Data Type：interview
Author：Lu, Xin-ying; Zhang, Debbie
Title：Interview with Wang Chia-Ming
Place：Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group [Shashibiya de meimeimen de jutuan], Taipei
Date：2012/10/25
Language：English
Abstract：The director speaks of Romeo and Juliet as "educational theatre" and "a work in progress." He emphasizes language and pushes students' physical limits.
Date: October 25, 2012
Place: Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group
Q: We would like to begin by asking you why you started directing Shakespeare’s plays.
A: Actually I have directed two, one was Titus Andronicus, and the other was Romeo and Juliet. Well, the first time was because that I was going to graduate, and I thought that it would be formal to do Shakespeare for graduation. The other time was because of the term production; and I thought it was important to turn Shakespeare into theatre. Shakespeare to me is a source of performance. So I decided to do so at that time.
Q: Taiwan audiences have different familiarities with the two plays, why would you choose them?
A: Before doing Titus Andronicus, I asked others which one was suitable for me. They told me, so I chose it without even reading it. Because I felt that other people understood me more than myself. For Romeo and Juliet, it was because many people know it quite well, and I wanted to adapt something which is well known.
Q: When did you first read Shakespeare?
A: I didn’t seem to finish the reading when I was at university. Then I was to prepare for the postgraduate entrance exam of Taipei National University of the Arts, so I read more about it. At that time I was already 29 years old. I was only about 21 or 22 years old when I was at the university, and I only read a bit of it for the sake of attending university clubs.
Q: Have you watched any Shakespearean productions before you directed Titus Andronicus?
A: It is hard to avoid watching some. And I directed it precisely because I thought most of them were not that interesting. Shakespeare’s plays are about Shakespeare’s time. I thought most people usually read them for meanings and images, but the flowing sound is actually very important as well. So we paid much attention to the script when adapting. We had to read it out, not only the original English but also the translated Chinese words. We were looking for the appropriate sound of the word, and we translated words according to the sounds, including its construction of sounds, rather than the meaning of words.
You got different feelings about English and Chinese. Some certain thing could bring you feelings of beauty. But if the translation was too straightforward, what we got may just be a sense of uncertainty. If it is so, I won’t insist on doing it in that way. At that time, transforming scripts, more than translating, took up most of the time. When the actors are performing on the stage, what is left is their sound and voice only. Just like Romeo and Juliet, the actors were talking casually at the beginning. If you translate the script directly, it would be too boring. So you had to say something silly and vulgar. The sound had to appeal to the feelings, the kind of idiom feelings.
Q: What was your biggest problem when adapting the play?
A: The theatre was not real; you cannot turn the western into eastern completely. As in our daily life, most of the office workers would say “hey, John” or “hey, Mary” to their colleagues. They just call their English names. It is not the difference between eastern and western, but just a mixture. To me, it will be weird if you call John “约翰”. It may be unfamiliar to students, but it is very common to office workers.
Another problem is that, I cannot face theatre in a realistic way completely. Even the style of realism is only a form of theatre. There are many kinds of realism, but which one is the actual one? To me, it is not that people will not be able to understand it unless it has something to do with their real life. If you watch a painting, a painting by Paul Cézanne, whose painted fruits are crooked, could you say that is wrong? It concerns about the aesthetics of theatre when we are watching an artwork or the so-called “theatre”. In the theatre the interaction between sound and body matters. I think Titus Andronicus did better in this aspect. It still had many problems that I couldn’t figure out in my Romeo and Juliet production, so I spent more time on it. When you are in a theatre, you can feel that all the things are interacting with one another including lighting, costumes and stage. They reveal the aesthetics or aesthetic feelings as a whole, and that is the most important. And you won’t regard it as realistic or not.
Since social news was so dramatic, some people would ask: “Why do you insist in doing theatre?” I want to say that it has no similarity between the beauty of theatre and the roughness of daily life. The theatre contains not only plot, dramatic effects and realist reflections, but also an entity of universe. The language and sound, which is not completely the same as Shakespeare’s, provides me a process of power. No matter how light or heavy it is, it gives me a feeling about space. I think it is significant to turn the feeling and meaning of flowing into a kind of space aesthetics. Language is meant to be transferred, and I try to catch the flowing power of it. And I am also wondering what the initial power of English is, and what can hold the flowing of power. The feeling of language is like a river, it has its winding, flowing and rising tide. I am trying to feel it in the process of translating. The problem of this aspect is that the ways you feel its power are different as Chinese has Mandarin and other dialects. You need to find proper words while the breakthrough points are different.
Someone chose to look up dictionaries while I chose the appeal similar to the way of “river”, the way of feeling the flowing of power. The hearing and sounds are more significant to me, though later the visual part is hard to work together with them. And the practicality of performance is another issue. To me, Romeo and Juliet is an educational theatre. My concepts may not be achieved to a high level, while the stimulation it gives me makes more sense. I kept asking the actors to build up their bodies; but it didn’t work out at last. So I decided to turn half of the changed parts back to its beginning. I want to emphasize the importance of body. You cannot shake your body when speaking. Every line, every gesture and everything should be controlled by your conscious. It is very important in the theatre. I did the translation with seven of my postgraduate students. The translated scripts had three or four versions, and we kept analyzing them. The process of doing Romeo and Juliet was beyond its accomplishment, as you had to cooperate with the school.
Q: What first came into your mind when considering the sloping stage?
A: I had a concept of stage first—two sloping boards with a gap between them. The simpler, the better. But it may not work well if you add too much things in the design. One of the interesting things was that once the back board fell when a person walked by. I thought it was not bad. Sometimes coincidence happened and would bring some ideas. So I kept the falling part at last. It was funny to see someone emerging from the back.
Q: How is your concept of beast developed?
A: It first came into my mind as I wanted to tire the actors out. I was meant to ask them to build up their bodies. The actors had to balance their arm muscles and bodies. The sloping boards were designed to let them crawl, or the audience won’t see them. From the text we can see that Romeo and Juliet are young people, they have passion and brutality in love. As we were grown up we were afraid to face our internal instinct, but to rationalize it and repress it in the name of ethics and morality. What is valuable about Romeo and Juliet is that they are uncontrollable. The older people would regard it as a world that they could never come back. In the domain of spiritualism, impulsion is important. There are different kinds of impulsions. You have to have impulsions so that you can keep on doing something. Romeo and Juliet are still at the state of youth and innocence; they are looking forward to the unknown future. On the contrary, the adults are fighting under rationality. Compared to the beast world, what does the so-called “civilized” world mean?
Q: How do you regard the problems of “humanity” in Shakespeare’s plays?
A: The so-called “humanity” directs to different points. Humanity means that all the different people have their personalities. It is dangerous to talk about human nature as many people will do dramas and write scripts in the name of it. Then the outcome will be like something locked in museums. They are just floating in air. Theatre is a 3D space with visual and audio effects, and it doesn’t mean too much to me. Actually it is very “human(e)” to enjoy a bowl of plain noodles. It is embarrassing for me to talk about humanity. Theatre is really practical, no matter how you deal with a table, a chair or a bowl. It is practical to hold a bowl, to throw things, to stand up and to face audience with different angles. Theatre is a specific and manipulative thing. The so-called “concept”, just like the beast concept, has to come back to practical issues. Shakespeare’s plays are manipulative scripts; they are not locked in museums and being waited for others to analyze. Though analysis is necessary, it should be done at the very beginning. Theatre is a stall-keeper in service industry.
Q: How do you regard the problem of trans-time-space?
A: Shakespeare is brilliant. He emphasizes on sound. The language operates well when in the context of sound and plot. When you are doing drama, the time has been spanning. The past, the present and the future are synchronous to us. When all the things are converging at one point, they are meant to span. They are not spanning from the past but they always stay together. Speaking selfishly, I have to do what I like. Every time when I am doing Shakespeare’s plays, I think I am Shakespeare. If it is not related to me, it will have nothing to do with the audience.
I think it is a paradoxical question because, for me, everything can be transformed or turned into something related to you. As for resonance among audience in theatre, although we all differ from one another, there is still, of course, resonance, which is related to the universality of humanity that you mentioned earlier. For instance, when we are watching a play, we will laugh or cry all together, regardless of our difference. However, for me, when directing Shakespeare, I still prefer to turn to the practical executive aspect of the theatre because the energy produced by the exchange among sounds, plots and characters in his plays is especially powerful. This energy and power, rather than the textual meanings or messages conveyed by his plays, is precisely what I love and what I am pursuing in theatre. Those meanings and messages about life are all secondary; they are things that you should know already before directing and performing the play. What is more important for me is the energy and power of sounds displayed in Shakespeare’s plays as well as the fact that he writes his plays specifically for “acting” and “performing”. Voice or sound is in itself a kind of action and movement, and thus the combination of vocal sounds and textual words can create various relationships and possibilities. They are not dead, fixed or inflexible. From the perspective of the performance, they will have various different, strange relationships. For example, in different situations and contexts, the same statement “I love you” can point to different meanings, totally depending on its actions and expressions. I think Shakespeare’s plays fully exemplify the aspect of theatrical “performativity” and the possibilities of performance, which is precisely the reason that Shakespeare’s plays are open to many interpretations. For Shakespeare, theatrical performance in practice is the starting point and foundation of his texts.
Q: When you are directing a play, do you take the issue of audience into consideration?
A: Many people have asked me this question, but I think we all have different identities. For instance, I might be a teacher to you, yet I might have many other identities to other people, such as the son of my father or the husband of my wife. Therefore, when I am directing a play, my identity is actually the second audience. I am the audience, just like I am Shakespeare, except that we have different names. Of course, I cannot represent all the audience, but which term, even the term “audience”, can truly represent any audience? Thus, to say that you do a play for the audience will often be problematic. Is your audience referring to office employees, to my acquaintances, to frequent theatre-goers, to students, or to the audienceship of “audience” aged over 70 or 80? The meaning of “audience” in itself is fundamentally paradoxical. Let’s say you do something for the purpose of the audience, but this so-called “audience” is actually very ambiguous. For me, of course I am doing it for the audience because I am the audience, and I am watching actors rehearse and perform like other audience. Yet, at the same time, I am also the director, just like I can be both a lover and probably an enemy in front of my beloved. They are all possible, and it is just a matter of identity. Thus, for me, this question is usually nonexistent and unproblematic, since I of course am doing it for the audience.
Q: Was your experience in directing Shakespeare a fun or a heavily burdened, dismal one?
A: Of course the process involved both. My productions certainly had something that interested me to some extent. Of course there was something depressing involved in the process, but you cannot say that it was entirely depressing. Just like when you watch people play chess, would you say they are looking dismal? Isn’t it hard to define? You think they look dismal, but in fact they are playing and having fun. Or, when you watch people play football; actually they are playing, but everyone looks quite serious and solemn. I think the experience of doing a production was similar to this kind of game-playing state, but sometimes you need to be very serious of course. That is why it is really difficult to be pinned down by any adjectives or terms, whether it was interesting, dismal or fun. It was simply a game-playing state.
Q: How long did you spend in directing this play Romeo and Juliet?
A: About two or three months.
Q: Including translations and textual adaptations?
A: No, we started the translation job a lot earlier, about four or five months earlier.
Q: Would you consider doing another Shakespearean production?
A: In fact, I’d like to direct the beast version of Romeo and Juliet again. The production in 2008 was initially done for a theatre-in-education project. I knew from the very beginning that those actors couldn’t sustain the physical demands and training, but I still wanted to train them. If I really want to put the production on stage for the general public, I’d like to find some actors who can sustain the demands physically. In this way, I think the whole physical energy and power will be completely different; it will be closer to what I intended to do, and the interaction between space and the slope on the stage will then be fully manifested. I always make a clear distinction between educational theatres and any other forms of theatres. For theatre in education, the main purpose is to train the actors. If they fail to do a good job or fail to achieve the expectations, it is totally fine. I think at least they will learn something from that experience. Yet in terms of performance targeted at the general public, I still hope that I can find a troupe of professional actors whose physical strength is sufficient. Although they will by all means be tired out, I think they will enjoy it anyway.
I will also be directing another Shakespearean production at Taipei National University of the Arts next year. We are still in the middle of selecting the play, but we should have started translating and adapting the text by the first half of next year, and will start performing on the stage later that year. This is our first performance at Taipei National University of the Arts, and we are thinking about doing a play that is related to history or politics, such as Richard II or Richard III. Our current idea is that we will have all the actors dress in oversized costumes and that they will sometimes fall down while walking. They will all pretend to be very mature and grown-up, while obviously their clothes are far from fitting. Basically it will be something about history and politics.
Q: You mentioned that the concept of the beast version has to be achieved with power and strength, and thus actors’ bodies are deliberately pushed down and lowered to the ground into a low crouch. The speed and tempo of their movements have to be modified as well. Did you deliberately train the actors during the rehearsals?
A: They were completely exhausted because of this. For example, we went to learn Capoeira, a Brazilian martial and dancing art, which has to be done with body lowered into a crouch position. The actors’ legs were shaking after just one or two hours, and some of them even had difficulties taking their trousers off. The whole process and training was indeed exhausting, and I spent a lot of effort training their physical strength and building up their muscles.
Q: So they did physical training first before they started rehearsing the play?
A: Yes. When we were doing physical training, I also tried to let them read out some lines while having their bodies lowered and crouched. For most young people, I think there was still a gap and distance between their bodies and voices, between their emotions and actions. Thus they didn’t understand and couldn’t see that slight difference they would make when having their bodies crouched in different angles. But I thought let’s do it and try it first then, so we did it.
Q: When we were watching this production, we noticed that some actors were crouching and crawling on the stage at the beginning, but they began to stand upright in the second half of the play.
A: Because they couldn’t bear it any longer. Therefore I made a compromise and told them to stand up. This is why I kept saying that it is really paradoxical because I myself am aware of some technical problems. In fact, half of the group was already standing. Since some major characters had to stand upright to perform some major scenes in the second half of the play, those originally crouching, crawling actors then started to stand up as well in order to match up and cooperate with those leading actors. Originally I hoped that they could all act with their bodies crouching and crawling like beasts, but the compromise was made basically for this reason. Of course the executive aspect will involve many complexities. For me, a concept will remain merely conceptual if you fail to push it forward and carry it out. This is why I don’t really like to talk about concepts or ideas.
Q: The entire stage presentation was like a slope, so what about stage properties? The entire stage is like a slope, so what about stage properties?
A: Yes, in order to prevent stage props from falling down, we had to make some special design and arrangements. This is why I said theatre is always interrelated; one thing will affect another, and all of them are closely connected and mutually dependent.
Q: Is your insistence on actors’ physical energy and your fondness for theatrical power on stage influenced by any productions or genres?
A: I think it is Chinese Kunqu. I often tell people that Kunqu is the initial inspiration of my career in theatre. There isn’t much complicated plot in Kunqu, and the focus of the audience can be directed towards the actors, but you will simply feel amazed and mesmerized by it. During my university years, I knew little about theatre. I had watched many plays that also had strong power and energy before. Yet, Kunqu is different. Whenever I watched it, I was simply amazed by its elegance, delicacy, and beauty. Every sound and every singing is just so beautiful. I think theatre is simply and purely beautiful. There are many different kinds of beauty and aesthetics, of course, but that kind of theatrical beauty lies precisely in the manifestation of various details being closely linked together. That is why I said previously why I wanted to turn to theatre; its aesthetics is totally different from things like social events in daily life. For me, Kunqu also shows a kind of power, though a more elegant one. It is different from many other genres that appeal to roughness or fierceness. I personally prefer the energy and power Kunqu reveals because it displays a sense of theatrical aesthetics to me.
Q: I saw a Kunqu performance in Nanjing this July. We often emphasize that Chinese theatre is actor-centered and that directors are less influential or significant than actors. I noticed from my experience in Nanjing that actors seemed to have a lot of improvisation. What is your opinion on improvisation or impromptu acting?
A: There isn’t much improvisation in Kunqu. Clown roles might have more impromptu acting, but most of them are still arranged and rehearsed beforehand. It is quite impossible to find male or female leads doing improvisation because that will undermine and downplay their roles. As for improvisation and impromptu acting, which part are you referring to?
Q: I mean things that outside of or beyond the texts.
A: This usually happens in rehearsals, but quite rarely in actual performance. When we were rehearsing, actors often improvised to a very large extent because we were like playing and having fun, and usually I was quite carefree during rehearsals. They even joked that I might be the least in rank in our theatre because if I said I didn’t have appetite to finish the lunch box, I would even be scolded by actors. We were like playing game and having fun. During our rehearsals, there is usually a central “text”; of course there will be a lot of improvisation, but most of them still revolve around that central “text”. During actual performance, most of the acting is already designed and rehearsed, for I think there should be “structure” in theatre. If there is too much impromptu acting, the structure will be loosened. I have always been trying hard to adjust the balance of the structure.
Q: What is the major difference and the biggest shock in your experiences of directing Shakespearean plays and Nanke Dream（《南柯夢》）?
We rehearsed Nanke Dream for over one year, and I spent at least half a year in Nanjing. The biggest shock in this experience is that I realized how exquisite and delicate Kunqu really is. We needed a lot of help from our technical instructor. For example, every Hang Dang (行當; role types) could have significance to costumes and props, and there were various zhexi (折子; selected excerpts) and gestures, such as holding or rolling up their sleeves, which we all needed to discuss with the technical instructor. We had to communicate and discuss every little detail with the instructor. I think Kunqu is most delicate and exquisite in a way that it is very normal to spend five or ten minutes just on one single word. For example, when an actor enters the stage, we have to revise endless times on his movements even before he starts to sing or read his lines. We have to consider every possible gesture and movement of the way an actor holds the sword, whether to hang it or place it on his back, to put it around his waist or in his hand. How he should hold the sword in his hand must be rehearsed as well, including how he is going to wave the sword and why he has to hold the sword. Often one silent, wordless section can take us very long, and sections with lines will take up even longer. For instance, there can be full of details in a simple scene in which an actor turns his back after having spoken for twenty minutes and interacts with another actor. Though it might appear to be rather simple and straightforward, how these two actors interact and cooperate in fact involves a lot of intricate details and work.
Place: Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group
Q: We would like to begin by asking you why you started directing Shakespeare’s plays.
A: Actually I have directed two, one was Titus Andronicus, and the other was Romeo and Juliet. Well, the first time was because that I was going to graduate, and I thought that it would be formal to do Shakespeare for graduation. The other time was because of the term production; and I thought it was important to turn Shakespeare into theatre. Shakespeare to me is a source of performance. So I decided to do so at that time.
Q: Taiwan audiences have different familiarities with the two plays, why would you choose them?
A: Before doing Titus Andronicus, I asked others which one was suitable for me. They told me, so I chose it without even reading it. Because I felt that other people understood me more than myself. For Romeo and Juliet, it was because many people know it quite well, and I wanted to adapt something which is well known.
Q: When did you first read Shakespeare?
A: I didn’t seem to finish the reading when I was at university. Then I was to prepare for the postgraduate entrance exam of Taipei National University of the Arts, so I read more about it. At that time I was already 29 years old. I was only about 21 or 22 years old when I was at the university, and I only read a bit of it for the sake of attending university clubs.
Q: Have you watched any Shakespearean productions before you directed Titus Andronicus?
A: It is hard to avoid watching some. And I directed it precisely because I thought most of them were not that interesting. Shakespeare’s plays are about Shakespeare’s time. I thought most people usually read them for meanings and images, but the flowing sound is actually very important as well. So we paid much attention to the script when adapting. We had to read it out, not only the original English but also the translated Chinese words. We were looking for the appropriate sound of the word, and we translated words according to the sounds, including its construction of sounds, rather than the meaning of words.
You got different feelings about English and Chinese. Some certain thing could bring you feelings of beauty. But if the translation was too straightforward, what we got may just be a sense of uncertainty. If it is so, I won’t insist on doing it in that way. At that time, transforming scripts, more than translating, took up most of the time. When the actors are performing on the stage, what is left is their sound and voice only. Just like Romeo and Juliet, the actors were talking casually at the beginning. If you translate the script directly, it would be too boring. So you had to say something silly and vulgar. The sound had to appeal to the feelings, the kind of idiom feelings.
Q: What was your biggest problem when adapting the play?
A: The theatre was not real; you cannot turn the western into eastern completely. As in our daily life, most of the office workers would say “hey, John” or “hey, Mary” to their colleagues. They just call their English names. It is not the difference between eastern and western, but just a mixture. To me, it will be weird if you call John “约翰”. It may be unfamiliar to students, but it is very common to office workers.
Another problem is that, I cannot face theatre in a realistic way completely. Even the style of realism is only a form of theatre. There are many kinds of realism, but which one is the actual one? To me, it is not that people will not be able to understand it unless it has something to do with their real life. If you watch a painting, a painting by Paul Cézanne, whose painted fruits are crooked, could you say that is wrong? It concerns about the aesthetics of theatre when we are watching an artwork or the so-called “theatre”. In the theatre the interaction between sound and body matters. I think Titus Andronicus did better in this aspect. It still had many problems that I couldn’t figure out in my Romeo and Juliet production, so I spent more time on it. When you are in a theatre, you can feel that all the things are interacting with one another including lighting, costumes and stage. They reveal the aesthetics or aesthetic feelings as a whole, and that is the most important. And you won’t regard it as realistic or not.
Since social news was so dramatic, some people would ask: “Why do you insist in doing theatre?” I want to say that it has no similarity between the beauty of theatre and the roughness of daily life. The theatre contains not only plot, dramatic effects and realist reflections, but also an entity of universe. The language and sound, which is not completely the same as Shakespeare’s, provides me a process of power. No matter how light or heavy it is, it gives me a feeling about space. I think it is significant to turn the feeling and meaning of flowing into a kind of space aesthetics. Language is meant to be transferred, and I try to catch the flowing power of it. And I am also wondering what the initial power of English is, and what can hold the flowing of power. The feeling of language is like a river, it has its winding, flowing and rising tide. I am trying to feel it in the process of translating. The problem of this aspect is that the ways you feel its power are different as Chinese has Mandarin and other dialects. You need to find proper words while the breakthrough points are different.
Someone chose to look up dictionaries while I chose the appeal similar to the way of “river”, the way of feeling the flowing of power. The hearing and sounds are more significant to me, though later the visual part is hard to work together with them. And the practicality of performance is another issue. To me, Romeo and Juliet is an educational theatre. My concepts may not be achieved to a high level, while the stimulation it gives me makes more sense. I kept asking the actors to build up their bodies; but it didn’t work out at last. So I decided to turn half of the changed parts back to its beginning. I want to emphasize the importance of body. You cannot shake your body when speaking. Every line, every gesture and everything should be controlled by your conscious. It is very important in the theatre. I did the translation with seven of my postgraduate students. The translated scripts had three or four versions, and we kept analyzing them. The process of doing Romeo and Juliet was beyond its accomplishment, as you had to cooperate with the school.
Q: What first came into your mind when considering the sloping stage?
A: I had a concept of stage first—two sloping boards with a gap between them. The simpler, the better. But it may not work well if you add too much things in the design. One of the interesting things was that once the back board fell when a person walked by. I thought it was not bad. Sometimes coincidence happened and would bring some ideas. So I kept the falling part at last. It was funny to see someone emerging from the back.
Q: How is your concept of beast developed?
A: It first came into my mind as I wanted to tire the actors out. I was meant to ask them to build up their bodies. The actors had to balance their arm muscles and bodies. The sloping boards were designed to let them crawl, or the audience won’t see them. From the text we can see that Romeo and Juliet are young people, they have passion and brutality in love. As we were grown up we were afraid to face our internal instinct, but to rationalize it and repress it in the name of ethics and morality. What is valuable about Romeo and Juliet is that they are uncontrollable. The older people would regard it as a world that they could never come back. In the domain of spiritualism, impulsion is important. There are different kinds of impulsions. You have to have impulsions so that you can keep on doing something. Romeo and Juliet are still at the state of youth and innocence; they are looking forward to the unknown future. On the contrary, the adults are fighting under rationality. Compared to the beast world, what does the so-called “civilized” world mean?
Q: How do you regard the problems of “humanity” in Shakespeare’s plays?
A: The so-called “humanity” directs to different points. Humanity means that all the different people have their personalities. It is dangerous to talk about human nature as many people will do dramas and write scripts in the name of it. Then the outcome will be like something locked in museums. They are just floating in air. Theatre is a 3D space with visual and audio effects, and it doesn’t mean too much to me. Actually it is very “human(e)” to enjoy a bowl of plain noodles. It is embarrassing for me to talk about humanity. Theatre is really practical, no matter how you deal with a table, a chair or a bowl. It is practical to hold a bowl, to throw things, to stand up and to face audience with different angles. Theatre is a specific and manipulative thing. The so-called “concept”, just like the beast concept, has to come back to practical issues. Shakespeare’s plays are manipulative scripts; they are not locked in museums and being waited for others to analyze. Though analysis is necessary, it should be done at the very beginning. Theatre is a stall-keeper in service industry.
Q: How do you regard the problem of trans-time-space?
A: Shakespeare is brilliant. He emphasizes on sound. The language operates well when in the context of sound and plot. When you are doing drama, the time has been spanning. The past, the present and the future are synchronous to us. When all the things are converging at one point, they are meant to span. They are not spanning from the past but they always stay together. Speaking selfishly, I have to do what I like. Every time when I am doing Shakespeare’s plays, I think I am Shakespeare. If it is not related to me, it will have nothing to do with the audience.
I think it is a paradoxical question because, for me, everything can be transformed or turned into something related to you. As for resonance among audience in theatre, although we all differ from one another, there is still, of course, resonance, which is related to the universality of humanity that you mentioned earlier. For instance, when we are watching a play, we will laugh or cry all together, regardless of our difference. However, for me, when directing Shakespeare, I still prefer to turn to the practical executive aspect of the theatre because the energy produced by the exchange among sounds, plots and characters in his plays is especially powerful. This energy and power, rather than the textual meanings or messages conveyed by his plays, is precisely what I love and what I am pursuing in theatre. Those meanings and messages about life are all secondary; they are things that you should know already before directing and performing the play. What is more important for me is the energy and power of sounds displayed in Shakespeare’s plays as well as the fact that he writes his plays specifically for “acting” and “performing”. Voice or sound is in itself a kind of action and movement, and thus the combination of vocal sounds and textual words can create various relationships and possibilities. They are not dead, fixed or inflexible. From the perspective of the performance, they will have various different, strange relationships. For example, in different situations and contexts, the same statement “I love you” can point to different meanings, totally depending on its actions and expressions. I think Shakespeare’s plays fully exemplify the aspect of theatrical “performativity” and the possibilities of performance, which is precisely the reason that Shakespeare’s plays are open to many interpretations. For Shakespeare, theatrical performance in practice is the starting point and foundation of his texts.
Q: When you are directing a play, do you take the issue of audience into consideration?
A: Many people have asked me this question, but I think we all have different identities. For instance, I might be a teacher to you, yet I might have many other identities to other people, such as the son of my father or the husband of my wife. Therefore, when I am directing a play, my identity is actually the second audience. I am the audience, just like I am Shakespeare, except that we have different names. Of course, I cannot represent all the audience, but which term, even the term “audience”, can truly represent any audience? Thus, to say that you do a play for the audience will often be problematic. Is your audience referring to office employees, to my acquaintances, to frequent theatre-goers, to students, or to the audienceship of “audience” aged over 70 or 80? The meaning of “audience” in itself is fundamentally paradoxical. Let’s say you do something for the purpose of the audience, but this so-called “audience” is actually very ambiguous. For me, of course I am doing it for the audience because I am the audience, and I am watching actors rehearse and perform like other audience. Yet, at the same time, I am also the director, just like I can be both a lover and probably an enemy in front of my beloved. They are all possible, and it is just a matter of identity. Thus, for me, this question is usually nonexistent and unproblematic, since I of course am doing it for the audience.
Q: Was your experience in directing Shakespeare a fun or a heavily burdened, dismal one?
A: Of course the process involved both. My productions certainly had something that interested me to some extent. Of course there was something depressing involved in the process, but you cannot say that it was entirely depressing. Just like when you watch people play chess, would you say they are looking dismal? Isn’t it hard to define? You think they look dismal, but in fact they are playing and having fun. Or, when you watch people play football; actually they are playing, but everyone looks quite serious and solemn. I think the experience of doing a production was similar to this kind of game-playing state, but sometimes you need to be very serious of course. That is why it is really difficult to be pinned down by any adjectives or terms, whether it was interesting, dismal or fun. It was simply a game-playing state.
Q: How long did you spend in directing this play Romeo and Juliet?
A: About two or three months.
Q: Including translations and textual adaptations?
A: No, we started the translation job a lot earlier, about four or five months earlier.
Q: Would you consider doing another Shakespearean production?
A: In fact, I’d like to direct the beast version of Romeo and Juliet again. The production in 2008 was initially done for a theatre-in-education project. I knew from the very beginning that those actors couldn’t sustain the physical demands and training, but I still wanted to train them. If I really want to put the production on stage for the general public, I’d like to find some actors who can sustain the demands physically. In this way, I think the whole physical energy and power will be completely different; it will be closer to what I intended to do, and the interaction between space and the slope on the stage will then be fully manifested. I always make a clear distinction between educational theatres and any other forms of theatres. For theatre in education, the main purpose is to train the actors. If they fail to do a good job or fail to achieve the expectations, it is totally fine. I think at least they will learn something from that experience. Yet in terms of performance targeted at the general public, I still hope that I can find a troupe of professional actors whose physical strength is sufficient. Although they will by all means be tired out, I think they will enjoy it anyway.
I will also be directing another Shakespearean production at Taipei National University of the Arts next year. We are still in the middle of selecting the play, but we should have started translating and adapting the text by the first half of next year, and will start performing on the stage later that year. This is our first performance at Taipei National University of the Arts, and we are thinking about doing a play that is related to history or politics, such as Richard II or Richard III. Our current idea is that we will have all the actors dress in oversized costumes and that they will sometimes fall down while walking. They will all pretend to be very mature and grown-up, while obviously their clothes are far from fitting. Basically it will be something about history and politics.
Q: You mentioned that the concept of the beast version has to be achieved with power and strength, and thus actors’ bodies are deliberately pushed down and lowered to the ground into a low crouch. The speed and tempo of their movements have to be modified as well. Did you deliberately train the actors during the rehearsals?
A: They were completely exhausted because of this. For example, we went to learn Capoeira, a Brazilian martial and dancing art, which has to be done with body lowered into a crouch position. The actors’ legs were shaking after just one or two hours, and some of them even had difficulties taking their trousers off. The whole process and training was indeed exhausting, and I spent a lot of effort training their physical strength and building up their muscles.
Q: So they did physical training first before they started rehearsing the play?
A: Yes. When we were doing physical training, I also tried to let them read out some lines while having their bodies lowered and crouched. For most young people, I think there was still a gap and distance between their bodies and voices, between their emotions and actions. Thus they didn’t understand and couldn’t see that slight difference they would make when having their bodies crouched in different angles. But I thought let’s do it and try it first then, so we did it.
Q: When we were watching this production, we noticed that some actors were crouching and crawling on the stage at the beginning, but they began to stand upright in the second half of the play.
A: Because they couldn’t bear it any longer. Therefore I made a compromise and told them to stand up. This is why I kept saying that it is really paradoxical because I myself am aware of some technical problems. In fact, half of the group was already standing. Since some major characters had to stand upright to perform some major scenes in the second half of the play, those originally crouching, crawling actors then started to stand up as well in order to match up and cooperate with those leading actors. Originally I hoped that they could all act with their bodies crouching and crawling like beasts, but the compromise was made basically for this reason. Of course the executive aspect will involve many complexities. For me, a concept will remain merely conceptual if you fail to push it forward and carry it out. This is why I don’t really like to talk about concepts or ideas.
Q: The entire stage presentation was like a slope, so what about stage properties? The entire stage is like a slope, so what about stage properties?
A: Yes, in order to prevent stage props from falling down, we had to make some special design and arrangements. This is why I said theatre is always interrelated; one thing will affect another, and all of them are closely connected and mutually dependent.
Q: Is your insistence on actors’ physical energy and your fondness for theatrical power on stage influenced by any productions or genres?
A: I think it is Chinese Kunqu. I often tell people that Kunqu is the initial inspiration of my career in theatre. There isn’t much complicated plot in Kunqu, and the focus of the audience can be directed towards the actors, but you will simply feel amazed and mesmerized by it. During my university years, I knew little about theatre. I had watched many plays that also had strong power and energy before. Yet, Kunqu is different. Whenever I watched it, I was simply amazed by its elegance, delicacy, and beauty. Every sound and every singing is just so beautiful. I think theatre is simply and purely beautiful. There are many different kinds of beauty and aesthetics, of course, but that kind of theatrical beauty lies precisely in the manifestation of various details being closely linked together. That is why I said previously why I wanted to turn to theatre; its aesthetics is totally different from things like social events in daily life. For me, Kunqu also shows a kind of power, though a more elegant one. It is different from many other genres that appeal to roughness or fierceness. I personally prefer the energy and power Kunqu reveals because it displays a sense of theatrical aesthetics to me.
Q: I saw a Kunqu performance in Nanjing this July. We often emphasize that Chinese theatre is actor-centered and that directors are less influential or significant than actors. I noticed from my experience in Nanjing that actors seemed to have a lot of improvisation. What is your opinion on improvisation or impromptu acting?
A: There isn’t much improvisation in Kunqu. Clown roles might have more impromptu acting, but most of them are still arranged and rehearsed beforehand. It is quite impossible to find male or female leads doing improvisation because that will undermine and downplay their roles. As for improvisation and impromptu acting, which part are you referring to?
Q: I mean things that outside of or beyond the texts.
A: This usually happens in rehearsals, but quite rarely in actual performance. When we were rehearsing, actors often improvised to a very large extent because we were like playing and having fun, and usually I was quite carefree during rehearsals. They even joked that I might be the least in rank in our theatre because if I said I didn’t have appetite to finish the lunch box, I would even be scolded by actors. We were like playing game and having fun. During our rehearsals, there is usually a central “text”; of course there will be a lot of improvisation, but most of them still revolve around that central “text”. During actual performance, most of the acting is already designed and rehearsed, for I think there should be “structure” in theatre. If there is too much impromptu acting, the structure will be loosened. I have always been trying hard to adjust the balance of the structure.
Q: What is the major difference and the biggest shock in your experiences of directing Shakespearean plays and Nanke Dream（《南柯夢》）?
We rehearsed Nanke Dream for over one year, and I spent at least half a year in Nanjing. The biggest shock in this experience is that I realized how exquisite and delicate Kunqu really is. We needed a lot of help from our technical instructor. For example, every Hang Dang (行當; role types) could have significance to costumes and props, and there were various zhexi (折子; selected excerpts) and gestures, such as holding or rolling up their sleeves, which we all needed to discuss with the technical instructor. We had to communicate and discuss every little detail with the instructor. I think Kunqu is most delicate and exquisite in a way that it is very normal to spend five or ten minutes just on one single word. For example, when an actor enters the stage, we have to revise endless times on his movements even before he starts to sing or read his lines. We have to consider every possible gesture and movement of the way an actor holds the sword, whether to hang it or place it on his back, to put it around his waist or in his hand. How he should hold the sword in his hand must be rehearsed as well, including how he is going to wave the sword and why he has to hold the sword. Often one silent, wordless section can take us very long, and sections with lines will take up even longer. For instance, there can be full of details in a simple scene in which an actor turns his back after having spoken for twenty minutes and interacts with another actor. Though it might appear to be rather simple and straightforward, how these two actors interact and cooperate in fact involves a lot of intricate details and work.
