This is an idea that many have considered, given the contrast between the crudity of street opera, with its improvised performances, and the sophistication of the carefully scripted and rehearsed productions that can be seen in the theater. Even the actors themselves feel that if it's not in a theater, then it ain't art. "We do over 100 operas, and we too would like to perform in a theater, but apparently we're not classy enough!" says Wang Chuhua, leader of the Shuang Ming Feng Fujianese Opera Troupe. Or as another performer says, it would be enough if she could perform just once in her life in a real theater. TV opera saves the day
It was during the 1970s and 80s, when ko-tzai-hsi was on the way out in Singapore, that opera groups from Taiwanese TV stations began performing in Southeast Asia, so initiating a second springtime for Fujianese opera in the region.
The most popular such group at the time was the TTV Joint Opera, which was invited to do a series of shows at the People's Theatre in Singapore. The 40-plus members of the group, including stars Yang Li-hua, Wang Chin-ying, Hsu Hsiu-nien and Li Ju-lin, turned out in force to effect the transition from television back to stage. The TTV group trained together for three months, rehearsing from scripts specially revised for the stage, working on their technique, and obtaining new costumes, props and scenery. By introducing the softer style of make-up used in television opera and adding a few new ballads, they created a fusion of the best in stage and television opera, and filled the 2000-seat auditorium to capacity night after night. Demand for tickets was so great that after a month they had to extend the run by another two weeks. Singapore had become a second home for ko-tzai-hsi.
What exactly is the appeal of Taiwan's televised operas? "In a word: beauty!" says Sim Siew Tin, executive secretary of the Fujianese Association's Xiang Opera Troupe. "Beautiful actors, beautiful costumes, beautiful sets and beautiful locations." At the peak of televised ko-tzai-hsi's popularity, TV opera films from Taiwan were the hottest and most expensive item in Singapore's video rental stores. Fujianese opera groups in Singapore also began copying stories from Taiwan videos. Says Cai Jianfu, a board member with the Sai Feng Min Opera Troupe: "Videos of Yang Li-hua, Yeh Ching, Huang Hsiang-lien, Sun Tsui-feng, whoever...you just grabbed anything decent and went off to make your own version."
Promo flyers for live opera at the time highlighted the fact that opera companies were staging new productions using scripts expressed over from Taiwan. Borrowing from the appeal of televised opera in this way proved to be highly effective, and audiences once again began emerging from their front rooms to enjoy the spectacle of outdoor opera. "Seeing that time was right, many performers broke away to form their own groups," says Ken Cheong. The fever has waned since those days, but there are still 13 groups performing in Singapore today, the more prominent of which present up to 200 performances during the course of a year.
But audiences find that while the stage shows are similar to their television equivalents in terms of plot, make-up, costume and singing, things remain much how they always were in terms of the shapes and ages of the actors, and in the way that the operas are acted out. It is still very much an outdoor-style performance, and this remains one of the characteristics of Fujianese opera in Singapore. This is live theatre!
In the suburbs of Singapore, dominated by the high-rises of the government housing projects, redevelopment of old communities has resulted in temples being torn down and merged into newly constructed "joint temples." It may be this god's birthday on one day and that god's birthday on the next day, which means plenty of occasions for setting up opera stages in open areas around the nearby apartment blocks.
The matinee performance attracts only a handful of onlookers, and is a chance for juniors in the company to try out their skills playing servant girls, young soldiers and eunuchs. After the show is over some of the cast play mahjong on the stage, while others go off on errands. Mostly the troupe works from an established repertoire, and it is frequently the case that come 6 p.m. the actors still haven't been told what they'll be performing in two hours time. All they get before the show starts is a brief outline to remind everyone who enters and exits in each scene. For a new production the cast gathers at around five in the afternoon to hear the director explain the story and assign roles, and to run through some action moves. "We do whatever story we think of on the day," says Cai Jianfu. "It's not all fixed in advance."
Eight o'clock approaches, and with a slam of the clapper-boards the musicians start "warming-up the stage." Today the cast have been told they will be presenting an opera entitled Eternally Illustrious. In the wings, the princess is getting ready to enter for Scene One. She raises her forefinger while keeping her other fingers curled, and at this signal the percussionists to one side of the stage strike up a rhythm on the gongs and drums, to which the other musicians add a melody in the "seven-character meter." The princess now comes on the stage singing to the same tune. Next to enter is the emperor's son-in-law, who starts to address the princess, both actors knowing through years of experience how to carry forward the dialogue: "Aiya! Princess. Listen... to... my... words... aah...." The actor playing the emperor's son-in-law raises the pitch of his voice and draws out his words, and as he lifts his thumb the musicians break into another melodic form. In this way, relying on mutual understanding and a few gestures to communicate, the cast and musicians act out the well-known tale of The Orphan of Chao, about an old family retainer who saves the life of his young master.
As to how the performers choose what to sing, it depends on how tragic or comic the plot is, and also sometimes on how they feel on a given day. "Today my voice is OK so I can do a few soprano numbers," says Qiu Meiqi of the Shuang Ming Feng Troupe, "but if I haven't got the voice for it then I stick to songs that don't go so high. So it goes." Qiu's attitude neatly sums up the flexibility of Fujianese street opera.
"A lot of people look down on the street opera troupes, but I think that this type of improvisational performance, in which so much depends on context, is actually art of the very highest kind," says Yung Sai-shing, professor in Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. "Show me the mom who keeps stopping in the middle of making dinner to check a cookbook and measure out quantities of salt and MSG." Whether it's high art or low art, traditional drama does after all exist in its own traditional settings and have its own characteristics. And it would be wrong to criticize outdoor theater by imposing on it the viewpoints of Western or modern professional theatre, or of pure art. Theatre of life
has attracted widespread attention of late and been in newspapers almost every day. The multi-ethnic state used to emphasize "forgetting where you come from," but as old buildings disappear one by one and the city takes on a new face, those of the younger generation, educated in English and attuned to Western culture, are beginning to wonder about their self-identity.
Lin Xiaosheng, curator of the Singa-pore History Museum, says: "Quite clearly, Singaporeans are beginning to develop a consciousness about the place they live, and are concerned about the erosion of traditional culture." It is only in the last five years that the museum itself began recruiting staff with both English and Chinese language skills, and systematically building up a collection of local opera artifacts.
Yung Sai-shing says: "Traditional opera is a medium through which an ethnic group forms an identity and provides support for its members. Like the upsurge of interest in Cantonese opera in Hong Kong recently, I think it's all part of a longing for home that surfaces when people feel a crisis of identity."
As demonstrated by the stages that are built outside temples, religious thanksgiving provides the main role for Fujianese street opera. Before the start of each matinee, it is customary for the cast to present a series of short scenes about mythological figures by way of prologue to the main feature. Solemnly and silently, the actors first portray the three immortals representing good luck and long life, paying their respects to the gods. Then one dons a green mask and takes up an inkbrush to depict the god of literature granting honors to deserving scholars, after which comes a scene of Maid Ma making her longevity offering. Lastly the Tiaojia official parades around the stage holding up a scroll bearing the name of the patron of the performance, who, together with family members and guided by temple officials, then lights incense to each of the gods. One temple follower, Liao Yushan, says: "Business has been going well for me in the last few years, all due to the gods' blessings, and this is the seventh year I've come to give thanks by backing an opera."
What all these thanksgiving operas have in common is their expression of people's wish for a good life. Such operas preserve the original form of traditional opera and constitute an important element in the art and the community-building of an immigrant society. In all such immigrant societies, townsfolk associations, temples and opera troupes are bound in a tight triangle of connections. And when opera like this is transplanted into the professional theater, the domain of pure artistic expression, it loses all semblance of what it originally was. Close encounter of the first kind
"When we were children a lot of people went to watch the operas, and we had to bring a straw mat and four nails along to 'stake out' a good spot in front of the temple. There were so many people that it was hard just squeezing your way out to go for a pee," recalls Chua Soo Pong.
"The adults watched the opera while we kids checked out the stalls and munched snacks. All the traditional novels I read when I was a child were bought during those operas," says Koh Eng Soon, a freelance writer who collects historical material about opera.
"Why play immortals? Who is the God of literature? For many people Fujianese street operas, free and open to all-comers, provided a first encounter with Chinese cul-ture, and that was especially so for me," says Ken Cheong. A number of Singapore University students have recently been doing field research into traditional opera because the Fujianese opera troupes, with their close involvement in religious culture, provide the best window onto traditional culture.
Another stage has been erected among the apartment blocks, and after dinner, old ladies in comfortable clothes emerge to spread themselves out across chairs in front of the stage, chatting away and swapping little things to eat. Mothers with young kids in their arms come out to share in the fun, and one buys a little bell for her toddler. With the bell in her hand the child looks towards the stage, where a magnificently costumed actress is performing, her hair festooned with colored ornaments. Amid the sound of gongs and drums, another youngster begins her first encounter with traditional culture.