'Autumn Rain' reinvents puppetry again

It might be fashionable to say that romantic passion is out of fashion, but this has not dissuaded Robin Ruizendaal and Wu Shan-shan (伍姍姍) of the TTT Puppet Center from diving head first into an ambitious project to reinterpret the classic tale of Yang Kuei-fei and the emperor Tang Ming Huang for a modern audience. The result, called Autumn Rain opened last night at the National Experimental Theater in Taipei and will run through to Sunday.

Ruizendaal, who has made his name as the director of the TTT Puppet Center, is clearly broadening his creative horizons with this new work. He had already met with considerable success and recognition with Marco Polo, which combined Taiwanese glove puppets with nan-kuan music, Italian opera and a mixture of traditional and customized puppets. Other shows have made use of traditional Italian Puppets, introduced by puppeteer Massimo Godoli Peli, who continues to collaborate with Ruizendaal on TTT Puppet Center projects.

While human actors have played an important role in most of these performances, serving as narrators and as a gateway between the audience and the puppet stage, this is the first time the humans have been the protagonists of a TTT Puppet Center performance. Naturally puppets are also present, but they have been somewhat relegated to the sidelines in Autumn Rain, and they serve as a symbol for the workings of fate.

"Puppets are manipulated by people, and people are manipulated by fate," Ruizendaal said. The eternal and perfect nature of love -- as a story at least -- is also highlighted, as puppets retain their youth and beauty through the ages. In effect, Autumn Rain can be seen as a meditation on timeless love.

Nevertheless, Autumn Rain is very much in the tradition of crossover theater. Deeply informed by local tradition, these works refuse to be bound or restricted by performance discipline and happily integrate diverse elements, often to remarkable effect. Here, Ruizendaal sets off to retell a story of perfect love, taking his themes from romantic classics including Bai Juyi's Song of Everlasting Happiness, Bai Pu's Wutong Tree Rain and Hong Sheng's Hall of Eternal Life, which all deal with the great love between an emperor and his concubine that ultimately ends in national upheaval and death.

The story opens and closes with the narrator, Wu Shanshan as the Empress Wu. She tells how the emperor had a dream of perfect love -- and in trying to express this through the agency of a puppet show -- meets the love of his life. He becomes so obsessed with his love that he neglects national affairs, and finally his generals demand the death of his concubine if they are to continue supporting him.

The story is painted in broad strokes and is presented as a visual spectacle rather than conventional drama. The spectacle is added to by the splendid costumes designed for the show by Sophie Hong (洪麗芬), one of Taiwan's leading international fashion designers. The use of various types of hand-woven and specially treated silks which she has developed herself, make this as much a fashion show as a play -- and are worth the price of admission in themselves.

Autumn Rain is one of the most original local shows to be put on at the experimental theater for some time, and makes a real stab at creating a new and yet distinctly Taiwanese style.