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SCMP Reporter

RUNNING an avant-garde feminist theatre company is not easy. And when, a day before the Hong Kong premiere, one member of the cast walks out and disappears in a huff, running a touring feminist avant-garde theatre group is not easy either.

  This week the Taipei-based company Shakespeare's Wild Sisters is scheduled to make its first appearance in Hong Kong with a production called Three Color-haired Women Dance Upon a Broom, a piece about three lesbians with an attitude and big hair.

  The company flew into the territory on Tuesday night with a trunkful of wigs and a general determination to make a positive impact among local theatre-goers.

  However arguments between the cast late yesterday afternoon led to one of the three actors walking out, and the performance being put on hold.

  The South China Morning Post talked to the director Wei Yingchuan yesterday morning, a few hours before the walk-out drama. She described the show as a story of gender politics, body politics and lesbian politics.

  'There are three women because that number means that there will be a natural imbalance within the relationships,' she said. 'Sometimes they get on well with each other: sometimes there is an eternal triangle and there are terrible arguments.

   'I want to show gay relationships being like straight relationships. They aren't very different anyway - you love someone, do they love you?'   Gay rights in Taiwan are rather underdeveloped, she admitted.

  'It is a difficult issue to talk about in Taiwan, there are so many traditional attitudes,' she said.

  The producer, Angela Ma, said many of her lesbian friends were afraid to tell their parents they were gay.

  'I did know one friend who came out to her family and her mother really accepted it - her girlfriend became like another of her daughters,' Ma said.

  Everyone around the table looked suitably impressed. 'That's only one case,' Ma said, with a laugh.

  'No one else has such a good story.'   Other friends have even been sent to hospital by their parents when they came out. 'People think there must be something wrong with their brains if they prefer women to men,' Ma said.

  Three Color-haired Women is not traditional mime, but it is a performance without any particular language.

  'We just focus on the human voice, without specifying what language is spoken,' Wei explained, adding they did this because they believed their subject was universal, and they wanted to be understood by people all over the world. 'And also I believe that most lesbian and gay people are silent in a heterosexual society. The lack of sound is symbolic.'   Their shows in Taipei earlier this month were to an 80 per cent female audience.

  'There were both straight women and gay women who watched our play and said they were very moved: they said how it is good to show women in strong roles,' Wei said.

  Actor Aileen Liu said it was very important for her to be working in an environment where women are independent.

  'When I was in high school I wanted to be a wife,' she said, by way of illustration.

  'I wanted to have a husband and children and I wanted to look after them: many women who I grew up with think that way still.'   And now? 'Now I want to learn, I want to move around, see the world, be myself.'   The group took its name from an essay written by Virginia Woolf in the 1920s, called Shakespeare's Sister.

  Woolf argued that even if William Shakespeare had a sister who was as brilliant as him, she would still not have been able to publish any plays.

  Instead, as a girl, she would have found it hard to get the kind of education that was needed to know about life beyond Stratford-upon-Avon.

  And even if she had taught herself to read, had talked to people - as her brother had - who could help her expand her mind, and had the courage to run away to London, she would probably have been made pregnant by a lecherous theatre manager and have ended up as a sad suicide at a crossroads outside the city.

  In the same essay Woolf said that every time she read of a witch being burned at the stake, she thought of yet another potential genius whose life had been wasted.

  The essay had affected Wei very strongly: her 19 plays written so far have been full of witches. In this work, the three women appear as dolls with a difference.

  'Most people think of dolls as innocent and pure. An ideal of womanhood perhaps. I want to subvert the stereotypical image of dolls so they are not innocent,' Wei said.

  'I want them to move like witches. For me, witch-burning is a symbol of the way women have been persecuted when they try to be different.'   Wei is also interested in the politics of the body: 'I want to look at women's bodies and how our images of ourselves have been altered by men. For example many people feel that women's menstruation is dirty; they don't want to speak about it.

  'But I want us to speak about it, because it is not dirty. It is something that brings us closer to nature, and so makes us stronger. It is what, partly, defines us as women, and we don't want to be ashamed of that.'   The theatre group is made up of 15 people, although only six are in Hong Kong for Three Colour-haired Women.

  'There are lesbian women and straight women in the group; we don't discriminate,' Wei said.

  'And there is one man, but he is a feminist,' she said, indicating the theatre lighting technician, who - with his dyed red hair - looked suitably avant-garde to be part of the group.

  They all graduated from the National Taiwan University together. Wei and Ma are now graduate students in theatre studies in New York: the others live in Taiwan, studying, making commercials, and supporting their interest in avant-garde theatre - which will not support them full-time.

  'We used to perform in bars and cafes and little studio theatres,' Liu said. 'Sometimes outdoors even, just to keep performing.'   There is very little government arts development funding for such groups; performers have to work in full-time jobs to support their avant-garde habit, and venues are sometimes hard to find. The avant-garde theatre scene is strong in Taiwan and growing very quickly. 'It is chaotic but very powerful,' she said. 'People have original and creative ideas. The avant-garde is still new in Taiwan.' Three Color-haired Women Dance Upon the Broom, Shakespeare's Wild Sisters' Group. Fringe Studio. Scheduled to open today at 7pm - $60 ($45) 



Of sisters, witches and lesbian love