Chinese opera adaptations from Shakespeare are nothing new in Taiwan. The highly successful series of performances created by Wu Hsing-kuo (吳興國) and his Contemporary Legend Theater (當代傳奇劇場) come to mind immediately, the first of these dating back to 1986. What distinguishes the Taiwan Bangzi Company’s (台灣豫劇團) new production Bond (約/束), an adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, is that it will be presented this Friday at the 4th British Shakespeare Association Conference at the Greenwood Theater of King’s College, Cambridge. It will premiere in Taiwan on Nov. 28.
This is the first time a Chinese-opera production of a Shakespeare play has been associated with so august an academic organization as the British Shakespeare Association, and this has necessarily greatly affected the nature of the production. “In the past, opera companies would take the story, some of the characters and the themes of a Shakespeare play and do with it what they wanted,” said Chen Fang (陳芳), one of the adapters.
According to Chen, the production first came to the notice of the British Shakespeare Association when it heard that it would be based on a new translation of The Merchant of Venice by one of Taiwan’s foremost Shakespeare scholars and former dean of the National Taiwan University’s College of Liberal Arts, Perng Ching-hsi (彭鏡禧).
Chen, who helped transform Perng’s translation into a format suitable for Bangzi opera, otherwise known as Henan opera or Yu opera (豫劇), pointed out that because the production of Bond would feature at the conference, the adaptation required far more rigorous adherence to the original play than any previous productions of this sort.
This is the second time that the Taiwan Bangzi Company has taken on Western material, having adapted Turandot (中國公主杜蘭朵) in 2000. It has also produced numerous “new style” operas in recent years, broadening the horizons of the company. “As we are presenting this opera before many Shakespeare experts, it was particularly important to preserve the spirit of the original,” said director Lu Po-shen (呂柏伸), the artistic director of the Tainaner Ensemble (台南人劇團), who was brought in to create the right dramatic setting for the production. His role was to facilitate the expression of emotions through the elaborate movements and gestures that are the foundation of Chinese opera.
To achieve this, the clear distinctions between character types had to be broken down, most notably in the character of Shylock, performed by the doyen of Taiwan’s Bangzi opera, Wang Hai-ling (王海玲). “Most opera performers learn one specific role type,” Lu said, “but this opera requires a performer with a wider range. The character of Shylock spans the roles of sheng (生), or leading male, ching (淨), the exuberant male and that of the chou (丑), the clown. Wang has to shift between these role types, a task for which she has to draw on her decades-long experience of opera.
“Cross-cultural adaptation is important in our international society and is a major topic within contemporary theater, so we wanted to create the first Bangzi adaptation of a Shakespeare play,” Chen said. “We are lucky to have someone like Wang Hai-ling who is willing to take on such new challenges.”
Lei Bi-chi (雷碧琦), convener of the National Taiwan University Shakespeare Forum (臺大莎士比亞論壇) to be held in Taipei from Nov. 26 to Nov. 28, underlined the importance of the current production. “This is not the first time the Taiwan Bangzi Company has toured abroad, nor is it the first time adaptations of [Western] plays have been presented. On the face of it, this production might not seem particularly unusual. But it has a special significance. This production will be part of the British Shakespeare Association Conference ... In the past, such [cross-cultural] productions have generally been part of various arts festivals, playing before people who are open to all kinds of innovation. This time, we will perform before Shakespeare scholars, people who uphold an academic tradition ... They may never have had any contact with Chinese opera. We hope that this will open their eyes.”
More information about the 4th British Shakespeare Association Conference can be found at www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/news/conferences/localglobal.
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