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Hong Kong as a theatre of absurd|Pat To Yan

蘋果日報 2020/12/13 09:41


It’s another week of indiscriminate arrest and injustice trial here in Hong Kong. Yes, we know we have tons of works to do, to build a stronger community network or to strengthen ourselves. Nevertheless, still, we can’t stop the never-ending evil.
Second World War was undoubtedly a disaster to civilization. Humans had been proud of inventing tools and initiating the Industrial Revolution. In the end, all these advanced technologies were used for self-destruction. Among these catastrophes, the Nazi concentration camps were the most disturbing. Building an ‘effective’ factory of death to murder several millions of Jews was beyond humans’ imagination. I remember I watched a documentary shot right after the liberation of a concentration camp. The troops of Western allies were shocked to find out the truth: the systematic procedure of sending Jews and other prisoners to the gas chambers, a mountain of dead humans who were obviously far underweight when they were alive ……
How can we live in a world with concentration camps? The foundation of civilization was shaken. A lot of thinkers and writers gave various responses to the question. The philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote ‘writing poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric’ (Auschwitz was the largest Nazi concentration camp). After the quote became popular, Adorno reemphasized the importance of writing poetry. Despite this, his quote showed the devastation caused by the concentration camps. Imre Kertesz, the Hungarian writer and Nobel Prize for Literature winner, wrote a book called ‘Kaddish for a child not born’. The protagonist was a Holocaust survivor who thought he should not bring a child to this world as there had been concentration camps.
Playwrights also cast their doubts through theatre. A scholar Martin Esslin grouped them as ‘The Theatre of the Absurd’, including Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Eugene Ionesco, etc. In spite of the variations of styles, there are commonalities among these plays. The characters in the plays speak a lot, but they couldn’t communicate efficiently, or even worse, the communication breaks down. Western civilization is proud of rationality. Playwrights of the Theatre of Absurd use the irrational language to question rationality. The plays deal with the meaning of existence. Characters may exhibit weird behaviors, such as peeing on the stage.
In one of the classics ‘Waiting for Godot’, the protagonists Vladimir and Estragon have to wait for a person named Godot, although they don’t know who he is, what he’s going to do, and why they must wait. And Godot doesn’t show up in the end. Godot has offered a lot of room for interpretation: is he the God? Judgement Day? A supernatural being? We can never know the true meaning of Godot, but we have to wait. We are only leading an absurd life.
Unluckily, genocide has never left us since World War 2. And now, there are still concentration camps in the world. Everyone knows about the fact of Xinjiang re-education camps and the infringement of human rights in Tibet and Hong Kong, but the world still keeps going. Perhaps we should ask the same question again: How can we live in a world like this? With re-education camps and all these atrocities? Can we claim back our sensible life?
(Pat To Yan, Active in Hong Kong and German Theatre. Playwright, Director, Lecturer. Elected Council Member and the Chairman of the committee of Literary Art of Hong Kong Arts Development Council.)
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