Taiwan Theater Director in Love with Hangzhou

Stan Lai or Lai Shengchuan as he is most known in Taiwan and on the mainland is a highly influential award-winning Taiwan playwright and theater director. His latest show, “The Village”, was staged at the Red Star Theater in Hangzhou on January 22 and 23, 2010. Since its debut in 2009, “The Village”, jointly directed by Stan Lai and Wang Weizhong, has been staged for more than 60 performances in Taiwan. More than 100,000 people in Taiwan have watched the play, which tells stories about the families who fled to the island province in 1949.

When asked why the director comes to Hangzhou frequently, Stan Lai replied that he was in love with Hangzhou.

The love is not a one-way affair. As a matter of fact, Hangzhou is also in love with the best theater director of Asia. In October 2009, the West Brook Wetland in a west suburb of Hangzhou started a project. Under this project, 59 detached villa-styled houses are offered to cultural celebrities for using them as studios in exchanges of cultural activities in Hangzhou.

The house assigned to Stan Lai is a minimalist-styled riverside house in the West Brook Wetland. Through thick ceiling-floor windows on three sides, one can view the idyll scenes of China’s first national wetland park. Words such as reeds, streams, marshy weeds, trees, birds, small bridges, wild fruits, houses and culture accurately define the ambiance. Lai’s studio here is called “My Home in Hangzhou”.

Lai was born in Washington DC, America in 1954. He came back to Taiwan with his family. In 1972, he entered Fu-Jen Catholic University of Taiwan as a student of English major. He worked through the college as a singer in a restaurant in Taipei. After graduation, he went to California and studied drama at University of Berkley. After five years and a Ph.D. degree, Stan Lai came back to Taiwan and taught at the National Taiwan College of Arts, which had just come into being and badly needed qualified teachers.

Stan Lai’s first play started as soon as his teaching career began. “We All Grew Up This way” was staged in 1984 in a college auditorium. The now most successful director’s first endeavor was a flop, watched by an audience of about 100 people including many of his friends and colleagues. Stan Lai was not totally surprised by the lackluster response in Taipei where modern drama was something totally new. He discussed the feedback with his wife Ding Naizhu, also a theater professional, and decided to set up Performance Workshop, a contemporary theater group to revitalize theater in the island province.

Lai’s “This Evening We Perform Xiangsheng” in 1985 was a huge success. The play featured five separate cross-talks (a popular and traditional comedy usually staged by two stand-up comedians). The innovative play portrayed in a humorous way people’s life and mindset forcefully shaped by the fast-moving society. It pulled audiences in. A record company published the play in albums. Lai later produced two sequences on the strength of the first play. They were successes too.

This success was more than a success of a theater director in Taiwan. Local media commented that Stan Lai’s explorations in theater brought something brand new to the audiences in Taiwan who had been long since fed with popular romances on televisions. The local people for the first time turned their attention to Xiangsheng.

“Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land” Lai wrote and directed made him one of the most recognized theater directors in Asia. First performed in 1986 and revived in 1991, the play was later adapted to a film and won Lai important film awards. In 2006, the play came to the mainland and more than 100 performances have been staged across the mainland so far. In 2007, which marked the 100 years of modern drama in China, this masterpiece was elected one of China’s best ten modern dramas over the past 100 years. Lai was ushered into the Hall of Fame for the 100 Years of Chinese Drama.

Stan Lai is a prolific director. Since “Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land”, he has written and directed 28 plays by himself or in partnership with others and 2 films and two sitcoms and directed 22 foreign dramas.

Before the performances of “The Village” in Hangzhou, Lai and his troupe staged his 2009 new play called “Watch Television with Me.” According to Lai, “The Village” is his most enjoyable creation in recent years. He worked in partnership with Wang Weizhong, a very prominent television producer in Taiwan. The play has been the biggest sensation in Taiwan theater in recent years. The village portrayed in the play embodies the residential communities created and inhabited by 600,000 soldiers and their families from the mainland. It is viewed as the biggest success of theater in Taiwan over the past seven years.