{"id":2745,"date":"2011-06-01T08:52:55","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T08:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/development.creativeworkz.co.uk\/?p=2745"},"modified":"2021-08-03T10:37:04","modified_gmt":"2021-08-03T02:37:04","slug":"the-night-we-became-crosstalk-comedians-%ef%bc%881985%ef%bc%89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pwshop.com\/en\/portfolio\/theatre-portfolio\/the-night-we-became-crosstalk-comedians-%ef%bc%881985%ef%bc%89\/","title":{"rendered":"The Night We Became Crosstalk Comedians (1985)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"dyntabs\"> <ul><li><h4 class=\"tabhead\"><a href=\"#tabs-1\"> 1985 <\/a><\/h4><\/li> <li><h4 class=\"tabhead\"><a href=\"#tabs-2\"> 1993 <\/a><\/h4><\/li><\/ul><\/p>\n<p><div id=\"tabs-1\"><\/p>\n<p>This play, Performance Workshop's premiere work, became a milestone in the development of recent theater in Taiwan for its fusion of tradition and modernity, its innovative creativity, and its powerful performance. Created as an experimental work by writer-director Stan Lai and the actors Lee Li-chun and Li Kuo-hsiu, the play was an unexpected smash hit, hailed by the media as \u201cthe marriage of fine art and popular culture.\u201d The Taipei run and Taiwan tour totaled 20 sold-out performances (a record at the time for a single performance). The subsequent audio recording issued by UFO Records was an unprecedented hit, claiming number 1 on the popular recording charts for many consecutive weeks, and quickly attaining Platinum status, bringing the stage play to a broad, popular audience.<\/p>\n<p>In a gaudy Taipei nightclub, two entertainers announce the evening\u2019s main attraction: a famous but forgotten duo will appear in a rare performance of the dying traditional Chinese stand-up comedy form xiang-sheng (hsiang-sheng). However, the famous pair fails to appear on cue. Baffled, the two onstage entertainers decide to try to impersonate the famous pair to allow the show to go on. Unfamiliar with the ancient art of xiang-sheng, they begin pathetically, but slowly improve, until mysteriously, they seem transformed into the two \u201cfamous\u201d performers, and the audience is transposed scene by scene into time, where the two performers perform stand-up comedy Chinese style, commenting on crucial and often tragic moments in modern Chinese history. In a black comic final scene, the two performers recount the events of their own death, in an earthquake, in the Ch\u2019ing Dynasty.<\/p>\n<p>Among other things, The Night We Became Hsiang-Sheng Comedians was seen as a comment on the death of culture in modern Taiwan. Critic Ma Shu-li called the play \u201dusing the form of xiang-sheng to write xiang-sheng's elegy.\u201d The play served as the opening event of the Sixth New Aspect International Arts Festival, Taipei. Its success spurred a revival of xiang-sheng performance in Taiwan teahouses. Thus aside from creating an exciting and new kind of theater experience at a time when modern theater in Taiwan was in its formative stage, the play inadvertently revived the traditional art form it had pronounced dead.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Night We Became Hsiang Sheng Comedians is the premiere effort of the Performance Workshop. The newly formed group consists of two of Taiwan's most popular actors, Li Kuo-hsiu and Li Li-chun, and its most consistently innovative stage director, Lai Sheng-chuan. The three-man collective is commonly referred to in the Chinese press as \"two Li's and a Lai\".<\/em><br \/>\n<em>This play, like others Mr. Lai has directed, developed not from a script but through collaborative improvisation combined with research. The results of this method have, so far, electrified Taiwan's still underdeveloped theater.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Last year, Mr. Lai directed a series of vignettes about retarded children by the Lan Ling Theater Workshop, Taiwan's seminal theater group. \"Plucking Stars,\" as the production was called, managed to be realistic, inspired and genuinely moving without ever becoming preachy or patronizing. Mr. Lai's collaborators this time, though widely recognized as comic actors from TV, movie and stage appearances, have had varied enough acting careers to lend depth and conviction to their roles. The combination of these talents was bound to be a success, but the magnitude of it has been a welcome surprise to the group.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>It is greatly to the group's credit that in spite of its rather lofty and amusing aims, the play never bogs down in solemn profundities or obscure symbolism. Buoyed by the original, often startling humor and swept along by the plays energetic pace, the audience doesn't think about the essentially serious messages embedded within the piece's tight meticulous structure until later, and then more likely than not with an irrepressible smile.<\/em><br \/>\n\u2014\u2014Paul Shackman, \"Resuscitating Taiwan's \"Cross Talk\" Comedy\" Asian Wall Street Journal, 5\/17\/85<\/p>\n<p>Script:Stan Lai,\u00a0Lee Li-chun, Lee Kuo-hsiu<\/p>\n<p>Directed by Stan Lai<\/p>\n<p>Cast: Lee Li-chun, Lee Kuo-hsiu<\/p>\n<p>Scenic and Lighting Design:\u00a0Alan Kuang-yen Nieh<\/p>\n<p>Costume and Makeup Design: Pamela Chin<\/p>\n<p>Produced by Xu Boyun<\/p>\n<p>World Premier: 3\/1\/1985 National Arts Hall, Taipei<\/p>\n<p>Toured Cities: Taichung, Kaohsiung, Tainan, Chungli<\/p>\n<p><\/div> <div id=\"tabs-2\"><\/p>\n<p><strong>The memories of Crosstalk, our memories...<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Through the traditional performing art form and with deep philosophical meanings, Performance Workshop strives to reflect many things that are vanishing in contemporary society.<\/p>\n<p>Script: Collective creation led by Stan Lai<\/p>\n<p>Creative Process Participated by Lee Li-chun, Lee Kuo-hsiu<\/p>\n<p>Directed by Stan Lai<\/p>\n<p>Cast: Lee Li-chun, Feng Yigang<\/p>\n<p>Scenic and Lighting Design:\u00a0Alan Kuang-yen Nieh<\/p>\n<p>Costumes and Makeup Design: Pamela Chin<\/p>\n<p>Sound Design: Zhang Xiaowen<\/p>\n<p>Produced by Nai-chu Ding<\/p>\n<p>Toured Cities: Taipei, Tainan, Taichung, Hsinchu, Chungli, \u00a0Kaohsiung, Los Angeles, Kinmen, Singapore<\/p>\n<p><\/div> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-2745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theatre-portfolio","tag-1985-performance"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2FCzk-Ih","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwshop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwshop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwshop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwshop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwshop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwshop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18213,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwshop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2745\/revisions\/18213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwshop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwshop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwshop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}