1960年代是美國文化史上最具戲劇性、表演性的時期,各種反體制、反文化運動風起云涌,美國先鋒戲劇潮流隨之高漲,世紀初歐陸歷史先鋒派的政治與美學得以復興。但60年代的美國先鋒戲劇還可以追溯至一種"東方"神秘主義傾向:道家及深受道家影響的禪宗既是儒家文化的逆流,也是中國美學的主要源泉,經歐陸歷史先鋒派理論和美國戰后反文化運動的傳播,其回聲也激蕩于美國先鋒戲劇。后者通過誤讀或化用汲取呼應了道禪思想,借此突破歐美戲劇傳統和主流文化的困囿。本文從反、易、觀、真四個維度追溯道禪思想及美學與美國先鋒戲劇的聯系,通過系統梳理貫穿于美國先鋒戲劇巔峰時期的一支深潛源流,試圖描繪美國先鋒戲劇理論與實踐的一種跨文化譜系,并以此為視角探討美國先鋒戲劇的歷史意義。

In the 1960s, a most theatrical decade in American cultural history, currents of anti-establishment counterculture movement intertwined with a swelling tide of American avant-garde theatre, which revived the politics and aesthetics of the historical avant-garde of early twentieth-century Europe. Like its European precursors, the American avant-garde theatre planted part of its roots in the otherness of "Oriental" mysticism. Taoism and Zen Buddhism, as countercultural thrusts against Confucianism in the Chinese context and as major sources of Chinese aesthetics, also found avant-garde echoes in American theatre of the 1960s in its efforts to break the bondage of conventional Western drama and mainstream American culture. Tentatively mapping an intercultural genealogy of the American avant-garde theatre in theory and practice, this essay focuses on such Taoist or Zen Buddhist concepts as reversal, change, vision, and authentic truth to trace the political and aesthetic links between Tao or Zen and American avant-garde theatre, and thereby to explore the historical impact of vanguard performances in the 1960s and after.