From the West back to the native land
Still in an exploratory mode, U-Theatre's second play, Retrial of Wei Jingsheng, came after its first, Faust: A Subterranean Journal. The second half of Retrial featured an open dialogue on cross-strait relations. Unexpectedly, it sparked an adverse reaction from the audience. Reviewers either loved it or hated it.
From this experience, Liu learned that Taiwan's independent theater groups, which mostly perform stage plays, have largely remained the products of the West's alternative cultures. They have not moved into Taiwanese culture itself. She thus decided to get back to the roots, studying popular rites and folk arts, including chegu performances (dancing and singing with a small drum at the waist), stilt walking, beiguan music, and the "Eight Generals" processions. Subsequent U-Theatre performances would take their inspiration from classical Chinese tales, adding in contemporary Taiwanese perspectives. Touring the cities and towns of Taiwan, U-Theatre sought to open up a dialogue with local audiences.
Five years after U-Theatre was founded, the troupe began to emphasize the elevation of its members' "quality of life." Liu invited Huang Chih-chun to join the group; he had just returned from studying meditation in India, and became U-Theatre's drumming master.
Huang was born in Malaysia. He began studying drumming at age six and martial arts at age ten. Huang required troupe members to first learn how to meditate and contemplate the self, and only then move on to the study of drumming and martial arts. "After training in this way, whenever the performers were on stage, the audience could feel an explosive power emerging from beneath a surface stillness," he says. Liu saw how Huang's regimen was effecting a qualitative change on the troupe. The Chinese name of the theatre was thus changed to youren juchang ("the theatre of excellent performers").
In order that troupe members truly focus on opening up and developing themselves, U-Theatre moved away from the noisy urban corner they had occupied in Taipei City, to a remote hideaway on Mt. Laochuan in Mucha. U-Theatre's members came from all over, joining with an attitude of entering into the mountains to engage in cultivation. The training schedule includes tai chi at 6 a.m., meditation at 8 a.m., hiking and drumming in the afternoon, and rehearsing at dusk. In addition, members also engage in gardening. Whether eating, drinking, or training, troupe members constantly adhere to a given set of precepts and program of spiritual cultivation.
"Our main purpose in studying drumming is to cultivate ourselves. Its effect on our performative self-expression is secondary," says company manager Ken Kuo. U-Theatre seeks innovation and self-expression in its performances. The troupe's chosen instruments comprise a wide-ranging combination, including drums, gongs, huqin (Chinese two-stringed fiddle), and flute, as well as Western instruments such as the piano and cello. However, in the end nothing can replicate the stirring sounds of drums. Paired with dance and music in one performance after another, the drums have gradually come to occupy a unique place of their own, and have earned the members of U-Theatre the nickname of "drummers out of the stillness."