SOURCE: Chen, Xiaomei. “A Wildman Between Two Cultures: Some Paradigmatic Remarks on ‘Influence Studies.¹’” Comparative Literature Studies 29, no. 4 (fall 1992): 397-416.

In the following essay, Chen discusses Wildman in terms of both Western and Chinese cultural influences.

In May 1985, when Gao Xingjian premiered his third play, Wildman, in Beijing, China, its critical reception was quite different from his first two plays, The Alarm Signal staged in 1982 and The Bus Stop in 1983.² Both of his earlier plays have been immediately recognized as being strongly “influenced” by the Western modern theater—by such people as “the formidable French dramatist, God-madman, Antonin Artaud,” and “a host of writers and theorists of the Theater of the Absurd.”³ The Western critics were unanimous in reviewing The Bus Stop as “the first play to introduce elements of the Theater of the Absurd to a Chinese audience.”⁴ Their Chinese counterparts, likewise, expressed a similar view. One...