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At Paris's Théâtre du Soleil in June 2000, Taiwanese actor Wu Hsing-Kuo performed a half-hour solo piece presenting his own remarkable synthesis of Shakespeare's King Lear and the Chinese theatrical form jingju (known in the West as Peking opera).1 Wu is an acclaimed Taiwanese jingju practitioner and the leading actor in the Contemporary Legend Theatre (CLT), which he founded in 1986. In 1999, disillusioned with his personal and artistic life, he disbanded the company and quit the stage. After being invited by Theatre du Soleil's founder, Ariane Mnouchkine, to run a three-week jingju workshop, Wu returned to the stage with his individualistic interpretation of King Lear. After the performance, as Wu later recounted, "Mnouchkine walked slowly towards me. She held my shoulders with both of her hands, and said emotionally: 'Wu Hsing-Kuo, you must carry on the creative life of the Contemporary Legend Theatre. You must go back to the theatre. Otherwise, I'll kill you!'"2
Indeed, Mnouchkine's words affirmed Wu's determination to return to his jingju profession and his earlier ambition to revitalize this traditional Chinese genre. Wu and the CLT reappeared in Taiwan with the premiere at the Taipei Novel Hall in July 2001 of the full-length solo work Li Er zaici, written, directed, and performed by Wu. The production's title could be translated into English as Li Er (Lear) Is Here; the expanded title supplied in the program notes is King Lear: Wu Hsing-Kuo Meets Shakespeare. Wu did not aim to present zjingju adaptation of Shakespeare's play but rather to create his own unique fusion of materials quarried from both Western and Chinese theatrical traditions. Coming two years after Wu's severe personal crisis, this production clearly marked a turning point in his life and career.
Over the three acts of Li Er zaici, Wu presented nine principal characters from King Lear-Lear, the three daughters, the Fool, Kent, Gloucester, and Gloucester's two sons. In addition, he appeared as himself confronting his personal and professional dilemmas of 2001. In traditional Chinese musical theater, of which jingju is a preeminent genre, actors' roles are strictly categorized, and it is extremely rare for any performer to attempt a part outside his particular specialty. Yet in this production, Wu's roles spanned six conventional jingju character types: wusheng (the...