Kenneth Pai (白先勇) made his reputation as a novelist many decades ago with seminal works of Chinese literature such as Taipei People (台北人), published in 1971, inspired by James Joyce’s Dubliners. In recent years, one of his many occupations has been as a self-described “volunteer worker for kun opera,” and he has brought his considerable creative talents to the production of two “youth edition” kun operas. The second of these, The Jade Hairpin (玉簪記), opened at Taipei’s National Theater yesterday.
The Jade Hairpin follows the enormous success of Pai’s highly acclaimed version of The Peony Pavilion (牡丹亭), which toured successfully in Asia and the US, and proved that an ancient style of Chinese opera could form the basis of an international theatrical hit. The show’s triumph — far exceeding what is usual for Chinese opera — showed that Pai was onto something with his “youth editions,” which sport a young cast and a youthful aesthetic. With The Jade Hairpin, Pai builds on this brand, and the production has generated massive interest among young people.
Pai has a broad appeal among Chinese youths as one of the most important writers to introduce Western-style literately techniques, including the use of such devices as “stream-of-consciousness,” to Chinese literature. He was also a pioneer of gay literature, and his 1983 novel The Crystal Boys (孽子) was made into a hugely successful television miniseries of the same name by PTS (公視) in 2003.
While none of this is directly related to kun opera, Pai certainly has cachet as an artistic innovator, and he has brought this very much to the fore in his opera productions.
The Jade Hairpin is an undisputed classic of Chinese opera, but, in the past, this has not been enough to earn popularity among young audiences. The story, by the Ming Dynasty playwright Gao Lian (高濂), tells the story of a young woman who finds refuge in a nunnery after being separated from her parents while escaping from an invading army. At the nunnery, she meets a young scholar, who has also taken refuge there after failing the imperial examinations. They fall in love, the affair is discovered, the young scholar gets his marching orders from the abbess, and heads back to the capital for another stab at fame and fortune. There is a tender parting. There is separation and then finally joyful reunion.
There are plenty of opportunities in this simple story for love duets and expressions of youthful joys and sorrows. The two leads, Shen Fengying (沈豐英) and Yu Jiulin (�?L), in costumes specially designed for this production, look extremely fetching. The youth of the performers is a crucial aspect of Pai’s vision of a youthful aesthetic. While the two leads, emerging stars from the ranks of the Suzhou Kun Opera Company (蘇州崑劇院), are certainly very talented, they are a long way from establishing their reputation as major performers. While purists might regard the performances of Shen and Yu as callow and unsophisticated compared to those presented by the many operatic masters who have visited Taiwan recently, there is something intrinsically appealing in having a young heroine played by an actor in her early 20s rather than by a mature woman in her 30s.
A comparison might be drawn with Baz Luhrmann’s film Romeo + Juliet, that saw the then 17-year-old Claire Danes perform the role of the 14-year-old Juliet, a role which in the theater is usually reserved for an actress of greater experience. What Danes may have lacked in experience, she more than made up for in simply being very young, and closer to the romantic instincts of youth.
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