Chang Wang's living statue troupe Meander is very different from the typical street act, which usually involves just one performer. Chang runs the troupe like a family, and has been holding group rehearsals since its inception. Its 40-some regular members, old ones and new ones alike, have been descending on Zhiqing Elementary School in Taipei's Wenshan District every Tuesday night for years to stretch, exercise, and practice martial arts to maintain the conditioning and limberness they need for their performances.
Chang himself models "the dramatic tension between stillness and movement" for new members and urges them to "forget that you're a person when you go out on the street." The statues remain still until given money, so Chang teaches appropriate techniques for encouraging the audience to make offerings. These include moving when the audience isn't expecting it; using mocking gestures at yourself or audience members to create interactions; using your eyes to connect with and hold your audience; and using the instant in which someone donates some money not to focus on that person, but to catch the eye of another audience member.
Some members have even traveled to Paris, Avignon, and Barcelona to study and perform (from which they earned their travel expenses), in the process affirming that the language of living-statue performance is powerful in spite of being silent.
This tightly knit almost mobster-like group also spends its Sundays together tracing rivers, hiking in the mountains, and climbing trees. "Spending three hours standing on the street is a very lonely thing," explains Chang. "If you don't get out into the natural world, you won't understand the power of serenity. And if you don't get that, you won't be calm and adaptable on the roiling streets."
Chang, who has very idealistic notions about the development of the "street," has lately been turning himself into a crab to perform a piece entitled "Scuttling Amok" on Songzhi Road behind Taipei City Hall. If you happen to run across a crab blocking the road, think about stopping for a moment to help free the streets.
Chang, a pioneer of the local street-performance scene, believes that it is busking's ability to "liberate spaces" and "liberate people" that makes it special. "Busking can survive only when there exist freely available spaces in which people can interact heart-to-heart," he says. In the photo, Meander's Autumn has a flirtatious encounter with a pretty girl during a performance in Barcelona.
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