“If disobedient, beat my kid to death,” (孩子不乖你打乎死) was, a decade or more ago when corporal punishment was an accepted part of school life in Taiwan, a common parental aphorism.
How times have changed. The development of the country’s education system forms the basis of Wei Jun-zhan’s (魏雋展) play Punish (罰), one of 10 solo performances by local artists beginning this weekend and lasting until Nov. 9, at Guling Street Theater.
“Today it’s more like, ‘touch my child and you’ll get sued,’” said River Lin (林人中), paraphrasing another of the play’s central conceits.
Lin, MOVE Theatre Group’s (動見体劇團) producer and the brains behind Fable To Be or Not To Be (漢字寓言:未來系青年觀點報告), challenged 10 performance artists to come up with a Chinese character that they think best symbolizes Taiwan.
“The idea came from online surveys that asked people to choose a particular [Chinese] character to describe a country for that year,” Lin said.
Citing one of last year’s surveys, Lin said respondents chose “rise” (漲) for China, “fake” (偽) for Japan and “disorder” (亂) for Taiwan.
The production sees choreographers, theater professionals, poets and multimedia artists coming together under one roof for solo performances — lasting roughly 20 minutes each — to convey their ideas about anything from entertainment to the economy.
Each performance features works by five of the artists. This weekends’ performers include actress Chou Heng-yin (周姮吟), whose work Struggle (掙) investigates gender bias in Taiwan. Huang Si-nong (黃思農) will play the erhu (二胡), a traditional Chinese fiddle, in her performance Forget (忘), a psychedelic rock number that looks at the popularity of talent shows such as One Million Stars (超級星光大道).
Chou Shu-yi’s (周書毅) Yield (讓) opens next week’s five performances. The choreographer combines mime with modern dance to examine how the meaning of the Chinese character has changed over time — from its Confucian roots meaning facing the world with humility, to its contemporary usage (often used by the bodyguards of politicians or celebrities pushing through a media scrum) meaning, “get out of the way.”
Lin chose “end” (末).
“As in the end of the world, or end of the Earth,” he said. When I pointed out that this was a rather pessimistic word to pick, he countered by referring back to the title of the performances.
“It’s the kind of thinking we hope to change through these performances. That’s why we called it Fable To Be or Not To Be … because its not the end of the world and it doesn’t have to be,” he said.
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