The nice thing about the theater is each performance is remembered only in the minds of the performers and audience members — and memories fade. Each performance is not preserved for eternity on tape, film or disk, with all its flaws to see. So if a director was dissatisfied with a show, he or she has the freedom to revise and update it, again and again until it rings true.
U-Theatre, the Taipei-based drumming performance group, has almost completely overhauled its 2005 production A Touch of Zen, which was commissioned by the National Theater, and the new version opens next Thursday night at the National Theater.
For A Touch of Zen the company invited China's famed Shaolin Temple martial arts monks to perform with them. While both groups use traditional Chinese martial arts and qi gong as the basis for their craft, their approach to their work — and to life — turned out to be very different.
Differing mindsets and a shortage of rehearsal time meant the two groups didn't really gel the first time around, or even the second and third time, as the two groups performed A Touch of Zen in Hong Kong, France and Singapore.
U-Theatre founder and artistic director Liu Ruo-yu (劉若瑀) said she was so unhappy with the original production that she stood backstage at the National Theater crying during the performances.
Company manager Ken Kuo (郭耿甫) said part of the problem was that the Shaolin group didn't get their visas for Taiwan until right before production began. Even though U-Theater members had gone to Shaolin six times to rehearse the show, it wasn't enough.
"Because it's about Zen, it was very difficult for the Shaolin group to get the tempo," Kuo said. "The director wanted to make it better. So we had opportunity when we were invited to the Hong Kong Arts Festival in 2006 to continue working on the production."
Liu gave the Shaolin members a very difficult task, Kuo said, of doing the same thing her group does: the percussion, the drumming as well as the meditation and martial arts training.
"Each performance gradually changed," he said. "Also the lighting and stage design is different and the story line is clearer. It will be easier for audiences to grasp."
"Now the Shaolin members are doing it perfectly, if audience members are not long time U-Theatre fans they may not be able to tell the difference between the U-Theatre and Shaolin members," he said.
While Kuo made it sound like a relatively painless metamorphosis, it wasn't for either group. Liu said U-Theatre members had to make adjustments as well.
"We had to face the fact that at that moment we really didn't understand what A Touch of Zen meant … We had to keep working it to understand it. It's more than doing it just for performance and then it is finished. In our true heart we really wanted to understand what the differences are between Zen and martial arts. We kept working, not just for the performance. It was working on our life," Liu said.
Meanwhile, she reduced the size of the Shaolin contingent from 21 to nine.
"Five of them kept coming to Taiwan to work with us so they get to understand more and more why their movement has to move with the melody. They understand why they can't only move from the outside, that you have to move from the inside as well," she said.
"Their minds need to count with the melody … so their kung fu gets more inwardly directed, because their mind has to count. If they don't go inside they will make a mistake with the beat. So they have to move slowly … with the gong's ring," she said.
"Singapore was the first time I saw them working slowly but clearly," she said. "They really let the energy go inside, they just don't just show their kung fu. They start to really move, but without kung fu. It was beautiful."
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