An Interesting Outline of the Philosophy and Technique The philosophy and technique of Chinese dramatic art formed the subject of an extremely interesting lecture given at Wednesday's meeting of the Union Church Literary and Social' Guild. The lecturer, Mr. Sheng Hung, who is in business in Shanghai, has nade a special study of Chinese and Western dramatic art, and dealt with his subject in an able and attractive way.
To any one visiting a Chinese theatre for the first time, he said, the place seemed a mad house. There everything is extraordinary. The stories enacted are not within every-day experience. Did we ever know a servant who sacrificed the life of his own child in order to save the life of his master'? Where was the General nowadays who would cut off his arm in order to fool the invading army and win a victory? Then again, the actors behaved most curiously. To denote a character their faces were daubed with red, green, black, white, in a manner unlike anything human. Childish devices were used to create stage illusion: an ea: represented.a boat, a flag an army, a chair a bridge, a table a mountain, while the mere waving of a whip represented a mounted warrior in full career. Yet, with all these peculiarities, the actors were earnest and the audio serious. How much truth, therefore, might there be im the old saying: Those in front of the stage are fools: those besind are lunatics
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.