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‘False but True, Empty but Full, Few but Many’—The Dialectic Concepts in Traditional Chinese Performance Art and Painting
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
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In 1986, an international symposium on Chinese theatre was held in Beijing, and for the first time the process of aesthetics in the theatrical form was debated among scholars, critics and practitioners on an international scale. Among the discussion, the three dialectic concepts of ‘false but true, empty but full and few but many’ were often referred to and applied. What are they and why are they so important that they are regarded as the guiding principles that make Chinese theatre different from its western counterparts? Mu Gong, a theatre historian from Jiangxi province, offers the following explanation:
[On the Chinese stage] a horse whip, or an oar, is merely a piece of property if it is seen on its own. But when it is seen through the performers' acting combined with the story, it not only represents the form of ‘a horse’ or ‘a boat’ on the stage, but also transforms the flat stage into a three-dimensional mountain, battlefield or river. In addition, the character's action, feelings and desires are therefore underscored. … If a real horse or a boat is used on the stage, the object itself is true, but the character and its circumstances will become false.
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- Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1999
References
Notes
1. Unless otherwise noted, all performances mentioned in this article refer to performances in the traditional theatre that has usually been known in the West as Chinese opera; while art or painting refers to traditional painting. In China, from the beginning of this century, ‘modern’ theatre and art, inspired by western realistic theatre and painting, have appeared, and have reached maturity along their own lines, but they are not the topic of this paper.
2. Unless otherwise stated, all translations from Chinese are mine.
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