National Chengchi University’s English Department yesterday defended its annual year-end production about man having a sexual affair with a goat as an appropriate choice and said they were puzzled why people would consider the play profane and foul.
“Sure the play touches upon the topic of bestiality but what’s so controversial about that? It has been around since ancient Greece,” said Patricia Ssutu (司徒芝萍), the directing professor, stressing that the central theme of the play is not about non-traditional sexual behaviors, but about family values and the complexity of the relations between a husband and wife, father and son, and extra marital affairs.
The 2003 Tony award winner for Best Play, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? by American playwright Edward Albee, was selected by the students after long deliberation, she said.
The student who complained about the show, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Taipei Times that “material of this nature is not the kind of thing impressionable young university students should be watching.”
He said that his interest was piqued after coming across a flyer for the show, which bears an image of a goat, which he said he thought looked satanic in nature.
After getting hold of a copy of the script one day before the show he decided to complain to the university vice-president, and said he had hoped the school would adapt the script into something “less ugly.”
Several other students apparently walked out in the middle of the show in apparent disgust at the graphic nature of the play and the string of profanities that littered the script.
“It was the students that picked the play and the school was not about the censor their choice,” said Ssutu, who has directed a dozen year-end plays for the English Department in the past 20 years she has taught at the school.
“If the use of a four-letter word can express the emotions of the character, then it is perfectly appropriate,” she said.
The student described a scene in the play in which a man was silhouetted behind a screen, simulating a sexual act with a goat. The script, he said, also included references to pedophilia.
The original play, starring Bill Pullman, first opened on Broadway in March 2002 and closed in December of the same year after more than 300 performances.
Civil society groups yesterday protested outside the Legislative Yuan, decrying Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) efforts to pass three major bills that they said would seriously harm Taiwan’s democracy, and called to oust KMT caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁). It was the second night of the three-day “Bluebird wintertime action” protests in Taipei, with organizers announcing that 8,000 people attended. Organized by Taiwan Citizen Front, the Economic Democracy Union (EDU) and a coalition of civil groups, about 6,000 people began a demonstration in front of KMT party headquarters in Taipei on Wednesday, organizers said. For the third day, the organizers asked people to assemble
POOR IMPLEMENTATION: Teachers welcomed the suspension, saying that the scheme disrupted school schedules, quality of learning and the milk market A policy to offer free milk to all school-age children nationwide is to be suspended next year due to multiple problems arising from implementation of the policy, the Executive Yuan announced yesterday. The policy was designed to increase the calcium intake of school-age children in Taiwan by drinking milk, as more than 80 percent drink less than 240ml per day. The recommended amount is 480ml. It was also implemented to help Taiwanese dairy farmers counter competition from fresh milk produced in New Zealand, which is to be imported to Taiwan tariff-free next year when the Agreement Between New Zealand and
A woman who allegedly spiked the food and drinks of an Australian man with rat poison, leaving him in intensive care, has been charged with attempted murder, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. The woman, identified by her surname Yang (楊), is accused of repeatedly poisoning Alex Shorey over the course of several months last year to prevent the Australian man from leaving Taiwan, prosecutors said in a statement. Shorey was evacuated back to Australia on May 3 last year after being admitted to intensive care in Taiwan. According to prosecutors, Yang put bromadiolone, a rodenticide that prevents blood from
China is likely to focus on its economy over the next four years and not set a timetable for attempting to annex Taiwan, a researcher at Beijing’s Tsinghua University wrote in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine on Friday. In the article titled “Why China isn’t scared of Trump: US-Chinese tensions may rise, but his isolationism will help Beijing,” Chinese international studies researcher Yan Xuetong (閻學通) wrote that the US and China are unlikely to go to war over Taiwan in the next four years under US president-elect Donald Trump. While economic and military tensions between the US and China would
RSS