| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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By the performers’ use, not of the psychological method, but of the alienated effect, the audience can objectively examine the dead lesbian’s real story within the social and cultural constructions and historical conditions of her life.
Moreover, Wei employs different methods to stage women’s stories to allow the audience to have an “alienated” view of the world. Therefore, the audience can watch, feel, and comment on these women’s life and works, and address them critically.
In my book, I discuss not only modern Western literature and contemporary Taiwanese literature, but also classical Chinese literature which has been adapted by directors for productions in Los Angeles and Taiwan. For example, in Chapter Two, Dai Chun-fang’s Willow Dreams of Plum employs the exquisite literary script and delicate performing art of the traditional Chinese drama Kunqu The themes of Tang Xianzu’s Peony Pavilion15 are love and miracles. Du Li-Niang’s love is so deep that she gets sick after dreaming about her lover. Moreover, Du Li-Niang even misses him so much that she dies. Three years after her death, her spirit finally encounters her lover for whom she has waited so long and she undergoes a rebirth. Therefore, deep love can bring the dead back to life and break through life and death, and time and space.
By adapting the Peony Pavilion, Dai Chun-fang, successfully innovates the traditional Chinese Kunqu by combining its beautiful literary script with postmodern Western performativity. However, in Dai’s one-hour production, she only directs the scenes in which Liu Mon-Mei (his name in Chinese characters means Willow Dream-Plum) meets Du Li-Niang’s ghost to the scene in which Liu agrees to dig up her grave.
Dai assigns women to play the two main protagonists because in Kunqu, Liu, as a young male is often played by women.