Mei Lanfang: Actor, director
and choreographer
Sayeed Ahman
MEI Lanfang started learning about Peking Opera when he was eight years old and made his debut on stage as a female role player at 11. When he died at the age of 67, he was a legend. For half a century his name was a household word.
During 2,000 years of feudalism, women were confined to separate living quarters. In Chinese theatre men all along played female roles of ‘dan’ right up to the close of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Mei Lanfang was widely acclaimed to have been the best of all. There are other names e.g. Cheng Yangqui (1904-1958), Shang Xiaoyum (1899-1976), and Xun Huisheng (1899-1968).
Mei was born in Peking into an ‘opera family’ 1984. His grandfather, Qiaoling was a famous ‘dan’ player and the leader of the ‘Four Happiness Troupe’. His father, Mei Zhufen (1874-1896) was another outstanding actor. Mei Baojin, Mei Lanfang’s youngest son, is also an accomplished ‘dan’ player. So Meis have for generations performed female roles in Peking Opera. Mei Qiaoling broke away from the age-old conventions and became equally accomplished in both the type-roles. Mei Lanfang rose to greater heights, first performing a singing role, and later becoming skilled in playing other roles, such as an unmarried young girl, a vivacious woman and later on a woman warrior.
Mei Lanfang became a national icon before he turned 20. In over 50 years of stage life he played no less than 100 characters in the repertoire. He created new plays and improvements in both make-up and costumes. These plays are dramatisations of either historical episodes or classical literary works.
Mei’s childhood was a miserable one. He was orphaned young, losing his father at four and his mother when he was 15. His uncle, Mei Yutian, took charge of the child. But this uncle was not rich, so Mei Lanfang had to start earning early in life. His uncle told him that there were no shortcuts and he should never expect to learn without effort. He had lacklustre eyes when he was a child. He exercised his eyes relentlessly. He would practice gazing at the movements of a flame in a dark room; he kept pigeons in order to look at them soaring higher and higher until they disappeared into the clouds. In later days he thanked himself for a pair of bright, keen, highly expressive eyes. He took time and trouble to learn Chinese traditional painting and calligraphy from Qi Baishi (1863-1957) and other eminent painters. His pride lay in his extensive collection of ancient manuscripts and old treaties on classical music and dance. He owed his achievements to his life-long habit of hard work. ‘I am now 60, but I am still fit to play role of a woman on stage, as well as others such as characters in “Drunken Beauty” and “Rainbow Pass”’. This I attribute to the rigid basic training programme my teacher drew up for me and to which I faithfully adhered.’ He was a gentle-hearted, modest and quiet man who respected both himself and others.
Another sterling quality of Mei Lanfang that commanded respect was his patriotism and moral integrity. During the eight-year Japanese War (1937-1945) he defied the enemy by growing a moustache when he had to live in enemy-occupied Shanghai. He pawned and sold his belongings to support his family and impoverished friends.
According to Mei Lanfang, Chinese theatre mainstay has the following pillars:
Fluidities: There is no lowering or raising of curtain. It is an art that has always appropriate tempo, rhythm and montage.
Plasticity: Chinese stage is highly flexible, with no limitation either of time or space.
Sculpturality: Western stage is two-dimensional rather enclosed in a frame, but those on the traditional Chinese stage stand out three-dimensionally.
Conventionality: Commonly recognised convention is a basic characteristic of the Chinese theatre. A play is a play; it is frankly theatrical and creates a set of conventions to break through the limitations of time and space so that life may appear more free and sublime on the stage. Stanislavsky believed in the ‘fourth wall’, Brecht wanted to demolish it, while Mei Lanfang felt that such a wall did not exist and so there was no need to pull it down. Since Chinese theatre has always been highly conventional, it did not try to create the illusion of real life for the audience Brecht proposed to pull down the fourth wall and expel the illusion of real life. In its place he employed the effect of alienation to shatter the illusion of real life and prevent the audience from identifying themselves either with the actors of the characters.
When Swedish Crown Prince and his consort visited China in 1920 he wished to see an example of Peking Opera. Mei gave a tea party in his house and held a performance for him. The same year, Somerset Maugham and dancers Ruth S.A. Denis and Ted Shawn also visited his house.
It was in 1930 in New York a gala premier of Peking Opera was staged. Within two weeks tickets were sold out. Mei was 36 years old. The 24-member troupe played in several cities. There he staged ‘The Fisherman’s Revenge’, ‘By the Fen River Bend’, ‘The Drunken Beauty’, ‘Parting with His Favourite’, ‘The Maiden in Heaven’ and ‘Rainbow Pass’. He also performed the sleeve dance in ‘Lady Shanguam’ and the feather dance in ‘Beauty Xi Shi’.
A reception committee was formed headed by the Maya in San Francisco. He met famous Civil B de Mule, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks. Later when Fairbanks and Chaplin came to China he reciprocated their generous hospitality.
At the invitation of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), Mei gave performances in Moscow and Leningrad in March and April 1935. A VOKS reception committee comprised K.S. Stanislavsky, V.1. Nemirovich Danchcheko, W.E. Meyerhold, S.M. Eisenstein, Maxim Gorky and Leo Tolstoy came to see the show and later meet him.
While in Moscow he called on Stanislavsky, Eisenstein and Edwn Piscator, the originator of Epic Drama, later developed by Brecht. Sir Gordon Craig, Director and Stage Designer was then visiting Soviet Union. The famous Soviet ballerina Ulanova personally invited him to watch her performance.
He was asked to speak on Chinese theatrical art at the Masters of Art Club in Moscow and Leningrad. At these talks he demonstrated various hand gestures, stage steps and songs of Peking Opera. Brecht, who was present, later wrote, ‘Is there any actor in the West (with the exception of one or two comedians) who can, like Mei Lanfang, in an evening dress, perform the essentials of stagecraft before a group of professionals in a room without any special lighting device?’ Brecht called him the ‘Master of Masters’.
To introduce the art of Peking Opera to the Soviet public, Sergei Eisenstein filmed a few scenes from ‘Rainbow Pass’ in a Moscow studio. Before the two parted, Eisenstein gave him a copy signed by the film director with the inscription, ‘To Mr. Mei Lanfang, the greatest master of forms’. Tagore visited China in May 1924. His friends circle in Peking staged his play ‘Chitra’ in English to celebrate his 64th birth-day. The auditorium of Peking (Beijing) Union Medical College in the eastern part of the city was crowded with the well wishers of the day.
On May 8, Tagore took his seat in the middle of the third row next to Mei Lanfang. After the performance he told Mei he was pleased to see his own play ‘Chitra’ staged in China but he was more interested to seeing a Peking Opera performance by Mei.
On the evening of May 19, he staged ‘The Goddes of River Luo’ and Tagore was invited to attend. In a scarlet gown, the formal dress of Viswa-Bharati University, the poet watched attentively throughout the performance and afterwards thanked the performer backstage.
The next noon Mei Lanfang gave a farewell lunch in honour of the poet. While commenting on the maestro’s performance with words of encouragement, Tagore explained, the decor for such a mythological drama was too plain, suggesting that hues or red, green, yellow, black and purple should be used on the stage and should be decorated with rocks, flowers and other plants like a ‘fairyland’. Mei readily accepted the idea and the decor for this particular scene in ‘Goddess of the River Luo’ was designed anew. Poet Rabindranath was a poet and painter indeed!
After two days, we were invited to visit Mei’s house and pay respects to the great artiste. His son Mei Baoyue and daughter Mei Baojin entertained us in their simple one-storey house with an inner courtyard and veranda along the inside. The government had made some improvements in the plumbing and also internal heating, which was not usually available to middle-class people. They had a lovely fluffy white kitten who responded to my wife’s petting, much to the happiness of Mei Baoyue. They served us some tasty Chinese rice cakes, similar to our Bengali ‘pitha’ and green tea. Then they took us to Mei Lanfang’s museum, which was not open to the public as construction was still going on. It was a privilege to enter the museum. The display cases were full of mementos and trophies of the great actor. I saw photographs of Bertholt Brecht, Stanislavsky, Eisenstein and Erwin Piscator, the originator of epic drama, whom Mel Lanfang had met in the 1930s.
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