In Jean-Paul Sartre's play, No Exit, four strangers are placed together in a room that turns out to be hell. Chi Wei-jan's (紀蔚然) latest play draws on the structure of No Exit and puts six characters together for one night. Though the setting of Chi's play isn't the underworld, each character lives in his or her own kind of inferno.
Countdown (倒數計時:夜夜夜麻完結篇), which debuts this week at the Metropolitan Hall(城市舞台), explores themes that Chi has been working with for the past five years: contemporary Taiwanese society and the characteristics of different generations.
"My plays deal with the state of things," Chi told the Taipei Times over coffee and cigarettes at his office at National Taiwan University (NTU) where he chairs the school's department of theater. "Mostly the plays are static. Nothing is moving."
PHOTO: NOAH BUCHAN, TAIPEI TIMES
The dramatic inertia in his work, Chi believes, mirrors a country bereft of idealism. "When you talk about plot it seems to [imply] a development," he said.
A founding member of Creative Society (創作社劇團), a theater group formed in 1997, Chi is one of a handful of contemporary local playwrights writing original work in Mandarin and Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) that criticizes contemporary society.
His 1999 work, Kiss of Death (一張床四人睡), features the breakup of two traditional couples because they are incapable of dealing with Taiwan's rapidly changing society. Utopia Ltd (烏托邦 Ltd), produced in 2001, looks at advertising agency employees who are forced to compromise their ideals to keep their jobs.
For ideals to be lost, of course, they must have once existed. Chi points to the end of martial law and the late 1980s as a golden age of idealistic fervor - especially in drama. "Everything became possible. There were no more political taboos; there were no more governmental regulations, so there was this booming of theater activity at that time," he said.
But, he says, a noticeable shift began in the 1990s when entertainment began to replace culture as the dominant narrative and wealth and conspicuous consumption became the benchmarks of an individual's success.
"The onslaught of globalization has had a big impact on Taiwan. In the 1990s, there was localization movement. We wanted to promote and teach our children what Taiwan really is. I think the biggest obstacle to that movement is globalization. It's not the conservative KMT (Chinese Nationalist Party) …. Younger people use computers and know a lot about the world and don't really care what is traditionally or indigenously Taiwanese," he said.
Chi's unrelenting and hard-hitting criticism of contemporary Taiwan coupled with creative and caustic dialogue have garnered him plaudits from colleagues and critics. His 2003 play, Deja Vu (驚異派對:夜夜夜麻2), won the 3rd Annual Taishin award for performance art, a prestigious accolade that has been bestowed on groups such as Cloud Gate Dance Theater (雲門舞集), U-Theater (優劇場) and National Gouguang Opera Company (國立國光劇團).
Deja Vu was the second play in a trilogy that began with Mahjong Game (夜夜夜麻), a work in which four men in their 50s reminisce about their college days, the dreams they had and the dreams they failed to achieve. Deja Vu compared some of the same characters with a younger, financially successful generation of characters in their 40s who, fed up with politics, spend their time focused on making money.
Phrases like, "I make money, I spend money. I have a thought and I speak it. I just speak it. I don't let it sit inside myself," mirror the language people use in day-to-day conversation - dialogue that Chi calls "frivolous and uncultured."
If Chi's generation is wallowing in the pathos of lost idealism and people in their 40s are obsessed with money and materialism, those in their late 20s and early 30s seem to be obsessed with performance. Each generation has its say in Countdown, the last of the trilogy.
"Today in Taiwan people like to perform, whether in public or private, and when they see a camera they want to say something, even though they have nothing to say, even though their language is terrible," Chi said.
And what of teenagers and people in their early 20s? Chi has taught playwriting at various universities for 16 years and has nothing positive to say about the creative ability of his students.
"It's gone from bad to worse. Their perception of the world is too cartoonish, everything is a cartoon to them," he said.
For Countdown, Chi wants actors to mimick the younger generation's cartoonish language.
Despite his criticism of Taiwanese society, there is still room for humor. "This play tries to make fun of itself and the playwright is trying to make fun of himself," he said.
Countdown opens Thursday at Metropolitan Hall and runs until next Sunday. Tickets are NT$450 to NT$1,500 and are available through NTCH ticketing or online at www.artsticket.com.tw
Dec. 16 to Dec. 22 Growing up in the 1930s, Huang Lin Yu-feng (黃林玉鳳) often used the “fragrance machine” at Ximen Market (西門市場) so that she could go shopping while smelling nice. The contraption, about the size of a photo booth, sprayed perfume for a coin or two and was one of the trendy bazaar’s cutting-edge features. Known today as the Red House (西門紅樓), the market also boasted the coldest fridges, and offered delivery service late into the night during peak summer hours. The most fashionable goods from Japan, Europe and the US were found here, and it buzzed with activity
During the Japanese colonial era, remote mountain villages were almost exclusively populated by indigenous residents. Deep in the mountains of Chiayi County, however, was a settlement of Hakka families who braved the harsh living conditions and relative isolation to eke out a living processing camphor. As the industry declined, the village’s homes and offices were abandoned one by one, leaving us with a glimpse of a lifestyle that no longer exists. Even today, it takes between four and six hours to walk in to Baisyue Village (白雪村), and the village is so far up in the Chiayi mountains that it’s actually
These days, CJ Chen (陳崇仁) can be found driving a taxi in and around Hualien. As a way to earn a living, it’s not his first choice. He’d rather be taking tourists to the region’s attractions, but after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck the region on April 3, demand for driver-guides collapsed. In the eight months since the quake, the number of overseas tourists visiting Hualien has declined by “at least 90 percent, because most of them come for Taroko Gorge, not for the east coast or the East Longitudinal Valley,” he says. Chen estimates the drop in domestic sightseers after the
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, speaking at the Reagan Defense Forum last week, said the US is confident it can defeat the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Pacific, though its advantage is shrinking. Paparo warned that the PRC might launch a “war of necessity” even if it thinks it could not win, a wise observation. As I write, the PRC is carrying out naval and air exercises off its coast that are aimed at Taiwan and other nations threatened by PRC expansionism. A local defense official said that China’s military activity on Monday formed two “walls” east
RSS