Wei appears on stage in black shirt and pants, with only simple makeup, departing radically on both counts from Peking Opera tradition. She careens quickly about, now laughing dementedly, now going completely silent. And then suddenly she is stock-still. On-stage illumination is limited to a small, roaming spot that calls attention at different times to a hand gesture, a pose, a facial expression, and then... wait a minute! Where has she gotten off to? Oh, there she is! Not standing, not sitting, not jumping-no, she's lying down. That's right, flat out on the floor. But what's that in her hands? A sword? Lance? Scarf? Folding fan? No, it's a human skull!

It is early 2009, and Wei is appearing in Orlando, one of the main attractions this year at the National Theater and Concert Hall. The East Asian version of Orlando was created specifically for Wei by renowned American theater director Robert Wilson.

During the performance, the European Orlando of Virginia Woolf's original novel is converted into a man from the Tang dynasty, and like Woolf's character he lives for 400 years and switches gender. Wei is stretched to the limit as she bounces between yin and yang, masculine and feminine voices, depression and elation. Her character is by turns mysterious, ambiguous, enchanting, alluring. Even though it's just Wei on the stage, the members of the audience are glued to their seats through the whole performance.

Wei Hai-min is a follower of the Mei school of Peking Opera, but has added much of her own interpretation to her performances, and seeks to capture the spirit rather than the form of the Mei school. She is shown here rehearsing for a 2008 tribute to the four great Peking Opera masters, attended by Mei's son.

First revolutionary step

Wei tested into the Haiguang Chinese Opera School at the age of 10, and after graduating became the Haiguang Chinese Opera Troupe's leading portrayer of "flower females" (in Peking Opera, the role of a vivacious maidservant, demimondaine, adulteress, or any woman of dubious character or reputation) and "black-dress females" (the role of a respectable, dignified young woman). Since being named the best performer in 1976 by the ROC Culture and Arts Association, Wei has gone on to win countless awards and accolades.

Any other performer with Wei's solid grounding in the fundamentals of traditional Chinese opera and years of on-stage experience might have been content to let their career path take a more orthodox trajectory, but to keep a promise to her good friend and avant-garde stage performer Wu Hsing-kuo, she gutsily veered away from the road more traveled and became a bridge between traditional and modern theater, performing in a number of trailblazing performances, including works of modern Peking Opera (Kingdom of Desire and Medea) and stories that have never been performed in the form of Peking Opera, like Wang Shi-Fong-The Most Scheming Woman in Dreams of the Red Chamber and The Golden Cangue, created by the GuoGuang Opera Company. Her position as Taiwan's top performer of women's roles in Peking Opera has been unchallenged since the 1990s.

Kingdom of Desire, which premiered in 1986, was the first work in which Wei left behind the stylized acting of traditional Chinese opera and moved from "imitation" toward "creation." Or to put it another way, she upgraded from "actress" to "author."

Kingdom of Desire is an adaptation of Macbeth by Contemporary Legend Theater. Set in ancient China's Warring States period, the performance tells the tale of General Aoshu Zheng, who begins plotting with his wife to usurp the throne after returning to the capital from distant conquests and hearing along the way from a spirit in a forest that he is destined to become king. In the ensuing intrigue, he kills his dear friend the Prince of Ji and his faithful lieutenant Meng Ting. Tormented by his guilty conscience, at the banquet marking his ascension to the throne a drunken Aoshu Zheng sees the ghost of Meng Ting. In the meantime Lady Aoshu, troubled both by the escape of Meng Ting's son and the miscarriage of her own child, goes insane and kills herself.

Unlike the stark contrast between good and evil characters in traditional Peking Opera, Wei gives a subtly nuanced interpretation of Lady Aoshu as a person with many different facets. She does not directly tell the audience that "here we have a really wicked woman." One the one hand she is calculating, headstrong, and ambitious. On the other, she clearly cares about her husband.

Because no one has ever played any role quite like it before, Wei has no point of reference to look to for guidance. She just has to rely on her own instincts, combining Peking Opera vocal techniques with exaggerated hand and facial gestures from Western theater. She also fuses the conscience-stricken torment of Shakespearian drama with the karmic concepts of East Asia in fleshing out the reality of a woman capable of egging her husband on to kill the king before going insane from the weight of her deeds.

Robert Wilson asked Wei Hai-min to try her hand at something almost unheard of in Peking Opera-a solo performance from start to finish. The pair also experimented with alternatives to the sword and spear normally seen in a Peking Opera performance.

Role on a 20-year roll

In her 1996 autobiography, Wei asserts that "tradition" and "modernity" are not polar opposites, and that the language of theater can be used innovatively, and if done well can bring about unanticipated results.

In creating the stage movements for Lady Aoshu, Wei makes good use of the long, trailing hems of her costume, for example. The long-trained skirt is designed to call to mind the tail of a scorpion, thereby hinting at the venom in the character of the leading lady. In moving about the stage, Wei forcefully "cracks the whip" with the long hem to emphasize the ferocity and decisiveness of Lady Aoshu.

After Wei made a name for herself playing the parts of virtuous, genteel women who "smiled without exposing their teeth, and walked without showing their feet," few could have expected her to take on a shrewish role that called for her to kick up her dress hem with vim, vigor, and viciousness. Her performance was a radical departure from anything familiar to Peking Opera aficionados, and reactions were decidedly polarized. Indeed, Wei herself could not understand the twists and turns in the mental state of Lady Aoshu. Even after playing the role many times, Wei still felt estranged from the Lady, and rejected her.

Says Wei: "I was caught up in a tug-of-war between modernity and tradition, realism and imagism, Western-style description and East Asian stylization. There was almost no way out." In the end, the key to resolution of the impasse was a bold decision to face reality, to keep focusing squarely on Lady Aoshu one performance after another, to keep thinking about the role and reinterpreting it until she was at last satisfied.

"I forced myself to set aside the acting routines I had employed in portraying the 'traditional woman' in Peking Opera, as well as my own easygoing nature. I started by being more exaggerated with my body and facial expressions, and by building myself up psychologically."

Fully 23 years after Kingdom of Desire premiered, the performance remains as powerful as ever. Younger performers practice their craft by learning to imitate the character of Lady Aoshu as created by Wei Hai-min, and her two-decade run with a single character has become lore in Taiwan theatrical circles.

Farewell My Concubine, a work performed in the Mei Lanfang style, includes a sword dance that requires serious skills in swordsmanship, and is a work that Western audiences are sure to ask for by name when Peking Opera troupes tour overseas. Wei Hai-min and Wu Hsing-kuo will perform the work this October, when the Contemporary Legend Theater "gives back" to the traditional theater from which it evolved.

Novel character

After Kingdom of Desire, Wei become even more deeply involved in the creation of atypical Peking Opera protagonists in Medea, Oresteia (set in ancient Troy), Wang Shi-Fong-The Most Scheming Woman in Dreams of the Red Chamber, and The Golden Cangue. For Wei, almost all these works have posed daunting risks and challenges.

Li Siaopin, rehearsal director of the GuoGuang Opera Company, recalls how the noted Hong Kong costume designer Tim Yip was still experimenting with Wei's costume right up to the first day she performed Medea. To stay in keeping with the status of the Lady of Loulan, a princess, Yip made Wei put on headgear weighing several kilos, and the rest of the costume was also extremely elaborate and heavy. People wondered whether Wei would even be able to act under all the accoutrements, but she toughed it out, and now quips: "Tim Yip is very creative, but he doesn't have any appreciation for 'the people's suffering,' as they say. One of these days I should have him put on all that stuff and get up on stage with it!"

All the music for Medea is modern, composed by Hsu Po-yun, while inspiration for the vocals comes from Xinjiang and Tibet. For Wei, with her training in classical Chinese Opera, learning to mimic the unadorned vocal style of far western China presented a special challenge. Though she could not have known it at the time, the highly experimental nature of Medea was good practice for Wei's later forays into the fusion of Eastern and Western theater.

But the greatest challenge in Wei's stage career has been the portrayal of Qiqiao, the lead character in Eileen Chang's The Golden Cangue.

Portraying the part of any character created by Chang would be tough, notes Wei, but Qiqiao is the most complex, the most degenerate, and the most unvarnished, none of which could possibly be more different from Wei's Peking Opera "good-girl" roles, or from her own easygoing personality.

Wei Hai-min was already beginning to do away with the traditional elements of Peking Opera when Medea premiered 16 years ago. The highly experimental nature of Medea was good practice for Wei's later forays into the fusion of Eastern and Western theater.

In character, out of body

To get into character, Wei would spend rehearsal days constantly imagining herself as Qiqiao. What tone of voice would Qiqiao have adopted just now? What sort of gesture would she have made in this situation? What would be the look in her eyes? Even after going to bed, Wei would continue thinking about the role. In the end, Wei didn't just get into character-she herself became the character.

Wang An-chi, art director of GuoGuang Opera Company, has written about just how wrapped up in her character Wei can get.

"The climax of the first act," writes Wang, "comes as Qiqiao discovers that a man has deceived her and concludes that nothing is real but money. To 'protect' her daughter she decides to bind the latter's feet even though the custom has long since fallen by the wayside. Her idea of protection is to keep her daughter always close by her side."

"Qiqiao spreads her arms wide, like an eagle extending its wings, and with eyes ablaze swings a wooden club down upon the arch of her daughter's foot, breaking the bones. Satisfied at last, she exults: 'That'll keep you hobbled!' Cradling her daughter's foot in her lap, a smile creeps across Qiqiao's face as she begins wrapping the foot in a blood-red footbinding cloth. Through the violence of her mien peeks a hint of tenderness, and the trace of an absent stare. Qiqiao enters, trapped now, into a safe world of her own making...."

"The curtain falls, signaling intermission. The stage crew hurries out to change the scenery, but Wei just keeps on wrapping the foot, which she still holds in her lap. Chen Meilan, playing the role of her daughter, is totally confounded by Wei's behavior, and doesn't know whether to pull free and leave, or call Wei back to reality. Crew members slowly move in, not daring to make too much noise. Quietly, gently, they escort Wei, still wobbly on her feet, to the area backstage."

Art director Wang recalls the phone call she got from Wei the day after the troupe had finished performing The Golden Cangue: "Now that I'm done playing Qiqiao, I don't know what I'm still breathing for. Now that the character I created has left the stage, where do I go from here?" Therein lies the secret of Wei's ability to reach artistic heights barely even imaginable to most others!

The Drunken Beauty contains two scenes that are extremely difficult to perform. Wei Hai-min is acknowledged by all as a courtesan with class.

Self-reliance

Wang Dewei, a literary critic and member of the Academia Sinica, opines that the strength of Peking Opera in Taiwan lies in its cooperation with modern theater troupes and frequent experimentation, and he feels that Wei has played a key role in the process.

One of Wei's most daring moves toward Western avant-garde theater came this year with Orlando, which opened in March. A lot of people, in fact, have looked on with apprehension at the sheer distance of the leap she is making.

"She's abandoned the most basic elements of a Peking Opera performer's comfort zone," exclaims Li Siaopin, who says that everything Wei did before, no matter how experimental, was still within the pale of Peking Opera, but this time Robert Wilson has taken everything she's familiar with-stage movements, acting techniques, vocal techniques, and cast-and done away with all of it.

Wilson is an avant-garde American stage director who likes to employ lighting, slow movement, formalized poses, and abstract space to create an on-stage style. He has a strong affinity for Eastern theatrical elements, which are often observed in the works that he directs. Many describe his style as "cross cultural" or "imagist."

Wilson's roots are in the anti-realist school of Western theater; he eschews the artifices that realist theater emphasizes most, such as language, dialogue, and story line.

According to Geng Yiwei, a part-time lecturer in the Department of Theatre Arts at the Taipei National University of the Arts: "Wilson's works are a bit like architecture. They have structure, while the sound effects, the actors' performances, and the stage visuals are all independent and equal theatrical elements. He also doesn't like to emphasize the actors, and opposes the use of scripts. He very famously said: 'I am opposed to actors becoming slaves to a script.' That's why he often asks his actors to step away from the performance, and avoid exaggerated facial expressions and movements."

"Once the director has decided to put on a particular work, the actor cannot allow herself to be consumed by the work, nor can she ride herd over it. The actress has to be sufficiently skilled to strike a proper balance." With these words, director Robert Wilson of Orlando communicated what he expected of Wei Hai-min, and she delivered just what he was looking for, proving that she was not limited to Peking Opera, but a true actress capable of working in any style.

Only art is forever

In this first-ever collaboration between a Western practitioner of modern theater and a performer of Peking Opera, Wei was called on to perform solo, which is extremely rare in Peking Opera. From start to finish, for 120 minutes, the entire work is performed by Wei alone. She had a lot of trouble getting used to it at first, and found it impossible to accept Orlando's switching back and forth between genders, but she managed to persuade herself in the end: "Okay, if you're going to perform it, you've got to face it. You'll get the hang of it sooner or later."

After a lot of rumination and adjustments, Wei and Wilson's Orlando worked out quite brilliantly.

Geng continues: "Wilson's theater has a number of special features-all sorts of sound effects, a clean stage and visuals, and fractured movements and language. But Orlando also has an East Asian air about it, as well. A Peking Opera script in all its aspects-both the classical and the vernacular parts-shows through in Wei's every stage movement and vocal delivery. Maybe that's what Wilson was talking about when he said: "We blend two into one: Orlando is both male and female, Western and Eastern. Orlando is mine, and is also Wei's."

Wei, a Peking Opera performer from Taiwan, in the end became a "great professional" in the eyes of Wilson. Geng Yiwei, who sat in on the entire rehearsal process, got a good feel for the great respect that Wilson's crew had for Wei. Wilson gave her a rose and a hug every day as an encouragement.

"Just go visit Robert Wilson's website," says Geng. Orlando has been put on in other languages and played by some of the best performers in the world. The French actress Isabelle Huppert, for example, is a legend in the world of artistic films, and Miranda Richardson is a Golden Globe and BAFTA-winning actress, but only Wei's name appears on the website.

The role of Qiqiao, the female lead in The Golden Cangue, was tailor-made for Wei Hai-min, who responded by creating many memorable theatrical moments as Qiqiao. She is shown here throwing a handkerchief, which hearkens back to a famous reference by Golden Cangue author Eileen Chang to "a flashy yet sordid hand gesture."

Never satisfied

It appears that Wei has taken her "personal revolution" a step farther this time. Many people don't understand why, after winning such prestige in Taiwan's Peking Opera community, she is still so restless and keeps seeking to outdo herself, as if she were still unproven.

Wei's response is always the same: "I don't feel like I'm there yet." Those who know her well are well aware of how much she demands of herself as an artist. Says Wei: "After a performance, the praise and criticism of others don't count for anything. The only thing that counts is what I myself feel."

I ask her what kind of theater she likes best.

"I like them all!" She gives this same answer every time. She says that it's fun to perform a newly created work because it stimulates one's creativity, but the old standards have such depths that you can never completely plumb them. "The old pieces have been thoroughly refined. You can't possibly appreciate all the subtleties. I have to keep practicing."

Wei and Wu Hsing-kuo will be performing The Drunken Beauty and Farewell My Concubine, a couple of classical Peking Opera works, this coming October, which will be a chance to take all the breakthroughs she's achieved over the years and plow them creatively back into some traditional pieces.

The role of Qiqiao, the female lead in The Golden Cangue, was tailor-made for Wei Hai-min, who responded by creating many memorable theatrical moments as Qiqiao. She is shown here throwing a handkerchief, which hearkens back to a famous reference by Golden Cangue author Eileen Chang to "a flashy yet sordid hand gesture."

Wei Hai-min's portrayal of the evil beauty Lady Aoshu in Kingdom of Desire stands as one of the great performances of Chinese opera.

Wei Hai-min and internationally renowned director Robert Wilson collaborated in 2009 on Orlando, an important step forward in the history of cooperation between Taiwan's theatrical community and its overseas counterparts.

The role of Qiqiao, the female lead in The Golden Cangue, was tailor-made for Wei Hai-min, who responded by creating many memorable theatrical moments as Qiqiao. She is shown here throwing a handkerchief, which hearkens back to a famous reference by Golden Cangue author Eileen Chang to "a flashy yet sordid hand gesture."