A couple of years ago Taiwan novelist and kun opera enthusiast Kenneth Pai (白先勇) brought a highly acclaimed version of Peony Pavilion (牡丹亭) to the stage of the National Theater (國家戲劇院). His version of the classical Chinese love story written by Ming Dynasty master playwright Tang Hsien-tsu (湯顯祖) generated renewed interest in this iconic work, and sparked a number of modern renditions.
Among these is You Yuan by Hong Kong award-winning theater actress and director Olivia Yan (甄詠蓓) of Theatre Ensemble, who puts a female take on this love story at the National Experimental Theater (國家實驗劇場) starting next Thursday.
But if you go to the theater expecting to relive the heart-stirring story of the beautiful daughter of an aristocratic family, Du Li-niang (杜麗娘), dying of lovesickness and being brought back to life by the love of the young scholar Liu Meng-mei (柳夢梅), you will be disappointed. Instead, you will find yourself lost in a modern garden where Yan's solo performance leads the audience through a fragmented poetry of imagery, sound, rhythm, and gesture.
Rather than an adaptation of the Peony Pavilion, You Yuan (遊園) serves as an extension of and a dialogue with the classical work. As Yan pointed out, she is greatly taken by the character of Du and wishes to instill a female sensitivity and point of view into the work by the male author.
To Yan, every woman is Du Li-niang, who sees love as the most important element in life. The characters she plays on stage are the incarnations of women's repressed desires and emotions. "In You Yuan, you can't find Du or any chapter of the original story. But to me, the soul of Du permeates the work," Yan said. "In different eras, people may have different values and idea, but the mental restriction on women remains the same. Women have been and will always live on love and die for love."
In the play, a modern-day female gardener drifts around a mystical space like a ghost as seasons come and go. Like all the shadowy women behind her, she falls in and out of dreams in which the repressed longings and memories turn into monstrous shades that haunt the mind. She crawls in and out of a cave, talking about trees and flowers, insects, birds and fish in swamps and woods.
A woman is born, grows up, gives birth and dies. A woman looks at herself in a mirror, puts on makeup, sprays perfume, smears it all off and does it again and again. Still another woman puts on a pair of high heels, laughing, crying, snoring and chewing the sofa. Through the presentation of different women, the solo performer focuses on the subtle intensity that derives from seemingly trivial yet refined movements and gestures, illuminating the incessant flow of thoughts and emotions. The narrative definitely takes a back seat.
Yan's feminine reveries are neatly woven into her contemplations on life and death, nature and modernization. "To me, the relation between life, death and nature is the essence of Peony Pavilion? . I am not trying to revive the traditional art form, and I don't think I am capable of doing so. I just look into my own cultural tradition and personal background and experiences and search for my own way of expression," Yan said.
To Yan, a great actor should be a total actor, that is, be able to perform without props or sets and still take the audience beyond the confining frame of the stage and into the unlimited realm of the imagination. And that is what she tries to achieve in her theatrical creations.
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