Director and actor Hsu Yen-ling (徐堰鈴) feels torn as Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group’s (莎士比亞的妹妹們的劇團) new production The Tracks on the Beach (沙灘上的腳印), which was inspired by the work of Marguerite Duras, hits the stage.
She had hoped the production would evolve organically as an abstract work in progress. Yet for all her experimental aspirations, she returned to a concrete, easy-to-grasp story.
Above all, though, Hsu strove to reproduce Duras’ sentiments.
The director’s bold exploration begins with Duras’ Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein (The Ravishing of Lol Stein). Stein, a married woman, returns to her hometown, where the disloyalty of her fiance tormented her when she was young, which led to an obsession with her childhood friend’s paramour Jacques Hold.
Duras’ tale serves only as a backdrop in Hsu’s production, the first of a yearlong series of performances to celebrate the Sisters’ 15th anniversary. The narrative of the play’s first half deals with love, desire and a constantly frustrated, elusive relationship between a deranged woman (Wei Chin-ju, 魏沁如) and a man (Shih Ming-shuai, 施名帥).
In the second half, the two characters become dancers and emulate each other’s movements, improvising and creating moves that resemble those of a tango or a pas de deux, though they rarely touch.
Meanwhile, a prerecorded voice-over reads lines from Duras’ novel, but deliberately out of sync with what’s going on on the stage.
The director says the piece is about the process of creating.
“I want to grasp why people want to create art and seek a way of creating that I feel most at ease with,” Hsu said. This play “is the beginning of a period of heavy learning. It is a tremendous task, but I may end up writing everything, hence nothing.”
Hsu said during an interview on Sunday that as director, she is constantly engaged in negotiations and discussions with the play’s actors and production team. As a result, the play is in flux.
All this weekend’s performances of The Tracks on the Beach at Guling Street Avant-Garde Theatre (牯嶺街小劇場) have long since sold out. Next in line in the series is Jumel, which takes place in June and was tailor-made by French theater director Franck Dimech for the company’s two veteran performers, Juan Wen-ping (阮文萍) and Chou Jung-shih (周蓉詩). Following Jumel are new renderings of the company’s 2005 box-office success Michael Jackson in August and Quartett von Heiner Muller in October.
For more information, visit the group’s bilingual Web site at www.swsg95.com.tw.
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