EDITOR’S Note:

Laughs, tears and a lot of sweat — after a long slump, drama is blooming on China’s mainland. Theater is now an integral part of the city’s cosmopolitan lifestyle, and production budgets increase along with audience numbers. Numerous outstanding talents are emerging as they try to pursue their dream of being on stage. In this column, we interview those devoted to producing original theater in China — from directors, playwrights and actors to those pulling the strings behind the curtain.

FOLLOWING a windy and snowy night, I met Ismene Ting on a Sunday morning so cold it broke a 35-year record.

Ting entered her office at Theatre Above, a new theater created specifically for Stan Lai Sheng-chuan’s Performance Workshop, and started to talk.

She’s in her 50s and has spent much of her career touring the world as a drama director. Her life has been such a whirlwind that, she says, she sometimes wakes up and needs a few seconds before she realizes where she is.

Originally from Taiwan, Ting has many talents. She has worked as an actress, a director and a playwright.

Even critics say that her career has been smooth — and often can’t help but mention how tightly her success is linked with her brother-in-law Stan Lai, the founder of the Performance Workshop.

Ting started her performing career in 1986, when Lai gave her a role in the second version of “Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land.” In 1990, Ting played in “Come on, Let’s Dance Together,” which was also her first work as a playwright. In 1997, she directed her first drama work “Love on a Two-Way Street” in Taiwan. The show was later staged on the Chinese mainland.

Her latest endeavor is Theatre Above, which opened in December at Metro City, a shopping mall in Xujiahui in Shanghai. So far, it’s a success — tickets for some shows have been sold out in a couple of days.

Three of Ting’s own works were staged, including “Just Play It,” which mixes music and dialogues and premiered in Taiwan in 2012.

“At the beginning it was just an experimental try. ‘Just Play It’ juxtaposes many kinds of performing arts and transcends the form of a regular piano concerto. There are many possibilities in theater that you can hardly plan,” says Ting.

John Vaughan, a music professor from the US, and Hsu Tse-chen, a blind student, are seen in the lead roles. Neither of them had any acting experience, but that’s what makes the show special.

“To be honest, the worries about non-professional actors’ performance are hard to avoid, but I am always willing to try,” Ting says.

In another show, “A Blurry Kind of Love,” Ting also used a non-professional drama actress — Taiwanese pop singer Ella Chen Chia-hwa, a member of the girl group S.H.E. The cast garnered applause from audiences as well as critics.

“A Blurry Kind of Love” tackles the topic of love and is loosely based on the 17th-century play “The Game of Love and Chance” or “Le Jeu de l’Amour et du Hasard” by Pierre Marivaux. Ting transferred the story into the 1970s in Taiwan.

“The class gap between lovers is an old topic not only in China but also in Western culture. This is what I want to express in this show,” she says.

“The Performance Workshop provides Ella with a super good chance to start her theater career. In my opinion, everyone can act only if you have life experience,” Ting says.

A globe-trotting career

That’s an experience Ting has made herself over the past decades.

Born in Hong Kong, she moved to Taipei at the age of five. Ting studied Comparative Literature at Berkeley University in the US, and says that she had never thought about being an actress. In her last term, however, she was short of credits, and decided to take a quick acting course.

“I was very shy when I was a child. I didn’t talk at school for the first two years when I moved to Taiwan as I couldn’t speak Mandarin,” Ting remembers, adding that her family spoke Cantonese at home.

When young Ting prepared her homework for the performance class, she hid herself in the wardrobe.

“My sister (Ting Nai-Chu) and brother-in-law (Stan Lai) made fun of me — it’s really hard for them to imagine that an actress is hiding from a performance,” she says, laughing.

After she graduated, she went back to Taipei, where Lai’s Performance Workshop was staging “Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land.”

“When I watched this show, I said to myself that if I had the chance to play in this show, I hope to play the role of Blossom,” Ting says.

Blossom is the leading role in the show, a woman with “loose morals.”

“I prefer to take challenging roles that are different from my real life,” she says. In 1986, she was asked to play Blossom, which kick-started her career.

In the 1990s, Ting produced the musical drama “Here’s Shangri-La/Finding Shangri-La,” which tells the story of a search for inner peace and love. In 2008, the play was made into a movie “Finding Shangri-La,” which led to a chance for her to be invited to the real Shangri-La.

“Yunnan is the homeland of our family, and this was the first time for me to visit. I was amazed by this beautiful place, it was like heaven, and I re-wrote the play to set it there,” Ting says.

Ting says she doesn’t have a definite style, and she certainly doesn’t want to be labeled. Instead of other dramas, she prefers to watch dance and music shows.

Made from life

“I’m sensitive to life and all the details. Drama comes from real life. All the topics, all the forms, from music to comedy — this is what I am doing,” she says. “I am always staring in the blank when I have no work — thinking. Or sometimes I don’t even realize I am thinking.”

“Mumble Jumble,” a play co-written and directed by Ting and her brother-in-law Lai, is shown at Theatre Above and will go through the weekends. With an array of energetic characters, the play is a feast of performance and video art and a keen observation of society and the absurdity of life.

“The play is like a roller-coaster, rapidly shifting gears between scenes, taking the audience on a wild ride of laughter and absurdity,” Ting says.

In the Performance Workshop’s 30-year history, Ting has travelled across the whole world.

In the 1990s, she spent a lot of time trying to make actors from the mainland understand the culture and dialogues of her plays. She also recalled that the mainland audiences didn’t laugh in the first 20 minutes when they watched her comedies. Only when the shows went on and the audience got relaxed and they started to get the humor from the stories.

But the market has changed, and Ting’s plays are more widely accepted, she says.

“The culture gap between Taiwan and Chinese mainland is fading away,” Ting adds.

For the new year, Ting is working on a drama named “The Lone Man Hotel,” a comedy that tells the story of a coquettish hotelier and her admirers, including a staunch bachelor.

What’s on the stage

• ‘Mumble Jumble’

Date: Through February 28, 2:30pm, 7:30pm

Venue: Theatre Above

Address: 5/F, Metro City, 1111 Zhaojiabang Rd

Tickets: 80-450 yuan

Www.theatreabove.com