The Mongol Khan – a Study in Cross-Cultural Communication

Since it first opened in mid – November 2023 a remarkable Mongolian stage drama has taken London’s West End by storm. ‘The Mongol Khan’, a visually stunning tragedy performed by a large cast including some of Mongolia’s most talented actors, is a private artistic venture. But its launch in London is also part of Mongolia’s current effort to engage the outside world, in particular the partner countries whom it terms ‘Third Neighbours’, in Mongolia’s cultural sphere as well as through enhanced economic ties. The international success of a new generation of Mongolian opera stars already demonstrates how much Mongolia has achieved in this sphere. (A gifted baritone, E. Amartuvshin, has recently performed the title role of Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House). The government is taking initiatives to develop and support Mongolia’s indigenous creative industry and talent.

This year Britain and Mongolia are celebrating 60 years of bilateral diplomatic relations. Launching Mongolia’s first overseas attempt at a full-scale theatrical extravaganza in Britain brings colour and tangible cultural impact to this anniversary. The production is intended to heighten the international profile of Mongolian culture and to enhance the country’s attraction as a rewarding visitor destination. A British Mongolist from Cambridge has commented on the importance of this type of cultural diplomacy.

As a demonstration of Mongolia’s cultural soft power in the heart of Britain’s musical and theatrical establishment, ‘The Mongol Khan’ constitutes an important act of cross-cultural communication. This paper explores the origins, aims, delivery and impact of an ambitious but at the same time potentially risky artistic venture.

Background

The Mongol Khan’s origins in a classic tragedy

This production is based on a play entitled ‘A State without a Ruler’s Seal’, written by a renowned Mongolian playwright, B. Lhagvasuren, and first staged in 1998 with a small cast of only the main characters and no special effects. This finely-written tragedy is set at the court of a fictional Khan of the historical Hunnu Empire which flourished from the 3rd century BCE until the 2nd century CE, centred in the steppes north of the Great Wall which was built to protect China from its incursions. But this play is not intended to be a historical drama about the Hunnu. It contains little detail about their empire other than using its name for the ‘state’ concerned. Much like a Shakespearean tragedy, it focuses on power, ambition, rulership and succession essentially as universal human constructs. However, its emphasis on State interests transcending those of individuals is a characteristic of traditional Mongolian culture.

The evolution of ‘The Mongol Khan’ as a production

The new London production is directed by B. Baatar, a visionary creative artist who knew Lhagvasuren well. Its script is close to that of the earlier play, retaining its rhetorical and poetic qualities and cultural references. However, the production is entirely different in conception and staging.

In preparation for its performance overseas, much thought was given to how it might be best presented to an English-speaking audience. An English audio translation had been prepared for an earlier run of the production in Ulaanbaatar. Later, the cast were trained to deliver the script in English. Eventually it was decided that in London the actors would speak in Mongolian, supported by condensed but carefully-nuanced English surtitles.
The new production still focuses on the same six leading roles, but they are now supported by a 70-strong cast of dancers, contortionists and acrobats who do not speak but help to illustrate and intensify the spoken content with dance and other movements embodying the conflicting thoughts and emotions of the protagonists.

The chosen London venue, the Coliseum, has a very large stage and state-of-the-art technical resources. Baatar’s production makes full use of these. While the set, costumes, lighting and sound-track of the original play were deliberately minimalist, the new production uses substantial resources to achieve stunning visual and aural effects, including a large and life-like dragon puppet, to increase the dramatic impact of the acted performances. Importantly, the proscenium arch and stage front are decorated with large motifs based on famous artefacts from the Hunnu period. Details of armour and other costumes as well as items such as crowns and swords were also based on Hunnu archaeological evidence.

Cross-cultural analysis

In order to assess the impact of ‘The Mongol Khan’ in London, this paper draws on the discipline of cross-cultural communication. Baatar’s production combines a range of distinct dramatic techniques to communicate cultural meaning to a foreign audience largely unfamiliar with Mongolian culture. It explores how the main components of the performance were constructed and presented, in terms of the production’s objectives as a work of art and what has been described as a vehicle for cultural soft power. It then draws on feedback from the audience and media reviews of the production to make assessments of how successful this venture in cross-cultural communication is proving in practice.

Authenticity and Innovation: Hunnu Cultural References

As noted above, the original play which provides the basis for the script in the new production says almost nothing about Hunnu history or people. Baatar’s version is just the same in terms of the storyline. As some commentators have noted, the story itself is quite thin and lacking in a sense of social context. However, messaging in the production publicity makes a strong point about how ancient nomadic cultural norms and beliefs run throughout thousands of years of Mongolian history and promotes the idea that these ancient states were the cradle of Mongolia’s traditional nomadic leadership philosophy. The production makes use of beautiful Hunnu-inspired decorative motifs and costumes to give substance to this connection which the storyline itself lacks.

This use of the authentic splendour of Hunnu culture is part of a recent upsurge in public interest in ancient Mongolian civilization as a component of modern Mongolian national identity. Recent archaeological discoveries and research are yielding more and more detail about the Hunnu period, bringing to life a hitherto limited historical record. As a result, references to Mongolia’s cultural heritage dating back a thousand years before Chinggis Khaan are becoming part of public and political vocabulary, and integral to expressions of national identity, values and beliefs. In this way the cultural messaging of ‘The Mongol Khan’ is in tune with cultural discourse in modern Mongolian political culture. It also reinforces the attraction of magnificent Hunnu artifacts, displayed in new Mongolian museums.

In terms of impact for the London audience, unlike Mongolians they would not have recognised the specific Hunnu visual aspects of the production. They would not have been able to distinguish them from the general richness and exotic character of an unfamiliar ‘Mongolian’ cultural experience, even though the programme explains the use of Hunnu models. Nor would the foreign audience have understood the significance of the dancers in shamanic costumes as part of a relationship between shamanism and traditional nomadic leadership. Despite these important visual references, some reviews comment that the production does not provide a sense of local culture, history or people, while the story proper is limited to a grim tragedy among a generic ruling elite. But on the contrary, others comment that as an introduction to Mongolian culture and tradition, to many for the first time, the production is ‘a triumph’. This perhaps reflects something other than the elements of cultural authenticity. This point is developed further below.

Language and Surtitles

Careful translation is generally fundamental to effective cross-cultural communication. In London, the decision to perform in Mongolian has met with general approval. One review comments that ‘the script is performed in Mongolian with a typically simplified English translation presented as surtitles, an effective artistic decision for retaining both the show’s original company and a great deal of cultural authenticity’. Another notes that ‘the Mongolian language lends itself to the dramatic content and the declamatory style adopted throughout’.

There has been some criticism of the small size of the surtitle display, and perceived infelicities in the use of vocabulary- ‘wooden’ or unintentionally absurd, while suggesting that the best idea is to read the programme’s plot summary first and then concentrate on the performance. However, elsewhere the surtitle language is described as ‘lyrical and metaphorical’.

The Mongolian script retains much of the content and quality of Lhagvasuren’s original, both in the grandeur and poetry of the diction and the profusion of cultural references. But condensed surtitles inevitably convey less of this. A likely example is the Khan’s revelation that the dead Queen-Consort’s own body and milk has been used to preserve the hidden Seal of State. Mongolian nomadic culture is centred on milk as pure and holy. Milk is routinely sprinkled for ritual purification. The symbolism of mother’s milk is doubly important. Here, this explicit act by the Khan symbolises the hoped-for renaissance of the State from the body of a prince’s mother. It is unlikely that this would have been easily comprehensible to the non-Mongolian audience, even if more fully reflected in the surtitles.

However, for many viewers, while an accessible English text was important for cultural understanding, the quality of the acting contributes at least as much, if not more, to the cultural impact. Overall, the surtitles provided a good balance between preserving the exotic richness of the original language and conveying the thrust of the dramatic development clearly. The benefits of this approach to cultural communication through the use of both Mongolian and English languages seem to have outweighed the disadvantages.

The Moral Locus of ‘The Mongol Khan’

As noted above, the story of ‘The Mongol Khan’ is a fictional tragedy based on generic archetypes while also reflecting certain aspects of Mongolia’s traditional legacy of beliefs, values and assumptions about rulership over nomadic societies.

Some London commentators, speaking from a contemporary perspective, have questioned the suitability of using an outdated storyline with so much cruelty, particularly against women, in the first full-scale theatrical introduction of Mongolian culture to the outside world. Conversely, it could be said that similar realities appear as universal themes in theatrical tragedies from ancient Greece to Shakespeare and beyond. From this perspective, “The story of ‘The Mongol Khan’ serves neither as a history lesson nor to promote values which are now obsolete and unacceptable, but instead provides a robustly ‘Mongolian’ baseline for a compellingly powerful dramatic spectacle. Thus the choice of the story is a facilitator rather than blocker of cross-cultural communication. However, there remain questions on other aspects of the ethos, including the idea that individual interests should be subjected to those of the State, which does not resonate well with liberal Western values.

Production Values and Impact

Many Mongolian and foreign commentators share the view that this lavish production achieves its impact through fusing technically and artistically creative elements. The result is a ‘physical drama’ combining powerful acting and music as well as breath-taking choreography, lighting and visual effects.

The production even uses innovative techniques to provide striking new takes on a number of traditional Mongolian themes. Examples include the lively depiction of two foxes by dancers at the start, reflecting a still-living tradition relating to the protection of new-born babies. Another is an exquisite lighting effect representing shooting stars, which in Mongolian tradition are a warning of bad fortune – here the death of Prince Khuchir is visually linked to a particularly large flaming meteor – although this would not necessarily have been apparent to the audience.

While a convincingly ‘Mongolian’ atmosphere is established by traditional costumes and performing arts, the production also resonates with aspects of Western popular culture. Commentators make comparisons with ‘Game of Thrones’, Cirque du Soleil, ‘Gladiator’, some Disney productions and extravaganzas associated with Olympic celebrations. The didactic aim of showing off an unfamiliar Mongolian context comes across as deftly packaged up with elements of accessible Western popular culture. ‘The Mongol Khan’ production is an ambitious cultural bridgehead to the West. This purpose is achieved, partly through well-known techniques of cross-cultural communication, but also by the sheer impact of its high production values and ‘stupendous sense of scale and spectacle’, as one review puts it, in a style which appeals strongly to western audiences for its own sake.

Conclusion

In the time that has passed since its first London performance, ‘The Mongol Khan’ has achieved success as magnificent, unfamiliar, energetic and innovative spectacular. As Mongolia’s first venture into Western theatrical space, it has definitely made its mark, and further Mongolian productions will very likely be even more welcome as a result. However, London West End memories are short. This production scored essentially as brilliant cross-cultural entertainment rather than a fully-realised work of art with no need to rely on elaborate special effects.

While ‘The Mongol Khan’ has shown what Mongolia’s creative industry can achieve in terms of stunning spectacle, the reception of this production arguably suggests that future cultural ventures could with advantage branch out into more nuanced space, drawing perhaps on more inclusive and positive aspects of Mongolian culture and civilization.

Co-authors of this article are Enkhtuvshin Namsrai and Matthew Henderson

28 November 2023