The Path of ‘Becoming A Person’ in Mud and Theatre

I went to Guanfu to see Langansan Theatre’s new piece ‘Mayaw Kakalawan--Sakala-tamdaw’. The age range of twenty or thirty performers on stage was wild. The show started with the Tafalong children singing and interspersed with legend ‘The Tale of Two Brothers’ and the indigenous colonial history as two narrative lines. The parallel and condolences of myths, dreams and reality made the audience witness a modern myth of "becoming a person".

The meaning of Sakala-tamdaw is becoming a person. In Tafalong social system, the age class is considered as the real medium of Amis (Pangcah) people’s ‘becoming a person’. However, it allows more possibilities in theatre. The idea of ‘becoming a person’ is attached with Adaw Palaf Langasan’s theatre practice. Now long ago in a forum of tribal theatre, instead of talking about his previous performance in theatre, Adaw started sharing from the founding of ‘Indigenous “Adult” Performing Arts Camp’ in 2002. It was a camp took place at Jinzun beach where all attendees living and learning for 6 days 5 nights together. It grew to a 9 days and 8 nights camp in three years.   

The first thing after the foundation of Langasan Theatre in 2012 was not creating but restoring the performing arts camp. Over thirty attendees coming from various places and different ethnic groups, most of them had no theatre background, met at Waves Café on Provincial Highway 11 where is nearly twenty minutes’ drive to the closest 7-11. They slept in the camps, danced with the sun and climbed Cilangasan, the Amis (Pangcah) holy mountain, in the middle of nowhere.   

The final presentation back then was that Adaw invited the volunteering attendees to join his ‘mud’ performance art work at Makotaay village. Everyone rolling on the ground, letting the mud cover the whole body, singing, and the space reinforced it mutually. Mud was also Adaw’s major choice of material and theme in his performances at the east coast, before he setting up Langasan Theatre. It can be found in Langasan Theatre’s three works since 2012.   

Mud is Adaw’s game memory of childhood. “I used to live in the center of Meilun before I went to primary school. It used to farmland behind. One day, I saw a clear small pond and wanted to paly with water so I took off my clothes. Once I took the first step, the muddy water came up from the bottom. So did it happen as I took the second and third steps. I was a little bit excited about it.” Mud refers to turbidity as well. In ‘The Tale of Two Brothers’, Mayaw and Onak unknowingly cut off their father’s head over clear water source. There are many explanations of this story. Adaw thinks that it is the turbid water confuse the two brothers’ direction so they kill their father. Then they grow up and become real men, then turn into the stars in the sky.   

Mud and two brothers were also the subjects in Langasan Theatre’s first two creations: ‘Misa-Lisin’ and ‘Eternal Niyaro’. There was Adaw’s touch to life, his hometown and myths. He mentioned that it was like a bad dream when he first read it. The reason he wanted to put it on stage was because he found it seemed to connect with Jung’s collective unconscious. In other words, are mud and the tale of two brothers, along with the mirror that appears in Adaw’s performances and theatre works, the medium of becoming a person in his theatre practice? 

“I used to break mirrors in my performances until I was stopped by Hu, Tai-li. One day, I washed the mirror and saw it’s shining and bright. I realized then that people’s heart would change. It is terrible to break a mirror. If one’s heart begun to split, it is very dangerous. People are innocent and can be washed away anytime.” Adaw says. In his first performance piece, ‘My Ritual’, he sang to a broken mirror. Mud is also turbid. However, isn’t stirring up the dark moments like this a kind of chaos leading to creation? 

Adaw mentioned once in an interview that Langasan Theatre’s current practice is the combination of ‘poor theatre, performance art and people’s theatre’. Backtracking his path to theatre, Liu Ching-min, Wang Mo-lin and Jhong Ciao were all his guides, intentionally or unintentionally. The Grotowski’s training that U Theatre did on Laoquan mountain, the truth and willpower of performance art, and the Philippine experience of ‘The Song of The Earth’ which involved political and social issues, focused on the collective improvisation and evil brutal war aesthetics all being deeply buried in his memories and become the nutrient to his theatre work.    

We are always used to classify things. After doing it for a long time, we start to think there is no intersection between classes. If classifying is a professional skill, we clearly make a lot of mistakes on it. It is similar when we talk about indigenous theatre and contemporary theatre in Taiwan. As long as you know Adaw Palaf Langasan a bit more, you’ll see the rich conjunction from both sides. Adaw, as a senior member of Formosa Aboriginal Song and Dance Troupe, is a leading singer of indigenous cultural performances and (Chinese culture) Taiwan modern theatre. He plays an important part in theatre communication, and interaction of cross-region and inter-ethnics groups.