Seeing through author's eyes

It's the kind of thing you might expect to see happen in the basement of the city's most popular bookstore. This weekend marks the start of the Author's Record of Events, a series of three plays about three different writers, in the basement of the Dunhua South Road Eslite Bookstore. Be prepared for some heady theater.

The first of the plays, which opened last night and runs through Sunday, is a reflection on the life and work of Walter Benjamin, the German essayist and critic known for having synthesized Marxist theory and Jewish messianism. Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, is by far the most read of his essays. He's also famous for his participation in progressive psychopharmacological research and having committed suicide while trying to flee the Nazi's in war-torn Europe.

What any of Benjamin's scholarly writings have to do with this weekend's play will be anyone's guess until the curtain goes up. Titled The Arena of Love is Just Like a Market (情場如商場), it

follows its protagonist as he attempts to sleep with 100 people he's never met. He doesn't want to know anything about them, much like the city in which he lives. In his mind, you see, meeting people is a lot like shopping.

"Sometimes we go shopping without knowing what we're looking for," said Hong Kong director Lin Yi-hua (林奕華). Lin, who is directing this weekend's performance, came to prominence with another sexed-up script, 1998's Watching too Much Porn.

Next weekend's production is decidedly less sexy, but still just as heady. Directed by Wu Xiao-fen (吳小分), Moonlight Rose (月光玫瑰) tells the story of the Yang Lu, the late author arrested and

imprisoned during the tumultuous period following the 228 Incident. Yang had written a 700-word

article -- a "declaration of peace" -- that offended the authoritarian KMT regime. For his 700 words, he spent 12 years in prison on Green Island.

Wu wrote the script with Pan Guan-hong (潘冠宏) and Chang Chia-yun (張嘉芸). Wu is asking if anyone remembers who Yang is. Read her notes introducing the play and you start to understand that this is a thinking person's theater piece: "What was the ideal world he was striving for? Was it a dream that would never come true, or a rose that could never be crushed -- an invisible, intangible rose made of moonlight?"

Finally, the series ends with a look at Japanese author Kenji Miyazawa, an agronomist,

amateur geologist and intellectual dilettante, having dabbled with learning Esperanto and tried his hand at musical composition.

He was born in 1896 and the play, titled simply Kenji, looks at his life in Japan, stricken with tuberculosis. It follows his childhood spent with his sister -- the director, Lee Huan-hsiung (黎煥雄), sees them as a kind of Hansel and Gretel -- and introduces the now-famous author's love of nature. Plants, birds, animals, even the grass and air become characters in Kenji's stories. His love of nature translated into a devout Buddhism and Kenji became famous after his death for having lived a celibate and short life. He died when he was 37.

Performance notes:

● The Arena of Love is Just Like a Market

Tonight and tomorrow at 7:30pm, tomorrow and Sunday evenings at 2:30pm.

● Moonlight Rose

Thursday Oct. 20 to Saturday, Oct. 22 at 7:30pm, matinee performances at 2:30pm on Saturday, Oct. 22 and Sunday, Oct. 23.