Theatre with film…let the Drums roll!

NDTV Lumiere | Movies | February 13, 2009 at 12:35 am

Acclaimed director Kenneth Bi speaks about his film, “ The Drummer “ which is all set to release at PVR Cinemas today.

“One day near the end of 2000, I saw a drumming performance by a group from Taiwan. They were called U Theatre. The style was traditional Chinese, using the big red drums. At the performance I saw something more than drumming, as evidently did the entire of the audience.

The special something was the drummers themselves. During the performance they didn’t say one single word, yet I felt as if they had spoken volumes. The act of drumming on stage was merely a public presentation of their art. It was apparent that they were more than musicians. I soon learned that their pure, unadorned performance was the result of years of training on a mountaintop, in the discipline of drumming, meditation, and martial arts.

I visited the drummers of U Theatre on their mountain on the outskirts of Taipei the very next week. It was an amazing sight. I arrived on a cold and misty day to find the drummers practicing Tai Chi in Chinese monkish outfits. It was like visiting the Shaolin Temple or stepping into ancient China. I asked them about their daily routines, the philosophies behind their training, their own personal motivations, and their trials of tribulations of being in this extraordinary group. What emerged from my months of research was a touching, mythical yet real-life “martial-arts” story. For instance, there was no electricity on the mountain and everyone took turns cooking every day.

When they built their wooden structures on the peak they had to carry the lumber up the steep slopes themselves, as there were no paved roads accessible by cars. In doing so, their bodies and minds were exposed to more than just drum training. They were forming character. It was astounding for me to find that there are people, in this day and age, especially in our pragmatic, money-oriented Chinese society, going against the grain.

The themes of the film revealed themselves to me after researching with the drummers; it occurred to me that the enlightened people, more humane and human, are hidden away in the mountains where animals are supposed to roam. While in the city where the purportedly civilised people exist, live the real animals. It is just that there are civilised codes of conduct preventing our animalistic impulses from tearing each other apart at will. In the mountains, the drummers are people who have re-examined their lives and tempered themselves into a higher state of self-awareness.

The drummers are completely unique so I had to cast them to play themselves in the film. To balance their austerity, I wrote characters that are the exact opposite, which required charismatic and seasoned actors to portray.

This is the reason the film features two distinctly different worlds. One of a metropolis and the other, the rural mountains. These two worlds represent not just geography but also our mental conditions. It seems some things that come easily in the mountains are not possible in the city. In the city, our content is ourselves, man and man-made stuff, whereas in the country and the mountains, we are alone with nature and our true self, therefore our mental content expands with the various elements of nature we encounter. That was why I named the protagonist ‘Sid.’ One side Sid Vicious and the other, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha).
Drumming represents an existential manifestation of the self in the film. It’s primal and exciting whenever people drum. The sound can penetrate into one’s core, vibrate our hearts, and stir our memories and emotions. It reminds us of who we are.

I hope when the audience sees THE DRUMMER they would feel what I felt when I first saw U Theatre: that sense of awe upon discovering that “the drummer” is within us all.”

More about ‘ U Theatre ‘

The pronunciation of the letter “U” in English is similar to the word meaning “excellence” in the Chinese language. In ancient China, the same word also meant “performers”. Established in 1988 in Taipei, Taiwan by Artistic Director Liu Ruo-yu and a group of close-knit performance artists, U Theatre believes that the combination of Tao and skill is the goal of their life and artistic creations, and has continued to perform and search for the self in life since its inception. Trained as an actress, Liu attended NYU with compatriot Ang Lee and co-starred in his thesis film, FINE LINE, with Chazz Palminteri. Liu puts great emphasis on the training and physical development of the group’s performers. Her directing style is modeled along the lines of the training she herself received from the great Polish director, Jerzy Grotowski. Her training, received in a forest retreat, taught her the importance of nurturing the inner soul and spirit of each performer. At their creative headquarters atop Laochuan Hill, surrounded by the bustling metropolis of Taipei, members of U Theatre devote themselves to enriching the spirit and mastering the ever
more complex percussion skills. Today, members maintain a strict daily training regimen that includes a full menu of martial arts, meditation, percussion practice, and Tai Chi. The comparative rigors of U Theatre’s training gives troupe members levels of stamina, energy, and personal well-being unmatched by other performance troupes.

A frequent participant at major international arts festivals, U Theatre has also won numerous awards, including Best of Show at the Festival d’Avignon in 1998, the Audience Choice award at the Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, and First Prize in the Performing Arts category at the first annual Taishin Art Awards.

Catch the movie that was Nominated for the Best Taiwanese film of the year in 2007, at the following PVR Cinemas in Mumbai