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to the new comers? I have come up with four logical reasons:
(1) In the actor's psychology, his role on the stage is to entertain, and as long as he can keep the audience amused, everything will be O.K. Sometimes, he forgets, as when he puts his whims and fantasies into practice, and he throws logic out of the window.
(2) The theatrical people may be inclined to think that the audience's mind cannot be rushed. The action has to be brought about in such a way that they can gradually grasp the meaning and importance of the story being told.
(3) One way to highlight the importance of the story is to prolong the time of the fighting scene. In other words, the more you fight, the more important that fight will be.
Things can turn sour if you run counter with this theme. Take, for instance, the following example which amply proves my point:
In the play "Jie Dong Feng" (f) which literally means "Praying For The East Wind", people spend hours acting out the story that leads to the "The Battle Of The Red Cliff” (EZ). The story has it that strategists of both the Wu (R) and the Shu (S) States are scheming how to defeat the mighty Wei State's fleet that was anchored on the upper reach of the Yangtze River. Since the Wu's forces were in the lower reach of the Yangtze River, they needed the "East Wind", in gale force, to help them to win.
Well, when the East gale force winds do come, you would expect that thousands upon thousands of soldiers would throw flaming arrows across the sky aimed at the Wei's fleet, which was tricked to join together with iron chains by internal spies. Then, when the fleet was destroyed and the smoldering ships were cold enough to board, the Wu and Shu strategists would send soldiers to mop up and put a finishing touch to it.
Nothing of the sort happened! What they did was to send a couple of men, with maybe two dozen arrows (not even the flame carrying ones), and throw them in the direction of the enemy. Before you even knew it, the war was over! What an anticlimax! So everyone who sat