Taiwanese opera in its purest form began life in Ilan, where the local government has been trying to preserve and develop it. A major step forward was the establishment of the Lan Yang Taiwanese Opera Troupe in 1992, but that was just the beginning.
The town of Ilan, in northeast Taiwan, has several things to be proud of. Few tourists fail to bring home some of its delicious preserved fruits, while those with an interest in preserving the environment usually give a thumbs-up to its well -dredged Tungshan river, scene of many international dragon boat races. But anyone who is keen to find out more about Taiwan's drive to "localization," currently a hot topic on the island, simply has to visit Ilan to find out what is happening there with Taiwanese opera.
It is perhaps natural that the Taiwan operatic renaissance should be taking place in Ilan, because this is the hometown of Yang Li-hua (楊麗花), possibly Taiwan's most famous star of TV Taiwanese opera. But an even more compelling reason for the flowering of Taiwanese opera in Ilan is provided by Lin Mao-hsien (林茂賢), a lecturer in the Department of Chinese Literature at Taichung's Providence University. According to him, no less than 93 percent of Ilan's inhabitants can trace their ancestry back to Changchou, in Fujian province, which is also the primary source of what is now Taiwanese opera. So it comes as no surprise to discover that Ilan's inhabitants are almost exclusively responsible for preserving Taiwanese opera in its oldest and purest form: lotisao.
Lotisao, or "performing on the ground," is the forerunner of present-day Taiwanese opera, which to some extent has been influenced by Peking opera. Lotisao itself is staged in the open air without a stage of any kind. The cast is exclusively male, and makeup and costumes are rudimentary in the extreme. Polished scripts and graceful movements are conspicuous by their absence, with stiff actors singing their roles in a somewhat repetitious manner.
The musical accompaniment is also fairly basic, consisting of bamboo and wood percussion instruments. The cymbals and gongs so typical of Peking opera were introduced to Taiwanese opera only at a later stage of its development. All this makes for a somewhat monotonous style of presentation, so that these days it is difficult to find an authentic, open-air presentation of lotisao.
"Even I can't stand it, let alone the public," Lin says. He currently teaches Taiwanese opera and Taiwan folk art at Providence, but he recognizes that this kind of opera will have an uphill struggle to survive. "The youngest lotisao artiste is about seventy," he notes glumly, and TV, movies, and other sophisticated forms of modern entertainment provide formidable competition.
Not much can be done to resurrect lotisao , but perhaps it can be saved from utter oblivion. The Ilan County Cultural Center houses videotapes of old lotisao artistes in performance, and also invites experienced performers to demonstrate techniques for the government-run Lan Yang Taiwanese Opera Troupe, thus enabling troupe members in turn to bring Taiwanese opera in its oldest form to a larger audience. Given that the authentic lotisao style is (not to put too fine a point on it) boring, the troupe has modified it. Plots are abridged and restructured, and makeup has been made more elaborate, for example. The musical accompaniment, on the other hand, has been left more or less untouched.
The Taiwan Theater Museum comes under the Ilan County Cultural Center, and is powerful evidence of the local government's dedication to cultural preservation. There, lotisao is presented to the public as just one stage in the development of Taiwanese opera. Founded in 1990, this three-story museum, with two giant marionettes representing guardian deities of Chinese opera flanking its entrance, showcases puppet shows, traditional musical instruments, peikuan (another form of folk music currently enjoying something of a revival), and of course, Taiwanese opera--the centerpiece of the exhibition. In 1998, a library with audio-visual equipment was opened in an annex, and there visitors can access magazines, books, scrapbooks, audiocassettes, videotapes, and CDs, all of which deal with Taiwanese opera and other traditional forms of performing art.
The local government is also active in schools, pioneering inclusion of Taiwanese opera in the area's most commonly used music textbook. Teachers are authorized to accompany their lessons on the piano or organ, since few of them know how to play the erhu (two-stringed violin) and other instruments deemed indispensable to proper Taiwanese opera. In addition, a junior high and a vocational high school have set up opera clubs that are subsidized by the local government, which loans them teachers and helps them arrange performances in the surrounding district.
Then there is the Lan Yang Taiwanese Opera Troupe, which has played an important role in promoting opera preservation and development since its foundation in 1992. To this day it is the only government-run Taiwanese opera troupe on the island. At present it consists of thirteen actors and eleven musicians, most of them in their twenties.
"The average age of our members is the lowest of all the Taiwanese opera troupes around the island," says Lin Ming-te (林明德), who joined Lan Yang on its foundation and is now the troupe's principal actor. At first, the upper age limit was thirty, but it soon came down. "We're looking for interested youngsters who are willing to pass the heritage on to future generations," he says. "That's our major objective at present." The troupe needs the energy and enthusiasm that only youngsters can contribute to reviving old-fashioned folk arts. "And a young troupe is a receptive troupe, able to reach out to audiences in the same age group," Lin points out. "Today's audiences aren't going to put up with watching somebody stand on the stage and cry for forty minutes, quite a common sight in the old days."
On the other hand, youth all too often means lack of experience, which explains why the Ilan County Cultural Center has hired professionals to teach the music, gestures, and singing styles of Taiwanese opera. They include Swiss-born Michel Rochat, formerly the conductor of the Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra and the Taipei City Symphony Orchestra, and three heavyweight local artistes, each of whom has received a National Folk Art Heritage Award: Chuang Chin-tsai (莊進才) for peikuan, and Lin Wang-tsung (林旺欉) and Liao Chiung-chih (廖瓊姿) for Taiwanese opera. Troupe members are also offered the opportunity to study ballet, pantomime, impromptu acting, and even calligraphy. "No private troupe would hire teachers for its members, but we do," Lin Ming-te says.
The local government is demonstrating single-minded determination to develop Lan Yang into a troupe of such quality that it will win back audiences in droves. "I haven't the faintest idea how to sing a Taiwanese opera role," says Lin Te-fu, director of the Ilan County Cultural Center and also the leader of the Lan Yang Taiwanese Opera Troupe. "But one thing I do know--Taiwanese opera is the jewel in Ilan's crown, and Taiwan's too." The Ilan county council obviously agrees, because Lan Yang's annual allocation of NT$20 million (US$582,412) invariably goes through on the nod.
It was not always so, however. At first, some county councilors thought that Taiwanese opera was vulgar and that the government was wrong to give so much support to this public troupe. Then a delegation of them traveled to Singapore in 1995, and saw Lan Yang give its first ever overseas performance. They were so impressed by the reaction of the large audience that their attitude toward Taiwanese opera underwent a 180-degree turn. Over the next two years, Lan Yang proved in venues as diverse as New York, San José (Costa Rica), Toronto, and Vancouver that Taiwanese opera is certainly worthy of an overseas tour.
Of course, Lan Yang has mounted many performances at home too, including a notable one in the past year when their musicians gave a concert of Taiwanese opera music at the National Concert Hall in Taipei. They also reach out into the community by performing for schools and community associations--an educational process in itself--and the troupe often dedicates its time to purely educational activities (it was founded on Confucius' birthday, also celebrated as Teachers' Day). Before a performance, a troupe member may deliver a short lecture on Taiwanese opera, backing it up with a demonstration. Some senior members, such as Lin Ming-te, teach at schools selected by the local government. In October 1997, the troupe even visited a local prison, where the inmates were planning to enter an islandwide Taiwanese opera contest sponsored by the Ministry of Justice, and with Lan Yang's help this team emerged as the runner-up.
Lan Yang seems to have a reasonably bright future, at least compared to many other local opera troupes, but Providence University lecturer Lin Mao-hsien has reservations about the existing scripts. "At present, the most popular scripts in Taiwan all come from mainland China," he says. But this is probably inevitable, because locally written scripts do not come up to snuff. In view of this, Lin thinks it is time to get serious about training local scriptwriters.
Lin Ming-te, for his part, is more concerned about recruitment. He once scoured southern Taiwan for young talent, only to come home empty-handed. "Parents don't usually let their children take this road, because they don't think it has any future," he says. "It's a pity, because we found lots of young people out there with great potential."
Parents do not confine their displeasure to Taiwanese opera: Lin Ming-te is describing an attitude that applies more or less across the board when it comes to a career on the stage. The pay--NT$18,000 (US$524) a month for a new recruit--is lousy. This may be one reason why the female members of any Taiwanese opera troupe often outnumber men, who tradition ally shoulder the responsibility of supporting the family. But even the women sometimes quit. "Quite a few girls leave when they get married, to help their husbands do business or run a store," says Lin, who is Lan Yang's only male actor.
Those who stay are usually real devotees of Taiwanese opera, like Lin and his wife, who is also a troupe member. Lan Yang is currently looking for five more actors, who will bring the cast up to eighteen--no easy task, because a talent for Taiwanese opera does not necessarily accompany a true love of it, and the converse is equally true.
Compared with Lan Yang, which is run and sponsored by the local government, the private Han Yang Taiwanese Opera Troupe, also based in Ilan, is facing much more serious challenges. Like the four other private troupes operating locally, Han Yang mostly consists of members in their forties or fifties. This troupe performs outdoors, mainly at temple festivals held to celebrate the birthdays of their patron deities, and it is much less sophisticated than Lan Yang. For this reason, Han Yang and its counterparts are gradually losing their appeal.
Money, as usual, is at the root of the problem. Unlike Lan Yang, the private troupes are not in a position to offer members a regular monthly pay envelope. The rule here is "no performance, no pay." A decade ago, that meant nothing to Han Yang, because in those days open-air performances in front of temples were extremely popular. But times have changed. Shrinking audiences mean shrinking cash donations to the temples that used to sponsor such events, which accordingly hire opera troupes less frequently.
Chuang Chin-tsai, 63, wears several hats: Apart from teaching several members of Lan Yang, he is also Han Yang's troupe leader and one of its musicians. According to him, when the troupe was founded in 1986 it could put on as many as 280 performances a year. Now that has decreased to about 120, and the number of actors has shrunk from thirteen to eight, because the troupe can no longer afford to hire as many people. "Han Yang's in better shape than the other four Ilan-based private opera troupes," he says. "But we're all going to disappear soon enough."
Despite the problems, Chuang is not utterly pessimistic about the future of Taiwanese opera. He predicts that troupes will always be in demand to perform at temple festivals, although he recognizes that their numbers are likely to decrease. "The rarer a thing is, the more it's valued," he says. "There will soon come a time when there will only be room for one private troupe in Ilan. We must ensure that it's of high quality, and it will have to draw heavily on the younger generation. Very probably, that means Lan Yang."
Chuang, who has been studying music since he was twelve, has another reason for being optimistic about the future of Taiwanese opera: He believes that his skills will be handed down to successors. This versatile musician, capable of playing many traditional Chinese instruments, has taught at the government-sponsored opera club established by a local vocational school, and is now teaching at two other schools in Ilan county. Approximately half of Lan Yang's musicians take private lessons from him at home. "I don't charge students who come to my home," he explains. "I won the heritage award in 1994, so I regard myself as being under an obligation to teach."
Most people in Ilan regard Lan Yang as the only troupe capable of taking Taiwanese opera to new heights, and they are pinning their hopes on it. "We intend to develop Taiwanese opera performances into a whole cultural industry, combined with local tourism," says Lin Te-fu, director of Ilan County Cultural Center.
In furtherance of this goal, a 600-seat theater near Ilan train station was opened last April, and the troupe moved there during the summer. If all goes according to plan, there will soon be a program of Lan Yang performances for which tourists can book through their hotels. Lin Te-fu hopes that a day will come when visitors to Ilan feel real regret if for some reason they cannot attend a performance by Lan Yang. "Just as it's a shame to miss the ballet in Moscow, or a drag-queen show in Bangkok," he says. "I hope that someday Taiwanese opera will take its place in a much wider world."
Many observers view that dream with a degree of skepticism. The troupe has only been in existence for a short time, and at the beginning "members of the audience were usually outnumbered by reporters and scholars," Lin Te-fu says. And the familiar problem refuses to go away: talented actors are hard to find, while the ranks of elderly artistes are thinning by the year.
But at least Lan Yang has gained a toehold on the island, drawing bigger audiences than when it started. At the same time, Taiwanese opera has become ever more associated in people's minds with Ilan--it is a truly local product. This year, the Council for Cultural Affairs mounted a northern Taiwan cultural festival, and Taiwanese opera was chosen as the focal topic for the Ilan area. The activities included amateur performances put on by the local Taiwanese opera clubs, films of performances by professional troupes on the island, an operatic makeup competition, and exhibitions of Taiwanese opera artifacts.
"I'm grateful to the media for publicizing Taiwanese opera and all the effort we've put into it," Lin Te-fu says. Thanks to all the publicity, there is at last a chance that a local dramatic revival may at last be truly under way.