Theater
“When I was a child, my great-grandparents would carry peacock chairs and bring me to the temple square to watch performances,” says Prince Wang, founder of a theatrical company called Yang Cheng. Local temple squares are inseparable from his memories of growing up.
For Wang, temple squares were not only meeting points for him and his friends, but also where people gathered to enjoy traditional Taiwanese operas. On major occasions such as the deities’ birthdays, temples would invite theatrical troupes to put on performances in order to express their gratitude for divine blessings. A stage would be set up on the square, facing the temple. All sorts of characters, wearing exquisite makeup and gorgeous costumes, would act out enthralling scenes that tugged at the heartstrings of the audience. These theatrical splendors left a deep impression on Wang, who used to slink away from other commitments just to watch the performances.
It was during his compulsory military service that Wang decided to choose theater over business as his career. That year, when he told his family that a friend had invited him to attend a pilgrimage, they asked him: “We have Mazu pilgrimages here at home—why would you want to go elsewhere to watch these?” This simple question made Wang think. The Eighteen Villages Mazu Patrol Festival in Taichung and the Nanyao Temple Bengang Pilgrimage in Changhua had been familiar to him since childhood. Both events had a long history, but why were they not widely known in Taiwan?
As a result, Wang decided to quit working in the city and return home to produce a traditional opera about Mazu that would draw wider attention to his hometown and its Mazu worship. After spending three years carrying out field research and collecting oral accounts from older locals, Wang’s Yang Cheng brought out its first production in 2020: Bengang Pilgrimage.
The opera took its cue from an unresolved legal case in the history of the illustrious Lin family of Wufeng, Taichung, and incorporated rituals characteristic of the Bengang Pilgrimage of Changhua’s Nanyao Temple. Rather than confining the action to a temporarily installed theater, the troupe turned the central courtyard of Nanyao Temple into a panoramic stage. It thus harked back to the origins of traditional Taiwanese Opera, which used to be performed on the ground in open-air communal spaces.
Wang tells us that the temple officials at first frowned upon this setup. They were of the opinion that “a theatrical performance in honor of the gods should face the gods, because it is performed for them.” Wang and his team had to explain that their proposed use of the courtyard had a special significance, and that no offence to the deities was intended. It was only after a thorough discussion that the officials gave their consent.
“According to the director’s design, the central hall of the temple [beyond the courtyard] marked a boundary that separated Mazu from the other characters. The goddess remained in the hall, while the mortals were in the courtyard,” Wang says. This spatial pattern forged a conversation between the opera, the courtyard, and the temple itself, as well as instilling a sense of wonder in the audience.
Furthermore, Wang got in touch with the Lin family to arrange for one of Nanyao Temple’s Mazu statues to visit the family before the opera premiered, thus bringing some form of closure to the unresolved case of 150 years ago. “All the thrills and chills evaporate when a performance comes to a close, but I wanted to let people know why we brought out this production. What was its connection with the Lin family? And what could we achieve apart from recovering a lost page of history?” Through the performance, Wang’s troupe defined itself as an heir to the tradition of Taiwanese Opera, while the Lins of Wufeng were able to welcome the belated arrival of Mazu. Bengang Pilgrimage healed historical wounds by reconstructing and retelling the Lin family’s story in an authentically Taiwanese way.
On the evening of the premiere, Nanyao Temple’s central courtyard was all hustle and bustle, as if it was once again witnessing the heyday of religious worship, with locals from all walks of life gathering here to fulfill their spiritual needs. The popularity of the opera seems to bear out what Lin Junming, chairman of the Wufeng Lins Company, said to Wang: “If this production can move the audience, and encourage them to join the Bengang Pilgrimage and visit the Wufeng Lin Family Mansion and Garden, then that will be the first step to success.”
Prince Wang, founder of Yang Cheng, has fond memories of the square in front of the sea goddess Mazu’s Nantian Temple in Wufeng, Taichung.
Director Li Yun used the stone steps as a boundary separating the mortals in the temple courtyard from the deities inside the temple. This made it easier for the audience to understand the relationships between the characters. (photo by Liao Wenyao, courtesy of Yang Cheng)
A scene from Bengang Pilgrimage. Mazu and her guardian spirits Qianliyan (“Thousand-Mile Eyes”) and Shunfeng’er (“Wind-Following Ears”) stand inside the temple, facing the audience, as if their statues had come to life. (photo by Xu Zhihao, courtesy of Yang Cheng)
When Yang Cheng’s opera Mazu’s Birthday premiered at Nantian Temple in Wufeng, the deities of the local Eighteen Villages, Nanyao Temple’s Mazu statue, and the statue of Lin Wencha (an ancestor of the illustrious Lin Family of Wufeng) were all invited to a feast and to watch the performance together. (photo by Liao Wenyao, courtesy of Yang Cheng)