A little over six years ago, Zen drumming troupe U-Theatre (優劇場) hosted a show, Field Hands (手中田), at their Laoquanshan (老泉山) home in Taipei’s Muzha District (木柵) to bid farewell to the first group of graduates from its youth performing troupe, who were heading off to universities and further education.
One of the performers, Chen Tzu-lun (陳紫綸), also known as “Small f” (小ㄈ), stood out in that show, as she had in other performances with U-Theatre, by the size of her smile.
She always had the biggest grin on her face when she was drumming, compared to the more serious mien of the adult members of the troupe. That was really no surprise because as the daughter of U-Theater founder Liu Ruo-yu (劉若瑀), drumming and performing are in Chen’s blood.
Photo: Courtesy of Tu Kai-yen
Chen followed her mother’s footsteps in other ways as well.
A Golden Bell Award-winning actress in the early 1980s, Liu left Taiwan to study for a masters’ degree in theater arts at New York University. After graduation, she was one of 12 people, out of 200, selected to join a one-year-workshop in California led by innovative Polish director and theorist Jerzy Grotowski.
That workshop had a profound influence on her life and her life’s work.
Photo: Courtesy of Tu Kai-yen
In 2013, U-Theatre announced that Chen was one of five people selected from more than 100 candidates to study at the Grotowski Institute in Poland. She later attended the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Pontedera, Italy.
The key to Grotowski’s training is that the actor is the core of theater art and that dramatic literature simply offers a framework for actors to explore themselves.
In his final years he focused on “art as vehicle” or using an interest in art to examine the “interiority” of human beings. It is about performance as research. The settings for such research can be theaters, industrial buildings, bars, cafes, churches and homes, and a key element to the performances is contact with the observers.
That fit in well with Chen’s own search for explanations about herself, her ideas and goals.
She said that when she was 21 she started to ask a lot of questions. Why are moods subject to external controls? Why can’t I stop thinking about certain things? Why do we act in certain ways?
She said she did not understand herself, and realized that people do not understand other people, so wanted to explore studying herself as well as other people.
Since returning home, Chen has been involved in U-Theatre projects as well as becoming director of the Golden Stone U-Theatre (金石優人), which next week will perform Dr. Miss: The Evolution Lab of Man (Dr. Miss人的進化實驗室).
Given Chen’s studies, it comes as no surprise to learn that the show is about facing your inner self and discovering what might be missing in your life — by conducting experiments to see how people perceive themselves.
Dr. Miss: The Evolution Lab of Man is described as a mix of drama, singing, dance, video and exploration of space.
Chen said the people working with her on the show are” very brave.”
The production comes with a warning that there will not be any seats in the theater; audiences will need to move with the performers as they change their performing areas.
Ahead of the start of the show on Thursday at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park’s Multifunction Auditorium, there is an exhibition, a teaser really, for the show. Titled “Take off our facades,” the exhibition runs through Sunday as part of “The Original Festival.”
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