--As different capacities exist at once in the same character, the words uttered call for an

interreferential reading. Zhuang Zhou does not remain a simple integrated self in his own
capacity, as in the original xiqu story of Smash the Coffin. Hence, the singular truth of the
original characters world is deconstructed and replaced by a multiplicity of personae.
Zhuang Zhous testing his wife is the focus of observation, but each of the four personae
provides a different angle from which this focal point is viewed, and all together form an
integrated totality. What the audience sees, however, is not a single Zhuang Zhou but four
voices. In coming from the same physical being, these voices are interrelated and
interreferential.

--Gaos idea of the neutral actor functions on the premise of a suppositonal theatre. The
state of neutrality that the actor acquires keeps him or her in an intermediary position
between and separate from the two other worlds of reality, that is, the actors selfhood and
the characters identity. Such an actor must be clearly aware that the theatre is a
suppositional space in which the characters reality is at once experienced and performed. A
suppositional theatre requires the actors imagination to fulfil its utmost creative potential.
To play various dramatic roles as a neutral actor demands a similar quality of imagination.
The basic concern is thus not the object of representation but the process of representing. If
Gaos theatre is accorded unlimited potential by its suppositionality, its representation of
characters is also enriched by the performance of the neutral actor.