has been published, and the main Chinese theatre journal, Hsi chu pao, was discontinued after the February 1966 issue. At the end of 1970, only eight stage works had been approved for presentation—five “Peking dramas with contemporary themes” (modernized Peking Operas [see T44]), two ballets, and a symphony.

Chinese Communist theatre policy has consistently reflected the principles spelled out by Mao Tse-tung at the Yenan Forum in 1942.

In the commentary which accompanies the recently published book of photographs of Dionysus in 69. Richard Schechner writes: “Most important by far is our struggle to expose our feelings, to reveal ourselves, to be open, receptive, vulnerable; to use impulse and feeling in our work. And to believe that excellence in art is, ultimately, a function of wholeness as a human being.” Although the members of the company have mostly changed from those of the earlier production, there isn't any reason to suppose that the Performance Group doesn't want its new work, Commune, to exemplify the same qualities and live in the same spirit.

For the most part it does live this way, or at least tries to mount such an existence. And so it directly raises all the questions which would only be present in a negative form if the wofk were cold, inhibited, aloof, and protected—the qualities, presumably, of the kind of formal, institutionalized theatre the Performance Group has set itself to oppose.

At the beginning of Peter Brook's production of A Midsummer-Night's Dream the entire cast, caped like artists of the flying trapeze, stride to the crash of snare drums through the double doors of their canvas-white trapeze-hung set, smile professionally, mindful of later heights and daring, gesture a grand if impersonal welcome and are off into the wings and about their work. This Dream is to be a circus—that best of all dreams for children of a certain age.

The play begins. As at the circus the only color is the costume—the actor is boldly outlined against the white, looking at times like an oleo, at times like a Kate Greenaway illustration, at times Chinese. Musicians, prop men are visible at the sides, those actors not working look on from above with a professional interest.