Lai Shengchuan: Everything you have done is like someone is keeping an account, reincarnating to your side

01 The leader of Asian theater

In 1983, Lai received his Ph.D. in theater in the United States. At that time, Taiwan was a real theatrical desert. The theater market is deserted, there is no decent theater, no one watches the play, and even the university does not open a theater major.

That year, Lai Shengchuan returned to Taiwan to teach, becoming one of the earliest pioneers of Taiwan's modern theater. In his view, it was not a bad era, but a golden age of theatrical pioneering and literary and artistic recovery.

The earliest attempt was to organize students to improvise en masse. Based on the students' real life experience, Lai Shengchuan completed the first drama work "We All Grew Up This Way" with them.

In 1984, fifteen actors performed in a very humble theater, two in a row. There were more than 200 spectators sitting under the stage, including Yang Dechang, Hou Xiaoxian, Wu Nianzhen, Jin Shijie, and so on. People were amazed at the natural flow of their performances and their very different styles from previous plays.

In November of the same year, Lai Shengchuan, together with Li Guoxiu and Li Liqun, established a performance workshop that became famous in the future.

In 1985, the stage play "That Night, We Say Crosstalk" was staged, and Taiwanese Crosstalk came back to life because of it.

In 1986, Lai Shengchuan's "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden" premiered, causing a huge sensation, and to this day, more than thirty years later, it is still a classic. The real meaning of these two plays is not in the box office, but in allowing many audiences to enter the theater for the first time and appreciate the charm of the theater.

In 2000, he completed the most breakthrough and amazing work in his theater work for more than twenty years, "Like a Dream". The eight-hour-long play, bold and innovative in form, has been called "a major milestone in Chinese drama".

The new theater aesthetics and profound humanistic feelings created by Lai Shengchuan have made him a well-deserved "leader of Asian theater".

02 Life's first setbacks and blows

Lai Shengchuan was born in the United States, and when he was 12 years old, his father transferred back to Taipei.

He was a gifted student in the United States who could skip grades, but when he arrived in Taiwan, he became the worst student. On one exam, his transcripts were all in red. On a 100-point scale, he only scored 9 points in mathematics and about 20 points in Chinese, and was laughed at by the whole class.

After about a month, he couldn't stand it anymore and said to his father, "I can't do it, I'm going to transfer to an American school." ”

His father rejected him as soon as he took a bite. In the end, there was no way but to repeat the grade.

Next, his father fell ill and got cancer.

One day when he was 14 years old, he was in a hospital in Taipei, and his mother told him, "Father will not be well." He was completely stunned, and his mother's words were like thunderbolts on a sunny day. He knew he was about to lose his father.

The blow of his father's death changed his entire course, making him feel at a loss for the future, meaning that he would face a huge test in his future life.

Many things seem to have their own arrangements in the dark. Lai Shengchuan later completed junior high school, high school, and college in Taiwan.

After he finished college, he met his wife, Ding Naizhu. They applied to the University of California, Berkeley, where Lai Shengchuan read theater and Mrs. Ding Naizhu read education. They worked on the program for two years to save money.

Less than a month after going to the United States, they got the news that the money they had saved was taken by a friend to invest in the company, and then the company went bankrupt, that is, it went bankrupt, and the money was gone. What to do?

His father had an old classmate who opened a restaurant in San Francisco, and they called, and his old classmate listened to it and said, "Come here, go to the restaurant." ”

03 After 5 years of part-time study, he got a doctorate and gave birth to a daughter

Lai Shengchuan said that he had never been so tired: he had been walking around at half past five, until half past eleven, he had no chance to go to the toilet, he had been collecting things, he had been helping to lay out new tablecloths, and so on.

Lai Shengchuan said that almost every day there are things that are reprimanded by guests, that place is very expensive, some guests have a very bad temper, he came to spend money, is to be served.

He (the guest) would say, "Come here! How do you do this..." "I'm sorry. "I'm sorry for what?" Then start scolding you and discipline you. Then all that can be said is, "I'm sorry, we were wrong." ”

Lai Shengchuan was asked why he was so tolerant?

He replied, "In life, you have to be thankful, you have to thank these people, he is so bad to you, you have to learn something from him, like to endure humiliation." When a guest brings his girlfriend, he wants to show off his authority in front of his girlfriend. Okay, I'll cooperate with you. ”

The psychology of the guests is seen through by Lai Shengchuan, who treats those experiences as watching and cooperating with the act.

Over time, he found a wonderful thing, that is, the guests like to chat with the running hall.

They say, what is your background? Lai Shengchuan replied: "I am a doctor of drama at Berkeley. As soon as this sentence came out, there was silence. No one will pick up the words that the drama is so interesting, the other party will suddenly feel very uncomfortable, and the tip will not be too much.

Later, people asked, "What is your background?" ”

Lai Shengchuan said: "Our family opens a laundromat in Chinatown. ”

The other person said, "Well, you're working very hard." "Tipping will be a lot in the end.

What makes many experiences feel really precious is that you see humanity in them.

I worked in that restaurant for 5 years and studied for 5 years. It was also in those 5 years that Lai Shengchuan got his doctorate at the fastest speed and gave birth to a daughter. He sighed: "This is a time in my life that I miss very much. ”

04 Strange fate

In Lai Shengchuan's later repertoire, from "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden" to "Treasure Island Village" to "Book in the Water", some strange fates are delicately portrayed.

Lai Shengchuan's first visit to India was in 1988. A mountain town in northern India is called Biel. There was no water, no electricity, no roads, and it was an eighteen-hour drive from Delhi.

After living for a while, Mrs. Ding Naizhu said that she wanted to take a bath. Soon after, they saw an old lady coming down from the top of the mountain with a large bucket of water, and then Ding Naizhu couldn't bear to waste it, so he used the bucket of water to take a bath, wash his hair, wash his clothes, and he was reluctant to pour it out, thinking that the water was too precious.

Later, he asked some local friends how much it cost to get water, how much electricity to get on, how much it cost to repair the road, and at that time it was about thirty thousand US dollars to complete all this.

In 1988, Lai Shengchuan returned to Taipei to find some friends and said, "Let's raise some money." "Then the road was really paved and the water and electricity were connected. The second time I went, there was water and electricity.

In 2009, Lai Shengchuan's daughter was getting married, and the daughter and her husband met in India, and the town they decided to have a wedding was called Bill.

Then they went to the wedding, and the water they drank, the electricity they used, and the roads they took were all made by Lai Shengchuan. It's been almost 20 years.

Lai Shengchuan's experience tells us that this is a very profound education, people live in the world, every minute, a second, everything must be more cherished. Because everything you were doing at that time was actually like someone was keeping this account, and the things that surrounded reincarnation would one day come back to you.

As Dong Qing said: No one exists in this world as an isolated island, and we always have relationships with everyone around us.

So, be nice to people.

END