Taiwan's reclusive percussion oriented performance troupe, U Theatre (優劇場), will be coming down from its isolated Laochuan Mountain (老泉山) retreat next week in order to perform its latest drum mystical creation, The Dandelion Sword (蒲公英之劍).
Based on a short story by the group's founder Liu Ching-min (劉靜敏), the troupe's latest offering, which will premier at The Metropolitan Hall (城市舞台) on Wednesday, Nov. 5, is radically different from previous U Theatre shows.
Instead of captivating audiences with its trademark drumming the group has, for the very first time, incorporated dialogue, martial arts and song into a performance that has all the trappings of a plot-orientated theatrical production rather than a hybrid avant-garde percussive piece.
"It's certainly been a challenge for us, as this show is very different from anything we have ever attempted before," Liu said. "I remember when I first showed the work to the group there were comments made such as, `It's more like a movie script for a martial-arts movie than something we would do.'"
Founded in 1988, U Theatre appears to be more like a religious sect and has ventured down from its mountain hideaway on only a couple of dozen occasions. Its most memorable performance took place in 1996, when the troupe set out on a 600km odyssey in which it traversed the island's mountainous hinterlands on foot, performing at temples along the central mountain range.
It is the group's "sacred drumming" (神鼓), however, which drum master Huang Chih-wen (黃志文) devised at a spiritual retreat in India that has long defined the group and made it one of the nation's, if not the world's, most unique performance groups.
Many U Theatre performances, such as The Sound of Ocean (聽海之心) -- a show the group still regularly performs overseas -- border on the avant-garde, with the troupe blending Beiguan opera and traditional drumming, ceremonial marching and even stilt walking. While these performances were hugely innovative visual spectacles they were sorely lacking in plots and story lines.
Two years ago the group began veering away from this format. Although still lacking clearly definable characters, the troupe's 2001 creation, Meeting with Manjusuri Bodhisattva (金剛心) saw the hermetic performers combining dance, chanting and minor-dramatic elements into a performance for the first time.
For its latest work, however, the group has branched even further away from its exclusively drum-based and quasi-spiritual format. The Dandelion Sword sees the group incorporating identifiable characters with dialogue, martial arts and even song into what is set to be a groundbreaking performance for the group.
It might have taken Liu just two weeks to pen the story line for the The Dandelion Sword, but the transition from avant-garde performance group to one that can tackle melodrama proved to be a more lengthy process.
"We spent about a year-and-a-half in the preparation stage and then seven months studying and preparing to perform it on stage," Liu said. "It was a very difficult process as we had to choreograph the martial-arts scenes, coordinate the dialogue and synchronize the movement and drumming over the top."
The story is about a young martial-arts expert by the name of Frost. Having defeated countless opponents and fought in numerous battles, a chance meeting with an elderly master one day leads Frost to become disenchanted with his deathly world. The elderly man persuades Frost to abandon his sword and prepare for the most important battle he has yet to face -- with himself.
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