Other Shore

Gao Xingjian is the leading Chinese dramatist of our time. He is also one of the most moving and literary writers for the contemporary stage. His plays have been performed all around the world, including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, the Ivory Coast, the United States, France, Germany and other European countries. Born and educated in China, Gao studied French literature at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute between 1957-1962. After the Cultural Revolution, he became a resident playwright at the Beijing People's Art Theatre. His works, including Bus Stop, Absolute Signal, and Wilderness Man, were trend-setting and have created many controversies and a wave of experimental drama in China. In 1987 he settled in Paris, France and continued to write in Chinese and in French. He was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 1992.

The present collection contains five of Gao Xingjian's most recent works: The Other Shore (1986), Between Life and Death (1991), Dialogue and Rebuttal (1992), Nocturnal Wanderer (1993), and Weekend Quartet (1995). One finds poetry, comedy as well as tragedy in the plays, which are graced by beautiful language and original imagery. Combining Zen philosophy and a modern worldview, they serve to illuminate the gritty realities of life, death, sex, loneliness, and exile, all essential concerns in Gao's understanding of the existence of modern man. The plays are also manifestations of the dramatist's idea of the tripartite actor, a process by which the actor neutralizes himself and achieves a disinterested observation of his self in performance.

Born and educated in China, Xingjian Gao studied French literature at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute between 1957-1962. He became a resident playwright at the Beijing People's Art Theatre after the Cultural Revolution. His plays have been performed all around the world, including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, the Ivory Coast, the United States, France, Germany and other European countries. The Other Shore was banned in China in 1986 and since then none of his plays have been performed there. He settled in France in 1987 where he was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 1992. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000.

Gilbert C. F. Fong is an associate professor in the department of translation at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and is heading a research project on the history of Hong Kong drama. He is also the editor of the monographs Studies on Hong Kong Drama and Plays from Hong Kong, and of the journal Hong Kong Drama Review.