AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Opera - from Italy to France to Russia to the New World, audiences experience war and love and betrayal and more, all grandly spilled across the stage. Opera is particularly loved in Taiwan, where it's performed in the Hokkien, one of the Island's main languages and, as NPR's Emily Feng reports, also has some casting curveballs.
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EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Taiwanese opera, or koa-a-hi in Taiwanese Hokkien, first started here nearly two centuries ago in northern Taiwan.
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UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (Singing in non-English language).
FENG: And the weight of that history weighs on rehearsals for the Yilan Opera Troupe. They've got a big show in a few days. So one of their lead actors strides in, playing a famous male warrior, all masculine swagger and aggression.
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FENG: But when the scene ends and the actor's shoulders relax, it is obvious she is a woman.
LING ZHILIN: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: The actor, Ling Zhilin, says she at first resisted being cast as a man but now finds it the ultimate creative challenge.
LING: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Transforming her gait, her body language, even her face with elaborate costumery and hours of heavy makeup for every performance.
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FENG: Women playing men, what's called xiaosheng, is so common, indeed almost required, in Taiwanese opera that its most famous actors are almost always gender-bending women. Huang Yu-fei, the troupe's director, explains this has to do with the fact that koa-a-hi is often about raunchy love stories.
HUANG YU-FEI: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: And so in the early 20th century, when social mores were more conservative in Taiwan, Huang says it was more acceptable for women to watch two female actors, one playing a man, pretend to be in love on stage. Loosely banned during Japanese colonization of Taiwan for being too similar to Chinese opera, then later derided as not Chinese enough under authoritarian rule, Taiwan opera only really developed in the 20th century.
HUANG: So I just take - take some notes.
FENG: And as the genre developed, scholar Jasmine Chen, who studies koa-a-hi at Utah State University, says fans actually grew to prefer women playing men.
JASMINE CHEN: It's represent the idealized male image, based on a woman's viewpoint. And when a woman perform a man onstage, it may make other women feel less aggressive.
FENG: As in tempering the natural aggression in a male character.
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UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (Singing in non-English language).
FENG: The reverse, men playing women, is also very popular in koa-a-hi.
CHANG MIN-JYUN: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Actor Chang Min-jyun does just that. Men like to be in costume, he says, and be beautiful, too.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Chang is part of the Minanyu Theater Troupe in Taipei, run by two opera veterans, now in their 70s and 80s. They are some of the few people who still remember all the complicated choreography and classic productions, down to the hand gestures for certain characters.
CHENG FENGGUI: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: And director Cheng Fenggui chuckles, they also remember the physical punishment. She was spanked with a mop handle if she couldn't memorize lines. Their stable of actors are in their 20s, too soft to hit, Cheng jokes. They've been trained with subsidies from Taiwan's Ministry of Culture. And with interest in opera budding again, koa-a-hi is making a bit of a comeback.
CHEN YA-LAN: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: By far the most famous diva in Taiwanese opera now is this woman, Chen Ya-lan. She and her mentor, Yang Li-hua, are both renowned for only playing male roles.
CHEN: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Born into a family opera troupe, Chen said she was chosen to play male roles because she's tall. She notes some of her early fans didn't even know she was a woman at first, so enamored were they with her performances...
CHEN: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: ...In which, Chen says, she plays the heroic, handsome men women wish their husbands were like.
CHEN: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: With its elaborate satin costumes and stylized makeup, koa-a-hi has overlapped with modern-day drag queens, Chen says. Drag queens and Taiwanese opera actors both try to express the truest form of each character. Chen, now 58 years old, is still a tireless evangelist for Taiwanese opera, which she argues is uniquely Taiwanese...
CHEN: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: ...Because it puts Taiwan's gods, its language and its stories to song. Emily Feng, NPR News, Taipei, Taiwan.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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