On May 9 and 10 of 2009, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Lan-lin Theater (蘭陵劇坊)and the 70th birthday of its then instructor Wu Jingji(吳靜吉), three generations of actors of the theater performed the drama again with “acting relays.” Each character had his ax to grind and each tried to cheat others in the plot of the drama, and its natural and hilarious dialogs made the audience burst into laughter. Moreover, as the performing skills of the actors were perfect, theater critic Hung Hung (鴻鴻)called the drama “a living modern theater history of Taiwan.” As the celebrations of “Lan-lin 30th Anniversary • The Legend Lives on” were underway, I read articles on numerous scholars and experts home and abroad such as Wu Jingji(吳靜吉), Shih Kuang-Sheng(石光生), Chung Ming-Der(鍾明德), Yu Shan-Lu (于善祿)and so on. However, to these scholars and experts, the historical position of Hezhu Xinpei mainly stayed at the physical training of Lan-lin Theater and at its influence on the drama and the theatrical circles and ignored the value of Hezhu Xinpei itself. Therefore, the thesis attempted to construct its status from historical inheritance, drama creation and theatrical performance.
The entire thesis of Research of Hezhu Xinpei is around 120,000 Chinese characters long, and it is divided into eight chapters. The first chapter outlines its research motivation, methods, scope and difficulties, and the content of the remaining chapters are as follows:
First, in historical inheritance, to comprehend the origin and development of Hezhu Xinpei, the second chapter compiled and organized related documents and information from the Tang and Five Dynasties, the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and the Ming and Qing Dynasties to the Republican Period and referred to the drawing techniques of Liu Hui-Fen's(劉慧芬) Jing Ju Ju Ben Bian Zhuan Li Lun Yu Shi Wu(《京劇劇本編撰理論與實務》) to draw the relationship diagram of characters to reveal the origin and development of the literature of common people. By the method of induction and analysis, the third chapter reviewed the inheritance and integration of hopes, aspiration or self-reflection of creators of each period when they faced the change of politics in their nations and the transformation of their society and economy to display the status and value of the theme and thought of Hezhu Xinpei in history and culture.
Second, in drama creation, the article From Hezhu Pei to Hezhu Xinpei(〈從《荷珠配》到《荷珠新配》〉) written by Huang Mei-Hsu(黃美序) points out that Hezhu Xinpei has borrowed a lot of language, words, plots and movements from Hezhu Pei, and Chin Shih-Chieh (金士傑)indicated that inheritance or replacement between the two dramas could not be recalled after many times of adaptations. Therefore, the fourth chapter compared and analyzed the inheritance or replacement of the two dramas from language, words and theatrical movements. Although Hezhu Xinpei was absorbed and adapted from Hezhu Pei, it can trigger ardent resonance, so there must be places where it exceeds Hezhu Pei. Therefore, the second section of the fourth chapter found the features of Hezhu Xinpei that are superior to those of Hezhu Pei through the comparison and analysis of their dramatic structures, language and movements.
In theatrical performance, how actors shape and interpret characters influences the audience's understanding of the content of a drama and indirectly urges the extension of the life of a drama. However, Hezhu Pei and Hezhu Xinpei belong to different genres of drama, and thus, “ping yi three theory” (評藝三論)and “body language” were adopted to serve as the research methods of the fifth and sixth chapters to view the implementation of each actor on performing art in researching into the prototypes of characters and innovative issues. Moreover, the performance of dramas should be based on the aesthetic taste of the audience and the trend of the times to design dramas. Therefore, the seventh chapter reviewed the era background of the creation of Hezhu Xinpei and the effect of stage performance and reviewed the implementation of different stage forms such as “how well they perform” and “whether they are worthwhile” in accordance with Yao Yi-Wei's(姚一葦) “art is performance”(藝術即表現) and Edward A. Wright's(愛德華•賴特) “praises three questions” (歌德三問題)to find out a theatrical style that kept up with the times and the reason why it did not arouse great theatrical trend as it had in the 1980s.
Although Hezhu Xinpei is not a brand-new work, through the compilation and organization of historical documents, comparison and analysis of creation and presentation of theatrical performance, we can understand why Hezhu Xinpei is not submerged by the times and comprehend its value and meaning of circulating widely.