“If someone had told me back then that this piece would play for 30 straight years, I would have said they were crazy!” says Stan Lai, whose Performance Workshop is one of Taiwan’s leading theater companies.

Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land was formally introduced to US audiences on April 19, 2015, when it was performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, a venerable event with 80 years of history. Festival director and Tony Award winner Bill Rauch said that he chose it as one of the event’s three long-form presentations not only because he wanted the opportunity to work with Stan Lai, who he considers to be a very important dramatist, but also because it is an exemplary and iconic work from the Chinese-speaking world, so he felt a responsibility to give it greater exposure.

One of the distinguishing features of Stan Lai’s work is that it takes shape in part through collective improvisation. He welcomes his actors to contribute their own ideas about their roles, and the play is consequently modified day in and day out. (Taiwan Panorama file photo)

A mixture of tragic and comic

This year Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land will return home for performances in Taiwan. It is a remarkable work, combining elements reflecting modern Taiwanese society, postwar Shanghai, classical Chinese literature, Peking Opera, and Asian aesthetics. Company manager Hsieh Ming-chang estimates that the piece has been performed more than 1000 times worldwide, and guesses that if you were to count unauthorized performances too, that number would be more than 10,000! It is even on the curriculum of theater departments at universities in mainland China.

Hsieh says that Performance Workshop’s plays almost always are rooted in the historical background and social phenomena of their era. Thinking back to the initial creative impetus for Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, Stan Lai relates: “That was a very special era. At that time Taiwan was right in the middle of many historic transformations, and there was enough distance for Taiwanese to digest the joys and sorrows that they felt as a result of major historical events.” The inspiration for Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land reflects that whole process of social movements and the concentration of democratic forces that Taiwan’s society was then experiencing.

The basic story line is that, because of an oversight by a theater manager, performers from two different troupes—one playing Secret Love (a serious drama set in postwar Shanghai and Taiwan) and the other playing Peach Blossom Land (based on a farcical 4th-century story of a fisherman who accidentally discovers a utopian land)—end up rehearsing at the same time. After disputing the matter for a while, they have little choice but to make the most of their time and rehearse interactively, each group working to complete their own piece.

The directors and actors in each of the two companies interfere with and intrude on each other’s performances. Dialogue wires get crossed so that lines from one play mistakenly respond to lines from the other, creating intriguing linkages. Despite the head-on collisions, however, the two plays also subtly resonate with each other. The result is a work that makes you laugh and makes you cry, and is filled with dramatic tension.

One of the distinguishing features of Stan Lai’s work is that it takes shape in part through collective improvisation. He welcomes his actors to contribute their own ideas about their roles, and the play is consequently modified day in and day out. (Taiwan Panorama file photo)

An improvisation model of creativity

Since its premiere in 1986, the “keywords” for Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land have included not only “Stan Lai” and “Performance Workshop,” but also “collective improvisation.”

Hsieh Ming-chang explains the “improvisational creative model.” First Lai, as director, lays out the overall structure of the play. Then he gathers all the actors and tech staff together for a group discussion and run-through. Everyone is allowed to contribute some unique quirk, some new depth of emotion, or some dialogue to the role he or she will have in the performance. Lai then edits and re-structures the piece, and the next day they start all over again, following this pattern until the work reaches its ultimate form.

“During rehearsals,” Hsieh explains, “Stan is most concerned with the narrative structure of the script. He routinely adjusts the sequence and flips segments around, reorganizing the piece until everything is perfect. He has extraordinarily high standards that he demands from every work.”

The narrative structure of most stage plays is designed to draw the audience into the plot and to get them to identify with the characters through a kind of emotional transference. That’s how they achieve their artistic impact.

But Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land is different. It takes the form of “plays within a play.” It causes the audience, as they follow the shifts in the plot, to avoid excessive emotional transference. Through a process of emotional engagement alternating with detachment, they can watch the piece with a mindset of logic and rationality, and thereby think more deeply about the meanings and implications behind the performance.

Hsieh believes that one of the reasons this work has been so successful is that it operates on many levels that the audience can appreciate. “On the surface, it’s a complex mix of the solemn Secret Love and the comic Peach Blossom Land, but by the time you get to the finish, Secret Love has an uplifting ending, while Peach Blossom Land turns out to be tragedy. People who ‘get’ this work have a very rich and fulfilling experience.”

Hsieh has also observed that in performances since the turn of the century, many young people in the audience really don’t understand the historical background of postwar mainland China and Taiwan. They are actually more attracted to the melding of comic and tragic elements. This shows that as times change, this time-honored work has not lost its power to move audiences or provide meaningful content to them. It’s just that the impression it makes on the minds of the younger generation of viewers is different and new.

Chinese film icon Brigitte Lin (Lin Ching-hsia) was in the first stage version in 1991, and also starred in the film version in 1992. The photo was taken during the “collective improvisation” process for the stage play. (Taiwan Panorama file photo)

Also a hit on the silver screen

The New York Times has said that Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land “may be the most popular contemporary play in China.” Performance Workshop has staged the play in Taiwan in 1991, 1999, and 2006. The film version, made in 1992, went beyond even the stage version in breaking conventions, and won countless international awards.

Talking about the film invariably brings to mind its star, Brigitte Lin (Lin Ching-hsia). Acting in the stage version in 1991, the then 39-year-old Lin gave an unforgettable performance as the 18-year-old Yun Zhifan. Her performance was similarly brilliant in the film, which was lauded not only at Taiwan’s own Golden Horse Awards, but at numerous foreign film festivals, most notably in Berlin, Tokyo, and Singapore, and earned nearly NT$20 million at the Taiwanese box office, an astounding amount back in those days.

Now that Stan Lai has been personally producing and directing the play for three decades, we asked him what his favorite scene is in Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land. Lai says this is a tough question to answer, “But if I had to choose, I would probably say the last scene in the hospital ward. In terms of both its creativity and the quality of the performances required, it is really memorable.”

When the work was first developed, this scene, which then featured Ding Nai-chu as Yun Zhifan and Chin Shih-chieh as Jiang Binliu, took shape in a remarkable way. Under Lai’s direction, the two improvised to create a vignette that, as well as possessing a flawless artistic structure, felt exactly “spot on” while being completely natural and uncontrived. It can be said to be “high art” done in a manner that is “artless.” Lai says that despite having watched this scene hundreds of times, he is still moved to tears.

Performance Workshop will return to Taiwan to stage this play in August of 2016 to celebrate its 30th anniversary. It will be directed by Ding Naizheng and will feature top “middle-generation” actors.

Lai says, “I am very happy that this work can be reinterpreted by successor generations, and especially by Ding Naizheng. She played the role of Chunhua for many years, was in the film version, and has many years of experience as a director. She certainly will have a unique take on the play. And when you add in that we are going to have the most outstanding actors in Taiwan contributing their own interpretations of their parts, I can only say that I am really excited!”

As Performance Workshop turns 31, we asked Lai: Have you had the same mindset about creating new work continually from then until now? Lai’s response: Yes... and no. “One thing that has been a constant has been my desire to express my concern about various issues through theater, and I always hope that my works will be a gift to the audience.” He recalls that theater played an important role during the era of Taiwan’s transition to democracy, with a lot of people saying that theater was a forum on social issues during the martial-law era. Certainly Performance Workshop had that function in many ways.

But today, Taiwan has a mature democracy, and Lai’s personal conviction is that political commentary can no longer change political realities. All change has to come from the individual spirit. He says, “If you want to say that something is different now, that would be it.”

Performance Workshop has been a pioneer in devising theater of great depth, wide appeal, and high artistic standards. In so doing, it has created new markets, new audiences, and a new model for creative enterprises. The photo shows a scene from Ming Hwa Yuan’s Taiwanese Opera version of Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land.

Separating functions, building bridges

At the same time, Lai emphasizes that the management philosophy of Performance Workshop has always remained the same. “Since our founding in 1984, the core guiding principle for our operations is that the creative side stays on the creative side, and the production side stays on the production side. Neither can interfere with the other, and in fact they don’t even need to have any contact with each other.”

Performance Workshop has been a pioneer in devising theater of great depth, wide appeal, and high artistic standards. In so doing, it has created new markets, new audiences, and a new model for creative enterprises. The photo is a still from the film production.

The founding of Performance Workshop certainly raised the artistic bar for the dramatic arts in Taiwan in the 1980s, and it inspired the birth of a great deal of modern theater. One small story that originally appeared in an era of tectonic changes in Taiwan has survived and thrived to become the most performed piece of modern Chinese theater in the world, and to be a bridge between stages East and West.                                                    

For this year’s 30th-anniversary season in Taiwan, Stan Lai hopes to return the play to its classic nature.

The themes of people being torn apart by war and mankind’s search for a utopian world resonate timelessly with audiences. The photo shows a scene from the Shaoxing Opera version of the play.

In the 30 years since its premiere in 1986, this play has been astoundingly successful in the Chinese-speaking world. In 2015, it was adapted into an English-language version for a staging at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.