Peking Opera in Taiwan

It’s nearly noon in Taipei City’s Shilin District. The Taiwan Traditional Theatre Center on Wenlin Road stands glittering in the sun. In a corridor on the sixth floor of the center’s North Building, Chang Yu-hua, head of the GuoGuang Opera Company, gives us a survey of her troupe’s productions. Chang says that she often hears from international colleagues who wish to visit GuoGuang, but in the past couple of years Covid has made these exchanges impossible. On the wall behind her is a large landscape-­format photograph of an actor posturing gracefully, dressed in Peking Opera costume with the “water sleeves” rippling in the air—a very impressive image indeed.

With Chang Yu-hua at its helm, the GuoGuang Opera Company is pursuing IP-focused branding strategies, taking traditional Chinese theater in new directions. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

Finding its way

Chang Yu-hua guides us through the labyrinthine corridors. The posters on the walls epitomize the 26 years of GuoGuang’s history. Originally focusing on reproducing canonical works, in recent years the troupe has espoused elements of modernity and modern literature. Unfettered by the conventions of traditional Chinese theater, it now pursues a new branding strategy.

As Chang tells us, since its foundation in 1995 Guo­Guang has been exploring ways to provide a local under­pinning for Peking Opera in Taiwan. It regards this as its destiny, and endeavors to pass down its experience to posterity. Chang says that the troupe spent its first decade trying to define itself. “At that time GuoGuang was in a precarious state. Its main objectives were to preserve our cultural genes and to bring out superb performances by following the time-honored conventions of Peking Opera.”

In 2002 Wang An-chi came to GuoGuang to serve as its artistic director. It was she who began to give the troupe’s solid grounding in traditional Peking Opera a modern and literary edge. “Many of GuoGuang’s productions have a strong literary quality. Their libretti, which are mostly Professor Wang’s work, merit close attention,” Chang says. For GuoGuang’s second decade, Wang drew on locally grounded cultural perspectives to invent “a new aesthetic approach to Peking Opera in Taiwan.”

In recent years GuoGuang’s productions have become more diverse in terms of subject matter, taking their inspiration from Eileen Chang’s The Golden Cangue, Wang Xizhi’s Sunlight After Snowfall, 17th-century French playwright Jean Racine’s Phèdre, and other classic works. The troupe’s wide-ranging repertoire even includes works once banned, with mildly erotic scenes, or telling stories such as the apotheosis of General Guan Yu.

GuoGuang has invented a new and distinctively Taiwanese approach to Peking Opera by giving its theatrical productions a strong literary flavor.

New technology

In April this year, GuoGuang brought out a new version of Fox Tales, a play that oozes alluring magic. During the performance, a flickering blue flame suddenly materi­al­ized over the dark stage, then shape-shifted into a woman dressed in pink: this is the folkloric fox that metamorphoses into a human being to spend her life with a huntsman. The scene was powerfully dramatic.

The fox’s metamorphosis was achieved through a volu­metric video capture system similar to that used in the film Avatar. The production also relied on 3D holograms and other motion capture technologies to create phantasma­gorical scenery.

“As a locally based national troupe, GuoGuang has been trying very hard in the past few years to use branding concepts for innovative purposes, with a view to showcasing the team’s production skills.” Since 2021, GuoGuang has been working to establish its own presence in the creative industries, managing its brand identity by creating and exploiting intellectual property. Fox Tales was the first work to be produced under this new branding strategy. From the story’s subject matter and message to its casting and production design, Fox Tales crossed conventional boundaries to break new ground.

Fox Tales relies on cutting-edge digital technology to bring magic and mythical beings onto   the stage, immensely expanding our imaginative horizons.

Tradition and innovation

The year 2021 has seen GuoGuang’s identity coming into sharper focus. The troupe now aims to preserve traditional theatrical art while transforming its prior­ities through a three-pronged emphasis on culture, literature, and creativity.

Chang Yu-hua pulls out her phone and shows us a video of a “virtual figure” first publicized at this year’s Golden Melody Awards for Traditional Arts and ­Music. Wearing a black suit with sensors attached to it, a ­Peking Opera performer moves and dances in front of the troupe’s motion capture equipment. The screen between her and the audience shows a virtual figure whose phys­ical movements mimic those of the performer. This ­digital figure was for the character Sun Shangxiang—a feisty, sexy woman dressed like a videogame heroine, who appears in GuoGuang’s new production In Her Eyes: The Warrior World of the Three Kingdoms, scheduled for 2022. GuoGuang’s re­inter­preta­tion of this third-century Chinese noblewoman reverses her weak and reticent image in Luo Guanzhong’s classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Bold in its explorations of subject matter, and unafraid to go after innovative visions, GuoGuang nevertheless adheres to Peking Opera’s four traditional means of expression: singing, elocution, acting, and acrobatics. Chang says that the troupe’s mission is to reshape the DNA of tradi­tional Chinese theater. “For example, we’ve all read Eileen Chang’s The Golden Cangue and Red Rose, White Rose. We’ve been enchanted by Chang’s use of language in these novels and watched their film adaptations. But if you want to turn The Golden Cangue into a Peking Opera today, you need performers who are deeply versed in the tradi­tional technicalities of this art. Ordinary actors won’t be able to rise to the challenge.” In addition to producing Hollywood-­level stage effects, a successful opera requires its actors to dwell on every shade of feeling and to bring every posture and movement to perfection. It hinges on the col­labor­ation of various professional teams and on the ability to produce large-scale performances.

Reimagining the role of women in history, GuoGuang’s forthcoming production In Her Eyes: The Warrior World of the Three Kingdoms accentuates the robust and feisty character of the third-century Chinese noblewoman Sun Shangxiang.

International teamwork

In 2016 GuoGuang worked with Zuni Icosa­hedron, a pioneering multimedia ­theater company based in Hong Kong, on Lord Guan Yu on Stage. The performance combined piano music with the projection effects that Zuni is famous for to explore General Guan Yu’s thoughts before he was captured.

Subsequently, in 2018, GuoGuang joined forces with Japan’s Yokohama Noh Theater to present The Dream of an Embroidered Robe. Reinterpreting the traditional story of Zheng Yuanhe and Li Yaxian with Nihon buyo (a classical form of Japanese dance), shamisen (a three-stringed Japanese lute), and Kunqu (a form of Chinese opera originating in Kunshan), this project was a joint effort between Taiwan and Japan that brought together different types of performing art.

This year GuoGuang has teamed up with foreign professionals to produce a new version of Phaedra. It has rewritten the play to cater to inter­national tastes, combining Chinese operatic music with electronic music, and collaborating with a renowned foreign dramatist who has studied the classical story of ­Phaedra. By working with top-notch international teams, GuoGuang seeks to raise the standards of tradi­tional Chinese opera. It hopes to bring its creative energy, along with Taiwan’s artistic and intellectual vibrancy, to major art festivals overseas, helping to raise the country’s international profile.

Lord Guan Yu on Stage uses projected images, together with piano music, to interpret General Guan Yu’s thoughts and feelings.

GuoGuang collaborated with a Japanese company to produce a new Kunju opera called The Dream of an Embroidered Robe, which garnered much critical acclaim.

With a new plot that caters to international tastes, GuoGuang’s world-class project Phaedra raises the bar for traditional Chinese theater, aiming to bring Taiwan’s creative energies to the wider world. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

Rejuvenating traditional arts

With the support of the National Center for Tradi­tional Arts, GuoGuang is committed to en­suring the survival of the art of Chinese opera, bringing together traditions and cutting-edge ideas to achieve a new paradigm shift.

NCFTA director Chen Yue-yi says that Guo­Guang has set a perfect example of how to preserve and nourish traditional art. “The traditional arts will bloom again only if we distill new classic works from traditions, only if, having laid a solid foundation by preserving and passing down past experience, we go on to engage in inter­disciplinary innovation to ensure that each new work is relevant to our age.”

Traditional arts have grassroots origins and represent the collective wisdom of our ancestors. Having undergone centuries of development and refinement, they have evolved into an important part of our cultural heritage, with distinctive aesthetic traits and cultural meanings. Traditional arts will live on for as long as we are willing to perform and see them, for as long as we continue to preserve traditions and engage in innovation.