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.