ACCLAIMED Hong Kong theater director Edward Lam is known for his sensitive and complex portrayals of women, of couples and of men in love with men.

That sensitivity, humor and the many faces of women were on show recently in Shanghai in a recent dance performance of "Doppelganger."

The work is described by Lam's dance theater as a "schizophrenic tragi-comic farce that takes place in a 21st-century garden," the fantasy world of a matchmaker. It's adapted from "Romance of the West Chamber," a Chinese classic.

The original is about lovers divided by class and status in feudal society. In Lam's modern adaptation, there are other obstacles.

He focuses on the nature of love in a modern society and how choices in love and marriage are influenced by the mass media with its emphasis on money, status, class, power and material things.

Famous Taiwan actress Rene Liu, plays a matchmaker in "Doppelganger." In real life, she's known as being a matchmaker who helps her friends.

The performances in Shanghai were well received and many people attended to see Liu, who was famous for being single at age 40 - and recently married.

"I think I will never find a husband," are her opening lines. Altogether, she and her doppelganger give rise to 10 more faces of women seeking love, women in love, women in wedlock.

For the 20th anniversary of the Edward Lam Dance Theater, another dance production "Awakening," also titled "Jia Baoyu," will debut in Hong Kong from October 7-23. It's adapted from "A Dream of the Red Mansions," one of China's Four Great Classics. It too is about love and relationships.

Lam himself, whose parents were divorced, grew up in a "Red Mansions" environment, surrounded by many women, many aunties and sisters, which probably gave him insight into how women think. The red mansion is the women's part of the household.

Scriptwriter and author Lam admits his plays can be hard to understand - people should watch with their hearts - and he says it would be best if they could watch his plays more than once in order to understand.

Lam, who is 51, is prolific and known for productions such as "18 Springs," "Madame Bovary Is Me," and "Men and Women: Peace and War."

He spoke to Shanghai Daily.

"I cannot express myself through language," he said frankly, though he did speak quite a bit. "I will let you know more about me though my work," he added, then screened some of his works.

"The imagination and inner feelings aroused by the drama are the true details we see. But we are too conditioned by education and custom to 'see' only with our eyes."

The audience that focuses on what can be physically seen is not a good audience, he said.

"They are like tourists who take a lot pictures when they go on trips. They just record and bring away a lot of information. They are visitors in theaters."

The highest level of beauty in his opinion is "leaving blank space," as in Chinese traditional painting.

"When you see a beautiful woman, if she is perfect in all the details, she is no longer a beauty, but an artificial person," he said, saying that's the difference between classical and contemporary drama. Contemporary drama, like his own, contains blanks.

Chinese contemporary dramas copy Western models "but lose their features of audacity, freedom and criticism," he said, adding that Chinese audiences tend to want feelings of resonance and reminiscence on stage.

"In my works, I'm trying to break down boundaries and obstacles that the audience erects for themselves," he said.

Early years

Born in Hong Kong, Lam's parents divorced when he was a teenager, and he moved to Taiwan at the age of 13. He watched BBC news at home and dreamed of being an English news reporter. This took him to a live performance of Taiwan singing and dancing troupes and he dreamed of becoming a Taiwan singer.

"The various cultural soils in my childhood formed today's me. I am a mixture of Hong Kong's colonized culture, Taiwanese local culture and the Chinese mainland culture," he said, "and free imagination can be felt in my drama works."

At the age of 14, he was fascinated by Eileen Chang's stories, especially "Xin Jing," or "The Heart Sutra," which follows a distorted love relationship between father and daughter. He started to write his own stories.

While in high school, he became a scriptwriter for then-famous Hong Kong broaders Rediffusion Television and Television Broadcasts Limited. At age 18, he was offered work as playwright for a Hong Kong TV series. He decided instead he wanted to become a stage director.

From 1989 to 1995 Lam lived in London, studied theater and dance and founded the Edward Lam Dance Theater. He returned to Hong Kong in 1995 and immersed himself in theater. In 1994, he won the Taiwan Golden Horse Award as scriptwriter for the best adapted drama, "Red Rose, White Rose," directed by Stanley Kwan. It's an adaptation of an Eileen Chang story.

Lam has directed nearly 50 plays and staged many overseas performances, including shows in London, Brussels and Paris.

Many wounds

Lam, who is openly gay and writes candidly about sexual orientation, described himself as a sensitive person "with many wounds," one who sometimes laughs and cries when he watches his own works.

"I know I have a lot of wounds and I am not afraid of being hurt again. A creator of art needs fresh wounds to inspire their creativity," he said.

Since 1997 he has been lecturing on general education and "humanistic" education in Hong Kong University and Hong Kong Baptist University. He constantly writes articles for magazines and newspapers in Hong Kong, Beijing and Guangzhou. He has published dozens of books discussing his ideas about love, cinematography, the culture of Hong Kong and the entertainment industry, such as "Edward Lam on Love" (2002), "Edward Lam on Cinema" (2002), the "Waiting for Hong Kong" series" (2005). His latest four-volume series "The Beauty of Evil" focuses on the flamboyant lifestyle and material desires of Hong Kong people.

On being gay

Lam also stages high-profile plays about gay love, such as "Teach Me How to Love Four Men Who Don't Love Me" (1989-90), and "Four Scenes in the Men's Changing Room" (1991, 1994).

In 1989, he and his friends held a gay film festival in Hong Kong. At that time, the atmosphere was quite intolerant of gays and lesbians and many people were afraid to attend and disclose their sexual orientation.

Just as the word "gay" is used in the West to describe homosexuality, Lam came up with the word tong zhi, or comrade, a friendly fraternal word. It was famously used by Dr Sun Yat-sen who said, "The revolution has not yet succeeded; the comrades still need to work harder."

The word is now widely used in China to refer to gay people.

He is very forthright about being gay and his openness attracts a lot of attention. He's okay with the spotlight on him, he told a Guangzhou magazine several months ago.

"At first, people will get very interested in me because I'm a gay director. They may be thinking what's on the mind of a gay director? How will he describe the relationship between a man and woman. Slowly, the attention starts to shift because they realize I'm doing some interesting things, like putting literature into drama, even playing with the Great Four Classics of literature. The transition is natural."

He talks about being a gay director just as he would talk about the weather. He famously said in 2009 in an online interview: "I'm a man, but also not a man. I'm a woman, but also not a woman. My identity helps me see and feel the things that ordinary people can't see or feel."