Religious Play @ Chinese Temple

Today is a very special occasion as our Chinese opera troupe had a performance at a temple in Jalan Bahar. What's special about today's performance is that it is religious in nature, meaning it was to be acted as part of a religious ceremony for the Gods. This was the time time we were tasked to do such shows, and the show we were told to act was "The Eight Immortals".

Initially it seemed easy to us, other than having to write the script and music from scratch, but after the temple representative vetted our rehearsal, we were told that we had to be very solemn throughout the performance. That was though, many of our members thought, as on the Chinese opera stage, the Eight Immortals were perceived as eight carefree immortals of different backgrounds, always merry and cheerful. Hence the moment we stepped into the temple compund, we kept all our smiles and playfulness. In fact after the show, one of our members commented that we were all very solemn and stern-faced during the performance! Well, we were just following the temple's instructions, and according to their Taoist beliefs.

Actually the temple is not wrong to demand us of that, because we were so-called the "ambassedors" of these Immortals, and it is our duty to portray them correctly. The temple representative gave an example of the God of Wealth, and how he has been badly portrayed by commercialism. The God of Wealth is supposed to be a high-ranking God in which Taoist believers pay respect to, but nowadays during Chinese New Years, we see clownish-looking actors dressing up as God of Wealth, going around in shopping centres and public places shaking hands with members of the public and giving out "blessings". "What will the younger generation think if all our Gods were portrayed like that? 'Oh! So the Taoist Gods are all like that, wouthout any awe!'" Sounds logical to me, but then that also means that in future if we were to take on temple shows again, we have to be extra careful with what we do; we have to look from the temple's perspective and not from our own artistic perspective.