Normally spending his time working on new plays in meditative seclusion, when Stan Lai makes appearances at the Performance Workshop, situated in Hsichih, he exudes the relaxed, graceful charm of a scholarly gentleman.

As a founding father of Taiwan's contemporary theater, Lai's decision to follow this road was quite offbeat since, in the Taiwan of that day, virtually no one studied theater or saw any future in it. Despite this, after graduating from the English department of Fu Jen University, he proceeded to the University of California at Berkeley to study theater. As Lai himself has commented, underlining the dauntless pioneering spirit which animated him, "Who in their right mind would choose to go abroad to study a subject which didn't even exist in Taiwan-particularly if you planned to come back and apply your learning here?!"

What is it that drew Stan Lai to theater? As he explains it, he has always been interested in a diverse range of the arts, having painted since childhood, in college engaging in music-related activities, and being deeply interested in literature and photography. "I got the idea that theater could bring all these varied interests together and so struck off in that direction."

Lai was born in the United States in 1954, his father then serving as ROC consul-general in Seattle. Not long after he was sent back to Taiwan for junior high school studies, his father passed away, after which he and his elder brother grew up in Taiwan under their mother's care. In his youth, therefore, he had already tasted the impermanence of life.

If there may be said to be one person who has had the most profound impact upon Stan Lai, it would most probably have to be his wife, Ding Nai-chu, who shares his passion for the arts and serves at managing director of the Performance Workshop. They met and got to know each other in their college days, together also coming into contact with Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, which, for both of them, has been a fountainhead of spiritual sustenance and strength.

Both Chinese and Western

After receiving a doctorate in theater from Berkeley in 1983, Lai returned to Taiwan at the invitation of Yao Yi-wei, dean of the college of drama at the National Institute of the Arts (now Taipei National University of the Arts), to teach at the school. Lai has served there as associate professor, full professor, dean and, finally, founder of the school's graduate school of theatrical arts.

More dazzling than Lai's performance as an educator are his accomplishments as playwright and director.

As characterized by Kuo Pao-kun, founder of the Singapore Performing Arts School, "Stan Lai's theatrical work can't be pigeonholed. It's an exceptional form of theater, being neither Chinese nor Taiwanese, neither Eastern nor Western, neither elegant nor vulgar, conforming neither to this rule nor that. Change all those neither-nors to both-ands and you might have a fitting description of it."

Combining his talents as playwright, director and set designer, in 1984 Stan Lai joined with Hugh Lee and Lee Li-chun to found the Performance Workshop, which in the following year produced the ground-breaking performance of The Night We Became Xiangsheng Comedians. (Xiangsheng, also known as "cross-talk," is a form of comic banter traditional to northern China.)

Over the past two decades, Lai has written and directed a total of 19 theatrical works, in addition to producing and directing many more. These have included a series of dramas continuing on the xiangsheng theme-Look Who's Cross-Talking Tonight (1989), The Complete History of Chinese Thought (1997), and Millennium Teahouse (2000)-which have revolutionized the xiangsheng arts and given them a new lease on life. Also to his credit are such well-known works as Plucking Stars, Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring , Circle Story, Strange Tales of Taiwan, I, Me, He, Him and Husband! Open the Door!, all of which won high praise, with some even achieving box office success.

In addition, Lai has written and directed a film version of Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring and the movie The Red Lotus Society as well as a 250-plus-episode television series All in this Family are Humans, all of which have received high acclaim.

The Stan Lai trademark

Despite the breadth of Stan Lai's works, they share at least one oft-discussed unifying element: "collective improvisation" in the creative process. Though in fact not invented by Lai, but borrowed from Shireen Strooker of the Amsterdam Werkteater, collective improvisation has been taken by Lai to extraordinary heights, constituting the approach central to all of his works.

As explained by Lai, collective improvisation begins with the director, for his part, first creating an overall blueprint providing a concrete framework, direction and core themes. Then the players immerse themselves in it, delving into the meaning of their roles by plumbing the depths of their personal feelings, with the aim of making their performances as natural as possible and thus enriching the presentation's content and impact. Chin Shih-chieh, whose acting skills are supplemented by talents as playwright and director, is extremely enthusiastic about the use of collective improvisation: "In each role there are many blanks which actors must fill in themselves. And Stan Lai is extremely open to actors' input."

Collective improvisation is by no means a simple affair, however, the amount of time and energy it demands being considerably greater than with more traditional approaches. As pointed out in commentary written by dramatist Yao Yi-wei, collective improvisation is not a formula which just anyone can apply. In the hands of the wrong person, it results in a proverbial case of "turning a botched attempt at painting a tiger into a dog-like something-or-other."

As Yao explains, directors who would utilize it must possess the ability to bring out the best in their players, enabling them to penetrate into their own inner sanctums and release their latent energies. Moreover, the director must be prudently selective. Inasmuch as what each individual comes up with must inevitably differ from what others would say-even to the extent of contradicting each other-the crucial question becomes how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Additionally, the director must ensure that, out of this slurry of inputs, there is a distinct line of thought or philosophical outlook.

Theater limitation

The pains which must be endured and obstacles which must be overcome by a would-be pioneer are beyond the imagination of most people.

"Even our approach to production didn't meet the demands of the official review system in those early days," notes Stan Lai, since he could show the censors no detailed scripts for his collective-improvisation productions. And without a script which could pass muster, there was no way to obtain a performance license or sell tickets. Still more problematic for a pioneer in the Taiwan of those days was the question, where is one's audience?

"Despite having no financial resources, we charged forward." Over the course of its evolution from nothing to something, the story of the Lai-led Performance Workshop blazing its own distinctive trail-and succeeding not only in avoiding imitation of Western theater but in creating its own audience-constitutes a poignantly unique chapter in the history of Taiwan theater.

"In reality, it has been utterly impossible for my audience to view a work fully representative of Stan Lai." Though shocking to hear from the mouth of Lai himself, this comment is explained by the plethora of constraints under which he has been obliged to work. The fact, for example, that theater venues are all designed and operated along exactly the same lines has allowed him hardly any room to develop his creative ideas. Typically, only three days are allowed for setting the stage, whereas theaters abroad normally allow ten days to two weeks, and in some instances even months. There's just no comparison.

In Lai's case, however, limitations have also been an impetus to creativity. For example, The Night We Became Xiangsheng Comedians was conceived to be performable anywhere, at any type of venue. And all of the stage sets for Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring are handled by the performers themselves, obviating the need to take a stage crew with them everywhere they go in the world.

Despite continuing inadequacies, given Stan Lai's energetic efforts and undeniable achievements, Taiwan theater facilities are increasingly able to meet his needs. For example, when Lai got the notion to erect a bridge over the audience for last year's production of Waiting for Godot, he thought for sure that the National Theater wouldn't go for it. "But quite unexpectedly they agreed to it after talking it over less than ten seconds!"

Plays have lives of their own

Among Stan Lai's more memorable statements is his dictum: "The incomparable attraction of theater works lies in their here-and-now-ness. Their romance lies in the brevity of their lifetimes, encapsulating the impermanence of things."

Nonetheless, Stan Lai finds it impossible to get a firm handle on audience taste.

"Plays have their own lives, and there's no way to anticipate how they'll be received," says Lai. There are those plays which you yourself feel are great but which the audience doesn't much care for. And there are plays which you yourself feel are only so-so but which quite unexpectedly stir a sensation. For example, while Lai thought that the 1990 presentation of Come Dance with Me was "really wonderful," it turned out to be one of the Workshop's box office flops.

The work which truly established the Performance Workshop's reputation was the now-classic Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring. Since its debut, fifty-odd adaptations have already been presented in Beijing alone. This play is also the first which Lai made into a movie, promptly winning the Tokyo Film Festival's Silver Sakura Award.

In this play, two theater groups, by a twist of fate, are obliged to take turns using the same stage for dress rehearsals, bizarrely juxtaposing a melancholy Secret Love with a farcical Peach Blossom Spring. Secret Love tells of a man who still yearns for an old flame on the mainland, but who, frustrated by circumstance as well as by his own serious illness, is unable to return home. In Peach Blossom Spring, impotent Old Tao abandons his home because of his cuckolding wife and unexpectedly stumbles upon the utopian Peach Blossom Spring (as in "hot spring"). Still unable to forget his wife, however, he decides to go back home, only to discover that he has long since been supplanted by another. Despondent, Old Tao then decides to return to Peach Blossom Spring but, to his dismay, is unable to find his way back.

There are those who characterize Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring as a parable, while others say it is a Chan (Zen)-inspired story. For Stan Lai, however, it stands as something special in its own right, having a unique character: "No matter how many times it's revived, people can't think of anything they want to change in it!"

For actor Chin Shih-chieh, who has starred in nine Performance Workshop productions, it is Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring which has left the deepest impression. "Maybe it's because I was just starting out in my career, maybe because of my youth. But this play has a fierce vibrancy about it that really makes you feel tremendous power!"

Nor has that power of Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring waned with time. Recently, Stan Lai received an e-mail from the assistant director of the new production Like a Dream of a Dream, saying that he had come upon a copy of Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring in the US and, with a group of actors there, gave it a reading. By the time they had reached the final scene, "all of a sudden it seemed as if the room was getting bigger and bigger, and that all of us had passed into another dimension-so intense is the power of this play!"

For Stan Lai, however, the most exciting of his works is Like a Dream of a Dream.

In all, the play is eight hours long, stringing together three stories and over a hundred characters. Beginning with the story of a doctor, it links up with the stories of an old lady in Shanghai and a French duke, as a whole reflecting the course of life from perplexity to understanding, from suffering to liberation.

After seeing it, Chin Shih-chieh described it with the words "a work full of energy and wisdom, strongly evocative of a sense of 'journey.'"

Growing up with democracy

The people of Taiwan have a special sentiment for contemporary theater, as its rise coincided with Taiwan's late martial law era. For this reason, it may be said that the evolution of theater progressed in step with that of Taiwan's democracy.

Stan Lai has stated that the theater of the 1980s served as the most incisive public forum in the days before the easing of media censorship. Recalling those times, plays produced by the Performance Workshop such as Look Who's Cross-Talking Tonight and A Post Martial-Law Couple did indeed give people that sense of a "public forum," paralleling the feeling of present-day phone-in shows. Lai feels that despite the fact that audiences did not directly engage in any discussion, the interaction between people on and off the stage was still quite strong.

Since the rescinding of restrictions on the media in the 1990s, the theater's social-political commentary role has gradually declined in importance. As Lai has put it, "The revolution has already succeeded, so our mission has already been completed." Theater in Taiwan therefore has had to strike out in new directions.

"I once felt that theater must definitely reflect society. And theater did indeed play a very important role in the course of democratization. But now I've changed." Tai-wan's development has in many ways been rather disappointing, says Lai, but this sort of disappointment, unlike past types of disappointment, cannot readily be transformed into a work of art serving to guide debate in a healthy direction. For which reason he feels that social commentary has now ceased to be the underlying mission of his work. Instead, he is now turning his attention to deeper personal introspection while at the same time outwardly expanding the scope of his subject matter.

In this context, the new work Like a Dream of a Dream, staged in 2000, is a breakthrough. It does not focus on superficial political conditions in Taiwan, but delves into the inner human spirit, for which reason it has a more universal appeal.

Cross-strait culture shock

In addition to broadening subject matter, the greatest breakthrough and achievement of the Performance Workshop has been taking the Taiwan theater experience to the "other shore." Besides going on performance tours, the Workshop has taken steps to establish an operational infrastructure in mainland China for conducting performances and exchanges into the long-term future.

While tours by Taiwan theater groups represent one approach to interchange with the mainland, it is not easy to thereby achieve a deep level of interaction. For this reason, the Performance Workshop's mainland productions normally employ local actors. "Only when contacts involve substantive discussion regarding methods of work, and consultations and revisions relating to differences in taste, can there be any far-reaching exchange," comments Lai.

When in 1998 Red Sky made its debut on the mainland, Stan Lai thereby became the first ever Taiwan director to direct a play there. Since then, a succession of other Performance Workshop plays such as Millennium Teahouse and Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring have also been staged on the mainland.

In order to make it to the mainland, performances must first overcome cultural differences. As Lai explains, he has been careful in his choice of plays to stage there. Take for example Millennium Teahouse: The first half of its content relates to the Qing dynasty, presenting no problems with respect to acceptability to mainland audiences. The last half, however, relates to Taiwan, with one section satirizing the politics of the time when the play first appeared. When performed in Taiwan, the audience was in stitches from beginning to end. But for the mainland performance, that half was totally excised, as the characters would have beeen unrecognizable to mainland audiences.

Of his experience directing and performing on the mainland, Stan Lai has stated that for mainland audiences, choice of subject matter and language are not of crucial importance. What grabs them, rather, is the structural design of plays. Never having witnessed the novel way in which xiangsheng could be used, for example, it was for them a shocking sort of revelation.

Plays written and directed by Lai have always been quite multi-leveled, those "in the know" taking note of inner meanings, those not in the know appreciating them for their hilarity. Mainland audiences, says Lai, are very interesting, because they include many "insiders" but lack understanding of popular culture.

"Although I've devoted a lot of my energy to the form and structure of plays, Taiwan audiences tend not to give these much attention. Whereas mainland audiences, by contrast, are really sensitive to and excited by it. Taking for example the end of Millennium Teahouse, while Taiwan audiences react with cool sophistication, mainland audiences jump to their feet in applause, sometimes even interrupting the play."

Taiwan is home

"Taiwan is my home and my fountainhead of creative inspiration, but I feel that at this stage in life I should be able to do much more," says Lai. He feels that in recent years Taiwan theater's level of creativity hasn't been very high and seems to be steadily declining. Looking at the theatrical scene, all you see is more and more translated works, or musicals and children's drama whose contents are borrowed from other countries.

In Lai's view, "This is a condition stemming from the society as a whole. Over the past several years Taiwan society has become increasingly frivolous, interested only in fast-food type things, with a short attention span."

How then is Stan Lai himself keeping his creativity from running dry?

"If the world is a school, then Stan Lai is consistently one of its good students." Such are the words used by Chin Shih-chieh to describe the relentlessly self-goading and knowledge-seeking drive of this avant-garde theater-world trailblazer.

"I too have my dry spells," Lai candidly admits, expressing the view that by allowing oneself to relax and not making a forced effort, one's creative power can on the contrary flow more naturally. "The important thing is observation and sensitivity to society and human life, especially with regard to the more important issues in life," says Lai, indicating that he is increasingly applying his energies to exploration into human consciousness.

"Though perhaps you are more and more comfortable materially, that doesn't mean your life is any better. How can we live better? Too many people are utterly clueless!" Having taken an interest in Buddhist philosophy for many years, Buddhist literature has consistently challenged his thinking and feeling, spurring him to deeper reflection on the meaning of things.

One reason that Like a Dream of a Dream represents a major breakthrough for Lai is that previously he had always been reluctant to directly write anything from Buddhist thought into his plays, for fear of coming off as a missionary. In this play, however, he has included an approach to spiritual practice-"exchange of selves"-in addition to exploring the question of reincarnation. "At first, I was concerned that audiences either wouldn't understand or wouldn't have any reaction to what they saw. But as it has turned out, they've reacted with great relish."

Stan Lai still senses a limitless horizon extending before him, the success of Like a Dream of a Dream encouraging him to experiment with new theatrical forms. At the end of this year, the Performance Workshop will stage a new work in commemoration of Singapore Performing Arts School founder Kuo Pao-kun. And in the first half of next year, Lai will collaborate with actress Chang Hsiao-yen to produce a new play tentatively entitled On a Distant Star a Grain of Sand; it will be an innovative stab at "science-fiction comic drama."

What new creations does Stan Lai-dubbed by Chin Shih-chieh a "guide" and "catalyst" of the Taiwan theater community-have in the works? And what further impact will he have upon the theater cultures of the two sides of the strait? Stay tuned for further episodes of the Stan Lai saga!

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Stan Lai's Like a Dream of a Dream is a "breakthrough" work, and the one that he finds most exciting so far; from perplexity to comprehension, theater is life. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

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Collective brainstorming involving all the cast is a defining element of Stan Lai's dramatic style. The photo shows the well-known performers Ni Min-jan (left) and Chin Shih-chieh (right) working together.

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Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring is a work that evokes both joy and sorrow, with laughter amid the tears. It is Stan Lai's most famous production, and many theater companies still perform it.

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A Servant of Two Masters, first performed in 1995, is an improvisational piece.

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Millennium Teahouse was the fourth xiangsheng work from Performance Workshop; it is set in Beijing, home of comic dialogue.

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Stan Lai seems to have inexhaustible creativity, and Performance Workshop has been putting out novel works every year for the past two decades.

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From reflections on society to self-examination, Stan Lai's theater journey has been of ever greater depth and breadth.