It’s not everyday that a smiling minister of justice shakes hands with a group of young inmates and congratulates them on a job well-done — or that the first lady goes to prison to see an artistic performance, as Chow Mei-ching (周美青) is scheduled to do this morning in Chiayi.
However, it is not so unusual if the young inmates are members of the Guwu Percussion Troupe (鼓舞打擊樂團) — formed and mentored by the Zen-drumming group U-Theatre (優劇場) — whose drumming has given both new focus to their lives and helped bring national and worldwide attention to Changhua Prison’s (彰化監獄) unique traditional arts program. They are scheduled to perform today at Chiayi Prison (嘉義監獄) at 10am.
On May 20, 12 members of the Guwu group performed in Greater Taichung at the official launch of their 19-show tour of prisons and detention centers in the center and south of Taiwan. While it was not the first time members of the group have performed outside of their prison — they joined U-Theatre for a free concert at Changhua County Stadium (彰化縣立體育場) on Nov. 27, 2009, just three months after the prison drumming program began, and have since performed in Taipei — the tour has a special goal. The stadium show helped draw world attention to the arts program begun by Changhua County Cultural Affairs Bureau Director-General Patrick Lin (林田富) and Changhua Prison Warden Tai Shou-nan (戴壽南); the tour is aimed at gaining the attention of inmates at other facilities and inspiring them to change their lives.
Photo: Diane Baker, Taipei Times
The tour took six months of planning by U-Theatre, corrections department staff and other Ministry of Justice personnel. Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫), Department of Corrections Director Wu Hsien-chang (吳憲璋), Warden Tai, U-Theatre founder and artistic director Liu Ruo-yu (劉若瑀) and several journalists joined more than 200 inmates in a third-floor auditorium at the Taichung Prison (台中監獄) for the May 20 launch.
Going to the launch meant filling out forms, locking up cellphones in a row of lockers, an inspection of bags and passing through three sets of barred doors before a prison official escorted the visitors along carefully manicured walkways and then down a long hallway with rows of cells lining the left-hand side.
A row of open doors lined a long corridor, with data cards and headshots of the three men assigned to each cell slotted into a holder to the left of the doorways, and offered a glimpse of the spartan conditions the inmates share: a small room divided by a waist-high whitewashed cement wall separating the shower-toilet
Photo: Diane Baker, Taipei Times
from the sleeping area, with a high shelf holding boxes
of possessions.
The auditorium, with a small stage at the front and rows of prisoners seated on folding chairs in the back, was thankfully air-conditioned, considering the heat of the day and the number of people packed into the room. The summer weather also helps explain a gap in the Guwu group’s tour schedule. After four performances last month, there are six this month and then the final nine will have to wait until November. Prison auditoriums aren’t that big, and between the summer heat and typhoon season, scheduling outdoor performances between July and October is risky: The Guwu group is on a strict timetable as its members travel by bus to and from their Changhua home for each day’s shows, manacled and under guard.
Photo: Diane Baker, Taipei Times
Security reasons have also dictated that the whole troupe can’t go on the road, as Liu had hoped. Only 12 members are permitted to travel at a time.
While the launch was filled with speeches and the obligatory gathering of VIPs on stage, the road shows have a set format: a half-hour performance by inmates from the host prison and some speeches, then a 20-minute video about the Guwu troupe, with clips of its members auditioning and practices and performances, as well as a 40-minute performance by the troupe. For Taichung Prison, the home show was two magicians and a juggler, all helped by a green-wigged, fishnet and miniskirt-clad “lady” whose initial entrance from a previously empty “magic box” was accompanied by the pounding beat of a Lady Gaga tune.
The show shifted from enthusiastic amateurs to polished near-professionals when the Guwu team rolled their taiko drums into position and took their positions behind them. Bare-chested and clad in U-Theatre’s distinctive sarong-pants, the 11 drummers and one cymbalist looked impressive, although the number and size of the tattoos on several of them would make it clear to most U-Theatre fans that there was something different about this group — if the white masks covering their upper faces and the nervous quivers in a few legs hadn’t done so already.
Photo: Diane Baker, Taipei Times
As the powerful reverberations of the tightly disciplined drumming shook the auditorium, the hypnotic rhythms cast a spell over the audience members — inmates and visitors alike. After the two drumming pieces were finished, the men filed off for a costume change for their sacred dance encore, leaving the stage to two key members of the road show: Hsiao-tsai (小蔡) and A-gan (阿甘), who were paroled last October and have become full-fledged members of U-Theatre, performing in the Dajia Riverside Park New Year’s Eve celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Republic of China’s founding as well as the company’s 35-day stint at the Taipei International Flora Expo in March and April.
After a brief demonstration of big stick drumming, the two men — whom everyone refers to by their nicknames — took turns introducing themselves and telling of how their lives had changed since they took up sacred drumming — speeches that had an obviously moved Liu quietly dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. It’s those stories that the corrections department hopes will reverberate with inmate audiences as loudly as the taiko drums do.
Since beginning the drumming program at Changhua Prison in August 2009, Liu has extended an open invitation to Guwu’s members to join her company when they are released. Hsiao-tsai and A-gan are the first to take her up on the offer, one that she’s the first to admit is not an easy choice.
“Many don’t want to join us because our salaries are so low and the work is hard,” she said.
That’s one way of describing the almost monastic routine required of company members that sees them undergo a daily regime of tai chi, qigong, meditation, martial arts and sacred dance training before beginning rigorous percussion practice and rehearsals at U-Theatre’s Laoquanshan (老泉山) base in Muzha (木柵). The troupe’s Zen-based meditative movements require as much mental discipline as physical stamina, as do the marathon cross-island or round-the-island walks the troupe is famous for.
While the path to Laoquanshan was fairly clear to Hsiao-tsai, who was the Guwu group’s leader from the very beginning and constantly encouraging the others to practice outside the regular Tuesday drumming, qigong and meditation class with U-Theatre member Ibau (伊苞) and Thursday’s sacred dance class, it wasn’t so clear-cut for A-gan.
Liu said it took a concerted effort and a sit-down meeting with Ibau (who is a Paiwan Aboriginal like A-gan’s family), A-gan’s mother, Warden Tai, and U-Theatre drumming director Huang Chih-chun (A-dan, 黃誌群) to convince A-gan to give the company a try.
“We all talked to him,” Liu said. “His mom really wanted him to come, she didn’t want his old friends to find him. Two days after he got out he came to Muzha. But it took three days of coming and leaving before he decided to stay. He wants to make his mom happy. He thinks his being in prison really aged her.”
Now A-gan definitely has his eye on the bigger picture — or at least the bigger roles in the company’s productions — and isn’t afraid to say so.
“He really wants to do the challenging parts, the A-dan parts,” Liu said. “The company member who was teaching him wanted to know why he [A-gan] got to do A-dan’s parts so quickly when he had been there five years and was still doing small stuff. But after two weeks [of teaching A-gan] he said ‘I understand.’ A-dan says A-gan is already showing creativity.”
That’s a big change for a young man who was a boxing champ in elementary school, but didn’t do well academically and got into so many fights as a teenager that he ended up behind bars at 15. Academics weren’t much of an interest for Hsiao-tsai either. His life revolved around baseball and he did well enough in junior high school to be recruited to play ball for a good school in Kaohsiung. But in his first year there he hurt his ankle and it took half a year to heal. He ended up quitting Kaohsiung and returning to his home in Changhua, but had a hard time adjusting to school without athletics and dropped out. Robbing a 7-Eleven on a dare landed him in Changhua Prison with a 10-year sentence.
Liu praised Hsiao-tsai’s leadership skills and potential. He said he wants to study — especially English — so that he can better represent U-Theatre and perhaps one day go abroad on tour with the troupe.
Both men said drumming has given them focus and discipline, which is something Liu said she has noticed with all the inmates who have joined the Guwu troupe.
“The first day we did auditions, there were 13 of them — no eye contact, lots of different body shapes and tattoos, and they were all very nervous ... Ibau started to teach them one month later and when we [she and A-dan] went back after a month, they were much friendlier, relaxed, like kids. I tried to remember their names, otherwise they are just numbers. But their eyes still went everywhere,” she said.
“They all do exercises — one-armed push-ups — to buff up their bodies because they perform without shirts. These kids have so much energy inside and the drumming gives them form and focus to release the energy,” she said. “Memorizing the drum music, the beats, helps them calm down. Some of the kids have been in the group almost two years now, you can see the change in their eyes.”
She also noted the tight bonds the Guwu members have formed — “almost like a family,” she said — and how their enthusiasm for performing has encouraged the eight other music and performing arts groups at Changhua to do the same.
As confident as Hsaio-tsai and A-gan appear with the drums and their former colleagues, they are shy when asked about the differences between performing with Guwu and U-Theatre and other changes in their lives.
When pressed, Hsai-tsai mentioned his daily routine has changed — including being in bed by 10pm so he can be up at 5am to get to Laoquanshan on time — and how he was slowly cutting down from his two-to-three packs a day cigarette habit.
Both said performing without the face paint or eye masks that the Guwu members wear to protect their identities took some getting used to, and having to present their own faces to audiences had made them nervous. A-gan compared taking off the mask to a rebirth, while Hsiao-tsai said it helped him overcome his fears.
“I don’t have to be nervous, to have to hide anymore. Before I was always hiding — from the police, from someone,” Hsiao-tsai said. “Being part of U-Theatre is a simple, honest, normal life — no more being scared, no darkness, no hiding.”
“U-Theatre helped me fulfill a dream,” he said.
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