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Fine and Performing Arts:Reflection of Macau's Population

Norman L.Lofland (Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities University of Macau)

　　Fine and Performing Arts in Macau have been a dominant and influential element of Macau's development and have been influenced by changes in popu-lation. Chinese populist theater early in Macau's history was Cantonese Op-era. This form of theater seems less popular now, being primarily performed only during festivals. Rented videos and films made in both Chinese studios and Western studios have replaced the traditional Cantonese opera perform-ance as the populist theater. An example of Western influence brought into Macau by the tourist industry is the Crazy Paris Show, Lisboa Hotel, reflect-ing not traditional Macau but a Macau changed by tourism. Performances of this show used to be housed in the Teatro Dom Pedro, now refurbished, hope-fully to be used for dramas of ideas as well as entertainment.
　　Crash! Wham! Bam! The cymbals call the audience into the world of the Can-tonese Opera; the ratchet soundboard rattles its cacophony; the one-stringed viola carries the melody, and we note the entrance of the hero and heroine and full cast in lavish costumes to parade around, across, up and down the stage. The Chinese Opera has begun--just as it has for hundreds of years--and we know little more about its origins now than we did before the Emperor Ming Huang of the Tang Dynasty established the formal training center in Peking in about 740, called the "Pear Garden" training school.¹ But, Chinese Opera is an on-going phenomenon which is culturally established by its locality and has been handed down for cen-turies as a traditional art form, until it was cast into a rather permanent form in the 19th Century. Since we know little of its origins, the theory that some of its universal traditions, such as the tall platform boot-shoes and the masks (painted faces) may have come from the time of Alexander the Great's invasion of India, and via the silk road to China. It might be construed that Alexander's population movement influenced China--artistically at least--and ultimately Macau, through his actor's shoes and facial masks. And if not, what does it matter to us as we watch and listen to the traditional stories sung, danced, gymnastically presented to a sometimes enthralled audience, which today gathers itself during festivals, particularly to the goddess Amah, protectress of travelers on the sea--whether they be pirates or honest traders and fishermen. Today periodically the bamboo poles go up in alleyways throughout Macau to support the awesome (when seen for the first time) scenery and the stage for performers. Yearly a large pavillion isbuilt, seating hundreds of spectators desirous of participating in this ancient tra-dition enacted before them.
　　Sometimes we doubt that there is still interest in this tradition--especially in Macau, whose population's musical taste seems to be following Hong Kong into a glitzy world of mirrored-substantially-copied-Western musical incursion. Yet, when I viewed the opera last spring the attendance was heavy with youth in levis, ap-parently from Macau. This seemed a contradiction to what the sounds that per-meate our ambience of Macau would tell us--for our hearing seems to be shouted at by a disco beat, by the sound of video games in the local parlors, sometimes the slap of the Majong players and the shouts of friends talking. Macau taxi radios, unlike those I've experienced in Guangzhou or Beijing, are seldom tuned in to Chinese opera.
　　It seems obvious that the cause of this change--if my presumptive observer's analysis is correct--has something to do with the magnitude of incoming Western media. Now, by no means is Western thought new to Macau. For four-hundred years the Portuguese have shared their ideals with the East--particularly in Macau, but also in Goa and Malacca and other points of the compass. But it seems as though these past several years have brought most substantive changes based on images which are beamed in from the West. The influences are ever-present: AR-CHITECTURE--the Bank of China could have been based on the painting "Man-hattan Towers" by Georgia O'Keefe; FASHION--of course Western brands of de-signers' clothes are popular, being manufactured in Macau, and with Hong Kong's center of design an hour away; TELEVISION--I see a few wonderful older (and generally better than today's) films from Western studios; there are also some of the worst of television programming and the worst and best of music, opera, dance on our local channels, and a large variety of both the worst and best from the world's media from Hong Kong.
　　There are a few live on-stage theater performances in Macau. Theater groups do fine performances in Cantonese of selections from Chinese literature--I attended three such performances and was most pleased by the quality in terms of acting, directing, lighting, casting and limited scenery, which I think is the best kind of scenery if it enhances the ideas of the production, and for these shows it certainly did. Later in this paper I shall return to live theater in Macau.
　　Macau can hardly be called a mainly stage-show town; it is more of a film and video haven, as far as performing arts is concerned. Most of the latest Hollywood and some British and European, as well as Asian films become available--particu-larly through the Portuguese Cine Clube's promotion and sponsorship. Sometimes we of the English-speaking community find out at the last moment (since we are poor at reading the Portuguese newspaper). But, films are available in Macau, even though the big Hollywood extravaganzas--bad as many of them are--are here for only a day or so. Many films are available through the local video clubs. What one loses (watching a film on video) in big-screen size, one makes up in variety. Sometimes I teach the university's Film 100 and Film 200 courses, which are geared to introduce to students various elements of cultural history, literature, drama, comedy and help students discover a whole world of great cinematic lit-erature. Some students are disappointed in not learning to make movies/films,but I leave that to Prof. Nottingham, whose background in BBC-TV and Granada TV and film potentially expands the dimension of our communications offering, as soon as the new studio is ready.
　　All this supports my earlier thesis: the thoughts and actions of the Macau population are strongly influenced by the media of television and film. I'll not go into the varied sociological studies on the subject, supported both by parental socie-ties and Hollywood industrialists. However, in a recent Newsweek article a film researcher stated that in the 1990's American films "... dominate three-quarters of the world's movie and television screens," and further that "... a very few non-American movie makers just manage to survive."² European films have little in-fluence on Macau, other than Portuguese. Britain, France, Germany all have film industries, but they are declining (especially in Britain) for lack of funding. Ja-pan's industry is developing, but one of the biggest developments of Japan is in its purchasing of three major film studios in Hollywood, USA. Only recently have the Japanese owners started to add their controls onto the production factors of the Hollywood studios. Newsweek points out that Japan is mainly interested in the future software of these studios so the Japanese can fuel their computer and video industry. With 18 billion U.S. dollars budgeted for film in 1993, the main goal of Hollywood now is making money. That is not new, but in the great days of Holly-wood's 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's film world, the emphasis often became quality,³ based on good stories, often great literature, some wonderful dramas from New York's Broadway, or London's West End theaters, of marvelously moving "all singing, all dancing" musicals with everything from Showboat and Oklahoma--choreographed innovatingly by Agnes de Mille (who so recently died)--through Singing in the Rain with Gene Kelly to Cabaret with Liza Minnelli, daughter of Judy Garland, who inspired adoring audiences with her singing, as Liza does in Cabaret. All these are sensational productions, even with Yul Bryner playing the King of Siam--a favorite of my Film 100 students--and Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn over-whelming us with My Fair Lady, teaching our students to speak English; and Julie Andrews in Sound of Music (after Julie didn't get the role of Eliza in My Fair Lady), Our Man In Havana, Hamlet, Dr. Zhivago, Casablanca, and many more. As I type this I note with dismay, because of the hour, that Hong Kong TV is broadcasting a brilliant British film production of Charles Dickens' novel, Little Dorrit; it is now 1:00 a.m., and I must be the only one nearby watching it.
　　So, we have a more than adequate supply of great films on video to choose from, all with Chinese subtitles. Why, then, do most people in Macau--unless they watch Chinese videos--choose the worst films Hollywood makes: the "shoot-'em-up," killer, sex sequences? Perhaps I can divert a moment from Macau to answer that. Studies have shown that though three major Hollywood studios are headed in production by women, the Hollywood films are aimed at male audiences. They excel in the "macho" image; male audiences are identified with the macho (he-man) role. Films geared to men are guaranteed success at the box office when they have adventure and sex. When couples go out--particularly unmarried dating couples--the man chooses the film to be seen. In the past people just went to the movies. Now they watch TV. If in Macau--as in the United States--the men choose the films to be seen on a date, whether in a theater or on video, the girl very likelyacquiesces--if they follow the Chinese tradition... or the American.
　　Perhaps these films are chosen for the same reason that men go to the Crazy Paris Show--for the thrill of the forbidden--this vicarious thrill of watching a film actor shoot to kill, evade the law, make love--illicit or otherwise, accounts for much of today's film popularity. And therein is the worst of the influences of the Western film/video presentations. I don't show films like Die Hard or Termina-tor I, II, etc. in my film class; I rarely even watch them. But we realize that these films are popular and have a huge influence upon Macau's youth today. This in-fluence of strong emotional involvement is likely a strong contributor to the dou-ble-generation gap between the youth of Macau and their grandparents, accord-ing to recent research by Prof. Nottingham, media expert at the University of Macau. For, because of the influence of the media, today's youth can still talk to their parents, but not their grandparents.⁴
　　The ultimate influence of Western theatrical import into Macau is in the form of a local almost-but-not-quite duplication of a famous Paris, France, variety show. In Paris for decades The Lido, The Moulon Rouge, The Follies Berger, and the Crazy Horse Show have been the creme de la creme of the night club social whirl. One can go to Maxime's, to the Champs Elys閑s and into the Lido or farther to see the girls dancing nearly nude. In conversation with one of the performers in the Crazy Paris Show, Macau, a professional dancer from South Africa (who has since left Macau), I learned that "all of our shows are packed out with Chinese men--almost no women. The hardest thing about performing here (and I've worked in several different countries), is that the audiences give no response; they sit with blank faces and show no emotion whatsoever. If you've ever performed on stage, you know that actors are dependent on their audience to keep them going--there's stage-to-audience interaction that normally occurs. Well, it just doesn't happen here at the Crazy Paris Show, and I find it really difficult to keep my energy going to the end of the show. One of three similarly-managed shows located in Macau, Monte Cario and Lisbon, the Crazy Paris Show performed nightly at the Hotel Lisboa was formerly presented at the Dom Pedro Theater above the Leal Senado adjacent to Father Teixeira's Saint Joseph Seminary, Macau. The people of Macau do not attend the local strip-tease although they have certainly heard of it -- even students say they would never go to it. When attending the performance, a re-searcher noted the audience seemed to be made up of Chinese men (it was thought mainly from the mainland, and perhaps Hong Kong), Australians and a few Euro-peans -- apparently few Macanese.The show imports its dancers--all females--from Australia and Europe, Brazil, Russia and Europe, apparently no Chinese. In interviews, other dancers from the Crazy Paris Show indicated the show as a very exciting venture in which to work, and, no, one did not mind the fact that the Chinese--in their traditional way--do not respond enthusiastically to the produc-tion, which, she says, (and I agree from having seen it) is loaded with well-de-signed scenery, beautiful dancers, costumes designed by a Dutch designer (some-times cleverly removed), theatrical techniques using scrim and projections, with brilliant lighting design and excellent dancing. She feels that the audience--mostly Chinese, perhaps from Taiwan and Hong Kong brought to Macau in package tours including the Crazy Paris Show, hotel and casino-- is receiving the productionvery enthusiastically, considering it is sold out nightly, and women do attend. She mentioned that the Crazy Paris Show is one of the anomalies of Macau, rather like Morrison Chapel (we were talking in the garden after evening worship service) which is housed in a beautiful garden near the Old Protestant Cemetery--"so like home," she added.
　　While doing primary research for this paper, I had the pleasure of meeting the manageress of the Crazy Paris Show, Ms. Roberta McCarthy, and her associate Mr. Charles Fok. Briefly they told me the history of the show from its Paris con-cept to Macau. By the encouragement of Mr.Stanley Ho, Ms. Roberta was brought from her home in Paris to Hong Kong over fifteen years ago to "make a small Crazy Horse Show" performance on a gambling ship plying the waters between Hong Kong and Macau; she had only a few weeks to put the show together. Fortu-nately, Roberta knew the right theatrical people to do the quick, but good, job. They performed only when the ship was in international waters. After a season and while no one was on board a typhoon sank the ship with costumes, lights, etc. Later she returned to Macau and created the first Crazy Paris Show production in the local 19th century Teatro Dom Pedro, and it is now housed in its permanent location in the Lisboa Hotel. Ms. Roberta has as her highest goal a kind of "purity -- if one can imagine that in a strip-tease -- and "nothing 'suggestive' or slovenly is allowed; Macau is a very religious city and I will not have it offended." It is indeed a performance of beautiful dancing style with girls who look like Greek statues of goddesses and paintings from the French Academe of Art in the 18th and 19th centuries.
　　As we leave our discussion of the Crazy Paris Show, we go back in our thoughts to the earliest beginnings of indigenous theater in China, which came to Macau across the peninsula or down the Pearl River from Guangzhou (Canton). We un-derstand that they used to hold performances of Chinese Opera Theater in barns in the countryside, that the local population had its own style of opera, performed in local barns--the same as they perform in areas on the streets of Macau today--as the Elizabethan performers used to tour England playing in the courtyards of hotels/inns, a style which later developed into the Shakespearean Globe Theater. This same style of thrust theater (where the stage juts out into the audience, who watch the performers from three sides) also existed in early Chinese Opera, which was performed in tea houses called cha-yuan (meaning tea garden). It began so early that there is disagreement as to when and where Chinese Opera started; there are possibly Greek Theater influences. It may have developed in the agricultural areas; it all started in a bursting forth in Peking Opera form in later centuries, perhaps 740 A.D.--date of the first dramatic school, "The Pear Garden." With the movement across the silk road, the styles of theater performances could have been exchanged, with influences felt in both directions of the travels;the early Western theater traditions of the Greek cothurnus (tall boot) and mask (facial makeup) show up onstage in Chinese productions.
　　Growing out of tradition, Cantonese Operas are performed in Macau as ap-peasement to unhappy spirits during Yu Lau, the "Festival of the Hungry Ghosts." The devout and the not-so-devout as well as the "hungry ghosts" are seated in "mat-shed theaters" erected around the area. After the performances, "Dai Si"--the custodian of hell--who leads the ghosts back to hell is burned (like lucky money) to expedite his trip.⁵
　　I mentioned earlier the cha yuan tea garden theater for Peking Opera; the au-dience did not face the stage as in today's theaters, but sat at tables around the three sides of the playing area/stage. They conversed with their friends about the latest gossip, pausing to listen to the aria of their favorite performer. There is one of these playhouses (an open theater area) in the wonderful Yu Yuan garden in Shanghai, near to a most perfect tea house in the style I envision for Macau today. It could be most impressive to rejuvenate the old Loc Koc tea house in the center of Macau's "San Ma Lo" district (which hopefully is destined to be kept), add a thrust stage and local performers at certain times. This authentic bit of Chinese culture could be a remarkable addition to the Macau Tourist Association's "seeing Macau" tour. The rest of the time the tea house would be a welcome feature for downtown shoppers, instead of having the limitation of the local "Cow" milk and orange juice parlors. Perhaps it could be added to the same package tour which includes the Crazy Paris Show.
　　Though perhaps we have in Macau no Mei Lan-Fang--the most famous actor in the Chinese Opera in the first half of the 20th century--who performed as the "Leader of the Pear Garden" (the most honored title given to an actor); Mei Lan-Fang performed in the marriage ceremony of the last Emperor of China, and went abroad to America to electrify New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles in 1930; and Japan, Europe and Russia 1919-1935. New York theater critics lauded Mei Lan-Fang's acting skills:⁶ the gesture, mime, and movement which, during a period filled with realistic performers in front of naturalistic scenery, made the audience think they saw real doors when the Chinese actors stepped with a slight kick and entered the scene. There was little or no scenery; this again introduced simplified scenery, brilliantly augmented by mime and gesture.
　　When Hitler threatened his life and theater, it is no wonder that Bertold Brecht moved to Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, the USA and was welcomed back to Berlin, East Germany, to establish the "Berliner Ensemble" contributing to 20th century stylized theater genre. Brecht was influenced by Piscator--a German di-rector who worked with Meyerhold in the Moscow Art Studio Theater--until po-litically purged--and all three were influenced by Chinese theater techniques. Brecht used styles of acting similar to those of the Chinese theater and added slo-gans, which were hung above the acting area, augmenting the ideas/messages in the play. These techniques traveled across the world, ten-thousand miles away, and included: symbols of blue cloth representing the sea, an oar representing a boat, moving cloth the wind; the use of chairs placed in particular places with benches; and movements of actors--some acrobatic--which Brecht gained from China and enhanced, to represent particular localized scenes as clarified by Brecht's limited dialogue. Mei Lan-Fang showed ali these techniques to Europe and Russia 1919-1935.
　　I cannot leave the subject of fine and performing arts without some reference to painting. Painting in its traditional form has existed for many years in Macau. Often there are exhibitions of traditional ink and brush painting of calligraphy--many of which copy the greatest works still available from the history of calligra-phy and painting--those which were not destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. These include: watercolor landscapes with the finest traditional rendering of moun-tains, with a river and boat; or trees perhaps, with a man carrying a burden; or a city with canais, bridges and small boats; or houses or temples on the side of a towering mountain with additional mountains layered far into the background. All these scenes and others including flowers, animals, fish, shrimp, etc. are well-known to lovers of Chinese painting. One can walk Macau's street of antiques and buy wonderfully old--often interestingly restored--paintings, or find newer cop-ies in the China Product Store. But there is another newer area of Macau painting evident today, and that is the oils, drawings and watercolors of contemporary art-ists in residence in Macau, or frequently visiting macau to find inspiration in the city's magnificent architecture of the past one or two centuries, and farther back to the earliest elements of local population residing here on this peninsula and adjacent islands of Taipa and Coloane. Contemporary artists from the mainland of China often display in Macau works of art that are very advanced by Chinese standards, and show skillful techniques, sometimes unique, that convincingly com-municate the artist's ideas. One such exhibition in 1992 was by Bao Zewei, a Zhuhai painter and bas-relief sculptor.Unfortunately, at his and Mr. Simon Xue's exhibi-tion the Chinese customs forbade the selling of paintings in Macau.
　　During the past two years, I have participated in the formal openings at the Dong Guang Art Gallery, sponsored by the Dong Guang Artists Association and the Zhuhai mayor's office and Zhuhai Art Gallery. These occasions gave the opportu-nity to exchange ideas with local officials and artists. At both places, artists were eager to exhibit their works in Macau. I could only encourage them. The exhibition in the Zhuhai Gallery was from Vancouver, Canada; this collection should have come to Macau as well. Recently the same artists association has collected paintings from ali over China which are now being exhibited in the San Francisco area.
　　This exchange of ideas through art is important, as is the sharing of musical excellence in the annual Macau Music Festival. The University of Macau believes in the exchange of ideas conveyed by language in today's conferences held around the world. This is why the university encourages the sharing of research and ideas of the teaching staff by funding research and funding travel for many teachers to deliver papers all over the world. So, too, we need to see the visual and perform-ing arts in Macau. We have been fortunate to have had an art exhibition from Sin-gapore on campus, and to have the annual Macau Music Festival perform in our excellent Cultural Center Theater, as well as a French theatre troupe, and the Fes-tival de Artes de Macau.
　　Quoting the essayist and novelist Dorothy Sayers's Jane Austen-like charac-ter, Harriet Vane, "Oxford has been called the home of lost causes," and she fur-ther writes, "if the love of learning for its own sake is a lost cause everywhere else in the world let us [here at the university] see to it that here at least it finds its abiding home."⁷ An Oxford PhD colleague reminded me recently that a university is a community of scholars with a community of ideals. Hopefully our university community can excel in training Macau students not only for jobs, but for richer lives, contributing in turn to a spiritually richer community in our future Macau. In turn this would allow us to embody the thoughts of the 17th century meta-physical poet-philosopher-theologian John Donne when he wrote:"The University is a Paradise, Rivers of Knowledge are there, Arts and Sciences flow from thence."[sic.]⁸

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