Salesman in Beijing

by Arthur Miller

The playwright describes his experiences in China directing a local production of his play, "Death of a Salesman."

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1984

About the author

Works of American playwright Arthur Asher Miller include Death of a Salesman (1949), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Crucible (1953).


This essayist, a prominent figure in literature and cinema for over 61 years, composed a wide variety, such as celebrated A View from the Bridge and All My Sons , still studied and performed worldwide. Miller often in the public eye most famously refused to give evidence to the un-American activities committee of the House of Representatives, received award for drama, and married Marilyn Monroe. People at the time considered the greatest Miller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_...

Reviews

[ambyr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Going in, I think I was expecting something more analytical, more philosophical. Miller goes there occasionally, but mostly this remains his raw, day-to-day thoughts on his personal experiences directing a cross-cultural production, and it's the better book for that. It was fascinating watching his prejudices shift and unravel as the grueling rehearsal schedule draws the cast and crew all closer together. There's a fair amount of humor, too, both in the inherent irony of producing a play about the impossibility of the American Dream in a country just beginning to leap on the train of capitalism and in Miller's descriptions of trying to work around the technological limitations of a theater with equipment decades behind what he's used to.

I picked this up partly because I'd just returned from Beijing, and I was curious to compare my experiences in 2012 with older travel writing. It has a lot of that; Miller's descriptions of the people and places he visits are vivid. But it's equally interesting as a piece of literary criticism on Death of a Salesman and as a rumination on the art of theater in general.

[Hannah Wu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up for $2 in a secondhand bookshop. It was a kind of serendipity acquisition - the book was probably in the bargain bin because the shop-owner thought no one would want it at any higher price. I thought it was a great find, and having read it since lunchtime yesterday, and finished it this evening, have had that confirmed.

I always enjoy books that relate to the making of a play or a movie (for instance I have books on the making of Titanic, Sense and Sensibility and Casablanca, and one interesting one on the making of The Glass Menagerie, a film directed by Paul Newman, and starring his wife, Joanne Woodward, and John Malkovich)

Miller's book is a day-by-day account of the production of Death of a Salesman that he was asked to direct in Beijing in 1983. This was only six years before the tragedy of Tienanmen Square and it's not hard to see how such a disaster could be so close at hand when you read this book. The people in China were coming out of the long years of Mao's reign - and that of his viciously ignorant wife - but things were still in a great deal of transition, and no one knew quite where they stood. Intellectuals (a category that included artists of all sorts) had been treated not just with great disdain during the period of the Cultural Revolution, but were often subjected to unspeakable horrors (there's a brief story in this book of a woman imprisoned in a cupboard for two and a half years, with no means to go to the toilet, and the threat of having her children executed. I remember seeing From Mao to Mozart a number of years ago. It was filmed in 1981 and in it a professor of music tells of having the same thing done to him: the cupboard became his 'home' for a similar period of time. Isaac Stern, who is the focus of the movie, listens in bewildered silence.)

The actors who became the cast of Miller's production had also been subject to privations: made to work at menial tasks such as being sent to the country to pick rice. Ironically, because they were part of a state company, they were also paid their normal wages during this time - not that those wages were anything to write home about. The main female actress had only managed to keep her daughter from being raped by hiding her under a blanket. All through the book is this strange twenty-year history just behind these people, a history none of them have quite come to terms with yet.

Miller speaks no Chinese (although his artist wife speaks it very well, along with several European languages) and has to work mostly through interpreters. The main male actor speaks very good English and was one of the people who got the production off the ground. But language isn't the only barrier: Miller sees the play itself, initially, as primarily American in tone and nature and not adaptable to a Chinese environment, in spite of an excellent translation by the actor just mentioned. However, as the rehearsal period progresses, Miller comes to see that the universal aspects of the play far outweigh the American ones, and his biggest difficulty is in getting the cast to work naturally. At this point in their theatrical history there are lots of grand gestures, a lot of playing to the audience, many signs and signals and other paraphernalia that get in the way of a straightforward playing of the piece. Once the cast grasp this, the performances become as good as any Miller has ever seen.

There are other frustrations: the Chinese are used to making themselves up heavily for performances - Miller has to discourage this. They would usually all wear wigs; again he has to find a way around showing them that these aren't, for the most part, necessary. He has to search his brain for Chinese stories to help them interpret the script. The lighting system is so antiquated it can only have so many cues before a blackout is necessary. The sound system consists of one elderly tape recorder. Many of the costumes have to be worked out from photographs in American magazines. Some of the props required are of objects that the Chinese don't even recognise; and some of them are made out of papier mache - including a fridge that is so well constructed and painted that it's not obvious to the audience that it could be picked up with one hand. Everywhere in the corridors of the theatre you can smell the ammoniac stench of urine, and the theatre itself, a large place seating 1300 people, has seating whose fittings are so worn that when a seat is put down the noise is like a pistol shot.

All these difficulties are somehow overcome - the actors and the backstage people may seem to exist on a different planet, but they know their stuff, and when push comes to shove, they produce the goods. Miller is often humbled by the odds they overcome.

A couple of quotes from right towards the end of the book to finish:

When I visit the dressing rooms, where they are getting into makeup, the behaviour of the actors reminds me again of the replication of human life that a production represents. The actor begins in helpless dependency, gradually grows up to feel strength, often rebels against the director/author, and finally in maturity faces the world as though he had invented himself. Where once they loved me like a parent, now they can't help overdoing gestures of affection to their onetime leader, for whom they have no real need anymore. The hairdo's the thing now, the eyebrow, the necktie, the fingernail, and the teeth. Now I am rather in the position of a beloved aunt who taught them as children to play the piano; they are overjoyed to see me, and to see me go. [page 246]

The art of acting is the mastery of a contradiction: its object is to place the actor in 'the now,' the moment, but at the same time he has to be planning his next move, building his climaxes with modulations of voice and emotional intensity. By virtue of training and temperament the Chinese actor creates feeling by acknowledging his debt to his objectifying techniques. He does not 'throw himself into the part' but builds a performance by pieces of knowledge, as it were, of story, character, and specific circumstances. [page 251]

[Steve Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1983 playwright Arthur Miller traveled to China to direct a Chinese translation of his play. “Death of a Salesman”.

This is an account of his experiences and the challenges he faced in putting on the production. It’s more than that, though. It’s Miller’s reflection on art and culture, and his observations of the geopolitical situation in China in 1983. This will be a work that is used by historians researching this particular time in Chinese history-when China was coming out of the trauma of the Cultural Revolution, and stepping into modernity.

For those people who love “Death of a Salesman”, this may be a book you want to read. It certainly taught me a lot about the play. It also taught me a lot about Miller.

[Colin McPhillamy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gives a detailed description of Arthur Miller's experience directing his play, "Death of a Salesman". That alone would make it worth reading. The fact that he is directing Chinese actors in Chinese (with assistance from interpreters), in 1983 early on in the new Chinese national policy of openness, makes it a must-read for anyone from the West with theatrical connections or aspirations in China. His insights and assessments of the actors are penetratingly compassionate as they and he struggle to find common ground from which to work. Aspects of Willy Loman's dreams are shared in the market-economy-to-come that is still in early days. This was an event that paved the way for theatrical activity in a country which was starved of it. Described in compelling detail along with the author's own process of frustration and hope as he guides his cast, grapples with design and logistics, and ultimately achieves an extraordinary piece of theatre.

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman, have read it and seen it performed many times. This year at the Stratford Festival in Stratford Ontario I saw, for the first time, Death Of a Salesman In Beijing performed by an incredible cast, half in Mandarin and half in English, with subtitles. I was so intrigued by the play with it’s culture and language clashes that I decided I needed to read Miller’s journal about his experience directing Death of A Salesman (in China). I have to admit that I found the live play much more interesting and engrossing than the actual journal but I did appreciate the additional info and insight that Miller provided in his journal – much longer to read than to watch the live play - Death Of A Salesman in Beijing.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent journal/memoir by Arthur Miller of his two months in 1983 directing the first Chinese production of his Death of a Salesman. Very much a time capsule, because China has changed so much in 35 years, but much of Miller's observations of his time there, and the craft of acting, are timeless.

[erynde · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I can tell you now that one of the main motives in coming here is to try to show that there is only one humanity. That our cultures and languages set up confusing sets of signals and these prevent us from communicating and sharing one another's thoughts and sensations, but that at the deeper levels where this play lives we are joined in a unity that is perhaps biological."

[Serdar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mesmerizing, meticulous diary kept by Miller during the production of Death of a Salesman in China, with endless individual details about the experience, and about China in the early 1980s. Fascinating even if you are not a fan of the play (I am, but not everyone is).