Wu Hsing-kuo (1953—) is the artistic director, co-founder and lead performer of the Contemporary Legend Theatre in Taipei (1986—), and is known in theatre circles for adapting western literature into the jingju (Peking Opera) tradition (in addition to film and television roles, for which he has received awards and nominations). However, due to a personal-political fallout with a Chinese theatre master and former mentor, he has not been formally recognized as a qualified performer in jingju by traditional Chinese opera practitioners (tensions between China and Taiwan may have further exacerbated this). His cross-cultural adaptations are contemporary takes on fusing disparate traditional Western and East Asian theatre practices — an adaptation of Macbeth, for example, was named “Sex and the City” (or similar in translation). The Contemporary Legend Theatre’s production (a recorded performance at The Metropolitan Hall in Taipei, Oct 10, 2006), of “Li Er Zaici” (“Lear is Here”), is cited as being catalytic of Wu’s own personal-professional crisis at the time. In the play, Wu performs nine characters from King Lear (King Lear, the three daughters, the Fool, Kent, Gloucester and Gloucester’s two sons), in addition to playing himself confronting his own personal and professional demons arising from a failed pupil-mentor relationship (that led to Wu being disregarded as a jingju theatre artist in China), as a parallel to King Lear’s relationship to his children (Li 196). Jingju theatre, a popular form of indigenous theatre (from the geographic locale around Beijing), infused elements of other theatre forms over time, rising to a stature of representing China’s “national theatre,” despite being a relatively young theatrical form in the region (maturing mid-19th century). Nonetheless, an association between jingju theatre and Chinese cultural identity, has become a consistent headwind in Wu’s theatrical career as a Taiwanese artist practicing a Chinese theatrical art form.
Wu’s “Lear is Here” stage play (a one-man show) deviates from traditional boundaries imposed on actors in jingju theatre, (I assume) for the purpose of explicitly showcasing his performance range, stage techniques, martial arts, dance and song. In an article analyzing the jingju theatrical form in Wu’s play, author, Ruru Li, notes how actors’ roles are so narrowly categorized, it was rare for performers to attempt roles outside their particular specialty. However, in this production, Wu spanned six jingju character types: wusheng (the male warrior), laosheng (the singing older male role), jing (the painted-face role), qingyi (the singing female role), huadan (the vivacious female role), and chou (the lown) (Li 196).
Throughout the performances, his body primarily expresses both through changes in trajectory through the circular stage space (augmented by elaborate costuming, wigs, beards, headdresses and the traditional big, heavily draped sleeves). Precision characterizes all aspects of his performance — attention to detail in layered costuming, how the layers of material, wigs, beard flow with his movements, aesthetically drape and shimmer, while mostly navigating the space and playing various roles in high-platformed footwear. This is perhaps most acute in the first Act where Wu plays King Lear as a military general, revealing to the audience the division of his Kingdom amid his declining mental state, before removing his costume to shape-shift into a regular jingju performer (or penitently, regretfully playing a version of himself). In one-man theatre play where Wu plays all the characters as well as himself, all the performances are presented as characters or actors in addition to figures (jingju character types). On the almost empty, circular stage platform, lighting effects create thunderstorms, blowing fog or a cloudy mist across the stage, once with paper snow. The natural elements evoked (throughout lighting and sound effects) are adequately and aesthetically credible to render the King Lear character unconscious at several points in the early scenes. The dramatic intensity of the lightning storms (flashing light amid thick fog rolling across the stage with Wu in silhouette) reveals a vast landscape beyond the circular stage, with towering, rocky pillars at its edges, later falling across the stage, to denote a natural, ocean-side environment as the backdrop to later scenes. The manner in which the circular shape of the stage, the lighting design, sound design and craggy rock elements conspire is quite ethereal, how they seamlessly denote environmental shifts, and punctuate the characters emotions and actions throughout the play.
At the beginning of Act I, lighting comes from overhead, fog appears to be combined with falling powder creating vertical lines throughout the fog, picking up on and fusing the different coloured lights together in the smoky fog — these accentuate changes in backdrop, the haze the character walks and dances through on the circular stage, changing the amplification of multicoloured details painted on the circular floorboards which match the multi-coloured colour palette of Lear’s costuming and face paint. Yellow-gold details at the back and in the under layers of the costume provide a break in the overall colour palette of the stage, lighting, costume and makeup. A spotlight following his movement around the stage has a slightly red hue, shifting to a somewhat yellow hue, and later a white hue in the first Act, connoting changes in mood and mental state of Lear throughout the scenes. The traditionally designed pattern-detailed costuming has long, wide draping sleeves, which shift with his movements, punctuating them. His attire evokes a decorated military standing, yet his movements in turn creating amplified movement in the costuming juxtapose this social standing. The white wig, beard and headdress similarly amplifies all the shaking movements of his head, making Lear seem like a crazy old man, once decorated with accomplishments and yet still managing to possess his wealth. His body expresses primarily by displacement and trajectory through space; the physical signatures are far more prominent than the vocal signatures, at least in the first Act, although this balance shifts in the later Acts. His movements choreographed to the traditional music, using traditional instruments and percussive drumbeats, add further drama to every shake, swinging of his arms, twirling his body around the stage in a crazy dance that accelerates in pace, before falling dramatically to the ground, momentarily unconscious. When he awakens, he takes off his high-heeled platform shoe, throws it behind him, begins looking for his child, grabs his shoe, cradling it like a beloved object, before declaring he has no children. His stilted movements and slight shaking to the clanging of the music over time, amplify his descent into a state that increasingly seems near insanity.
Work Cited
Chang, Ivy I. Chu. “Rerouting King Lear in a Jingju Actor’s Reminiscence: Wu Hsing-Kuo’s Lear Is Here.” Journal of Literature and Art Studies, vol. 4, no. 12, Dec. 2014, https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5836/2014.12.009.
Li, Ruru. “‘ “Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am?” / “Lear”s Shadow’ ’: A Taiwanese Actor’s Personal Response to ‘King Lear.’” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 2, 2006, pp. 195–215.
Liang, Lia Wen-Ching. “Navigating between Shakespeare and Jingju: Wu Hsing-Kuo’s Li Er Zaici.” Tamkang Review, vol. 45, Dec. 2014, p. 131+.
Rolston, David L. “What Is Jingju, and Why Should We Care about It?” Inscribing Jingju/Peking Opera, Brill, 2021, pp. 1–94.
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