Reflection on ‘Medea’ and My Intimate Experience With Chinese Opera
Chinese opera was part of the routine life during my childhood. Everyday after I returned home from kindergarten, my grandfather and I would watch the television together while having our lunch. The daily news report at noon was usually followed by Taiwanese opera performance that runs into the afternoon.
I vividly remember seeing actors and actresses dressed up in opulent clothes singing in unfamiliar languages and tones. To my grandfather, these operas must have somehow reminded him of his homeland across the strait — a place that he wasn’t allowed to visit until many years later. To me, it was my first encounter with the traditional performing arts even though I was still too young to understand or even appreciate it.
“This intimate experience with Chinese opera shaped every inch of my muscles, influencing every movement gesture that I now make.”
Fast forward 20 years I found myself joining the Jing-Kun Chinese Opera Society during my postgraduate studies at SOAS, University of London. Every Saturday morning, I would learn the singing techniques and movements of Peking and Kunqu opera*. It was then that I was opened up to this seemingly-distant world of Chinese opera.
Thanks to my mentor, Kathy, I gained insights to the essence of this unique art form through relentless practice as well as the privilege to perform on stage with my fellow opera enthusiasts. This intimate experience with Chinese opera shaped every inch of my muscles, influencing every movement and gesture that I now make.
Courtesy of New Aspect
Since then, I would keep an eye out for interesting performance in town regardless of which city I am in. Medea by Contemporary Legend Theatre is one of those that I did not want to miss.
Last Friday evening, I watched Medea at the National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei. As its name suggests, Medea is an adaptation of Euripides’ tragic classic but with the setting relocated to a kingdom along the Silk Road in the East. The story revolves around Princess of Lolan whose husband’s betrayal — even after all the sacrifices she’s made — leads her to deadly revenge.
Courtesy of New Aspect
Throughout the performance, renowned diva WEI Hai-Min as Princess of Lolan manifests her true self by expressing out loud what she has on her mind: the step-by-step plan for revenge. Here, the Dan role (female lead) is empowered with such strength that’s hardly seen in other Chinese opera performances. During the performance, I couldn’t help but wonder how the public would have reacted to the rise of ‘woman’s voice’ after Medea ‘s debut in 1993.
Besides Princess of Lolan, my favourite role in this opera is her two children. On the stage, the children sing in foreign tongue as they circle dance. Their laughters and naiveness is no doubt a sweetener to this rather bitter tragedy. The appearance of these two little ones really made an impression on me as I don’t recall ever seeing any child acting in Chinese opera. Medea’s bold and daring set design, alongside its exotic and sometimes otherworldly music, makes this reinvented Peking opera that’s fascinating to watch, particularly for those who are unfamiliar with this longstanding cultural asset.
The aim of tragedy, as Aristotle writes, is to bring about a “catharsis” of the spectators — with sensations of pity and fear, spectators will leave the theatre feeling purified and restored with a heightened understanding of life.
After the performance ended that evening, I walked out of the theatre feeling cleansed not because that Medea is a tragedy but that it shed new light on the future of a unique but waning art form.
Shaopeng
Originally published at http://shaopengwanders.wordpress.com on January 16, 2021.
