Taiwan Today

The Uhan Shii Theater Group is more than a collection
of old folks acting out bittersweet life experiences from
Taiwan's past. It is, among other things, the culmination
of a soul-searching journey for a Taiwan-born theater artist.

When Peng Ya-ling (彭雅玲) was studying drama in England, her Taiwanese ethnic origin always seemed to be a topic of discussion. That somehow disturbed her a great deal. She says, "To me, it sounded like I was nothing to my English classmates, unless they mentioned where I had come from."

In 1990, Peng returned home after three years' study abroad; but she did not choose to work in experimental theater, as she had been doing for almost ten years before going to England. Neither did she look to conventional forms of performance to express her passion for theater, like many of her colleagues. Instead, Peng went on a spiritual journey, delving into her inner self as a source of inspiration and strength. "I wasn't happy with the status of Taiwan's experimental theater, but I didn't know where to go, either," she explains. "I needed to get hold of my self-being, so that I could carry on my search for art in the theater."

This soul-searching journey invariably brought back memories of Peng's experiences in England, and she was amazed by what she discovered. She says, "It just dawned on me that I had never learned to appreciate my own Taiwanese roots. Perhaps that was the reason I didn't like it when people emphasized my ethnic background. I thought it wasn't important. But it is. Everything about me is reflection of where I come from."

In order to find her roots, Peng continued on a spiritual path that wound back to her early years growing up in Taiwan. She had memories of going to traditional folk-art performances like Taiwanese operas and hand-puppet shows, staged at temple courtyards or on the roadsides. These played a crucial role in nurturing her talent and interest in theater.

When most kids her age were busy reading comic books and romance novels, Peng set her eyes on something tangible and true to life: elderly people. Peng took great interest in senior citizens, and developed the peculiar habit of following them around, asking questions of the old folks who had so stimulated her curiosity. "I would follow them home, begging them to tell me things about themselves. Somehow their stories sounded much more exciting than those in novels or comic books."

Later, after a decade of experience with theater and with her keen artistic perception, Peng intuitively realized that she had hit upon something important when she reflected on her youth. She believed that this unique, if not bizarre, childhood pastime of hers, combined with an emerging adult yearning to find her roots and inner self, might be turned into something meaningful. "I asked myself, why couldn't I present the stories of Taiwan through the voices and personal perspectives of old people who have timeless experiences of living in this land and who are eyewitness to Taiwan's dramatic changes over the years?"

Good question. Why not? So Peng went off to do fieldwork in Taiwan's rural areas, where traditional folk-art performances could still be seen, to collect and record tales of elderly people.

In the meantime, Peng worked for Chinese Public Television (CPT), making a respectable income. But comfort was not all that she expected out of life. In her spare time, she continued her experimental theater work--and her soul searching. Then, in 1993, at the invitation of the Tainan Cultural Foundation, she took the position of art director for its Modern Form Theater Group, which was to become the first theater in Taiwan featuring the elderly as performers. She willingly accepted the invitation because, as she explains, "I was anxious to work with people who've had rich life experiences."

The following two years in Modern Form proved to be highly fruitful. Peng had abundant opportunities to work with people in their fifties and older who came from widely varied backgrounds but who--in stark and refreshing contrast to trained or amateur actors of her own age group and younger--had never had a single day of acting experience. Most importantly, she learned to appreciate the mature body language and inner strength of the elderly, which they had accumulated through extended and often difficult life experiences--things that one cannot possibly expect to see in younger actors. By the end of 1994, Peng was fully convinced that staging theater performances with the elderly acting out their life dramas and reflecting on different aspects of old Taiwan was right on target.

In early 1995, Peng quit her job at CPT to devote herself to the development of senior citizens' theater in Taiwan. With the little money she was able to put together from donations and loans from friends and relatives, she quickly started Modern Form's sister ensemble in Taipei: the Uhan Shii Theater Group.

"Uhan Shii" (from the Taiwanese word for happy) was so named by Chang Chao-tang (張照堂), a photographer well known for recording images of Taiwan with his "magic finger" and poetic perspectives. Nearly one hundred people telephoned to sign up after Peng placed ads in local Chinese newspapers to recruit members for the theater group. Of these, sixty were chosen, and twenty to thirty are now active in the group. "The old folks came from all around, and some even commuted from cities outside of Taipei," says Peng.

Seven months later, Uhan Shii introduced its first dramatic production: Echoes of Taiwan illustrated life in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation (1894-1945). Since Uhan Shii's newly-recruited members were not yet ready to perform onstage, Peng asked actors from Modern Form to participate in the play. Peng also invited several traditional folk-art per formers--like Taiwanese Opera singer and actress Cloudy Black Cat (黑貓雲), whose real name is Hsu Yuan (許緣)--to join Uhan Shii for Echoes of Taiwan. Through her remarkable singing skills, Cloudy demonstrated how Taiwanese opera had been driven under ground during the time of the Japanese colonial government's suppression of Chinese art and culture on Taiwan.

Peng first found Cloudy in a small temple courtyard, where the late Taiwanese opera singer was performing before a small local audience. "I'd heard about her. She was born into a Taiwanese opera family in Taipei and had become very famous by the time she was twenty, playing a clown character called Cloudy Black Cat. Cloudy Black Cat has been her nickname ever since then," says Peng. When Peng found Cloudy, the actress was in her seventies, very ill, and confined to a wheelchair most of the time. But she was still able to sing and act with a vitality and beauty rarely seen today.

Getting Cloudy to perform in a modern theater, however, was no easy task. Every time Peng visited her, she was attacked by Cloudy's acerbic taunting remarks. Cloudy simply would not believe that a young woman who had been trained abroad could understand anything about Taiwanese opera. Cloudy eventually agreed to join Uhan Shii's performance, but not as a result of being moved by Peng's passion for art--quite the contrary. After watching performances of modern theater on television, Cloudy realized that one possible way to revive Taiwanese opera's popularity was to incorporate the traditional form of art into today's modern style.

Peng also recruited Li Ping-huei to perform Nakasi, an old Taiwanese style of singing popular during the occupation, heavily influenced by traditional Japanese singing. Accompanying himself on the accordion, Li's singing in Echoes of Taiwan stirred feelings of nostalgia among those who had fond memories of the Japanese period. According to Peng, a friend of hers discovered Li at a brothel in Tamsui, a small town just north of Taipei, where the blind 46-year-old musician had been playing since the age of twenty. Li subsequently recorded an album with another Nakasi musician and appeared in coffee and beer commercials, becoming quite popular islandwide.

Since most actors for Echoes of Tai-wan, like Cloudy and Li, were unable to read (formal education being a luxury to kids from poor families), Peng had to show some originality in communicating with them. Instead of providing a written script, Peng literally had to draw the script for the actors. But in Li's case, even the childlike "picture" script that laid out the whole plot--scene by scene and act by act--became superfluous. Verbal exchange was the only solution. Difficulties arose for Peng, however, because she (like most people her age who had grown up speaking the official Mandarin language more fluently and comfortably than their mother tongue) felt awkward conversing in Taiwanese. Thus, in producing and directing the play, Peng again found herself facing the issue of her true identity. She says, "In the beginning it was very difficult. I couldn't just talk to the actors in Taiwanese, even though I felt I understood the language pretty well. Then one day, all of a sudden, before I realized it, I was speaking Taiwanese effortlessly, without going back to Mandarin for the right words to express myself as I had before."

Soon after Echoes of Taiwan's successful debut in Taipei, Uhan Shii was invited to London to participate in the European Reminiscence Festival of Theatre & Arts, an international arts festival based on the concept of oral history. According to Peng, ten groups of elderly actors from different parts of the world, including Germany, Italy, Greece, France, England, the US, Denmark and Taiwan took part in the festival. People over sixty years of age acted out their feelings and experiences during wartime on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the second world war. In London, the audience response to Echoes of Taiwan was surprisingly good. An unexpected event contributed to the entourage's reception: as if encouraged by the enthusiastic audience, Cloudy Black Cat amazed everyone by standing up from her wheelchair while singing. Instead of singing only few lines taken from a Taiwanese opera as the program required, she sang the whole part which lasted for several minutes. After the London performance, Uhan Shii has been asked several times to stage this play again. "But," says Peng, "Cloudy is gone. We can't find anyone to replace her." Cloudy died of a chronic illness last year.

Uhan Shii's second play came out in November 1996. Echoes of Taiwan II depicts Taiwan's past fifty years of transition through the story of Wu Tien-lo (吳天羅), godfather of Taiwan's folk music. Wu was born in 1930 in Yunlin, southern Taiwan. He started in show business at the age of sixteen as a Taiwanese opera singer, but after motion pictures arrived on the island, Wu was forced to earn a living by singing and selling medicine on the street. By the time Wu turned thirty-five, television had become so popular that he found himself unable to make ends meet. But life must go on, one way or another. Wu reluctantly agreed to teach che ku (車鼓), a traditional form of folk art performed during harvest time, in which men dress in women's clothes and dance by moving their buttocks in a special rhythm. Wu also started his first folk-art group which performed during religious festivals. Now, there are ten or more folk-art performing groups in Yunlin, all formed through Wu's efforts and training.

After the following six months, Uhan Shii produced its third play in June 1997. Echoes of Taiwan III: The Story of Taiwanese Men explores the feelings of old men who die without knowing their true hearts, aspirations, and hidden inner selves. Peng explains the reason she wanted to focus on the inner feelings of Taiwan's men: "Men tend to be weak when it comes to feelings. While women will tell their stories freely, emotionally and eloquently, men tend to avoid the conversation by saying, 'It's nothing,' 'It's embarrassing,' or 'Forget about it.'" Peng says it is the differing responses of men and women which reinforced her determination to discover "the voices of men."

When Peng started Uhan Shii, she was warned that one of the risks she must face in directing a theater composed of elderly actors is the fact that their physical functions may deteriorate suddenly after a certain age. She says, "I was told that old actors age one after another. Then they leave and never come back." It took only one incident for Peng to learn this cruel fact of life. Tsai Yi-shan (蔡益山), one of the leading actors in Echoes of Taiwan III, discovered before the performance that he had bladder cancer and was told by his doctor he had only six months to live. On one occasion, he was too ill to rehearse and was hurried to the hospital. Worried and in a panic about his health, Peng said to him over the phone, "Tsai Yi-shan, you cannot die now. You are my leading man in the play." Tsai responded by answering in his barely-audible voice, "Really? All right then. Teacher Peng, please tell me again that I am your leading man." A few days later, Tsai came back to the rehearsal. According to Peng, Tsai's health problems are now under control, and he continues to be an active member of Uhan Shii.

After its debut in Taipei, the troupe was invited to perform The Story of Taiwanese Men in London and New York in March and June of this year, with overseas organizers paying the travel expenses of the troupe. According to Peng, the play is scheduled for Holland at the end of October; Sweden, next August; and Germany in October, 1999. In June 2000, it will be performed again in New York.

Previously, all drama productions by Uhan Shii had been performed in Taiwanese, leaving members who cannot speak the dialect out of the spotlight. The first production in Mandarin was staged this October. Echoes of Taiwan IV portrays the lives of the mainlanders in Taiwan: how they grew up in mainland China, left their families behind and moved to Taiwan, settled down, and established new families on the island.

Composed of a series of sagas adapted from the true-life experiences of four of the members, the play was especially challenging to produce because of the emotions it provoked in the performers. Every time the eighty-year-old retired sailor Yi Ching-tang (易勁棠) came to practice his part, he had to prevent himself from breaking into tears.

Alone in Taiwan since 1949, Yi had been a seaman on a cargo ship all his life. (He retired fifteen years ago.) When the communist revolution reached Shanghai in 1949, the cargo ship he was aboard received a radio message from the head office ordering it to sail to Taiwan. As his ship anchored at Keelung Harbor, Yi had no idea that Taiwan was going to be his home for the next fifty years. Neither did it occur to him that he would never see his wife again. He returned to his hometown in Hubei province the year after the ROC government lifted its ban on visits to mainland China in 1987, only to find that his wife had already died.

Today, when asked why he did not remarry and set up a new family in Taiwan as many others had, Yi just turns his face away, as if looking off into the distant past. For several seconds he does not say a word. When he finally returns to the present, he says, "You know something, my wife was a real beauty. Have you seen the picture of my wife? Everyone who sees the picture says she was breathtaking, like a movie star. Lin Chin-hsia (林青霞, a famous movie star from Taiwan), is nothing compared to my wife." Yi soon recovers, chuckles, and transforms himself into a contented old man again.

Some Uhan Shii actors say that performing the plays brings back memories they thought they had forgotten, or which they would prefer to forget. One time during rehearsal, the actors were asked to stand in silence, raise their left arms pointing to the sky and, at the same time, to think about pictures of the old days when they started their new lives in Taiwan. Sixty-five year-old Wang Hsiu-ching (王秀清) began crying. First tears streamed down her cheeks, then the quiet tears turned into weeping. Finally, she broke down into heart-rending, agonized sobbing. "The memories were unbearably painful," she recalls. Wang explains the reason for her sudden emotional breakdown. "I thought I had forgotten the times when we had to suffer hunger, cold, poverty, and all kinds of humiliation just to survive. But those old memories came back to me like an unexpected flood in such vivid images. I cried and cried like I wanted to cry out all the sorrows I had been holding inside for so many years."

Peng had certainly foreseen the therapeutic possibilities of such reactions, which many members of Uhan Shii have experienced during rehearsals of dramas taken from real life stories, but she did not attempt to elicit these emotions by any deliberate design. She says, "From my drama training and past experience with theater, I knew all along that this would happen at some point. It is the natural outcome of acting. But I didn't set out to provide an environment in which Uhan Shii's old people are given opportunities to vent their pent-up feelings or to have their personal problems solved. First of all, I am not a social worker; and, secondly, I am not a psychotherapist."

Nonetheless, Uhan Shii's old people seem to have found in this theater group a refuge and a center of relief from the ennui, the depression, and even the stresses of daily life. After her husband died, Wang Hsiu-ching sank into depression for a long time until her daughter talked her into joining Uhan Shii. "I had been a housewife all my life," she says. "After my husband died and all my children left home to raise their own families, I lost the reason to carry on. But being active in this theater group brought back my self-confidence, because people appreciate what I do. I can be useful here." Wang says now that she has turned 65, she will live for herself: "I have made an important, major step in my life by joining Uhan Shii. From now on I will learn to love and appreciate myself."

Yang Chi-tang (楊積堂), 70, began to think about what to do with all of his spare time, after he retired from the government four years ago. The sudden death of a colleague who had retired earlier put Yang into watchful circumspection. "I figured that I must do some good planning for my 'second spring,'" he says. So as soon as he saw Uhan Shii's 1995 newspaper ad, he called to sign up immediately. Liu Chiao-mei (劉焦妹), 68, is an obstetrician who retired six years ago. She now spends two days a week in Uhan Shii and another two days working as a volunteer at a hospital. She believes that staying active is one way to slow down the aging process. She says, "Physically and psychologically I feel younger. My body does not ache any more"

Yang Chen-yi (楊振宜), 71, a retired high school teacher of Chinese, has always been interested in drama and had some acting experience when she was a college student in mainland China. She keeps herself busy by attending Uhan Shii, as well as another community theater group in her neighborhood and a chorus group for senior citizens. She says, "Every morning I wake up in a cheerful mood, knowing that there is something I can look forward to." Yang points out that she has also made friends in the theater group. Sometimes after rehearsal, they have lunch, go shop-ping, or even go to sing karaoke together. "One time we went to a KTV, and we had such a great time that we didn't get home until late in the evening," she laughs.

Peng does not like to compare her theater group to community theaters for the elderly in other countries. She does, however, think that Taiwan lacks a good welfare policy for the aged. "Certainly most old people in Taiwan are taken care of by their families. They don't need to worry about feeding themselves, but they are not really being well taken care of emotion ally, spiritually, or even physically. There are just not enough activities designed for old people," she says. Peng has gained many insights into the lives of the elderly, as a result of her theater work. "Before, it didn't even occur to me at all," she says.

No matter how Peng views her theater group, members of Uhan Shii are grateful to her because she does not mind their elderly and frail conditions. Yang Chi-tang says, "We are slow-moving. Also, we are losing our memories. But Teacher Peng is very patient with us." Wang Hsiu-ching is thankful for the opportunity to share her story with others. She says, "Life is very tough. I've always wanted to write down my sad story and share it with somebody else." On the other hand she worries all the time that her performance might cause inconvenience to others and thus hinder the group's performance. She even asked Peng to cut her part short, so she would not have to memorize the long lines that have become a source of heavy pressure for her.

Peng admits that working with old people differs substantially from working with young people, but physical strength and mental perceptiveness is not what concerns her the most. She says, "When I work with younger people, I have to constantly put theatrical forms into practice, even to the extent that sometimes it is over-done. But when working on a drama with old people, content and expression of feelings carry much more weight." As a result, rather than demand that her elderly actors adapt themselves to certain styles of acting, Peng turns the situation around to capitalize on the person's body language and mental state. In other words, she tries "to make acting less like acting." She expects Uhan Shii's actors to speak their lines on the stage in the same manner they would in real life. Any theatrical exaggeration would be considered overdoing it. "An old person should look and act like an old person," she says. 

While it is true that Peng set out to establish a theater group with older people in mind, young children play equally important roles in Uhan Shii. Almost anyone who has been to a Uhan Shii performance is impressed by the delightful and natural acting abilities of the child actors. Normally, the children are asked to play the childhood roles of the older characters. "By bringing children to the theater, our plays look more interesting, lively and fun. It would be boring just to see old people acting as themselves onstage," Peng explains.

But why would parents want to send their children to Uhan Shii at such young ages? Why not keep their children busy attending the many bushibans, Taiwan's ubiquitous supplemental "cramschools" offering classes in English, Chinese, mathematics, mental arithmetic, calligraphy and other subjects considered more helpful to future academic performance? The mother of eight-year-old Kuo Ing-chun points out that educational activities and instructional programs available to Taiwan's children tend to be rigid and demanding, smothering the natural development of children's creativity, imagination and intelligence. "Here in Uhan Shii our children are able to relax and enjoy themselves through play-acting," says Mrs. Kuo.

Chang Hsin (張歆), better known by her nickname "Pipi," joined Uhan Shii when she was only two years old. Says her mother, "We were just looking for activities for her, and we saw the ad in the newspaper. Since the studio is close to where we live, we came over. We didn't expect her to learn anything particular from Uhan Shii. As long as she likes it here, we'll continue to bring her." Apart from Uhan Shii, Pipi also goes to an English class at a private language institute, but Mrs. Chang points out that Pipi will soon be going to school. By then she will probably not be able to take part in every activity sponsored by Uhan Shii.

Most parents do not seem to mind if Uhan Shii's activities interfere with school schedules. They are tremendously supportive, even to the extent of adjusting their own and their children's schedules to Uhan Shii's needs. Last year, all the children took two-week leaves from school to participate in the New York performance. During those two weeks, the children learned more than they would have at school. Kuo Ing-chun's mother says, "For one thing, they learned to take care of themselves as a group and to pack their own suitcases." For Peng, an extra and well-appreciated benefit of having the children in her theater group is the help she gets from their parents. "By acting as chaperons of their children, they have inevitably become Uhan Shii's volunteers. I really treasure them," she smiles.

With Uhan Shii's continuously successful theater productions, Peng has reasons to be optimistic about the troupe's future, but as anyone familiar with Taiwan's art and cultural environment knows, it is difficult to sustain a commercial theater group like Uhan Shii. Funds from private enterprise or government departments are minimal. Some even think it is miraculous that Uhan Shii has been able to survive as long as it has. Although Uhan Shii was fortunate enough to receive NT$1 million (approximately US$28,900) in grants from the Council for Cultural Affairs this year, what about next year or the years following that? Peng shrugs and flashes a relaxed smile. "We'll find ways," she says."So far, we've never had to starve."

After such a long journey into the heart and land of Taiwan, it looks as if Peng has finally found a home for her theater art.

Copyright (c) 1998 by Winnie Chang.