Selected Plays of Stan Lai Volume 2: the Village and Other Plays.

497 Pages·2021·4.34 MB·English

by  Stan Lai

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聲
Selected Plays of Stan Lai
川

Selected Plays of Stan Lai
賴
Volume 2:
The Village and Other Plays
聲
Stan Lai
川
Translated by the Playwright
Edited by Lissa Tyler Renaud
University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor
Copyright 2021 by Stan Lai
All rights reserved
No performance, copy, modification, reproduction, distribution, transmission, republication,
etc., may be made without prior express written permission. For application for permission,
please contact Performance Workshop, through their website (www.pwshop.com) or admin@
pwshop.com.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form or
by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods,
without written permission from the publisher. Any such reproduction must provide full cita-
tion, including all information on the title page.
All plays in this volume translated by Stan Lai ©2021 Stan Lai.
Original Chinese version of Millennium Teahouse ( ) ©2000 Stan Lai
《千禧夜，我們說相聲》
Original Chinese version of Sand on a Distant Star ( ) ©2003 Stan
《在那遙遠的星球，一粒沙》
Lai
Original Chinese version of Like Shadows ( ) ©2007 Stan Lai
《如影隨行》
Original Chinese version of The Village ( ) ©2008 Stan Lai and Wang Wei- chung
《寶島一村》
Original Chinese version of Writing in Water ( ) ©2016 Stan Lai
《水中之書》
Published in the United States of America
by the University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid- free paper
First published December 2021
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978- 0- 472- 07508- 9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978- 0- 472- 05508- 1 (paper : alk. paper)
ISBN 978- 0- 472- 12956- 0 (ebook)
Acknowledgments
Thanks to all who have worked so tirelessly to bring these plays to perfor-
mance, and into print, particularly to all the actors who collaborated on the
various works during the creative stage, and to all my colleagues at Perfor-
mance Workshop in Taipei and Theatre Above in Shanghai. Thank you for
your patience in the process, your dedication, and your artistry.
Thanks to Chang Hsiao- yen, for taking the challenge of the journey that
became Sand on a Distant Star; to the Institute for Diversity in the Arts and
the Department of Drama at Stanford University, and the Lark Play Devel-
opment Center, New York, for their assistance in the creation of Like Shad-
ows, particularly to Harry J. Elam Jr. and Michael Ramsaur at Stanford, and
to David Henry Hwang for curating the Lark readings; to Wang Wei-c hung
for sharing his village stories and insisting that I write and direct the work
that became The Village, to the Esplanade, Theatres on the Bay, Singapore,
for its generous help in the initial production of the play; to the Hong Kong
Repertory Theatre for its support in the creation of Writing in Water, and to
the National Theatre, Taipei, which has generously hosted all of these plays
on its stage, including the world premieres of the first four, and to all those
who worked on this project at the University of Michigan Press, for their care
and expertise in bringing the manuscript to print.

Contents
How I Wright Plays 1
How I Translate My Own Plays 7
Introduction to Volume 2, by Raymond Zhou 11
Millennium Teahouse 23
Sand on a Distant Star 141
Like Shadows 207
The Village 285
Writing in Water 421
On the Contributor 483
On the Editor 485
On Stan Lai 487
Digital materials related to this title can be found on the Fulcrum platform
via the following citable URL: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12103829

How I Wright Plays
In noting that the Chinese term for “playwriting” (bianju) means to “weave
a play,” as in weaving fabric or reeds, I am reminded that the English word
“playwright” is spelled with “wright” and not “write.” To “wright” is a whole
different skill from putting pen to paper, as in “wrought iron,” heating metal
to a workable temperature and then shaping it into the desired beautiful
form. The Cambridge Dictionary defines “wright” as “a person who makes or
builds things.” This more accurately reflects the way I create theatrical works,
and makes me wonder: when did they start using what is to me the incor-
rect spelling for “playwrighting”? The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that
in Shakespeare’s times, the word was “play- wright,” with a hyphen, and that in
1898, George Bernard Shaw referred to himself using the other word.
In performance, a play’s script does not exist in text form. It is living
onstage through the bodies, speech, and minds of the performers, and a
complete performance combines the efforts of director, designers and vari-
ous other collaborators in a grand team effort. A playscript may be a written
guide on how to present a theatrical work. It may also be a record of a theatre
piece after the work has been performed. To me, it is like a musical score,
which represents the music, but is not the music itself. You can transcribe
a Charlie Parker solo from a recording, but it is only a representation of the
performance. For a novel, the words are the novel itself, so it is valid that it
be created on paper (or device), to be read on paper (or device). For a theat-
rical work, thus, it is valid, and in my mind organic, to create a work using
the same ecology as the actual performance— on a stage, or in a rehearsal
space, with the performers and designers present. A preexisting text is not
a prerequisite to this process, nor is the process designed to necessarily pro-
duce a text. Some theatre artists work this way, seeing work in the studio as a
more organic and effective approach to theatrical creation than using paper
and pen, or word processing software. It certainly is the standard way that
choreographers work, and in many ways a play is choreography, a dance with
life, between characters and actions and words and thoughts and emotions
and— life. Many composers work with their musicians present, to hear what