Every morning, members of Taiwan's U Theatre (優劇場) travel to Laochuan Mountain (老泉山), in Mucha, to begin their daily regime of meditation, martial arts and drumming. The performance company's rigorous routine and emphasis on Zen Buddhism is more comparable to that of a monastery than a theater troupe, making its latest collaborative project with Shaolin practitioners a fitting venture.
Twenty-one performers from the Shaolin Temple Academy in Henan province, China, will join two Taiwanese masters of martial arts and U Theatre to stage A Touch of Zen at the national theater in Taipei beginning next week.
U Theatre is perhaps most recognized for its percussion-based productions that incorporate elements of Beiguan opera and modern theater into its trademark on-stage sacred drumming (神鼓). The group also has a history of collaborating with other artists, including the 2001 re-staging of The Sound of Ocean in which a children's choir from Hualien Zhou Fang Elementary School was invited to perform.
Unlike in past projects, this time it was a promoter within the Shaolin academy that approached U Theatre artistic director, Liu Ruo-yu (劉若瑀) and drum master Huang Chih-wen (黃志文) about incorporating theater and music into a martical arts performance. From there Liu and Huang took over and began penning a script. In the end, they produced a project that combines the talents of both groups and "has turned out to be a powerful learning experience for everyone involved," Liu said.
Like their co-performers, U Theatre members value meditation and qigong as much as any Shaolin apprentice, Liu said. Even their drum master, Huang, requires his students to first learn how to meditate properly before studying
percussion.
Witnessing the rigid schedule of the youthful (aged 14 to 20) Shaolin practitioners who wake up before 5am every morning to begin their training, U Theatre members have come to realize the strict discipline emphasized in martial arts, she explained. In the same vein, the project has also provided the Shaolin performers with an opportunity to study Buddhism, which for some is their first experience with the religion. "Martial arts is rooted in Zen, but many of those masters and students [in the Shaolin temple] have not read even one Buddhist scripture," Liu said.
The Shaolin temple shares a history with Buddhism's introduction into China. Both popular and academic opinions trace the Indian monk Da Mo (also known as Bodhidarma) to the early stages of the Shaolin lineage and the religion's induction into Chinese society. Historical evidence has also been used to show that the Indian master was invited to China to teach Buddhist theory during the reign of emperor Liang Wu (502-550 AD). When the emperor rejected Da Mo's religious philosophy, he withdrew to a Shaolin temple, taking his scriptures with him.
Restrictions on religious dogma and practice in China, however, have aided in turning the Shaolin tradition into more of a secular practice. "They [Shaolin practitioners] cannot really understand the Buddhist scripture but they have a history in it. Because they study martial arts they are familiar with the logic and they have an innate curiosity in Zen teachings," Liu claimed. This was her reason for including a scene in the show where all the performers recite a Buddhist scripture together on stage.
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