Even though some may doubt it, one of my biggest loves is the theater. But that is not all. One of my other great loves is detective stories. Generally, I have trouble combining the two - few plays unfold according to the rules of a detective mystery (if we ignore for a moment that "Oedipus Rex" is the ultimate detective story, where the detective is also the murderer). Despite the unequivocal success of Agatha Christie's murder mystery "The Mousetrap," I did not go to see it on principle, and not just because I know that the butler did it.
But recently, during a visit to Toronto, I met a person who perfectly combines my two loves. He is David Rotenberg, and he is one of the best-known acting teachers in Canada.
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The country's best actors come to his Toronto studio to hone their skills, after achieving success in film and on TV. Rotenberg has directed plays on Broadway as well as in various regional Canadian theaters.
Directing plays and teaching acting is nothing unusual in itself. But in 1994, Rotenberg played a part in a Sino-Canadian cultural exchange. As a teacher in York University's Theater department, he was invited to direct an original Canadian play at the Shanghai Theater Academy. When he arrived in that city, then home to 18 million Chinese (there are more now), he had six weeks until rehearsals began, and used this time to explore the city with his translator, Ms. Zhang Fang. Instead of visiting all the usual tourist sites, he went into all the small, dark alleys and chalked up impressions.
He directed the play to limited success. But when he returned to his routine in Canada, he turned his impressions from China into a detective novel based in Shanghai. Its hero is a Chinese police officer, Mr. Zhong Fong. Fong, the hero of "The Shanghai Murders," is married to an actress, Fu Tsong, who performs at the national theater. They live in the theater building, and Fong winds up following rehearsals led by a Canadian director (the play is Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," and Fu Tsong plays Olivia) and learning something about theater.
This is part of the charm of the Zhong Fong mystery series, which now includes five books. Rotenberg slips bits of theatrical theory into the pages of the mystery, seeking to show readers (and presumably his acting students) the secrets of the art of acting.
"Acting is not a matter of pretense," he says. "Acting is not about pretending. Acting is knowing your instrument and selecting the notes that produce the 'most eloquent music.'"
In the book, the Canadian producer describes to Fong a moment in a Toronto bar that shows how real life differs from acting. In the bar, a television report was describing how Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson had been stripped of his Olympic medal after he was caught using drugs.
"The faces in the bar became electric as every one of them fell into the pure primary state of being: 'I am betrayed.' But ... even as I watched ... they fell off into the redneck secondary state of 'I am angry' or the liberal secondary state of 'I understand.' Actors get paid to stay in primary states of being, and not to roll over into secondaries ... and experience, before our very eyes, that which we ourselves are unable to experience."
As the plot develops, Fong is accused of causing his wife's death and sentenced to a long exile in the Chinese countryside, outside the wall. He takes along his wife's bilingual edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, sewn into his shabby Mao jacket. He is brought back because the party needs his skills as an investigator, and lives in the shadow of his wife's memory. He continues to live in the apartment in the theater building, and when he wants to concentrate, he goes to rehearsals.
In the fourth book of the series, "The Hamlet Murders," the victim is the Canadian director (who was Fong's wife's lover, so Fong is once again a suspect). While investigating, Fong finds a manuscript draft. It is the prologue to a book about teaching acting that the Canadian director (a sort of alter ego for Rotenberg) had planned to write before he was murdered.
The end of the prologue reads: "The actor's territory is the human heart. It is an uncharted land, defended by terrifying dragons, but it also contains great glories, music and deep human truths. To the hungry actor, it is the only land worthy of investigating. This book attempts to give the actor a compass and a survival kit for this strange land. It includes sketch maps and points of reference in that divine territory whose exploration can for the artist, and should, last a lifetime."
This text is taken from Rotenberg's own manuscript about acting, which awaits a publisher. Meanwhile, at the behest of his Canadian publisher (Viking Canada), he has written a lengthy (almost 800 pages) epic novel, "Shanghai," which is supposed to do for that city what James Michener's books did for Hawaii and James Clavell's novels did for Japan. In the five Fong books, the reader learns both about theater and about Shanghai's wonders and secret places, the Chinese attitude toward foreigners ("the Long Noses"), secret Chinese cults whose dissident existence the regime actually encourages in order to vent the winds of protest, intrigues in the senior party echelons, Chinese customs, Chinese everyday life, the long-standing Chinese grievance against the Canadians (who imported cheap labor and traded Chinese slaves in the 19th century) as well as the Jewish aspect of Shanghai. (Yes, Rotenberg is Jewish, as you may have suspected). And do not be upset that a Canadian director was murdered in the fourth Zhong Fong book. In the fifth book, another Canadian director and drama teacher appears, and serves as a human "lie detector."
During my short visit to Toronto, I was also able to get an impression of Rotenberg's capabilities as an adapter, a director and an acting teacher. In a small new theatrical venue outside of Toronto's entertainment district, he presented his adaptation of Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." On a bare stage, with minimum props, a group of young actors unfolded the plot that many (so I discovered) consider to be the American version of Hamlet. The emphasis is on working as an ensemble, creating a theatrical reality that is true to life, but not realistic. The play will run there until the beginning of November
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