The Dawn Is Silent Here (Zhekuai'er de Liming Jingqiaoqiao), a drama by young director Xu Haofeng, is now being staged quietly in the Experimental Theater of Beijing People's Art Theater. Using puns and theatrical exaggeration, this play-within-a-play explores the commercialization of art and attempts to criticize deviations from traditional art forms.

In roaring thundering and lightning, a three-soldier military team marches. Suddenly, gunshots ring out and an officer is hit. Everyone hits the dirt. A female soldier asks, "Do you have a wife, officer?" "Yes, I'm married," he says. They crawl with difficulty toward each other and hug.

Don't think that this is a scene in The Dawn Is Quiet Here (Zheli de Liming Jingqiaoqiao), a play adapted from the famous Russian novel of the same title. But rather, the beginning of The Dawn Is Silent Here (Zhekuai'er de Liming Jingqiaoqiao), a drama by young director Xu Haofeng, now being staged quietly by the Experimental Theater of Beijing People's Art Theater, on the third floor of the Capital Theater, 22 Wangfujing Street, Beijing. The play is about a theatrical troupe attempting to stage the Soviet classic. The "playwright", acted by Jiang Zhuqing, comes up and complains: "How many times have I told you not to act like this!" She seems irate.

In fact, this play tries to explore the inner world of artists and criticize the unprincipled creation of "selling points" as a deviation from the art form.

The Dawn Is Quiet Here is a historical revolutionary classic from the former Soviet Union which caused a stir among Soviet youth in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, however, a man, acted by Zhang Jin, is trying to direct it into a play on stage and name it The Dawn Is Silent Here. Both he and the playwright are racking their brains to find better ways to attract audiences even at a cost of changing the play beyond recognition.

However, no one can help them keep the actors and actresses, who, in a marketing trend, have already stopped pursuing real art. Two major roles, the warrant officer and Kewa (Chinese form of the character Komelkova), leave the stage in succession and join more popular film and TV groups. The actress staying on, Lida, has to think out new ways to extract laughter from the audience: she asks the director to draw blood from her arm and shoot it at the audience. Unfortunately, her "courageousness" was spied on by film producers and she was carried off.

Both the director and the playwright are depressed and decide to employ new actors and actresses. People of all manners appear, including a man who dreams of acting as a Nazi soldier in Germany, a boy looking extremely feminine, a loyal fan of South Korean drama and a country girl who seems to be unable to act at all but wants to become a star.

As the blood-shooting gradually lose its attraction and the director and playwright spend all their money on suing companies that have plundered their staff, they are driven into a corner. In the play they cannot help but exclaiming: "An unrecognized artist is just like a dog deserted by its owner!"

They turn to the "warrant officer" and "Kewa", who have now become pop stars and also are a couple, for help, but are refused mercilessly.

The whole play is full of absurd scenes and unexpected plots. It keeps asking, in a society now accustomed to commercial growth, can art still maintain its original direction and integrity?

Taking shelter from the rain under a shirt, outside the house of an accomplished couple, they are met by the country girl. She is now the wife of a businessman, who gets rich by selling pirate DVDs. She and her husband agree to invest in the play, but they propose to act in lead roles and do as they like. The director and playwright agree, but feel sad: "Will it still be the play we want the audience to see?"

A harsher condition they put forward is that they want to own the two artists, so they ask them to bark like dogs. The humiliated playwright barks to realize her dream. She says "I love to play," while the director, losing his normal sense of himself, kills himself with the prop gun. In illusion, he sees all the people have come back.

The director of The Dawn Is Silent Here, Xu Haofeng, uses puns, exaggeration and free time and space exchanges to create a magic-realist world. By comparing the former Soviet Union battle field with today's stage, and a revolutionary spirit with commercial propaganda, he is actually trying to explore such an issue. He asks: "In an era when there is no enemy in the battlefield, who has defeated us (artists)?"

Though the director is young and most of the actors and actresses are still students from Beijing Film Academy, the play skillfully reflects contemporary life. As it ends and applauses rise, the audience perhaps wishes that the dawn here is no longer so quiet.

Dates: Nov. 16-Dec. 8
Venue: Experimental Theater of Beijing People's Art Theater, 22 Wangfujing Street, Beijing
Price: 100 yuan
Booking: 010-65250996, 65250123, 65249847
Booking for students: 85116622

(China.org.cn by staff reporter Li Jinhui and polished by Daragh Moller, December 1, 2003)