Devising Journal #2

Week 2, 17th August 2022:

In our second session of TS2233 Making Contemporary Performance, we had our first presentation and facilitation session about the media portrayal of Lady White Snake and how there are interesting overlaps in the negative attributes of feminism that is ascribed to Bai Su Zhen across various productions. This felt particularly problematic to me as I felt that in the modern day, it would be wrong to tell a story about a fictional female protagonist whose life and choices are dictated and judged by the patriarchal norms of the Tang dynasty.

Therefore, I chose to ask this question: In an era where femininity/choice has been redefined as empowerment rather than deviation, how might the story of Lady White Snake be re-presented to portray a more contemporary message?

As theatre makers, we have been presented with an opportunity to redefine the narrative of Lady White Snake. As our facilitators for the week took us through the ways in which Lady White Snake had been presented - from puppetry to Chinese opera in the ancient days, to films, novels and the latest Netflix series - I tried to think of an equivalent to this tale. My closest guess would be Esmeralda in Notre Dame de Paris, where Esmeralda is fundamentally a good person who falls in love with a handsome man. Her sole fault is being a Romanian Gypsy, an Other in the city of Paris - just like how Bai Su Zhen's sole fault is being a snake-lady rather than a human. In both cases, their femininity is not celebrated but demonized, and their sensuality (once again, their existence) is blamed for the fall of the men around them. In both cases, religion and order of some sort - Priest Frollo and the monk Fa Hai - are the male moral authorities who denounce the existence of those women and force them to atone for their sins, by paying the ultimate price. I thought those parallels were highly interesting because they showed that the patriarchy is truly universal.

By observing the global trends in the portrayal of women across cultures, we can then dissect what it means to be a female protagonist in the context of contemporary theatremaking. I place a lot of emphasis on questioning old narratives because they often perpetuate stereotypes that continue to ravage society even today. Awareness is the first step towards addressing those issues in theatre, and ensuring that our production has done its part in creating a more progressive environment both for its creatives and for its audience. But I digress.

We started off the student-facilitator led session with a movement lab where we drew on the anatomy and movement of snakes. Through this segment, we had a chance to think about how we wanted to create a dance or movement vocabulary for our actors - my group decided to focus on the transformation process between animal and demon, while the other group used sound and ensemble work to portray a giant snake eating its prey. 

We also devised some theatre - with five minutes to rewrite the ending of Mulan and three minutes to create the story for the stage, that was no easy task! For my group, Mulan dies and we were meant to portray her death as her fault through the lens of chauvinistic soldiers when they discover that she is a woman. With a few bamboo poles from backstage, there was a whole fight in the Theatrette. The rest of the day passed with a few more movement exercises like the magic ball, the flocking exercise, and our presentation of the "statues" - where my work was hilariously titled "ready for take off".

The experiences today made me think more deeply about the role of the female protagonist to the audience. Who is watching her? What do I want our audience to feel? As a massive fan of the musical Wicked, I had been reading Wicked: A Musical Biography by Paul R. Laird and it lent me some insight into how we can develop a character who is despised and feared by all who is on stage, yet universally adored by its audience. What exactly made Elphaba appeal to so many of her fans? Stephen Schwartz knew what he was doing when he wrote Defying Gravity - it was the chills that we feel when we watch someone step into their power and become themselves. The soul drinks in that energy which the actor emits as the character, and for a moment we can all pretend that we indeed have the courage to be ourselves every day. The power of the protagonist and heroine thus lies in giving every audience member a chance to believe that they too can aspire towards being true to themselves. In the same vein, Lady White Snake in its current form appears to be heavily steeped in archetypes - she's the demon ("witch"), seductress, mother and a misunderstood kindred spirit. But the heart of this play must come from Bai Su Zhen herself. She is not an archetype. She is a person, and if we want to tell this story from a feminist perspective, then she must be the self-determined agent of her own fate.

They say it takes brains, heart and courage to make a musical. I would argue that the same goes for any play, especially ours. Our devised take on Lady White Snake, like Wicked, is an adaptation of a series where the female lead is written as a mere plot device. This time round, we will rewrite her story so that she is the voice and the center of our show.