The New Idea Theater Festival began last night at the National Theater of the CKS Memorial Hall with the first of three pieces by Taiwan's leading experimental theater troupes. Performances run tonight through June 5, in Chinese and Taiwanese.
Putting arguably the festival's best foot forward is one of Taiwan's more established experimental troupes, Golden Bough Theater (
It has given free reign to their players to script three vignettes that focus on friendship, love and death and the result is an evening of surprisingly mature and cohesive theater. This is experimental, and it works.
PHOTO: DAVID MOMPHARD, TAIPEI TIMES
Stage veteran Wu Peng-feng (
Meetai, in his scene, gives a memorable performance as a Hindu devotee who encounters a god. His musical use of Hindi overcomes what might otherwise be a language barrier.
In the decade since it was founded, Golden Bough Theater has made a name for itself by performing everywhere from formal theaters to small-town night markets throughout Taiwan. Their style is marked by a fusion of modern theater elements with traditional Taiwanese opera.
Audiences who caught Golden Bough players performing My Dinner with Shakespeare last month will recognize the troupe's preferred modus operandi in All in One; a series of scenes with a joining theme that are both far out and grounded in reality.
The coming two weekends will see another two of Taiwan's experimental troupes tread the boards. Xitian Society Musical Workshop (
2:30pm matinee on Sunday. Portrait of Love has similar showings next Thursday, May 26 through May 29 and Who is Planning a Scheme will run June 3 to June 5 at 7:30pm, with matinees on Saturday, June 4 and Sunday, June 5 at 2:30. All performances are at the Experimental Theater of the National Theater (國家戲劇院實驗劇場), 21-1, Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei (台北市中山南路21-1號). Tickets for each performance are NT$400 or NT$960 for all three and available at the CKS Cultural Center or on the Web at www.artsticket.com.tw. For more information, call (02) 3393 9888.
July 1 to July 7 Huang Ching-an (黃慶安) couldn’t help but notice Imelita Masongsong during a company party in the Philippines. With paler skin and more East Asian features, she did not look like the other locals. On top of his job duties, Huang had another mission in the country, given by his mother: to track down his cousin, who was deployed to the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II and never returned. Although it had been more than three decades, the family was still hoping to find him. Perhaps Imelita could provide some clues. Huang never found the cousin;
Once again, we are listening to the government talk about bringing in foreign workers to help local manufacturing. Speaking at an investment summit in Washington DC, the Minister of Economic Affairs, J.W. Kuo (郭智輝), said that the nation must attract about 400,000 to 500,000 skilled foreign workers for high end manufacturing by 2040 to offset the falling population. That’s roughly 15 years from now. Using the lower number, Taiwan would have to import over 25,000 foreigners a year for these positions to reach that goal. The government has no idea what this sounds like to outsiders and to foreigners already living here.
Over the past year, a peculiar phrase has begun to litter Asian women’s social media accounts: “Oxford study.” An Asian woman vlogging about her dating life — and particularly about dating white men — gets commenters reacting to her updates with the words “Oxford study.” A young Asian student showing off her prom dress with her white boyfriend sees “obligatory Oxford study comment” on her TikTok. “I can already hear the oxford study comments coming,” one Asian woman captions a video of her dancing with her white partner. The phrase “Oxford study” refers to just that: an academic study out of Oxford
In spite of the next local elections being over two years away, there is already considerable intrigue and jockeying for position by politicians and their supporters. The local press runs quite a bit of content, mostly speculative, on who will run in what races and what the outcomes might be. This is an overview for English language readers to get a taste of the state of play. Four races in particular are drawing a lot of heat, those of mayors of New Taipei City, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung because in all four the incumbent mayors will be term-limited out. In