First 'Hakka musical' isn't very Hakka

Though Taiwan has no Broadway or West End, the popularity of musicals here is well established with recent foreign productions selling out at the box office. It's surprising, however, that Taiwan hasn't developed more indigenous musicals because the variety of operatic forms that are found on these shores, such as beiguan (北管), nanguan (南管) and especially Taiwanese folk opera (歌仔戲), all contain the necessary components of dance, song and acting necessary to pull off such a production.

If locally produced musicals are a rarity in Taiwan, the creators of My Daughter's Wedding (福春嫁女), beginning tonight at the National Theater, have gone one step further by producing a "Hakka musical."

The production "is supported by the council of Hakka Affairs and they are determined to promote Hakka culture and … make people more knowledgable about Hakka people's life," said Hong Kong stage director David Jiang (蔣維國).

Neither the musical's director nor composer is Hakka, and the Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA), hardly a bastion of Hakka culture, produces the musical. Aside from the language used in some of the scenes and a few scenes that employ Hakka cultural elements, what makes My Daughter's Wedding a Hakka musical?

The production is composed of over 200 performers - mainly TNUA students - including an orchestra, choir and a handful of Hakka musicians. Jiang says there are many parallels between My Daughter's Wedding and The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare's play on which the musical is based.

The Bard's comedy tells the story of two suitors competing to marry the daughter of a wealthy merchant. The father informs the two young men that his younger daughter cannot marry until her older, shrewish sister is married first (a preference Jiang says is very similar to "Chinese tradition"). The would-be grooms search for a suitable partner for the carping catch. My Daughter's Wedding employs the same conceit, but with a twist. Rather than interviewing a number of suitors for his eldest daughter, the father holds a contest, the winner of which takes home the bride.

Three scriptwriters - Lin Jian-hua (林建華) and Wang Yo-hui (王友輝) working in Mandarin, and Huang Yu-shan (黃武山) working in Hakka - adapted the script into a combination of Mandarin and Hakka, with subtitles in Chinese and English. About half the production takes place in Taipei and is delivered in Mandarin.

The second part has the couple traveling to Meinong (美濃), the groom's hometown, where they are feted by the village women. Though this event has nothing to do with the original story, Jiang says it provides the perfect context to create a variety of dance movements to celebrate traditional Hakka culture.

My Daughter's Wedding tones down the overt battle between the sexes in The Taming of the Shrew.

Composer Chien Nan-chang (錢南章), who received best musical work and best recording gongs at the 2005 Golden Melody Awards for his Buddhist Requiem and is a winner of the 2005 National Award for the Arts, uses operatic music and Hakka tonality for the score.

As the Hakka community was historically excluded from the mainstream artistic community, there aren't enough singers, dancers and actors necessary to pull the production off.

Jiang seems to implicitly understand this as he calls the production a work in progress or "a first draft."