“Arguably the most influential director of China's avant-garde stage, Meng Jinghui is an active and popular figure in the theatrical circle.”  — China Daily

I watch Meng Jinghui’s play every summer when I visit Beijing. His plays always get on stage in the same theater called the Bee Hive, and his tickets are always sold on the same website. So it is quite a routine objective that I stop by the theater or get on the internet to see if there is a play of his around the corner.

As a rule, 24th, July 2015, Meng is “playing with” his play, Xun Huan Zuo Le. But how do we define “play with”? Well, for most of the directors, their goal is to tell the story in the clearest way, to think about the nurtured techniques in directing and to express his deep understanding of each play. But what Meng has always been doing is to not to tell a whole story. Several times, and this time especially, Meng focuses on the “philosophy” instead of the plot. According to his own words,“People nowadays are reading and viewing too many stories, and they are often blinded by the plot of the story. They have laughed or cried for stories without reflecting on authors' real meanings of composing the stories.” This phenomenon of superficial viewing is quite natural, as is critic because people today are too busy and too tired to think. Then, it seems to Meng that organizing fragile, independent stories is a good way to make people think more about the meanings.

Honestly speaking, Meng has made a very nice try at entertaining the audience. And Meng’s thoughts are outstanding as well. But he has failed to achieve his goal of making people focus on meaning rather than plot.

First of all, we enjoyed the show. In the “talk after show” time, many people shared their thoughts about the play. “Dream-like” was my favorite word that describes the entire play.

What’s more, it is really worth reflecting on the dramatic expressions of Meng’s play:

In his play, there are always intensive intercourses between the actor and the audience. The actors are not afraid to ask the name of one of the audience members, and they are not afraid to take off their pants in front of him, or her.

There is a frequent change of style of expression in the play. There are realistic expressions like those in ancient dramas, but the styles could, to some extent, reflect Dadaism, an art style that stemmed at the start of World War I. To be precise, in the last scene, the three actors were only throwing a watermelon. One of the them failed to catch it, and it exploded on the ground.

However impressive the play was, none of the audience members understood the theme that the director intended to express. Just like in the scene of throwing a watermelon, one of the audience members said he thought that the message given at that scene was a sense of relief that everything was forgiven when the watermelon exploded. My first interpretation was that the watermelon represented their feelings about their lives. Because the stories in the play were mostly from daily lives, I thought the explosion of watermelon might mean a sense of rebellion or stubbornness against life. Nevertheless, the truth was that the scene was about happiness.
Why did the audience get so baffled by the delivery of the theme?

My first explanation was that Meng did not care about the audience. He was just trying to deliver ideas in the ways that he thought was the best. There are a lot of artists, especially those who paint abstractly, who do not want the audience to understand the superficial meaning of the subject. To them, what the subject is, an apple or a pear, does not matter. Similarly, I thought that Meng was trying to do the same thing, like when he said, “Too many people are trying to enjoy only the plot of the story instead of the spirit.”

Nevertheless, I found it was not the case that the incomprehensibility of the plot was Meng’s artistic intention. What Meng meant to do should not be getting the audience frustrated in understanding the whole plot of the story. Certainly, he could try to omit the settings, causes, or even the consequences of each event, but he should not have tried to hide the theme. The most abstract painter may have no one understand the subject or intelligibly have no subject in his paintings at all; however, people understand what the painter is attempting to express. As it came to Meng, he made not a single person understand his point. One better explanation is that Meng was simply using the most convenient way to address points. When we come to an act that is better addressed in a dramatic style, he address it abstractly, and vice versa. I admit, Meng had a great ambition. But I do not think it he is good at achieving it.

In addition, we paid the ticket to watch and enjoy plays because the play has cultural values, but not because there will be “acrobatics” going on. True, there are many laughs during the entire show. It should have be a good thing, though. The people are not laughing because they are happy along with the happiness of the characters, but they are laughing because they are amused, as if watching a circus show—the actors are playing jokes and taking off their pants. But, isn’t it important to have laughs in a play, and isn’t it essential to warm up the audiences? It is, but not in this way.

I went to see the show with a girl, one of my classmates. She enjoyed it. She was well known in our school as a review writer. Every time she watches a movie or a show, she writes about it, no matter what kind. She always finds meanings of a play however lame the show is. But this time, I asked her about what she thought. She replied, “It is good.”

Then, it’s been weeks now, and I have been desperately waiting for her reviews about Meng’s play. These days, I log in my twitter and Weibo twice a day to check if she writes about it, so that I can read it directly the article is uploaded. Yesterday, she finally sent an article on Weibo, and a long one. I went to ecstasy. “Quite explains why it has taken so long.” I thought. But it was a review about A HERO OR NOT(Chinese Name of Jian Bing Xia), a film that she watched 3 days ago. Therefore, I called her.

“Why aren’t you writing anything about Meng’s play?”

“I have. Check my Weibo carefully.”

Subsequently I checked her Weibo, and I found an article that was only two lines long.

“I went to see Meng’s play with Benson yesterday. It was a good play. Meng was a very ambitious director.”