Displacing the Scene: The Fantasy of Place in Chen Shi-Zheng's Peony Pavilion, Zhang Yimou's Turandot and Frederic Mitterrand's Madame Butterfly (Spine title: Displacing the Scene) (Thesis format: Monograph) by Guoyuan Lju Graduate Program in Comparative Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Guoyuan Liu 2010 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-89488-0 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-89488-0 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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Canada THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO SCHOOL OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION Supervisor Examiners Dr. Anthony Purdy Dr. Paul Coates Dr. Laurence de Looze Dr. Thy Phu Dr. Grace Kehler The thesis by Guoyuan Liu entitled: Displacing the Scene: The Fantasy of Place in Chen Shi-Zheng's Peony Pavilion, Zhang Yimou's Turandot, and Frederic Mitterand's Madame Butterfly is accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date Chair of the Thesis Examination Board 11 Abstract This thesis presents a comparative study of three opera productions: Chinese American director Chen Shi-Zheng's production of a sixteenth-century Chinese Kunju opera, The Peony Pavilion, in New York; Chinese director Zhang Yimou's production of Turandot in the Forbidden City of Beijing; and French director Frederic Mitterrand's opera film Madame Butterfly. Treating these productions as cross-cultural and transmedial events, the thesis investigates the problematic of the "real" and the "verisimilar" in their embodiments of "place" by plotting the way "place" is discursively formed through a coding-decoding interaction between the production and the spectator. It further explores the paradoxes and myths of spaces and places in these productions by considering that which brings together the embodied form of drama fiction and the spectator's world of reality as a fantasy of place—at once a place for fantasy and fantasy as a place. This fantasy of place is captured by the term "scene"—the place for the drama to be "put" as in mise-en-scene. Based on my investigations, I argue that spatial relationships function as a symbolic system of cultural conventions that determine our practice of everyday life. Key words: Fantasy of place, scene, spectator, spatial practices, opera, verisimilitude, form-suasion, prosopopoeia, China, Chen Shi-Zheng, Zhang Yimou, Frederic Mitterrand, The Peony Pavilion, Turandot, Madame Butterfly. iii To Pin, Andrew, and Anthony. iv Table of Contents Certificate of Examination ii Abstract iii List of Figures viii Acknowledgement ix 0. Introduction: Placing the Scene 1 0.1. Questions and objectives 4 0.2. Space in opera and opera in space 10 0.3. Placing the scene: from sk$n8 to mise-en-scene 28 1. The Scene in Literature, Theatre, and Opera 32 1.1. Vraisemblance: meaning production as everyday practice 1.2. Form-suasion of the fictional world 40 1.3. The persuasive model of sign enthymeme 48 1.4. Scene-suasion: the theatrical language 54 1.5. Tropological-topological embodiment of the operatic scene 2. The Scene on Stage: Chen Shi-Zheng's Peony Pavilion 75 2.1. "A spot beside the peony pavilion": kunqu opera and the traditional Chinese garden 80 2.2. "Let me see in the mirror what really happened": the other of representation 89 2.3. "My body remains virgin as before": the paradox of prosopopeia 100 2.4. Together we shall trace our peony-pavilion dream": cultural tradition as coding system 110 3. The Scene on Site: Zhang Yimou's Turandot in the Forbidden City 124 3.1. "Popo/o di Pekino": apostrophe of the place 129 3.2. "La sui monti dell'Esf: metamorphoses of the jasmine moon 140 3.3."Dimmi il mio nome": the paradox of the proper name 148 3.4."Nessun dorma" or how the opera audience is kept awake 158 4. The Scene on Screen: Fr6d6ric Mitterrand's Madame Butterfly 167 4.1. "E soffitto... e pareti...": shoji-\ng the spatiality of fantasy 173 4.2. "Dovunque al mondo": the omnipresent camera eye 181 4.3."Nello shosi or farem tre forellini per riguardaf: the paradox of the cinematic trompe I'oeil 190 vi 4.4."Addio fiorito asif : the place of the body and the body of the place 202 5. Conclusion: Displacing the Scene 210 5.1. The real place: legitimate or verisimilar 212 5.2. The scene as a signifier: invention of the other 214 5.3. Truth/knowledge: locating the spectator's desire 217 5.4. Displacing the scene: mise-en-scene as production of space 220 Works Cited 224 Appendix 1. Illustrations 236 Appendix 2. List of Chinese and Japanese terms and names 289 Copyright Release 300 Vita 301 vii List of Figures Illustrations to Chapter 2 237 Fig. 1 -4 Stage set of Chen Shi-Zheng's Peony Pavilion Fig. 5-11 Scenes from Chen Shi-Zheng's Peony Pavilion Fig. 12-15 Stage set of Bai Xianyong's The Young Lovers' Peony Pavilion Fig. 16-18 Woodcut illustrations of Mudan ting Fig. 19-24 Pavilion, stage and garden Illustrations to Chapter 3 252 Fig. 25-31 Beijing and the Forbidden City Fig. 32-47 Zhang Yimou's Turandot at the Forbidden City Fig. 48-49 Rehearsal for the Teatro Comunale di Firenze production Fig. 50-51 Franco Zeffirelli's Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera (1987) Illustrations to Chapter 4 268 Fig. 52-93 Stills from Fr6d§ric Mitterrand's Madame Butterfly VIII Acknowledgement I would like to thank Tony Purdy for his time, guidance and close readings. I would also like to thank Laurence de Looze, James Miller, and Angela Borchert for their suggestions. Lastly, I am forever grateful to my parents, my wife and my two sons for their love and support. ix 1 0. Introduction: Placing the Scene "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage," claims Peter Brook at the beginning of his book The Empty Space (10). As suggested later in the same paragraph, Brook's claim is a criticism of conceptions of the theatre that keep it too close to the cinema: We talk of the cinema killing the theatre, and in that phrase we refer to the theatre as it was when the cinema was born, a theatre of box office, foyer, tip-up seats, footlights, scene changes, intervals, music, as though the theatre was by very definition these and little more. (10) Brook's "bare stage" both narrows and broadens this traditional view of theatre. On the one hand, elements such as "footlights, scene changes, intervals, music," etc., are rejected as inessential for the theatre; on the other hand, the theatre goes beyond the limits of any interiority, such as "box office, foyer" and "tip-up seats," and reaches out to "any empty space." The Shakespearean director's definition of the stage thus stresses the reversibility of the Shakespearean topos "all the world is a stage," by adding that "the stage is all the world." Implied in Brook's confidence in his relation with space, however, is a problematic important to our understanding of the cinema, the theatre and "the world." In what sense can the stage be "bare" and the space be "empty"? And in what sense can the "emptiness" of space turn into the "bareness" of stage? To consider Brook's own example: "A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged" (10). First, the space in question is a 2 space being watched. To what extent, then, is the emptiness conceivable without this "someone else," whose gaze makes it possible for the space to become a stage? Second, the space is not a stage until "a man walks across" it; the moment it becomes a stage with the walking man, it is no longer "bare." To what extent, then, is the "bareness" of the stage conceivable without foreshadowing the "act of theatre to be engaged"? Peter Brook's example of "a man walking across the empty space" as the theatre's content reveals the structure of drama fiction.