Of Barriers and Transits: An Initial Study of Peking Opera’s First Presentations in Brazil

1 Introduction

Combining transcultural communication theories with a case study from the Global South, this paper aims to open new areas for theatre research by revisiting the very first encounter of Peking Opera with Brazil.

In 1956, theatre director and professor at the School of Dramatic Arts of São Paulo,^[1] Paulo Mendonça, concluded one of his reviews in Anhembi magazine in the most genuine aporia. While well-versed in many practical, theoretical and historical elements of the performing arts, he began the text by inquiring “How can one judge, how can one unveil the mystery of those words, gestures, and colors? Which points of reference should be used?”^[2] (Mendonça, 1956, p. 624) Fascinated, and ultimately perplexed, he had just watched his very first Peking Opera presentation, which left him “quite confused, thinking a great deal of contradictory things, without really knowing why,” and incapable of producing a reasonable analysis anchored on adequate epistemologies (Mendonça, 1956, p. 624).

Mendonça was not the only spectator puzzled by the foreign show. Many critics shared his disorientation, admitting in their writings that the lack of specific knowledge about the distinctive semiotics of such an alien theatrical form prevented them from analyzing it – and oftentimes also from enjoying it. Considered by the pivotal name of 20th-century Brazilian theatre studies, Sábato Magaldi, as “the most remarkable event of the (1956) season,” the first tour of the country led by a troupe from the recently founded People’s Republic of China – the Chinese Art Troupe (zhongguoyishutuan, 中国艺术团) – ended up forgotten by the local historiography nor has it been specifically studied by Chinese scholars (Magaldi & Vargas, 2001, p. 418).

As the Covid-19 pandemic keeps imposing challenges to global connections, it also reminds us of how vastly connected our world already is, demonstrating the importance of mobility and the notion of arts as means of communication, which enabled a unique contact between Brazil and the PRC long before the construction of embassies. To lend a new perspective to this exceptional episode, this paper puts forward transculturality as a lens to re-examine the transcendence of contextual variation in theatre mobility. This episteme not only obsoletes the binary paradigm of “self/other” without underplaying the role of the nation, state, and ideology (Baker, 2021), but it also redirects the discussion to a philosophic level where both cultures can be seen as equal parts of, and beyond the Cold War panorama (Jiang & Huang, 2009).

2 The Visit, or New China Comes to Call

If Brazil and other Latin American countries wish to establish diplomatic relations with China, we welcome them all. Doing business without establishing diplomatic relations is all right, and so is conducting ordinary exchanges of visits without doing business. The social systems of China and Latin American countries are different, but we have many points in common.

– Mao Zedong (1998, p. 262)

The above statement of Mao Zedong was made to two Brazilian journalists, Mariudim and Mme. Dotere,^[3] in a conversation in 1958 – two years after the Chinese Art Troupe’s visit, and one year before China sent another acrobatic troupe (Kong, 1959). Before the formal diplomatic relations were established in 1974, there had been appreciable “ordinary exchanges of visits” between the two countries, which answered Mao Zedong’s call in support of the people of Panama in their anti-American campaign (1998, p. 391), according to which “the people of the Asian, African and Latin American countries should unite, […] to safeguard world peace.” A landmark in 1950s’ Beijing was a 12-story building named the Peace Hotel by Guo Moruo, a prestigious Chinese dramatist. The hotel hosted delegates from 37 countries (Asia Pacific Rim Peace Conference, 1952) who came to the city for the Peace Conference of the Asian and Pacific Regions. Being the tallest building at that time, the hotel reflected China’s current mindset – a firm hope to foster a peaceful international setting for the new nation’s development.

Since its inception in 1949 against the backdrop of the Cold War, the PRC had resolutely turned itself against the capitalist world, and the Communist Party of China lopsidedly aligned with the socialist camp led by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This tension reached its highest point eight months later with the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea. The situation took a drastic turn in the late 1950s with the Sino-Soviet split, which quickly caused massive strains on China’s relationship with the Soviet Bloc, and led to its determination to adopt the principle of “regeneration through one’s own efforts” (ziligengsheng, 自力更生). Though the principle does not exclude the need to connect to other regions of the globe, the dispute with USSR did not drive China to the United States, particularly when John F. Kennedy reiterated his position on Chinese Taiwan question during his campaign, that position courted China’s vehement denunciation. As a result, China found itself in a simultaneous confrontation with twin superpowers (Farquhar, 1999, p.131). The Chinese leadership was aware of the severe isolation this new nation was subjected to, from which the importance of cultural mobility was unprecedentedly emphasized. According to Mao Zedong’s reaffirmation at the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference, in 1962, China sought to “establish diplomatic relations with the anti-communist, anti-popular imperialists and reactionaries of various countries,” striving to “have peaceful coexistence” with them (Mao, 1974, p. 182). This statement represents a transitional attitude from a worldview in which two blocs are incompatible to one that permits the possibility of harmony.

Following the Peace Conference, a series of cultural diplomatic actions were initiated by Zhou Enlai, Premier and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, attempting to promote this mobility. Milton Cummings (2009, p. 1) refers to cultural diplomacy as “the exchange of ideas, information, art, and other aspects of culture among nations and their peoples to foster mutual understanding.” This definition suggests a two-way system that Zhou intended to launch by not only “bringing-in” (yinjinlai, 引进来), but also “going-out” (zouchuqu, 走出去). The specific principle of implementation was set forth at the Bandung Conference: “seeking common ground while reserving differences” (qiutongcunyi, 求同存异) (Keith, 1989, p. 66) – in which the difference referred to the opposite social systems, and the common ground indicated the aspiration to “cast off the shackles of colonialism” (Main Speech by Premier Zhou Enlai, 1955). Thus, Zhou’s cultural diplomacy called upon an approach of setting aside ideological disputes to build a platform to present an intrinsic national identity of China. The Chinese identity is not the representation of any particular stage of China’s history, but the “sedimented spirit” (Adorno, 2006, p. 32) of the whole historical process that integrates the essence of Chinese culture. To employ cultural diplomacy would be to summon that identity and implant it into the present, generating a universal image of China that created a stable sense of familiarity. In this case, what could be more Chinese than the traditional Chinese theatre – or, specifically, Peking Opera?

As Daphne P. Lei argues, in the process of imagining and affirming the Chinese identity in varied contact zones,^[4] traditional operas have offered connotations of genuineness and permanence. Through them “a staged Chineseness appears pure, authentic, unpolluted and eternal,” solidifying a cultural image that looks as unique as stable regardless of the surroundings (Lei, 2006, p. 4), like “a symbol for eternal Chineseness” (Lei, 2006, p. 20). Even though the “definition of Chinese identity changes with time and location,” and so do the forms and styles of traditional theatres, Chinese opera is always portrayed as an “uncompromised lotus flower” that could resist in the mud, preserving its idealized identity against foreign influences (Lei, 2006, p. 255).

Peking Opera’s representativeness is based on multiple theatrical systems and techniques, as the form derived from the melodies of Shaanxi Opera (qinqiang, 秦腔) and Han Opera (hanju, 汉剧), the role types from Kun Opera (kunqu, 昆曲), the singing from Hebei Opera (hebeibangzi, 河北梆子), and the skills from numerous folk plays (minjianxiaoxi, 民间小戏), each of which enjoyed centuries of reputation. This combination endowed Peking Opera, which was less than a hundred years old by the 1950s,^[5] with a strong sense of history which, according to David Glassberg (2001, p. 7), is a sense of “locatedness and belonging” that validated the Chinese nationality ideal.

Furthermore, Peking Opera’s hybridity also reflected solidarity. From the late 18th century to the mid-19th century, theatrical troupes from regional provinces entered Beijing to perform for the court (and then to the public), where they settled down and merged. This dynamic suggested that the capital of the Qing Dynasty could attract artists from all over the country, providing a necessary environment for the fusion. The history of the late Qing Dynasty suggested a dire need for Peking Opera. Beginning in 1840 with the lost Opium War, China was gradually torn into several territories ceded to different forces. As Lei explains (2006, p. 255), “the constructed stability of Chinese identity is needed during times of crisis, as during the late Qing.” As a consequence, Peking Opera thrived in the post-Opium War China (Wang, 2008, p. 7), precisely when the nation was shattered and divided, as it staged a permanent and cohesively unified community which was used by both the Qing government and its people to deal with the identity crisis. After a century-long anti-colonialist journey, the crisis reappeared in the 1950s’ when the theatrical form identified with the capital of the PRC, Beijing, was once again used as a cultural and political symbol. The Chinese government “approved the idea of a national theatre to serve alongside Standard Mandarin (putonghua, 普通话) as one means of unifying the country and developing a national culture under a centralized state,” therefore, Peking Opera became a powerful instrument to legitimize the new country, asserting its identity inside China and abroad (Li, 2010, p. 8). In 1955, it set off to the West, seeking recognition.

The Chinese Art Troupe, assembled by Zhou through his endeavor to make “artistic moves first (xianwenyi, 先文艺), diplomatic moves later (houwaijiao, 后外交),” brought five Peking Opera pieces to the Deuxième Festival International d’Art Dramatique, at Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt (now Théâtre de la Ville) in Paris on June 4 (Zi, 2003, p. 21). Charlie Chaplin, coming from Geneva, hailed, “I saw Peking Opera shows in Hong Kong 20 years ago, […] but there is a world of difference from what I see today. It introduced me to New China” (Cheng, 1955, p. 28). Louis Aragon, a leftist writer, acclaimed assertively that “tonight, Paris recognizes the People’s Republic of China!” (Cheng, 1995, p. 28). After Paris, the group visited eight other European destinations – Belgium, Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Italy, United Kingdom, Yugoslavia, and Hungary – attracting over 230,000 viewers in total. However, the success was not directly political, for it would still take years for the diplomatic relations between these countries and China to be established; nor was it purely artistic, for the audience, as the Times of London commented, lacked the necessary knowledge of “the conventions which give significance to every movement” (Blutstein, 2021, p. 77).

The “movement” here explains why Peking Opera still attracted so much attention: it is theatre, an art form that is always “on the move.” Not only is the performance completed through the actors’ movements, but the audience’s emotional experience is moved along with them. The aim of Peking Opera is also to “move people with and into deep feelings (gandongren, 感动人), whose potent energy moves heaven and earth (gantiandongdi, 感天动地)” (Yan, 2004, p. 66). Further, theatre companies travel to different places to gather a certain amount of people, from dozens to thousands, to meet in one space, potentially melting their social and class boundaries for at least several hours. It is this entire experience of theatre that creates a metaphor that suggests that what appears to be fixed and stable is liquid and movable. As the geographer, Tim Cresswell (2006, p. 6) argued, “movement is rarely just movement; it carries with it the burden of meaning” and therefore shapes and produces possibilities. However, the world order was unlikely to change overnight within the Cold War framework. To bridge the distance between China and the world in the 1950s was primarily a matter of bold imagination rather than instant implementation, which was made possible by theatre’s mobility. In 1956, the Chinese Art Troupe crossed oceans to reach Brazil.

3 Mesmerized Spectatorship, Bewildered Criticism

Several weeks before the arrival of the visiting company, the main Brazilian newspapers announced their presentations with striking enthusiasm, highlighting that the group’s previous sessions in Paris had gathered thousands of spectators. As Correio da Manhã (1956, p. 13) observed, the distant news that French intellectuals and ordinary theatergoers had fiercely acclaimed the Chinese artists made Brazilian audiences “impatient” to welcome them. It is not surprising that the public sphere seemed, at least at first, more captivated by the prospects of watching the latest spectacle that had delighted France than by the unprecedented implications of this episode in the immediate context. Ever since the Portuguese invasion and subsequent colonization, in 1500, European discourses shaped the cultural horizon. After the establishment of the Republic, from the late 1880s onwards, attention was channeled to French contemporary arts, and the Parisian stages directly influenced the theatre repertories of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (Torres & Vieira, 2012).

Utterly unknown to these 1950s audiences, the Chinese company conveyed a tricky lexical operation. The official playbills for the shows referred to them as the Peking Opera (Ópera de Pequim, 京剧) or “China’s Classic Theatre” (“Teatro clássico da China”，中国传统戏剧). On the one hand, the term “opera” could misleadingly identify this art with the European operatic genre, making spectators think that they would watch works aligned with Verdi or Bizet. On the other hand, the label “China’s Classic Theatre” implied that Peking Opera homogeneously embodied and typified multiple codes, symbols, and practices developed throughout centuries in different regions of the Chinese territory, thus representing, by itself, a unique formal canon – which would be unfamiliar to most Western audiences, even if it existed in such terms. While some of the works presented were indeed pieces commonly performed on Beijing’s stages, most likely following Peking Opera's specific parameters, the evenings also included popular songs and dances by an ensemble from Liaoning.

On September 11, 1956, the troupe, composed of 20 musicians and 48 male and female actors, premiered in Rio de Janeiro, under the direction of Chu Tu Nan and Chao Feng.^[6] Having performed to an almost full house until September 22, they headed to São Paulo, where they once again attracted large crowds from September 27 to October 7. In both cities, the shows were presented at the Municipal Theatre, the two major professional buildings in the country dedicated to the performing arts, and the first ones where any traditional Chinese theatricality was seen in such grandeur. As the playbills reveal, evenings changed and the programs were designed to mix, with varying combinations, scenes from O adeus da favorita (bawangbieji, 霸王别姬); O bracelete de jade (shiyuzhuo, 拾玉镯); Os três encontros (sanchakou, 三岔口); O rei dos singes and Tumulto no reino dos céus (naotiangong, 闹天宫); and A fortaleza de Yen-Ten-Chan (yandangshan, 雁荡山);^[7] with solos of Chinese instruments; and folk songs and dances; such as the choreographies “The Lotus Dance” and “The Red Ribbons Dance.”^[8]

Although the sessions were vastly commented on, the coetaneous records do not point to unanimous acclaim. Several brief texts about Peking Opera’s role types; its stylized makeup; and the coexistence of spoken dialogue, singing, and acrobatics were published in the media, and a contextualizing introduction was specifically written for the brochure of the shows. Nevertheless, none of these materials could prevent a highly paradoxical reception, defined by bewilderment, mesmerism, rejection, and admiration. Music critic and composer Renzo Massarani observed (1956, p. 8) that his immediate excitement to watch the Chinese ensemble soon became, at the end of the evening, the feeling of “being freed from a nightmare […].”^[9] According to him, that “musical world, the crystalized echo of a millenary and glorious civilization, which is not ours, constitutes […] something inexorably hermetic. It is impossible to understand […], impossible to interpret, impossible to dig into the musical, histrionic soul of this ‘opera’ whose profound meanings say nothing to us” (Massarani, 1956, p. 8). Similarly, musicologist Eurico Nogueira França argued (1956, p. 15) that the scales, notes, and tones played by the Chinese Art Troupe were so distant from the sounds the audiences enjoyed that they even sounded “humorous” to their ears.

If the performances displeased music specialists, theatre critics had more ambiguous views. While admitting some perplexity, Van Jafa stated (1956, p. 1) that “one does not need to speak Chinese to feel these stories. They are eloquent by themselves.” Peking Opera is “a millenary gesture that moves and brings human beings together by the only possible human unity: the universality in art,” he added (1956, p. 1), going in the opposite direction of most of his colleagues, who had seen no universal beauty in a show filled with distinctive conventions. Magaldi (1956, p. 5) emphasized these peculiar elements, and proceeded to analyze some of them to answer “how useful can the Chinese traditional theatre be to the Brazilian stages?” Regardless of its aesthetic merits and vivacious aspect – translated in works that were not as constrained by the dramatic text as the majority of the Western canon – Peking Opera did not seem to offer, to him, any long-lasting legacy to the local spectators. “[…] we cannot assimilate the language of the Chinese theatre” (Magaldi, 1956, p. 5), he categorically stated, suggesting that not only was the genre too obscure, but it was also unabsorbable. Qualifying the presentations as the greatest artistic enterprise seen in the country in the last years, poet Murilo Mendes urged theatre professionals and the Brazilian people in general to extract solid lessons from the Chinese Art Troupe’s tour – a call that was never properly answered.

4 Beyond Cultural Exchange

In comparison to the Brazilian context, the outcome of these shows is less documented in China, except for a few official reports claiming their success. Primary sources suggest that both countries appeared to value Peking Opera differently, as Brazil focused on trying to apprehend its aesthetics whereas China seemed more interested in its diplomatic significance. With differing inclinations, one could be tempted into concluding that no substantial cultural exchanges have taken place. Could this explain the paucity of relevant discussions over the last sixty years? Was this unique episode a failure in communication?

Answering these questions requires a closer examination of the notion of culture, which is beyond the scope of this paper. However, insights from Ian Watson are pertinent to an understanding of this particular topic. Writing about Eugenio Barba’s cultural pluralism, Watson (2002, p. 3) refers to culture as “a discursive space that is permanently ‘in action’ rather than a completed product or object frozen in space and time,” and cultural exchanges as “a complex interaction of entities which are in a permanent process of negotiating their own identity.” This interpretation grants an essential attribute to culture: fluidity. China’s national identity has always been a highly plural, fluid concept. However, the PRC had to negotiate it in quite paradoxical terms, achieving fluidity through a fixed representation. Used as a diplomatic tool and a symbol for an idealized Chinese identity, Peking Opera conveyed a stable and solid image of an ancient, immutable country to illustrate a distant place about which in the analog 1950s western societies knew little. Like Brazilian immediate records demonstrate,^[10] the adjectives “millenary” and “mysterious” were frequently used to describe the century-old theatre form, which was seen as one of the most legitimate artistic heritages of a civilization of thousands of years of existence in the far East. By embodying the very essence of an antique, unknown China, this traditional theatre offered audiences a “token of Chineseness” (Lei, 2006) – whose emblem became, by consequence, the Chinese visiting troupe. “[…] of course all cultures are much more complicated than their most identifiable tokens. But we do start a cultural performance with a token […]. Cultures change, but tokens seemingly don’t; tokens offer an imaginary eternity for the culture, which is essential for identity performance” (Lei, 2006, p. 1).

Rather than conceiving the Chinese Art Troupe’s tour of Brazil as a failed attempt at intercultural communication between two highly different peoples, it seems more productive to borrow from transcultural communication lenses to analyze the paradoxical fluidity of this episode. In other words, what each side shared, transgressed, and ultimately transcended in this encounter, thanks to the performance of a stable national identity. As Pavis (2016) argues, “cultures are not opposed as distinct entities, but they are to be found in the general sphere of the cultural […] as the superposition of cultural elements” (p. 88). He also poses that “the transcultural transcends particular cultures and looks for a universal human condition, […] which supposedly unites all human beings beyond their ethnic differences and which can be directly transmitted to any audience without distinction of race, culture or class” (Pavis, 1992, p. 20). In this vein, Peking Opera’s visit to Brazil may be seen as a necessary step toward transcultural communication, for it conveys a sense of connection and transcendence in at least three dimensions.

First, two opposing ideologies ended up transcended through art. In consonance with the formalists’ belief that art should be self-regulatory to avoid being penetrated by social, historical, and political pressures, consequently becoming the product of such forces or a statement of certain ideologies, China’s cultural diplomacy was presented as a refined art form, despite (or discounting) its political overtones. In 1956, the Cultural Revolution, which accentuated the communist values and substituted the traditional oeuvres of Peking Opera for the “model operas” (yangban xi, 样板戏), was still a decade away. This gave China a certain level of flexibility in designing the trip. Zhou personally reviewed the program (Zuo, 2020) to transmit a purely artistic motivation for this visit. This move turned out to be effective, especially when the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also known as Itamaraty, refused to grant visas to the Chinese delegation.

As the newspaper Última Hora reveals, the scheduled presentations of the Chinese Art Troupe were almost canceled after the artists were denied the necessary documents to enter the country. Initially, Itamaraty declared that “there were absolutely no conditions to issue the visas” (Última Hora, 1956a, p. 5) since alleged evidence showed that the true motivation for their visit was the promotion of a communist agenda – an idea particularly dreaded in a capitalist society that was witnessing the unfolding Cuban Revolution. Despite the accusations that the Chinese Art Troupe was merely an instrument of political propaganda, several articles in the press spoke in favor of the group, commenting that the performers had just been a major success in France, and noticing with a fair dose of irony that any kind of leftist indoctrination delivered in Chinese would escape the Lusophone Brazilians (Última Hora, 1956b, p. 2). Moreover, as repeatedly echoed by journalists and critics, the repertory brought by the group was an elevated theatrical form with ancient roots that spectators in the New World should not be deprived of watching due to what they deemed the “ignorance” of certain local authorities (Ópera de Pequim: Reagem escritores e artistas contra o ato do Itamarati, 1956, p. 2). After key intellectuals organized a public campaign to speak in favor of the artists and Empresa Viggiani,^[11] a respected enterprise with vast experience financing and mediating foreign tours in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo negotiated with the federal institutions, their entrance was finally permitted.

Second, the visa incident ultimately led to the transcendence of the illusionistic performer-spectator relationship. Widespread in the European theatre, the naturalistic and realistic traditions relied on the fourth wall, “an imaginary wall that separates the stage from the audience,” as if the diegetic universe were not only unreachable but sealed by an imaginary barrier (Pavis, 2017, p. 315). Feeling that the performance is happening “regardless of their presence, behind a translucid wall,” spectators “like voyeurs […] watch the characters acting without taking the audience into consideration” (Pavis, 2017, p. 316). The “wall” makes a point about the binary opposition between stage and auditorium: one is in the spotlight at all times, while the other is kept in the dark; one is alive with the constant movement of actors, whereas the other asks the audience to remain motionless in their seats; one tells, the other receives. Being a spectator thereby means staying out of the drama while it unfolds before you. Throughout the 20th century, this dynamic was continually challenged, with performers interacting with spectators or commenting on the fictional nature of what was being presented; the play calling attention to itself as a play, and the audiences actively participating or intervening in the fictional work. During the Chinese Art Troupe’s tour, the artists and the Brazilian spectators ended up sharing the very construction of theatricality.

As previously mentioned, the major play that the PRC intended to present was the one that could exhibit a stable symbol of Chineseness – that is, the identity performance. It began even before the opera series debuted in Brazil, which functioned only as a curtain call at the end of this lengthy performance. The authors are certainly not suggesting that the Peking Opera content was insignificant; rather, the identity performance hinged on its successful staging. Many dramatic situations evolved from this particular issue. As in a play, the visa incident was the supreme crisis in the plot line; as opposed to a naturalistic play, the ultimate force that resolved the crisis came from beyond the “wall.” This wall can also be interpreted as a boundary that demarcates and separates one culture from another, which transcultural communication seeks to bypass or remove. It should be noted that not all actions in this play were scripted, as stage directions are. When the visa denial occurred, there was a spontaneous moment of passivity that fixed the actors to their current positions without further instructions. The audiences, though not written into this play, emancipated themselves collectively from the seats, broke down the fourth wall, and stepped onto the stage to intervene and make sure they could indeed be the audience of the Chinese Art Troupe’s upcoming shows. Their involvement in this previous performance virtually overturned the binary convention, by transforming themselves from mere viewers into “actors” to try out new solutions for the drama.

Third, the entire visit may be interpreted as a metatheatrical experience^[12] that embedded Peking Opera within itself as a mise-en-abyme and broke the fourth wall via a series of real dramas, illuminating its nature as an identity performance. In this theatre, many movements can be viewed as theatrical actions with a specific purpose. The effort and struggle to bring the Peking Opera to the stage, for example, reflected the immobility of the Cold War dynamics and its incompatible dichotomies, which in turn made this visit radically progressive. The mutual imbrications of the performer-spectator relationship in this dramatic scene empowered the audience with subjectivity and initiative. As a result, theatre of the real and theatre of fiction no longer opposed each other, but coexisted, resulting in a tangible product (given the performances were physically visible), yet immaterial (in terms of their communication value) at the same time. This episode provided the necessary conditions for transcending certain bureaucratic and ideologic Cold War barriers by literally allowing the Chinese artists, coming from a socialist system, to enter capitalist Brazil – which welcomed them enthusiastically. Like Para Todos magazine posited, the mere possibility of interacting with visitors coming from the other side of the globe was perceived by Brazilians as “a great party of friendship and culture” (Jean, 1956, p. 24).

What is more, thanks to the 1956 tour, a series of travels between Brazil and China was initiated, with official invitations to Brazilian intellectuals, journalists, and artists to visit the PRC (Zuo, 2020, p. 77). Indeed, like Jornal do Brasil noted in 1960, “visiting China is the new trend,” as demonstrated by the recent seasons of Raimundo Magalhães Júnior, one of the main names of the Brazilian intellectual life, and of stellar actors Maria Della Costa and Sandro Polloni in the Chinese territory (Maurício, 1960, p. 6). In her book Passaporte para a China [Passport to China], published only in the 2000s, writer Lygia Fagundes Telles presents a series of columns sent to Última Hora describing her 1960 visits to Beijing and Shanghai, where she was accompanied by other compatriots (Telles, 2011). It could thus be argued that the Chinese Art Troupe inaugurated a bridge between Brazil and China. Some years later, this flux would be interrupted when China entered the Cultural Revolution period, and Brazil suffered a coup d’état that implemented a twenty-one-year far-right dictatorship.

The unsatisfactory critical interpretation and lack of deeper analyses of Peking Opera’s reception in Brazil might be considered, in isolation, as an example of an unsuccessful cultural exchange; but if one considers the holistic picture, it is possible to argue that the shows engendered a heightened sense of heterogeneity. Brazil’s engagement with this radically alien cultural product shows that the dichotomy of socialists/communists versus capitalists was lost of sight. Since the national scale in transcultural communication has never been denied (Baker, 2021), a country’s nationality is “negotiated at the interfaces and faults connecting and separating cultures” (Schechner, 1991, p. 30). More importantly, by flowing across the geographical and ideological borders under the confrontational mindset of the Cold War, the Chinese culture thereby transcended confrontation, while simultaneously exhibiting its subjectivity and appeal to the globe. Other than aesthetic pleasures, these Peking Opera performances did not openly convey any particular message, as they were already a diplomatic message in their own right. The message was well-received as evidenced by the strong support of Brazil before the troupe’s arrival, during the Peking Opera performances, and even after the show, when diverse – and oftentimes puzzled – responses tried to grasp the performances. Therefore, what has been transcended, at last, was the theatre/world itself. By virtue of mobility, it became a theatrum mundi, namely, “all the world’s a stage.” Finally, the 1956 presentations also inaugurated the operative conditions that enabled the visits of Brazilian intellectuals to the People’s Republic of China, where they could see and experience the country for themselves.

5 Conclusion

The contribution of this paper can be summarized as twofold:

For one prism, it deepens the historical understanding of this unprecedented contact between Brazil and the PRC. Despite the absence of more substantial comments on this episode from the 1950s until these days, it greatly contributed to the richness of the transnational/global theatre history. When discussing this field, Christopher Balme and Berenika Szymanski-Düll (2017, p. 3) highlight Kiran Klaus Patel’s idea that “in transnational constellations, the nation continues to play an essential role. Transnational history encompasses therefore all which is located beyond (and sometimes inside) the national but which continues to be defined by the latter.” By using Peking Opera as a token of Chinese identity, the Chinese Art Troupe’s tour tensioned and expanded the potentialities of national identity representation and theatre performance. Additionally, it transgressed ideological and geographic barriers, traveling to territories where these artists would not have been allowed to enter – if not for theatre.

For another, it argues that the “trans” perspective of transcultural communication provides a philosophical method of studying the communicative practices in which different cultures meet, yet the exchanges seem unobtrusive. As illustrated by Jiang and Huang (2009), transcultural communication does not ignore or eclipse cultures, nor does it mix or creolize them; rather, it places forward a frame in which all cultural identities are viewed as “all-under-heaven,” seeking to communicate freely, equally, and adequately while retaining their uniqueness. As a utopian design, transcultural communication moves beyond cultural barriers instead of transgressing them, which characterizes the whole process but also displays its limitations. As discussed in this paper, the ultra-stable structure of Peking Opera made it difficult, if not impossible, for audiences without specific knowledge to grasp and appreciate the performances themselves, yet, thanks to them, a pivotal artistic and cultural bridge was built between the two countries that were still isolated from one another. Solving the lack of more in-depth analysis of the early reception of this traditional Chinese theatrical genre in Brazil perhaps will require more than “moving beyond,” and this fairly unexplored cartography begs for further exploration.