The original production of Castrated Chicken (閹雞) began inauspiciously.
Midway through its first performance in 1943, faulty electrical wiring caused a blackout in the theater. But audience members were determined to see the entire play and volunteered to hold flashlights so the performance could finish.
Bigger problems, however, cropped up after the curtain fell because the production included Taiwanese folk songs, which challenged the Japanese colonial administration’s ban on the use of local languages. The arrival of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) perpetuated the suppression of local culture and ensured that the play remained an obscure work of modernist drama only studied in university theater departments.
Tainaner Ensemble (台南人劇團) has revived the play and given it a professional treatment for the first time in 65 years. It premieres tonight at Taipei’s National Theater.
“Taiwanese theater professionals were unknown until the end of the 1980s,” said Tainaner Ensemble artistic director Lu Po-shen (呂柏伸). “But with greater political and cultural freedom, scholars were able to discover the past of [modern] Taiwanese theater.”
The work sees Tainaner departing from its tradition of adapting Western theater and literary classics into Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese). Based on the play of the same name written by Taiwanese playwright Lin Tuan-chiu (林摶秋), which was adapted from a novel by Chang Wen-huan (張文環), the revival combines elements from the novel that didn’t appear in Lin’s script.
The play opens in a Taiwanese village in the first decades of the last century. The main character’s father, San-kui, receives news that the Japanese authorities are planning to build a railway through a neighboring village and initiates a plan to exchange his pharmacy for a parcel of land, owned by a man named Ching-piao. San-kui also encourages his son A-yung to marry Ching-piao’s daughter, Yueh-li.
After securing the land and marrying off his daughter, San-kui obtains a loan to build new houses in the expectation that people will want to live close to the railway station. But when the construction is about to finish, the railway plan is unexpectedly cancelled. The shock causes San-kui’s death and leaves A-yung with a mountain of debt. A-yung, meanwhile, is too frustrated to continue his job in the township office and quits to help Yueh-li at home. A-yung, however, is incapable of dealing with the rigors of farm work and gets sick, leaving Yueh-li alone to stoically care for the household.
Lin’s script ends at this point — a conclusion that, for Lu, was unsatisfying because it portrayed A-yung as a hero trying to come to terms with forces beyond his control and Yueh-li as a subservient woman.
“The novel is much better than the play,” he said. “If [Yueh-li] were a real person, she would be more complicated. A-yung is weak. He cannot protect Yueh-li and always talks a lot but does nothing. If Yueh-li were a stereotypical woman, she would accept this and people would say she is a good woman. I find that ridiculous.”
Tainaner’s production follows the novel closely by portraying Yueh-li as a strong and complex character while leaving the play’s basic plot intact.
The realism of the characters is complimented by the stage design, which recreates a pharmacy and other buildings that hark back to the period and features the actors and chorus dressed in kimonos, Chinese gowns and Western-style suits. The theater group also revised the original score of Taiwanese folk songs, which are now played by a live six-piece band.
When asked if the play marks a shift from staging Western classics to modern Taiwanese plays, Lu paused before answering.
“To be honest, no … because Castrated Chicken was supposed to be the best,” he said. “I’m more interested in doing the works of contemporary [Taiwanese] playwrights.”
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