Behind the Scenes at the Milarepa Play

January 1, 2010, The Drama Field near Tergar Monastery, Bodhgaya, India,
Report by Pi-Chun Chen, Editor: Jo Gibson, photos taken by Karma Norbu, Pema Orser Dorje

 

On New Year’s  Day 2010, in an outdoor arena constructed from a barren field in the poorest province of India, approximately  twenty thousand people, including two thousand on-line viewers, gathered to watch a six-hour long dramatic performance.  The play centred on the life of one of the forefathers of the Kagyu lineage, Jetsun Milarepa, whose life initially was one of great hardship and suffering, but that led him to authentically practice dharma for the benefit of all sentient beings.   

On stage the trials and tribulations of Milarepa were shown, and off-stage the actors and technicians also had to undergo testing times.  The audience in the theatre shed tears for Milarepa, whereas backstage the determined and steadfast staff burst into tears when His Holiness told them, “You have worked so hard!”On stage, and off-stage, who were the actors? Who were the viewers? Who was Marpa? And who was the true Milarepa tonight?

The script of the Milarepa play, written by His Holiness Karmapa, was first made available in August 2009. This set all subsequent activities in motion. The troupe formally started rehearsals in September; the musical compilation took its initial form in November; construction of the arena and the stages, and making the stage sets and props started around the same time.  In the second half of December, staff from various teams arrived in Bodh Gaya to set out on the final and most difficult part of the project, which was the integration of all the components of the play within ten days.

The official staff roster listed two directors.  They were renowned directors from Taiwan,  Director I-Cheng Ko and Director Ming-Che Lee respectively.  Few knew that behind the scenes there was an anonymous director, Director Karmapa, His Holiness the Karmapa himself.  Every line in every act of the Milarepa play comes directly from Director Karmapa.  In order to make sure that each actor captured the role correctly, Director Karmapa recited and recorded the dialogues of each act himself to demonstrate the correct pronunciation, intonation, and proper breaks in each sentence.  Nearly sixty members of The Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts’ (TIPA), overseen by its director Wangchuk Phasur, were divided into groups and took turns coming to Gyuto to rehearse in front of Director Karmapa.   Besides himself, Director Karmapa also invited a group of experts to supervise rehearsals and provide suggestions for improvement.  Throughout the process, Director Karmapa continually revised the script, fine-tuning and improving it to a high level of achievement.

At the same time, with the assistance of Venerable Choekyi Gyamtso, Director Karmapa started the theatre and stage design for the play.   Director Karmapa would describe his ideas of the design, and Venerable Choekyi Gyamtso would then map out the blueprints of  the physical structure using his trained architect background.  The outdoor theatre is 100 meters in length, 40 meters in width, equipped with three big viewing screens on each side, and can accommodate fifteen thousand people in total.  The stage is 30 meters long, 40 meters wide, a huge lotus flower serves as the backdrop, and a bodhi tree is located at the center of the upper stage.   The structure of the stage can be broken into three parts: a central main stage with wings on either side.  The main stage has three layers: the top layer is the stage where the sangha performed their monastic chants; the bottom two layers are separated by an off-set ramp, designed to create a layering effect to represent the summit and the foot of the mountain.  This feature was used to particular effect to show Marpa’s house at the top of the mountain, while he was plowing the field at the foot of the mountain, awaiting Milarepa’s arrival.  On each of the two wings of the stage, sat 250 bhikkhu and bhikkhuni. The total of 500 ordained sangha from both wings symbolized the 1000 eyes and 1000 arms of Avalokiteshvara.

The theatre site was located in the field on the left of Tergar Monastery, assigned as the future site for the Kagyu Monlam administration building and accommodation.   Overseen by Venerable Choekyi Gyamtso, about eighty construction workers spent one and a half months and used two thousand carts of sand and gravel to turn this barren field into a magnificent wonder, a modern outdoor theatre in a place where there are few modern facilities.  The completion of construction was just a preliminary success; greater challenges and trials were yet to come.  

Ten days prior to the performance, different groups started arriving in Bodh Gaya.  There were about sixty Tibetan actors from TIPA, thirty Chinese crew comprising two Taiwanese directors, two lighting engineers, three sound engineers, one program director, five cameramen, make-up artists, stage property makers and movers, thirty-six students for  the Tibetan dance performance from the Tibetan Children’s Village School, sixty bhikkhu/bhikkuni and twenty getsuls for interlude chanting, ninety Indians in charge of lighting/sound equipment and wiring, and  more than ten Indian generator engineers etc.  This international assembly of more than three hundred people was set for a journey full of unexpected incidents and challenges.

The working schedule for the five day final countdown was as follows: December 27^th was the walk-through rehearsal, December 28^th the technical integration, and December 30^th the final dress rehearsal of the entire play.  However, on December 28^th technical problems caused by the instability of the power supply started to emerge.  The lighting equipment was the first to be affected, and then the sound equipment.  On December 29^th technical issues finally tapered out after the Indian chief generator engineer was called urgently to stand by on site.  December 30^th, two days before the performance, was scheduled to be the formal dress rehearsal.    Right from the very beginning, various technical issues came up in succession.  Firstly, the microphone burned out; after it was fixed, the lighting equipment burned out; after the light bulb was changed, the generator ran into problems; after the generator had been repaired, just when it looked like the rehearsal could finally take place, it started to rain, a very unusual occurrence  in  Bodh Gaya’s dry winter season.  The staff waited for a while until the rain paused, and then dragged all the equipment out from under cover. But before long, it started to rain again.  The staff had no choice but to pull the equipment back under cover and wait for the next opportunity.  This happened several times until it started to rain relentlessly.  Finally, after the stage had accumulated a layer of water that made a ba-ji ba-ji sound when the performers walked through it, Director Lee, with a livid face, ordered a formal wrap-up, leaving the remaining staff stunned.   

This unfortunate rainstorm on the 30^th pushed the dress rehearsal schedule to the 31st,  only  a day away from the performance itself, and it was not until the 31st, that the troupe had a chance to run through the entire play on stage.  Only then could the lighting engineers really work on the stage lighting, and they continued working on adjusting the lights until 5:00am the following morning, the performance day.  Faced with so many unfavorable conditions, most people might feel a great deal of pressure and anxiety.  In retrospect, instead of feeling the depression and agitation which was his usual response to frustration, Director Lee was surprised to find himself experiencing a sense of determination that success would come when conditions were  ripe.  Director Lee attributed this largely to the calmness and stability of outstanding staff such as Tammy Shao, Rachel Lin, and Chia-Li Wang.

After the roller-coaster experiences of December 30^th, the great success of the play on  performance day was almost like a miracle.  It was like the person who needs to expel all the poisons and pus inside their body before they can completely heal; in the same way, though the occurrence of all possible problems that one can imagine on December 30^th  was quite scary, they seemed to be the last hurdle to be overcome.  Once they had been faced with bravery and determination, there had been no further difficulties waiting.

During the formal rehearsal, Drupon Rinpoche of Tsurphu Labrang came to visit, and found that the cloth of Gampopa’s seat was not right. The next day, Rinpoche came with the cloth from his own shrine and a staple gun to replace  Gampopa’s cushion cloth himself!

The six hours of perfect performance on New Year’s Day can only be described as “incredible”.  The play consists of six acts: birth and suffering when young, spells and black magic, meeting the teacher and austerity, returning home and solitary practice, turning the dharma wheel to benefit beings, and nirvana.  The play was all in Tibetan with no translation into other languages.  For those who were proficient in Tibetan, it was quite easy to understand the colloquial conversations and follow the development in the play.  Those who did not understand Tibetan, however, could still capture most of the story by watching the skillful presentation of the actors and actresses on stage.  It seemed that whenever there were scenes of separation between loved ones in life or death, or fickleness in the world, one was almost sure to hear sobbing in the audience. 

There were seven video cameras on the performance day to film this historical play from various angles.  The play began at 6:30pm, and as the evening progressed, the temperature gradually dropped until it was below ten degrees Celsius by 9:00pm.  The actor, who played Milarepa, insisted on appearing on stage nearly nude to be faithful to the real image of Milarepa.  With only six heating pads attached to the body under his white cloth, he survived the cold weather until the very end of the play at just turned midnight, and his performance could not have been better.  Next day, when he came backstage to meet with the staff, he spoke in a husky voice, admitting that he had caught a cold from last night.  Hearing his reply, the staff’s hearts ached.

Actually, during the performance there was an unrevealed incident.  One of the stagehands needed to slip on to the stage to adjust a stage light suspended from a rock, while the stage was in darkness. However, it took longer than he expected, and suddenly he was caught there when the lights went on! Keeping his wits about him, he quickly hid behind the rock, but had to stay there until the scene changed, when he finally escaped from the stage pale-faced. He relaxed once he knew that he had not been caught on camera.

In a working team meeting on the day after the performance, a teary-eyed Director Lee shared his experiences with the group.  He said, he felt he himself was like Milarepa in the play;  all kinds of trials and difficulties had come to test him during the ten days of directing.  Later, when he was asked about the play’s impact on him personally, Director Lee indicated that he was very much inspired by His Holiness the Karmapa’s approach of using theatre to deliver the Buddha dharma.  He aspired to direct great plays in the future, and hoped that through them the audience could be influenced in a positive way and that that influence would further extend to their family and friends after they returned home, and then those positive impacts would spread throughout the whole of society in the end.

TIPA’s performance earned great praise from every one. From the walk-through rehearsals, the make-up, to the stage costumes, in every detail of the preparation, their professional, vigorous, and devoted spirit had never been less than that of any famous troupes of today.  TIPA’s director Wangchuk Phasur stated:  It was their great honor to lead the Milarepa play.  As TIPA’s past experiences focused on dancing and singing, it was their first time performing on the stage of a modern theatre, and also the first time trying out theatrical performance.  This was, indeed, a great opportunity for members of TIPA to explore their performance potential.

What about Director Karmapa?  He had been nurturing, and providing the life and backbone of the Milarepa play. What would he think about the outcome?  Other than experiencing some nervousness on the performance day, Director Karmapa expressed great satisfaction in all kinds of gestures toward the perfect performance of the play.  Just as Director Karmapa later said with delight to the working team on January 2^nd: In this imperfect samsara, we have completed a perfect mandala together!