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(Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun)
Oscar winning designer Tim
Yip is the art director for Heaven and Earth, opening at The Centre
in Vancouver For Performing Arts. Nina Mu plays The Goddess of Love in the
play.
Tim Yip, Oscar-winning art director for
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is in Vancouver to create the look of Heaven
and Earth at The Centre It certainly feels like The Centre of things. As all
the lobby carpet is torn up to be replaced and the smell of fresh paint wafts
from the executive office, where the only reminders of former owner Garth
Drabinsky are the hooks on the walls for his valuable collection of art, The
Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts is the proverbial beehive of activity.
Things are even busier down in the labyrinth
of backstage (or to be more accurate in the case of the former Ford Centre,
below-stage) corridors and dressing rooms where dozens of fresh-faced young
Chinese performers fill the air with the sounds of Mandarin. Above, through the
doors of the auditorium into that ocean of royal-purple fabric and blond wood,
is the near-chaos of what many find to be the most exciting part of a new
production -- its rehearsal.
A choreographer sits in the auditorium with a
cordless microphone, directing the movements on stage of dozens of dancers in
all kinds of costumes. Lights and music come up and down as levels are tested
and while technicians fine-tune all of the hall's equipment, much of it brand
new, maintenance workers test every armrest for 1,800 seats.
Tim Yip sits in the hall and smiles. Perhaps
it's because as art director for Of Heaven and Earth, the extravaganza due to
open The Centre next week, his job is largely done and he can actually sit and
chat for a few minutes.
Best known for the Oscar he won last year as
art director for Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Yip is here from
Beijing for just two days to ensure his costumes, sets and lighting are in order
before returning to the Chinese capital and a new movie that's already started
shooting. It's about a young woman who grew up through Beijing's explosive
growth and massive change of the last 20 years, and Yip is delighted to be
collaborating on the film's design with some of the French special-effects
wizards who helped make Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie such a hit.
Then it's off to Taipei to take 100 of
Taiwan's citizens from every walk of life, governor to streetsweep, and put them
on the runway in the rich fashions he now designs. "The idea is quite
interesting for me," he says, "because I will also get many
different kinds of artists together for the show -- somebody is making
sculpture, somebody is making music, somebody is making graphic design."
When Dr. Dennis Law and his three brothers
came from Denver to buy the former Ford Centre, they wanted to christen their
new theatre with a bang. Years ago, Dennis and Yip had discussed mounting a
reinterpretation of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, but Yip had to cancel all
other obligations when the complexities of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon came
along. By the time they met again, Law had an even more ambitious project in
mind.
Of Heaven and Earth would be, as Law loves to
dub it, the world's first "action musical," combining many elements of
Chinese folk arts in a wholly modern retelling of the legend of a goddess and a
cowherd.
"Everybody in China knows the story of
the lady and this guy," says Yip.
"They have many problems, they're kept
apart, all kinds of conflict takes place and then, after many different
beautiful actions, they're together."
A happy ending, but not before Yip has
paraded a rich banquet of sights and sounds drawn from millennia of Chinese
artforms. He scoured the enormous nation in search of material, "and from
the beginning we prepared everything for an international audience, so it's very
easy for people to understand."
Yip says Westerners will find Of Heaven and
Earth "special and new," while Chinese audiences who tire of seeing
one too many folk-dance troupes "will like it because we have a whole new
feel for the dances they think they've seen before."
All of theatre's magic will be called into
play as heaven and earth make love and war. The fly galleries above the stage
will earn their title as cast members soar and swoop, while giant projections
behind the action will offer glimpses of Yip's own unique artistic talents.
He started out at school in Taiwan wanting to
be a painter but soon shifted to photography, and especially fashion
photography. At an exhibition in Hong Kong he met film director Ching Siu-tung
(A Chinese Ghost Story) and it wasn't long before Yip was working for John Woo
on what would become Woo's first runaway hit, A Better Tomorrow. "Quite
frankly," says Yip, "I don't like to make that kind of movie. It
was only later, when I worked on Stanley Kwan's Rouge, that I changed my
impression of movie-making." The supernatural love story won five Hong Kong
film awards and plenty of praise for its artistic integrity and emotional depth.
Best known in Asian artistic circles for work
even more avant-garde than what we saw in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Tiger, Yip
says he likes Of Heaven and Earth "because it's so big and so easy to
know." But he's also keen to return to projects that really test a theatre
audience.
"I never use dialogue to tell a
story," he says. "Whether it's Beijing Opera or dance, music or
movement, I'm trying to do things in theatre that make you forget yourself, make
you look deep in your mind and memory. When you hear dialogue, you are thinking,
trying to understand, but for dance or music you cannot use your brain. You must
use your body to experience it, and I want to touch the heart of the
audience."
Yip is asked if winning the Oscar opened
doors for him. "Yes, even inside," he replies, "because
before I didn't know if I could write [he's at work on a complex four-part novel
set beyond time and space] or design fashions. I think it's the right time to do
the things I want to."
A symbol of that new-found strength came when
Yip was on his way to the airport in Taipei and a strong earthquake hit the
city. He left not knowing what had happened at his home, and for a month in
Europe and then China worried about whether Oscar had fallen from its high perch
atop a cabinet.
Back home, he found his British film award
for Crouching Tiger on the floor. Oscar, by contrast, hadn't budged an inch.
- by Peter Birnie
Vancouver
Sun 21 May 2002
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