Taking a literary approach to theater

Literature is the best aphrodisiac," said second-time director Kuo Chiang-sheng (郭強生) at the rehearsal of his first major theater performance The Desired (慾可慾非常慾), which deals with how three characters in academia are trapped by their desires.

In directing the show, which he also wrote, Kuo is making a comeback on the local theater scene after a 10-year absence. Despite Kuo's NYU doctorate degree in theater, he is better known in Taiwan for his widely-acclaimed novels since winning the China Times Literature Award (時報文學獎) in 1990.

The Desired tells of the shifting relations between two literature professors and one of their students. A young female professor finds a secret that an established male professor has been hiding for years, giving her an advantage over him in the competitive literature department. The power struggle between them is further complicated by their shared desire for an ambitious and attractive male student.

Chang Hsiao-chuan (張孝全), who starred in the TV series The Waterboys (孽子) last year, Liu Yuei (六月), who won a Golden Bell Award for her leading role in Ni-Nu (逆女) in 2001, and best-selling author Tsai Shi-ping (蔡詩萍), were all at their best during rehearsals.

Combining the roles of novelist, playwright, literary critic, essayist, professor and director, Kuo said he considered theater his favorite medium. However, writing and directing are closely related for him.

"From writing novels and plays, from criticism to directing, I am doing the same thing. That is, to reveal the inner worlds of people to them. We all know how amazing it is to experience something revealed to us when we are reading literature or watching a performance," Kuo said.

Kuo is known to portray people's inner world through unconventional but no less convincing characters. In The Desired, the three characters are a white male literature professor in the depth of his mid-life crisis, a young Asian female professor specializing in feminism, and an exceptionally bright and ambitious Asian male college student.

Despite their differences in age, sex, race and achievement, they are all unable to deal with their desires. Although the homosexuality and the nude scenes of the two male characters have led to some sensational coverage in the local media, Kuo sidestepped the homosexual aspects to the play. Rather, the intellectuals' failed approaches to personal desires is what Kuo wanted to talk about.

"Placing the characters in tangling relationships reveals their frailties, because a person is always naked in a relationship," Kuo said. "By presenting them in relationships, the facade of academia is torn down and our illusions about intellectuals are broken."

"The male professor, in his 50s, is one of my generation. Literature for him is what he resorts to in order to fulfill his romantic desires. With an intellectual's perfectionism, he cannot bring himself to face his desires in real life.

"The female professor, in her 30s, represents the younger-generation intellectuals who grow up and spend all their adult life inside the academic circle. They think they know everything but when it comes to the practical aspects of life, like their desires, they don't know how to deal with them," Kou said.

"The male college student is of an even younger generation of intellectuals. They have tried out various things that life has to offer before entering academia. Now he wants to test what he learned from life in the academic sphere."