Is TV Taiwanese opera merely the latest step in the development of an old art form or something radically new? Aficionados love to argue the point--but whatever the answer, television is playing an ever increasing role in the Taiwanese opera heritage.
What do flared jeans, black Bakelite dial phones, and Taiwanese opera have in common? Answer: They are all so old that they're new, having survived the orbit into outer darkness and come back into the light of day with new spin and revived vigor. How did Taiwan opera manage to pull it off? Just ask any Taiwan-based TV executive, and you'll be in for an inspiring cultural success story.
When Taiwan's first television station, Taiwan Television Enterprises (TTV) was set up in 1962, its early broadcasts included a number of Taiwanese operas, although they failed to reach a wide audience since at that time there were only a few thousand television sets on the island. Radio was still the most common entertainment medium, with Taiwanese opera high on the popularity list of programs. But within a few years television had replaced radio, and TTV was hiring famous opera singers to star in live performances that went out several times a day. Taiwanese opera was soon a firm favorite, and actors and actresses such as Yang Li-hua (楊麗花) quickly became much loved TV stars.
TTV's monopoly of the opera market ended in 1969 with the formation of the China Television Company (CTV) which made a determined grab for audience share. Instead of merely broadcasting stage performances, it started to produce Taiwanese opera series: a one-hour program was broadcast every day except Sunday, adding up to one complete story a week. Audiences liked this so much that TTV decided to follow suit. It reorganized its four opera troupes into one and went into the Taiwanese opera series business. "Competition for the TV Taiwanese opera market was something of a war zone back then," says Tseng Yung-yi (曾永義), a professor of Chinese Literature at National Taiwan University.
Black-and-white TV had given way to color by that time, and television was generally becoming more sophisticated. Instead of merely pointing the camera at a staged performance, producers started to replace basic sets with proper scenery, symbolic props with the real thing, and traditional instruments such as the san-hsien (violin) and pipa (flute) with electronic music. Special effects became the norm, and the songs that lay at the soul of opera were rewritten to give them greater depth.
Scripts also started to be written in TV soap-opera style, and many more people got into the act: Television requires a producer and director, screenwriters, and experts in such diverse fields as makeup, costumes, scenery, props, lighting, and special effects. Even casts had to expand, because while twenty actors might combine to portray a convincing battle scene on stage, approximately a hundred were needed to create a similar impression on a TV screen.
Not everyone was happy with these changes. People with an eye to cultural preservation charged that they were stifling "real" Taiwanese opera, but TV people with hands-on experience believed that the changes were necessary to attract audiences. Yeh Ching (葉青), a famous Taiwanese opera actress, points out that audiences who habitually attend stage performances readily accept the fiction that a dozen steps symbolize a journey from Shanghai to Beijing, but TV viewers cannot be expected to grasp such nuances.
If more attention was being paid to chronological and spatial unities, that in turn meant that scenery also had to be made more attractive and relevant to the plot. "You can lock up an audience in a theater--at least until the half-time break--but you can't freeze the TV remote for a second," Yeh says. "If we'd followed the original format, with some young woman taking half an hour to sing and recite while climbing over a wall to meet her lover, viewers would have changed channels before she was halfway through."
Despite these adjustments, which Yeh regards as wholly necessary, she believes that TV Taiwanese opera managed to retain a considerable amount of the original package--language, music, special singing techniques like the "tearful tone," and gestures were all largely left intact. She further maintains that TV performances gave the characters an additional psycho logical dimension through the use of close-ups denied to stage performers, who were forced to express themselves through exaggerated postures and tones. TV, in contrast, requires gestures to be understated rather than overplayed.
Audiences seemed to like these changes, particularly the innovative soap-opera-series style, so it came as no surprise that when a third station, the Chinese Television System (CTS), was founded in 1971, Taiwanese opera rapidly made inroads into its programming. Competition among the stations heated up but, despite the efforts of dedicated troupes and individuals, no clear winner was destined to emerge. They were beaten out by, of all things, a hand-puppet called Shih Yen-wen (史艷文), a wildly popular figure in an updated, high-tech, revamped version of traditional puppetry. Many people in their mid thirties or early forties can remember with nostalgia how at that time their most important goal in life was to get home in time to watch the puppet show, which obliterated much more than Taiwanese opera in its triumphant march across the island's screens.
In an attempt to win back viewers, in 1972 TTV reorganized its troupe and hired some of the best directors, screenwriters, actors, and even superstars like Yang Li-hua and Yeh Ching. Many of them had previously worked for one of the other two stations. The troupe was a major success in the ratings, as advertisers were quick to notice--and in those days TV commercials were completely unregulated, so as much as half of a thirty-minute program might consist of advertising.
The good times lasted until 1977, when TV opera ran afoul of the recently passed Radio and Television Law, which provided that Mandarin should be the primary language of broadcasting and restricted dialect programming to one hour a day. But there were in-house problems as well. "People had come to associate Taiwanese opera with a bunch of miserable females crying non-stop," Tseng Yung-yi says. "Audiences were sick and tired of stereotyped plots, and when ratings dropped the advertisers walked away." In 1977, the joint troupe was disbanded, and Taiwanese opera disappeared from the island's screens completely.
The absence lasted for only two years, however. Despite the law limiting dialect programming, "Taiwanese opera was too closely tied up with people's everyday lives, so as television also became part of daily life, it was natural for Taiwanese opera to start to be associated with it again," Tseng says. In essence, the restrictive law was ignored. But again, there were changes: new plots revolving around legendary swordsmen, historical dramas, fairy tales, and folklore. Well-knit storylines and improved special effects provided a solid basis for the return of Taiwanese opera to the island's screens, and it has not been absent since.
The television stations have given commendable support to Taiwanese opera in recent years. Operatic superstar Yeh Ching points out that the cost of putting on a Taiwanese opera is about one-third higher than that of mounting a conventional drama, but the income each generates is about the same. "If it were purely a case of commercial considerations, the stations would have pulled the plug on Taiwanese opera years ago," she says. "But they didn't, because they realize that it's a valuable form of traditional art that merits preservation."
Over the past few years, some cable TV channels have also begun broadcasting Taiwanese operas. Although most of them are comedies, with low production costs and insignificant artistic content, Yeh believes that their influence is nevertheless positive. "At least there's greater exposure to Taiwanese opera, so that more people can see it," she says. "Most viewers of comedy shows forget them the minute they're over, but if even a handful of them become interested and are willing to spend a little time getting to know it better, that's something."
Ratings are not as good as they were a few decades ago, when TV Taiwanese opera was at its peak, but at least the audience base has grown. Yeh has her own website, and every day hundreds of people use it to express their views. Visitors to the site include university students and professors, who for long were regarded as the last people who would watch televised operas. Beside expressing concern about the future of the art, participants seem particularly keen to discuss an increasingly hot topic: Does TV Taiwanese opera preserve an ancient tradition, or is it a new art form?
On this issue, the preponderance of academic opinion differs sharply from that of the people with hands-on experience. "There's a basic contradiction between symbolism and realism," Tseng Yung-yi says. "On stage, horsewhips symbolize horses. If you make them real horses, the abstract, symbolic nature of the stage performance is superseded by the realism required of any TV broadcast."
Tseng also fears that TV operas may be undermining the original language of the stage performances, noting that some screenwriters can't write proper Taiwanese dialogue. "Just because you can carry on a conversation in Taiwanese, that doesn't mean you're qualified to write Taiwanese opera scripts," he says. "A lot of important folk idioms are no longer heard in daily conversation."
Tseng is an acknowledged expert on Taiwanese folk art, but he does not consider himself qualified to write opera scripts, because his Taiwanese has been influenced by his mainstream Mandarin education. He realizes that changes, or at least adjustments, are necessary. But because of them, he prefers to regard TV Taiwanese opera as a new art form that has developed from traditional opera. "They may both be called Taiwanese opera, but the content is definitely different," he says. "Such development isn't necessarily a bad thing, or abnormal, because every generation must develop its own art forms."
Actress Yeh Ching agrees that there are fundamental differences between TV Taiwanese operas and stage performances, but argues that they are formal rather than substantive. "We've made adjustments to bring ourselves into line with the real world, accommodate the demands of the medium, and improve visual effects," she says. "But stage performers, even in the Peking opera field, are also making adjustments."
To back up her point, she notes that formerly actors had to signal their next moves to the musicians so that they could play the right music; but this is no longer necessary because the orchestra now has a score to follow. As in Peking opera, some performers are now giving their productions a stronger visual dimension by adding props, improving lighting effects, and even incorporating elements of Western drama such as stage sets and costume designs. "When everybody is making 'adjustments,' how come TV Taiwanese opera is the only one accused of killing off the old traditions?" Yeh pointedly asks.
Nobody is denying that TV Taiwanese opera, original or not, has played an important role in preserving the art's heritage. It is getting more and more attention. Scholars are doing serious research on related topics, and people are going in droves to venues as diverse as the National Theater and humble temple courtyards to enjoy a couple of hours of Taiwanese opera. "If it hadn't been for TV, Taiwanese opera would have died out years ago," Yeh Ching says. "Tightly written plots, fancy scenery, special effects, and the characters' new psychological dimensions managed to hold audiences, even though cultural preservationists had to struggle to save on-stage performances." Taiwanese opera across the board owes television a big vote of thanks.