从“中国惯例”到“美国戏剧”:《黄马褂》的媒介书写嬗变

From“Chinese Customs”to“American Drama”:The Evolution of Media Writing in The Yellow Jacket

美国戏剧家乔治·黑泽尔顿与哈里·本里默的戏剧作品《黄马褂》于1912年11月4日首次在纽约公演后很快便风行美国,并且迅速在全球传播,还在短短数十年内驻演于欧洲数个国家。作为美国百老汇首部“中国题材”的戏剧作品,《黄马褂》中体现的“中国戏剧特点”成为一再被评论界探讨的话题。借由1912—1944年间美国媒体对《黄马褂》的报道与评论,可以看到当时历经动荡的西方社会对中国的想象和凝望并未停止,田园牧歌式的中国形象也成了当时西方“精神沙漠”中的重要慰藉。但更加全面地来看,在美国社会内因与外力的作用下,《黄马褂》无论在文本中和舞台上体现出怎样的“中国性”,其目的依旧是对美国戏剧自我空间的补充和延展。当中国戏剧传统被嫁接在西方戏剧内涵之上时,真正的中国并未登场,这只是西方戏剧作家打破自身戏剧舞台传统的一种手段。

This paper takes the dramatic work The Yellow Jacket(also known as The Story of the Yellow Robe in Chinese)by the American dramatists George Hazelton and Harry Benrimo as the research object.After its first premiere in New York on November 4,1912,the play achieved great success,became popular in the United States,and quickly spread globally,reaching several European countries in just a few decades.As the first Chinese drama on Broadway in the United States,the“characteristics of Chinese drama”reflected in The Yellow Jacket has become a topic of repeated discussion.From the reports and comments of the American media on The Yellow Jacket from 1912 to 1944,we can see that the imagination and gaze of the turbulent western society on China have not stopped,and the pastoral image of China has become the only consolation of the western spiritual desert at that time.But from a more comprehensive perspective,under the influence of the internal and external forces of the American society,the purpose of The Yellow Jacket is still to supplement and extend the self space of American drama,no matter how“Chinese”it reflects in the text or on the stage.When the Chinese drama tradition is grafted on the connotation of western drama,the real China does not appear,but becomes a breakthrough means for western drama writers to break the drama stage tradition.