"Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring" - the second draft for wikipedia by Ming-Wei

"Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring (暗戀桃花源)" was the second stage plays performed by the "Performance Workshop (表演工作坊)" in 1986, and also the first successful modern stage play in Taiwan. The play is combined with two different stories -a tragedy and a comedy- on the same stage, so that this play is mixed with serious and bantered atmosphere. A remarkable feature of this play is "extemporization", because this play is extemporized by the director, Sheng-Chuan Lai (Stanly Lai, 賴聲川), all actress and actors. The originality renewed the view of Taiwan's drama, and then affected the Asian's performing arts.

This stage play stats that two drama troupes were arranged to have a rehearsal at the same time because of an unknown reason, one of the workshop is playing a modern tragedy named "Secret Love", and the other one is playing a costume comedy named "The Peach Blossom Spring". The problem is, both these two plays have to perform in two days. Since they have only one stage for their rehearsals, how should they do? "Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring" creates a unique experience of stage play by mixing up the costume and modern, sorrow and delight.

This play was first performed on March 3rd, 1986. In these twenty years, the play have been adapted to a movie and revised twice: the first revise was in 1999, and the second will perform in September, 2006. Each performance has its own specifity. The first performation addressed the creation of style of modern play, the first revision in 1999 included some young performer and implied the translation between two generations of performer. The second revision in 2006 involves a famous Taiwanese opera (歌仔戲) group: Ming Hwa Yuan (明華園) in the play. The combination between stage play and Taiwanese opera is another innovation of performance in Taiwan. The success of this play rewrote the Taiwan's history of theatre, and ignited further creative works of modern Chinese drama in Taiwan.

Acknowledgement:
Francesca Silvestrini, review and comments.
Chun-Ying Wei, discussion and comments.