Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land
Source: NYT (1/5/07):
http://www.nytimes.com/iht/2007/01/05/theater/IHT-05blossom.html
Acclaim in China for 'Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land'
By SHEILA MELVIN
From International Herald Tribune
BEIJING 'Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land" by the playwright and director Stan Lai (Lai Shengchuan) is an iconic play in contemporary Chinese theater. Here on the mainland it has been performed hundreds of times since its 1986 premiere by Lai's Taipei-based Performance Workshop and is now a standard of university theatrical troupes. The 1992 film version is widely available on DVD, as are taped versions of live performances. Both the play and the movie are included in a snazzy 17-disc boxed set of Lai's works that bears his photo and signature and retails widely for only $12.
There's only one problem - up until now, not a single one of these performances or video recordings has been made with Lai's permission.
It is thus only fitting that "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land's" first authorized performance in mainland China is being staged to massive media attention, sold-out houses and enthusiastic crowds. The play is already nearing the end of its second Beijing run (at the People's Liberation Army Opera House, having started Dec. 22 and closing Sunday), after nine performances at Beijing's Capital Theater, as well as six at Shanghai's 1,800-seat Grand Theater and two in Xian. When the second Beijing run finishes, the production will go on to Shenzhen, Chongqing, Hong Kong and other cities, and then return to Shanghai for a second run. Even with this number of performances, tickets have been so hard to get that scalpers and students alike have resorted to producing counterfeits bearing seat numbers in nonexistent rows.
"The response has been a bit overwhelming," Lai said. "And, I may sound arrogant, but kind of to be expected."
Indeed, given its two-decade performance history, the stellar cast Lai has assembled from Taiwan and China, and the immense appeal of the play itself, the response is, perhaps, unsurprising.
"Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land" is actually two plays that at first have seemingly little in common other than the artful, often hilarious conceit binding them together - a mistake that has led a theater to schedule simultaneous dress rehearsals for both shows.
The first play, "Secret Love" is a serious drama that opens in 1948 Shanghai as two young lovers, Jiang Binliu and Yun Zhifan (played by Huang Lei and Yuan Quan), bid each other a temporary farewell in a misty moonlit park. Images of war still torment Jiang - his homeland in northeast China has been devastated by the Japanese invasion - but Yun tries to persuade him to forget the past, brightly telling him, "A new China is on the way!" Fast-forward four decades and Jiang Binliu is an old man lying terminally ill in a Taipei hospital room as his devoted, but unloved, Taiwanese wife looks on. He is still brooding over the past, desperate to see Yun Zhifan, from whom he was separated after fleeing the Communist takeover of China in 1949, before he dies.
The second play, "Peach Blossom Land," is a farcical interpretation of a well-known fourth-century story about a lost fisherman who stumbles into a utopian land filled with blossoming peach trees where all people live in harmony because they have no historical memory. In this version, however, the fisherman (played by Yu Entai) is a hapless, cuckolded husband, and the first people he meets in the mythical Peach Blossom Land look exactly like his wife (played by Xie Na) and her lover (performed by He Ling and Tian Yu on alternating nights). He gradually succumbs to their absurd utopian lifestyle - dressing in white, catching injured butterflies "to return to their mothers" and taking care to step lightly so as not to hurt the grass - but eventually leaves in the hope of persuading his estranged wife to return with him.
Forced to share the same stage, the directors and casts of "Secret Love" and "Peach Blossom Land" argue over who needs the rehearsal space more, critique each other's performances, remove each other's props, and ultimately divide the stage in half and perform at the same time. Through these shared scenes - which on the opening night of the second Beijing run caused laughter so loud it was sometimes hard to hear the actors - the two plays slowly, almost magically, merge as their performers complete each other's lines and common themes emerge. But, by play's end when Jiang Binliu finally finds Yun Zhifan, who has been living in Taipei all along, the laughter gives way to sobs and the audience is left to contemplate the burdens of memory, history, longing and love - and the power of theater itself.
"Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land" was first performed in Taiwan when the island was still under martial law and contact with mainland China had just begun after nearly 40 years of rigid separation. It was a highly emotional era, as many of the two million mainlanders who had escaped to Taiwan - thinking their stay would be temporary - sought to re-establish contact with those left behind. While some reunions led to joy and renewal, others collapsed in angst and bitterness over wasted years, unbridgeable experiences and economic disparities. While Lai's work springs from and reflects this era in ways both comic and tragic, it also transcends it. It is a play that defies labeling - and this, in its creator's opinion, is one of the explanations for its tremendous success in China.
"There are too many labels here," Lai said. "Is it high art, is it popular art, is it big theater, is it small theater?" He added: "Even creativity is labeled. China needs a liberation of creative forces."
In support of this goal, Lai, who is currently a visiting professor at Stanford University, has staged several other plays from his Performance Workshop in China and also invested in a noble, albeit short-lived, attempt to create China's first private repertory theater. Most recently, he has written a book, "On Creativity," published in China by Citic Press, in which he argues that creativity can be taught and outlines methods for doing just that. He has also invested considerable time in teaching and lecturing on the subject. "I've been around the country talking about creativity. There are huge cities here with only one theater," he said, adding, "China needs to unleash creativity - it seems ironic that art has to be something higher than the people."
When it comes to theater itself, Lai says that too few plays are written in China and that creativity is often lacking because so many people are busy trying to make the next Broadway-style hit, like "Cats" - or finding excuses for not making anything at all.
"I was once teaching a class here," he said, "and I challenged the students. I said: 'With the opening up of China, I thought there'd be so many great playwrights and directors. Where are they?' One student answered, 'We're waiting for the Communist Party to die.' But the truth is, I think that's an alibi. Our play was very taboo in Taiwan when we made it. The stage is a place where anything goes. Have you been liberated to the point where you can see this?"
http://www.nytimes.com/iht/2007/01/05/theater/IHT-05blossom.html
Acclaim in China for 'Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land'
By SHEILA MELVIN
From International Herald Tribune
BEIJING 'Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land" by the playwright and director Stan Lai (Lai Shengchuan) is an iconic play in contemporary Chinese theater. Here on the mainland it has been performed hundreds of times since its 1986 premiere by Lai's Taipei-based Performance Workshop and is now a standard of university theatrical troupes. The 1992 film version is widely available on DVD, as are taped versions of live performances. Both the play and the movie are included in a snazzy 17-disc boxed set of Lai's works that bears his photo and signature and retails widely for only $12.
There's only one problem - up until now, not a single one of these performances or video recordings has been made with Lai's permission.
It is thus only fitting that "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land's" first authorized performance in mainland China is being staged to massive media attention, sold-out houses and enthusiastic crowds. The play is already nearing the end of its second Beijing run (at the People's Liberation Army Opera House, having started Dec. 22 and closing Sunday), after nine performances at Beijing's Capital Theater, as well as six at Shanghai's 1,800-seat Grand Theater and two in Xian. When the second Beijing run finishes, the production will go on to Shenzhen, Chongqing, Hong Kong and other cities, and then return to Shanghai for a second run. Even with this number of performances, tickets have been so hard to get that scalpers and students alike have resorted to producing counterfeits bearing seat numbers in nonexistent rows.
"The response has been a bit overwhelming," Lai said. "And, I may sound arrogant, but kind of to be expected."
Indeed, given its two-decade performance history, the stellar cast Lai has assembled from Taiwan and China, and the immense appeal of the play itself, the response is, perhaps, unsurprising.
"Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land" is actually two plays that at first have seemingly little in common other than the artful, often hilarious conceit binding them together - a mistake that has led a theater to schedule simultaneous dress rehearsals for both shows.
The first play, "Secret Love" is a serious drama that opens in 1948 Shanghai as two young lovers, Jiang Binliu and Yun Zhifan (played by Huang Lei and Yuan Quan), bid each other a temporary farewell in a misty moonlit park. Images of war still torment Jiang - his homeland in northeast China has been devastated by the Japanese invasion - but Yun tries to persuade him to forget the past, brightly telling him, "A new China is on the way!" Fast-forward four decades and Jiang Binliu is an old man lying terminally ill in a Taipei hospital room as his devoted, but unloved, Taiwanese wife looks on. He is still brooding over the past, desperate to see Yun Zhifan, from whom he was separated after fleeing the Communist takeover of China in 1949, before he dies.
The second play, "Peach Blossom Land," is a farcical interpretation of a well-known fourth-century story about a lost fisherman who stumbles into a utopian land filled with blossoming peach trees where all people live in harmony because they have no historical memory. In this version, however, the fisherman (played by Yu Entai) is a hapless, cuckolded husband, and the first people he meets in the mythical Peach Blossom Land look exactly like his wife (played by Xie Na) and her lover (performed by He Ling and Tian Yu on alternating nights). He gradually succumbs to their absurd utopian lifestyle - dressing in white, catching injured butterflies "to return to their mothers" and taking care to step lightly so as not to hurt the grass - but eventually leaves in the hope of persuading his estranged wife to return with him.
Forced to share the same stage, the directors and casts of "Secret Love" and "Peach Blossom Land" argue over who needs the rehearsal space more, critique each other's performances, remove each other's props, and ultimately divide the stage in half and perform at the same time. Through these shared scenes - which on the opening night of the second Beijing run caused laughter so loud it was sometimes hard to hear the actors - the two plays slowly, almost magically, merge as their performers complete each other's lines and common themes emerge. But, by play's end when Jiang Binliu finally finds Yun Zhifan, who has been living in Taipei all along, the laughter gives way to sobs and the audience is left to contemplate the burdens of memory, history, longing and love - and the power of theater itself.
"Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land" was first performed in Taiwan when the island was still under martial law and contact with mainland China had just begun after nearly 40 years of rigid separation. It was a highly emotional era, as many of the two million mainlanders who had escaped to Taiwan - thinking their stay would be temporary - sought to re-establish contact with those left behind. While some reunions led to joy and renewal, others collapsed in angst and bitterness over wasted years, unbridgeable experiences and economic disparities. While Lai's work springs from and reflects this era in ways both comic and tragic, it also transcends it. It is a play that defies labeling - and this, in its creator's opinion, is one of the explanations for its tremendous success in China.
"There are too many labels here," Lai said. "Is it high art, is it popular art, is it big theater, is it small theater?" He added: "Even creativity is labeled. China needs a liberation of creative forces."
In support of this goal, Lai, who is currently a visiting professor at Stanford University, has staged several other plays from his Performance Workshop in China and also invested in a noble, albeit short-lived, attempt to create China's first private repertory theater. Most recently, he has written a book, "On Creativity," published in China by Citic Press, in which he argues that creativity can be taught and outlines methods for doing just that. He has also invested considerable time in teaching and lecturing on the subject. "I've been around the country talking about creativity. There are huge cities here with only one theater," he said, adding, "China needs to unleash creativity - it seems ironic that art has to be something higher than the people."
When it comes to theater itself, Lai says that too few plays are written in China and that creativity is often lacking because so many people are busy trying to make the next Broadway-style hit, like "Cats" - or finding excuses for not making anything at all.
"I was once teaching a class here," he said, "and I challenged the students. I said: 'With the opening up of China, I thought there'd be so many great playwrights and directors. Where are they?' One student answered, 'We're waiting for the Communist Party to die.' But the truth is, I think that's an alibi. Our play was very taboo in Taiwan when we made it. The stage is a place where anything goes. Have you been liberated to the point where you can see this?"
Comments
I believe that this is appearing in the context of Singapore as well. Many blame the government for stifling our creativity, not having enough emphasis on the arts and culture... but these are all like the statement,an excuse.