Hi everyone!
Tomorrow I am going to board a plane and fly to Beijing, where I will live for the next fourteen months in an attempt to better understand the humor of China.
That’s not my undercover mission. Thanks to the U.S. State Department and the Fulbright commission, Chinese humor and everything that has to do with it is my full-time job until October of 2013. I’m going to keep track of the many things that happen to me this upcoming year-and-few-months on this blog, and I expect that with such an amazing opportunity will offer me ample opportunity to think about how to combine these two passions of mine: the culture, language, and history of China, as well as the collaboration, creativity, and fun of comedy.
As the Fulbright Fellowship is what is making this trip possible, I want to spend this first post explaining what Fulbright is and what the organization does, and what specifically they are asking of me. The Fulbright program is funded by Congress and serves as an educational exchange program, where America is represented abroad by scholars. Fulbright scholars design their own project, which can consist of anything and everything they wish: the organization then chooses the projects they feel best fit with the overarching goals of cultural exchange.
In order to apply, Fulbright requires many materials, including several essays, three letters of recommendation, a language evaluation, as well as submitting info on the extent of your travels to your host nation. They also require official transcripts from your school. People of all ages and education levels can apply for Fulbrights, although applicants with Doctorate degrees must design and teach courses at an affiliated university. This year, there were 50-some odd China Fulbright recipients, more or less evenly split between BAs, MAs, and PhDs.
Fulbright scholars need to submit a mid-way report on their progress, but there are no metrics to determine success or failure, other than those self-imposed by the research fellows themselves. I will get to determine my own hours, and the amazing staff at Fulbright have shown that they are extremely flexible in allowing scholars to pursue topics that arise in the course of research and are of interest to them. The emphasis is on the experience; my job will be to experience Chinese humor.
If you want more info on Fulbright, or to read about other projects that are as esoteric and interesting as I hope mine is, go to http://fulbright.state.gov/. I am happy to say that I’ll be paying my tax dollars into this program!
But this still leaves the question: What will I be doing day to day? Who will I work with? These things are never certain in China, but I have plans as of my departure, and these plans are included in one of the essays I wrote for my Fulbright application, my “Statement of Grant Purpose.” Because this essay does a good job of describing what I think is important about my project, I’d like to share it with you, and show some of the things that I will be thinking about this coming year, and what might show up in the blog.
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Statement of Grant Purpose
Jesse Appell, China, Arts, Drama, Theatre Arts/Acting. Performance Art.
Face and Voice: Chinese Traditional XiangSheng Comedy and The Value of Humor
Where is the human element when “China” and “The United States” exchange “culture”? What face does it have? What voice does it take? Adding the human element to international discourse is crucial when representatives of two cultures meet, and is the crux of the purpose of the Fulbright program. If educational exchange can turn nations into people, then it is my own hope that laughter can turn these people into friends.
And so, I humbly propose a project to do with laughter, humor, and comedy. I wish to learn about China and Chinese culture through the study, rehearsal, composition, and performance of the traditional Chinese comedic art of 相声 (XiangSheng). During my ten-month project I immerse myself in this unique art form by living in the comedy community of Beijing.
XiangSheng, an art that hails back hundreds of years to the Qing Dynasty, means literally “face and voice.” Its witty banter fills tea halls and public squares all around China. In the performance’s most basic form, two performers play off of each other on stage to create a humorous dialogue. The style is a bit like Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First” routine, but with hundreds of years of Chinese performance art and theatrical influence intertwined with the topics and techniques. XiangSheng is a mix of sketch, standup, and improvisation before any of those arts existed.
Seeing a XiangSheng show is like nothing else: the performers talk to themselves and the audience in bantering tones, often about XiangSheng itself. They slap each other around the stage while shouting in loud Beijing accents and make jokes at each other’s expense. With the set consisting of only a small table between the performers and audience, a XiangSheng show is nothing short of a theatrical tour de force.
Studying the topics of XiangSheng is a good way to understand China, as they are often diatribes on modern culture. Simply learning the techniques of the art would be an invaluable window into how the Chinese see humor. But the true value of my project lies in the performance aspect. By rehearsing and learning the art myself, I will get to actually experience all these aspects of Xiangsheng and participate in a truly novel form of cultural exchange.
This summer, while in Beijing on an internship, I spent my free time meeting XiangSheng artists and talking with the community, as well as trying my own hand at the art. I have been incredibly fortunate in getting to meet and learn from the best right away. I attended weekly classes taught by the great XiangSheng master Ding Guangquan, famous nationwide for his tutelage of international performers in the art of XiangSheng. His student, Professor David Moser, also gave me advice and materials, including a copy of his Masters thesis on XiangSheng. The two of them, as well as many fellow students, have offered me their kind support and guidance if I can come back to turn my passion and hobby into something more. Mr. Ding has promised to teach me personally, one-on-one, for free. I discovered XiangSheng to be a perfect fit for my current linguistic capabilities: difficult, but doable, and with much room for growth.
As my project builds directly on pursuits and networks I established this summer, I will be able to engage immediately within this community. I will attend shows of famous performers such as Guo Degang, as well as study the scripts of older performers such as Hou Baolin, Mr. Ding’s old master. Over the summer, I spoke with many performers and students of XiangSheng who promised to help me learn through interviews and practice sessions.
Rehearsal, in all its various forms, promises to be a consuming task—but one I look very much forward to. Punning, jibing, and general verbal swashbuckling are all part of the linguistic calisthenics XiangSheng is known for, and will require hours of practice and study with my Chinese performance partners. Because Mr. Ding’s foreign students are often called upon to perform at festivals, TV shows, and other cultural fairs in Beijing and around the country, having the chance to study under Mr. Ding is certain to ensure a XiangSheng study like no other. The support network available to me, along with my own experience in immersive language situations provides a firm base for learning a foreign art in a foreign land. The challenge promises to be intense, but I know my growth as a performer and person will be as great as the effort required of me.
As an improvisational actor, I am greatly interested in the intersection between performance technique and its effect on the audience. How do performers use physicality to produce humor? How do they use words? How are the four techniques of XiangSheng—说学逗唱 (Speak, Study, Joke, Sing)—used to create humor? These techniques are all means to the end of comedy that improvisers and comedians study when considering performances in real-time. As a standup comedian, I was also instantly drawn to the composition aspect of the art. I will work with Mr. Ding, as well as my fellow XiangSheng apprentices, to learn how to compose pieces of XiangSheng and perhaps even perform them.
Learning the way Chinese people see humor is a way to learn about Chinese people themselves. It speaks in ways that their words can’t, won’t, or don’t. Humor permits a depth of cultural understanding and interaction difficult to communicate through articles or books. Sharing humor with Chinese people strengthens communication beyond the scope of language.
The strong advice of my mentors convinced me to apply to study in Beijing. The north of China is the largest remaining bastion of the art of XiangSheng, and Beijing is the only place there is enough density of the art to support a full-scale project. Additionally, there is a distinct lack of scholarship on this subject: Professor Moser, a decades-long scholar of the art, counted for me on one hand the number of young students who had researched the topic in the past ten years. In the field of humor, the capitol city is paradoxically the undiscovered frontier.
On a basic level, study on humor is a huge blank on our map of cultural knowledge. On old maps, blank spots were often inscribed with the phrase “Here Be Dragons”; this, I feel, is a fitting analogy for the China that remains disconnected from western knowledge for lack of exploration. The uncharted waters of humor are in need of an expedition, and I would love to be an explorer heading out to lands far away. The time is now, and the mission is urgent, needed, and intensely human. After all, how can we ever hope to work together as cultures, as countries—as people—if we don’t know how to make each other laugh?
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Finally, I want to thank all of the people who made this possible. My professors who taught me Chinese and wrote me recommendations, my fellow performers who have played onstage with me and taught me the skills I’ve used my whole life as a performer, my parents and family members who have supported me, my mentors who have guided me through all sorts of complexities in the real world and made me a more capable person for it, and the people I’ve met in China who have been so willing to help when I’ve been nothing but 麻烦 to them. The excitement I feel in embarking tomorrow on this mission is thanks to them. I hope these people get a special boost from reading about my adventures!
Jesse