Adapted by author Jade Y. Chen from her award-winning novel of the same title, the play draws on the writer’s own tangled family background in a quest for Taiwanese identity, which is advanced dramatically through the experimental blending of Taiwanese opera and contemporary theater.
Chen’s family story is a microcosm of the island’s cultural and political past. The family of her maternal grandfather were long-time residents of Taiwan from Fujian Province in southern China, yet her grandfather married an Okinawan woman who came to the island during the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945). Their daughter was wed to a veteran soldier of Mongolian descent from Beijing, who arrived in Taiwan with the Kuomintang government. Chen herself has carried on the cross-cultural family tradition and is now married to a German national.
This background left Chen, now in her 50s, deeply confused about her own identity, driving her to compose the semi-autobiographical volume. Published in 2004, “Mazu’s Bodyguards” has been compared by critics to Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and won the “Golden Song” prize in the full-length novel category in the 2007 Taiwan Literature Awards.
“After writing this story, I feel I finally know who I am,” Chen told “Taiwan Today” in an interview Dec. 2.
The theatrical version of “Mazu’s Bodyguards” revises the story as a love triangle among Chen’s grandparents and granduncle, symbolized by Mazu and her two guards. Based on this romantic relationship, it also “pays homage to political fighters like my granduncle, who sacrificed personal happiness in return for a better future for Taiwan,” said Chen.
Sun Tsui-feng (right) and her daughter Chen Chao-ting played the ill-fated lovers in “Mazu.” (Photo courtesy of the National Theater)
The granduncle, born under Japanese colonial rule, fought in a failed attempt to establish a “Taiwan nation,” and had to flee to Brazil, separating him from his lover, the grandmother, and their illegitimate daughter, Chen’s aunt.
“Mazu” is not Chen’s first attempt to combine Taiwanese opera and modern theater in one show. Twenty years ago she juxtaposed the two art forms in the experimental theater piece “Drama Ants,” but this time the two types of drama are intricately blended, with help from Sun Tsui-feng, star performer with the prize-winning Taiwanese opera troupe Ming Hwa Yuan Arts and Cultural Group.
The following interview by “Taiwan Today” sought to get a glimpse of how the versatile Chen chose to present her new dramatic work and of her thoughts between the lines.
Taiwan Today: “Mazu’s Bodyguards” is a major breakthrough in Taiwan’s theater. It combines Taiwanese opera with modern theater. How are you going to present such a blend?
Chen: I plan to reserve only the spirit of Taiwanese opera singing and place it in a contemporary setting. I have spared the conventional use of gongs and drums, because I want my production to have the sound of arias that exude emotion, rather than festive noises in traditional temple events.
Singing is a perfect choice for presenting the sad love story of “Mazu,” in that Asian people are often better at expressing their feelings through singing than through speaking, and in that the opera’s cultural base fits the characters, because they are speakers of the Taiwanese language, in my play.
TT: Did you encounter any problems putting this technique into practice?
Chen: Quite a lot. At first, Sun felt clueless about how to sing without the rhythms provided by traditional drumming. But that’s just how fun it is to mingle the old with the new: experimentation, conflicts and resolutions.
TT: Speaking of the mixing of the old and the new, Mazu the ancient goddess is a haunting motif in this contemporary story. What does she symbolize?
Chen: Now that I recall my writing process, Mazu came naturally into the story. I have always felt close to her, and therefore I wove her into my novel. From a literary angle, Mazu serves as a timeless female protagonist who takes a journey home in a parallel metaphorical space with the narrator—me—and the main female characters in each of the three generations in the story. It is through this journey that they gradually grow strong enough to take up burdens in life when the key male roles are absent.
TT: Why did you want to write about the quest for home?
Chen: I think this is a prevalent sense in modern society, which comes from German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Heimatlosigkeit,” meaning “homelessness.” Many people feel homeless these days, because by constantly moving about they no longer have a home in the global diaspora. I have always felt strongly that I am homeless. ... I am homeless. But would it be strange for a person like me to write about home and the history of her family? No. It is through the quest for home that I have been able to rebuild both a microscopic home for myself and a macroscopic home for my family, even Taiwan as a whole.
TT: You have found a sense of belongingness in the creative process.
Chen: Yes, I have mended the relationship between me and my family—and among my family members. This is a metaphor of the reconciliations among different ethnic groups in Taiwan, since my senior family members come from quite different ethnic backgrounds.
TT: You have come back to produce a story about home. How is this homecoming special to you?
Chen: Home or country can be interpreted in many ways, and for me theater has been one of my homes. I had been working on novel writing for some time; this has been my homecoming to theater.
TT: In addition to the motif of home, you also hope to share with spectators your findings about a person’s identity. How would you define yourself now?
Chen: No matter where I was, I was confronted with the question “Who are you?” all the time, and I found it difficult to answer. But now that I have thoroughly examined my family’s past and the modern history of Taiwan, I realize that I am just me, a person born and raised on this culturally, ethnically and politically diverse island—Taiwan. I am a wonderful mixture. I am Taiwanese.
TT: What will your next project be?
Chen: It’s been in progress, and it’s also about intercultural issues. It will be a story about tea in the year of 1864 in Taiwan. Formosa oolong tea was the largest export product back then. Even Queen Victoria fancied it so much that she called it “oriental beauty”— the subject of my new romance story on intercultural exchanges.
TT: So you will focus on writing when the production is over?
Chen: I think so. It’ll take about two years, I think. I’m constantly yearning to go to the other extreme when I am on this side. When I work in theater, I yearn for writing, and vice versa. It’s the same with leaving and returning home.
TT: Will you embark on another journey, then?
Chen: No, I will probably just stay in Taiwan, or Germany, with my husband.
You asked me about home. ...now that I think of it, home is the space in which I write, because I feel most comfortable writing. Even if I am writing on a moving train, the carriage would be my home. I belong to writing. (THN)
Write to Tien-ying Hsu at: tyhsu@mail.gio.gov.tw