1. The First Encounter
As previously documented, Group 1 was composed with aged actors from “Si Lin Men” theatric troupe. Comprising with four males and eight females, these members were aged 62 to 90, all having retired from government offices, businesses, schools, and some were housewives. Their personalities could be sensed not only from their participation in performances, but also from what they wished to be called.
Some, for example, cheerful old ladies preferred to be nicknamed Tao Tze (after a name used by a famous TV hostess which sounds similarly as “peach” in Chinese), Bamboo Green, Kung Hueu Hwa (named as a famous Hong Kong porn movie star), or Black Cat. On the other hand, gentlemen were named as How Yea-Yea (good grandpa), Flying Squirrel, Bright Piggy, Si-Shih15
The classroom was quickly warmed up right after self introductions were held by the members of Group 1, and it was easily observed that abovementioned names did bring an obvious effect upon young students, who then began to report their baby names and nicknames in front of the whole class. Of course some of the students’
fashionable names immediately caused small disturbances since they might not be known, or even understandable, to the seniors, but the laughing results remained.
(a leading beauty in the 5th century B.C. in Chinese history).
It seems that the students, like the aged ones, became easy to get along with. In the authors’ teaching experiences, such a warm occasion in the first meeting was not common at all, a phenomenon worthy of attention in the future communication research relating to this kind of unpredicted encounters with the aged people.
Soon after the self-introduction session, all the attendants were then grouped into small parties and played their first impromptu piece together. To the teachers’ surprise, nursery rhymes and children songs were quickly adopted by almost all the parties. It is hard to tell which age group is in fact leading the other. However, it is possible that, since members of Group 1 knew little about pop songs and current day hits, the situation forced them to all choose whatever they remembered since childhood.
15 The name of Si-Shih has often been used in the Chinese society as a metaphor to describe beautiful women. It was said that Si-Shih’s reflection in water has been so beautiful that even fish forgets how to swim and therefore sunk into deep water. See http://baike.baidu.com/view/6732.htm
(Picture here shows one of the five mixed groups singing “Little Lamb Wants to Go Home.” This group had two senior actors (centers) and four students.)
The interaction which came after the self introduction session was worthy of future examination. What were the elements which attracted people to group themselves together in spite of age differences? What was the role of “age” in attraction? Why were the children songs, but not newly learned ones, remained in memory for a long time? Was it true that in some social interactions the greater the age difference the greater the attraction?
2. The First Rehearsal
The first rehearsal came two months later after the first stage of acquaintance.
During the two months of time lag, each group held its own practices in acting. As different from what is expected from the beginning of the class, Group 1 worked up a script, with the help from Ms. Tsai, about how people survived from the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).
It is clear that these senior members in Group 1 were not prepared at all to perform impromptu pieces on the stage. Although Ms. Tsai and her aged actors simply hoped students in Group 2 to portray all the young roles in the play as scripted, this unexpected result was approved and taken seriously if not respectfully.
It was noting that students were not shy or dumb at all. According to the
instructor’s knowledge, students enrolled in National Chengchi University were among the top 10%, some even top 2%, high school students in Taiwan before they passed the entrance examination held annually. Bright with good senses in general, they quickly accepted the new proposal of playing the minor roles following the proposed script. However, these students did not give up the idea of doing improvisations on stage. The negotiated result was that the students would design three impromptu pieces to present their talents in Act 2.
At the first rehearsal, students quickly noticed that they needed to help some of the aged actors who easily forget their and lines probably resulted from the aging symptom. They, for example, often stood at wrong spots in a scene and were confused when the scene changed. It is also noticed that, without any guidance and assignment from the class instructor, students were volunteered as assistants to the aged actors, sometimes even worked as their utility persons. When walk-on parts assigned, students were responsible to lead and stage the major roles to their proper positions.
(The picture shows that, in rehearsal, the young students played as nurses to a pair of aged sisters who were separated because of the War. The students were responsible to stage the aged actors to their spot on cue. And due to the mobility problem of these senior actors, they were assigned to be pushed around on moveable chairs to ensure the timing of the entrance and the dramatic effect of the play.)
A great difference in the learning ability between the two groups was easily
observed since the whole three-hour class time was used entirely to practice Act One, which is a scripted drama about Group 1 members’ personal memories of the Sino-Japanese War. No one in the class had any chance to get familiar with what Act Two would be. Apparently the problem was a failure in time management.
It was then wondered which kind of attitude was appropriate toward the situation when slow learners were involved. The only possibility might be to practice Act 2 earlier in the following rehearsal, while pre-arrangement or some kind of agreement on the use of time should also be placed with students beforehand.
3. Interactions during rehearsals
The main theme of Act One was reminiscent, which clearly shows that what happened in the past was unforgettable and could be (re)told. It is observed, for example, that life memories in the Sino-Japanese War remained vividly to most members of Group 1. Ironically enough, while some of these senior members fought for the Chinese Army against the Japanese during the war, some others served in the opposite Royal Japan Army since Taiwan during the wartime was still colonized by Japan and young male residents were drafted involuntarily to the battlefields including the Chinese mainland.
Such conflict in identities served as the strong historical backgrounds in the script, which nevertheless also depicted how Taiwan today is becoming a melting pot to allow everyone acculturated as the Taiwanese, allowing different members from either China or Japan living here to join the same performance troupe “Si Lin Men.”
Stories concerning the past were usually told and heard from one side and one side only. The foe was therefore always on the other side and it was always “they”
who were blamed for all the misfortunes in the War. Students, on the other hand, grown from different family backgrounds, were often told how previous generations had been seriously suffered due to faults of the so-called “they enemies.” It was strange enough, then, that suddenly there were people from both sides telling their own true stories together; students were astonished in hearing the script.
As the authors have previously introduced that Group Two was composed of 15 young students with quite different family backgrounds. In fact, other than three students from Malaysia, one from Japan, and one from Korea, the remaining 10 were either descendents from families which either speak Mandarin or speak the local dialect Taiwanese.
During the War, Taiwanese young men were Japanese soldiers who fought against Chinese, Korean, and people in the South Pacific and South China Sea, including Malaysia. Here and now, offsprings from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Malaysia were all gathered in one classroom at the same time to hear stories told by persons who were actually foes in that War.
(The picture shows one of the leading actor recites his war experiences in rehearsal. In the drama, he is a Taiwanese soldier drafted by the Royal Japan Army and fought in the Philippines. He then comes back after the War and tries to find his poor wife. In real life, however, he is originally from Mainland China. Note how students were crowded behind the curtains to pay attention to the story.)
To play a historical event on stage is often fictional. Although the major storyline
and some of the historical events are preserved in the play, it is still fictional in many aspects as in most narratives,16 despite it may remain convincing to the immediate audience. Does the process of interaction sustain the factuality of oral history? Does oral history provided by the aged always to be considered “truth”?
4. Differences between the groups
Several differences observed in the rehearsals were also worthy of reporting. As shown in the following table, it was noticeable and to our surprises that the three stories improvised by the students were all associated with death. It might have happened by coincidence but it did arouse the instructor’s curiosity because the subject did touch the social taboo since it was often related to the aged people.
It is natural for young people to play death who may have played death for numerous times since their childhood. However, with many aged actors watching without laughing or talking about the subject, the scene somehow did not fit to the immediate social context.
It is worthy of discussion about when, how, and why a teacher should say or not to say something about the subject dealing with the social taboo like death. This problem remains as a question for future attention since the authors did not query at all why they chose to act as such. And the problem must be a question which deserves further research because all three impromptu groups suddenly changed their stories in the next rehearsal without explanation. How and why did the students decide to do a different piece for final presentation?
16 Many historical events indeed are narratives in nature, see related chapters in D. Herman (1999) (Ed.). Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press.
Table 1: Differences between the two age groups in presenting the final project
Group 1 (senior citizens) Group 2 (young students) Theme in the story life, reunion death, separation
Set past, another place here and now
Plot complex simple
Characters children, young and old men young men & women
Style sentimentalism farcical
Performance to live a life to play
Language formal post modern, ill logic
Tempo slow fast
Stage directions dependent to director self instructed
Stage lines memorized impromptu
Physical movement little heavy
Emotion strong shallow