As a director/scriptwriter who believes that "the performance of actors on stage is but an expression of real life backstage," Lee Guo-hsiou (李國修) has more than once blurred the line between theater and the real world by staging plays-within-plays or playing himself.
In Wedding Memories (女兒紅), the new work by Lee's Ping-fong Acting Troupe (屏風表演班), Lee reflects on his relationship with his late mother with a large-scale production that encompasses various settings from Shandong, China, to the Korean peninsula, to Taipei, from the 1930s to the present.
In what will be a rare event for theater shows here, the performances will involve realistic war scenes involving up to 100 extras.
Wedding Memories is not Lee's first autobiographical script. In Beijing Opera: The Revelation, which Lee wrote for Ping-fong's 10th anniversary in 1996, he played a theater director who disobeyed his father's wish for him to become a Chinese opera singer, only to end up in an theater troupe called "Fong-ping," which is producing a Chinese opera show.
Wedding Memories is a continuation of Beijing Opera. While the latter deals with how Lee failed to meet his father's expectations of him, the former depicts Lee's reconciliation with his mother, whose psychosis made an embarrassing mark on the young Lee's mind.
When the term "clinical depression" was unknown here, Lee had felt embarrassed by having a mother whom people called "psycho." Mentioning his mother had been a taboo well into Lee's adulthood.
The play starts out dramatizing the life of Lee's mother. As the elder of two sisters in a conservative family, Tsuei-ying substituted for her sister in an arranged marriage so that her sister's elopement with her lover would not shame the family. During the Chinese civil war, she escaped with her shoe-smith husband along a tortuous route to Taiwan, suffering the loss of two children to illnesses along the way.
After settling down in Taipei in 1949, Tsuei-ying began to suspect her husband was having a love affair. She suffered a mental breakdown that confined her indoors.
The play has the present Lee visit his younger selves, at seven and 10 years of age to try to understand why he felt shamed by his mother.
The play is a thoughtful and touching departure from Ping-fong's well-known comedies.
"It was such a touching play that all of us couldn't help crying during rehearsals," said Hsiao Shu-mei (蕭淑玫), Ping-fong's promoter.
Ping-fong Acting Troupe will perform Wedding Memories at
7:30pm tonight and tomorrow, and from Nov. 3 to Nov. 8. Matinee shows will be held at 2:30pm tomorrow, Sunday, Nov. 8 and Nov. 9 at the National Theater (
RSS