The National Guoguang Opera Company (國立國光劇團) has revived its 2015 production of The Painting of 18 Lohans (十八羅漢圖), which won the troupe one of the four NT$500,000 prizes at the 14th Taishin Arts Award the following year.
The production is directed by Wang An-chi (王安祈), who collaborated on the script with playwright Liu Chien-kuo (劉建幗) and directed the first version, while the stage design was created by multimedia pioneer Mathias Woo (胡恩威) of Hong Kong’s experimental theater company Zuni Icosahedron (進念2十面體).
Four of the original leads are back: Wei Hai-min (魏海敏), Tang Wen-hua (唐文華), Wen Yu-hang (溫宇航), Liu Hai-yuan (劉海苑). Lin Ting-yu (林庭瑜) has taken on the role played by Ling Chia-lin (凌嘉臨) in the earlier version.
Photo courtesy of Liu Chen-hsiang and the National Guoguang Opera Company
In Chinese Buddhism, the 18 lohans, or arhats, include the original group of 10 followers of Gautama Buddha who although they had achieved nirvana were entrusted with staying on earth to wait the coming Buddha, plus eight more spiritual masters.
The opera tells the story of a painting in the Ziling Temple of the lohans, created by a famous hermit. Five hundred years later, the temple is largely in ruins, with just one nun living there, Jing-he. She saves a young boy, Yu-qing, who stays with her to learn how to meditate and paint.
When Yu-qing reaches adulthood, Jing-he tells him he must leave the temple for the sake of propriety, but he begs her to let him stay so they can restore the hermit’s masterpiece. He stays for a year, but never sees Jing-he, as they take turns working in the day or at night to maintain the proper Confucian code of conduct.
When Yu-qing leaves the temple a year later, he goes to work for the owner of a local bookstore, but the jealous owner ends up framing him for a crime and he is sentenced to 15 years in prison. Upon his release, am embittered Yu-qing decides to seek revenge on the owner by forging a copy of the hermit’s painting.
When doubts are raised about the painting, Jing-he is asked to determine its authenticity. When she looks at the original she worked on, she realizes that it actually reveals her feelings for Yu-qing and vice versa. When she views the suspect version, she realizes that Yu-qing has revealed himself in copying the hermit’s work, but that he is now a very different person.
The opera asks how does one know what is real and what is fake, for even a fake can reveal the real feelings of its creator.
Following this weekend’s shows, Guoguang will take the production to Shanghai next month and then to Tainan and Jhubei City in Hsinchu County in June.
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