You realize on entering Screen Theater's new basement premises off Chung-hsiao East Road in Taipei that it has the layout of a not-insignificantly sized company. Three offices to the left house the administrative department, while a turn to the right takes you into the main drama area, sectioned off into the rehearsal floor, the props store, control room, and an office for the B troupe that is soon to break away from the main body of the company.

In March this year the island-wide 7-Eleven chain store decided to sponsor Screen Theater to the tune of NT$1 million annually, and provide free publicity for the group's new productions via its 600 outlets. Though delighted, Li Kuo-hsiu remarks calmly: "Our fixed monthly outlay is at least NT$300,000, so the sponsorship covers less than a third of our annual expenditure."

Screen Theater has consistently set records for the length of its production runs, and the revival this year of Save the Nation Society, which ran from Western New Year through to Chinese New Year, had to have an extra ten performances added on. "Even so, seventy performances in a hundred-seat venue only amounts to a total audience of 7,000," says Li, running off figures fast and precise, Woody Allen fashion. "When direct and indirect production costs for the play are taken into account, including auditorium rental and personnel overneads, we are talking about a net loss of NT$150,000."

What then would satisfy him?

Says Wang Yueh, Li's wife and chief administrator with Screen: "His only dream is to set up a professional company, and have a theater purpose-built to house it." The dream is in fact for a future Taipei where there are countless productions performed every night for theatergoers to choose from, as in New York or Tokyo, and also for Screen itself to have branch groups throughout Taiwan, so that somewhere there will always be a Screen show to see.

Since his first appearance on stage with the drama club at the World Junior College of Journalism, Li has performed with the Chen-shan-mei Social Theater, Lan Ling Theater and also in television variety show sketches. In 1984 he jointly formed Performance Workshop with Stan Lai and Li Li-chun, and they had a big hit with That Night We Talked Hsiang-sheng. There were differences of opinion though and after deliberation he left the group, two years later forming Screen Theater. Those who have met Li during his 17-year career with the stage know just how serious he is about it, and how hard he works.

Li is convinced of the need to make theater a profession, bearing in mind that not one professional group has emerged in Taiwan in the last forty years, and that there are no more than ten functioning groups around at the moment. His approach has been to aim for a full-time group, where acting and technical talent can be nurtured free of outside demands, but having first laid a firm administrative foundation for the company. Groundwork design for the company's structural needs has already been done by an architecture student as a graduation project.

Screen already has 11 paid administrative staff, and actors and technical personnel have contracts and are paid by the show, even clocking on and off for rehearsal time. The original volunteer system is still in operation, and the last recruitment brought 400 respondents, later whittled down to 40, including a fair share of white-collar workers prepared to go along and do newspaper clipping or floor sweeping after office hours. After four and a half years in operation, Screen Theater even set the precedent of providing insurance cover and legal advice for its personnel.

"Originally I didn't know the first thing about theater administration," admits Li, "and had to figure it out by degrees from business management books and public relations classes on the radio." The group's current administrative system was created for them by Chen I-heng, who has a doctoral degree in arts administration from the US, while Chiang Han, recipient of several Golden Bell awards for radio and television, has taken over the position of company manager and has been busy computerizing the files.

Group identity is an important ingredient of Screen's success, and according to film director Huang Yu-shan it is a credit to Li's enthusiasm and personal warmth, that he can draw together different people, many of whom have no previous involvement with theater.

Key actor Hsia Ching-ting refers to the family atmosphere that prevails at the group, while Shih Hung-ta, head of the soon-to-be B troupe cites the teacher-pupil relationship in which group members look to Li to learn acting skills and dramatic concepts. His scripts are meticulously prepared before undergoing further polishing during the rehearsal phase. Executive secretary Chang Chin-ting, who has been with the company two months, formerly knew nothing about theater, but admiringly describes how Li is "not worried if you go and ask him something, only if you don't learn."

"I don't want even those volunteers who come just to clip newspapers to lose interest," says Li, so he talks with them about their activity and about drama in general, "to let them know what they are doing." Li's keenness and commitment leaves Wang Yueh, his wife, with a paradox however. As a co-worker in the group she is responsible for administrative affairs, and points out that there are other couples working together in the arts to share their load. Yet equally she hopes for the sake of her family life that Screen will eventually disband.

But Li cannot stop now that things are really taking off. His first production was done on a shoestring for NT$3,000, compared to a budget of NT$8 million for the show Flexible Time and Place that he is currently preparing for this year's Taipei Drama Festival. "It is no miracle, this is something we have built up towards little by little," he says dourly.

Ever since the early days Li has relied on a makeshift approach, surviving from one show to the next with profits serving as funding for the following production. In this way the company has put together eighteen productions with over 400 individual performances, and earned a surplus of NT$2 million. Information about their future works that appears in the program notes also indicates how well they plan the year in advance.

Does Screen Theater's box-office appeal rest with a comic style that easily pleases audiences? Not so according to Li. "We have tried other dramatic forms apart from comedy, such as plays based around a story element, plays about contemporary events, and experimental drama." Yet he admits that comedy is still the group's strong point, and that he has developed a unique style of performance during his years of making people laugh. "But there are different degrees of comedy to consider. If it were not for our concern with society and human nature I might just as well go and do stand-up routines at dinner clubs, or ham it up on television instead of working with theater."

It is interesting to note, however, that Screen has closer ties with the world of television and radio than other theater companies, and that a number of familiar faces on TV have either done a spell at Screen or are still with the group. Even Li himself can boast nine years of experience in television, and he does not mind admitting that he graduated from college in Radio and Television Studies, and has no professional foundation in drama. "But I moved into comedy out of a concern for our living environment, especially in the city." Many of his works are thus comic attacks on some of the stranger phenomena and characters in society, subjects that his audience can identify with amid the laughter.

An example is their stage play on modern concepts about men and women Pre-marital Trust, whose title became a popular buzz phrase for a while. Another was the production of Three People Going Together, about urban life, which writer Ku Meng-jen praised highly: "It flowed perfectly without let up ... the audience was in stitches and was as exhilarated as the cast." In the follow-up piece City Frenzy, Li used a multimedia approach on stage to question the reality of drama and life. In one scene an eccentric version of a dance from Swan Lake merged with the reenactment of a notorious recent street demonstration in Taipei. Save the Nation Society, which completed its run to acclaim, concern ed itself with alienation and the inability to communicate within society, and drew some of its power from the mystery surrounding the tragic disappearance of a Japanese girl travelling alone in Taiwan last year. Novelist and critic Ma Sen describes the play as a satire, using current language to tell a contemporary story, successfully appealing to a modern audience by sharing their concerns.

The risk for drama that adheres too closely to current events though is that in a fast changing society it will soon be out of date and irrelevant. Huang Yu-ming believes that Li Kuo-hsiu has enough ideas and inspiration to meet the challenge, but that perhaps in thinking and adapting so fast he sacrifices something in artistry and originality.

Also the political and social satire in his work is sometimes minor compared to the objectives that move him to create in the first place. Those with a more radical attitude to drama therefore see Screen Theater as promoting a basically conservative urban aesthetic. Theater worker Wang Mo-lin voices this complaint, remarking that Screen tends to perform in a situation comedy mode, tailored for middle class consumption, where modern social satire ends up as little more than "urban fairy tale."

What these criticisms overlook is that Screen Theater has also worked alongside other play- wrights and directors, and come up with different styles accordingly. In August 1988 eyebrows were raised when they staged Tenth Month Tenth Day, Decameron in association with Twenty Dimensional, an avant-garde group invited over from Hong Kong. Jung Nien-tseng leader of the Hong Kong group, specializes in diffuse stage imagery and overt political metaphor, and the resulting production was considered the Screen play "least like a Screen play." Furthermore, it did not attract the audiences, and the company made a loss of NT$800,000.

Other joint efforts include their version of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, specially adapted by Hsu Liang-feng of the Chinese Culture University's drama department, and the experimental piece Lover Comrade by Lin Wei. Box-office sales were poor in every case, especially when compared to those productions which have the drawing power of Li Kuo-hsiu's name. It is a situation that is particularly pronounced in the center and south of the island.

In 1989 Li set up a branch of Screen Theater in Kaohsiung, in response to the success of the company's tours to the south. After members were selected a six month seminar in performing arts was begun in the city. The project came to fruition with the production Raining Again in Harbor City, but ticket receipts were far short of expectations. The actors were all new faces, but it was hoped that the association of Li's name with the show would make a difference, so publicity vans were hired to cruise the streets blaring: "Li Kuo-hsiu! Li Kuo-Hsiu! Big laughs! Big laughs!" All was to no avail, and the Taipei parent company had to carry losses of NT$2 million.

As the person in charge of splitting off the group, Tang Yin, explains: "The arts are not such a big draw in the south as in Taipei, and there is also more emphasis on star names. The company therefore needs first to get a firm foothold in the city if it is to achieve self-sufficiency there."

The division of the Taipei branch itself into two separate groups will mean a chance for some of the key members to start afresh. Shih Hung-ta, who will head the B Troupe, explains that under Li the A Troupe will continue to stage two main productions a year as before, while the B Troupe will produce two smaller productions a year in the experimental theater, with costs to be covered by the main group.

From one group, to two, then three. From productions with ten consecutive performances, to thirty, to forty, and even seventy. Li Kuo-hsiu is unstoppable. He does not stop coming up with new dreams, and he does not stop realizing them. For Li, it seems to have all begun "back as a child, watching outdoor operas. I always liked to crawl backstage to see the human reality behind the screen. An actor is made up and ready, looking every inch Lord Pao in all his finery. Beside him a cigarette burns to a teetering stick of ash. An actress playing a maiden on stage ducks back in through the screen and swiftly lifts her gown to breastfeed her crying baby."

[Picture Caption]

In 1988 Screen Theater invited the avant-garde group Twenty Dimensional to come from Hong Kong for the joint production Tenth Month Tenth Day, Decameron, a complete departure from the company's usual comic style. (photo by Hsiao Chia-ching)

Flexible Time and Place is Li Kuo-hsiu's latest work. The inspiration for the piece came from watching his wife give birth.

With 17 years experience as a performer on stage and screen, Li Kuo- hsiu is determined about "making drama into a cause."

The conjuring skills of Wang Kai-fu help to make Flexible Time and Place a stage spectacle that flits back and forth between past and present.

In Three People Going Together the cast of three played many roles between them, for a varied portrait of city life.

They Never Went Back to That Coffee Shop, by Wang Yueh, was an experimental drama in a cinematic style.

Save The Nation Society ran for seventy performances, a record for little theater in Taiwan. (photo courtesy of Screen Theater)

Li Kuo-hsiu's commitment to his work, and personal warmth, attracts a crowd of young members to the group.

Keeping methodical records is one step towards professionalization for Screen Theater.

Flexible Time and Place is Li Kuo-hsiu's latest work. The inspiration for the piece came from watching his wife give birth.

With 17 years experience as a performer on stage and screen, Li Kuo- hsiu is determined about "making drama into a cause.".

The conjuring skills of Wang Kai-fu help to make Flexible Time and Place a stage spectacle that flits back and forth between past and present.

In Three People Going Together the cast of three played many roles between them, for a varied portrait of city life.

They Never Went Back to That Coffee Shop, by Wang Yueh, was an experimental drama in a cinematic style.

Save The Nation Society ran for seventy performances, a record for little theater in Taiwan. （photo courtesy of Screen Theater）

Li Kuo-hsiu's commitment to his work, and personal warmth, attracts a crowd of young members to the group.

Keeping methodical records is one step towards professionalization for Screen Theater.