Rive-gauche Theater Group's (
To effectively convey the murky subject matter, choreographer and director Chen Pin-hsiu (
The play is a montage of dreamscapes, connected by the dozing off and waking up of the dreamers.
The first dreamscape shows that we may have shared our dreams with another person. A sleeper on the floor laughs and rolls as if tickled by the twitching fingers of three others sitting unconscious by the bed. Ultimately the bedside dreamers caress the lying one as he cries in his sleep.
Then there comes an eerily funny scene of the four performers taking turns acting as the main characters in mock TV commercials. Speaking in incomprehensible languages, these characters make exaggerated gestures and ecstatic expressions until they suddenly drop to the floor and fall into their dreams again.
For Chen, TV commercials and dreams have a lot in common. "Dreams are the silent, unintrusive interludes in our lives. We dream, we wake up, and then we forget all our dreams as we go about our business. It's the same with commercials between TV dramas. They pop up and go away while we go on watching the same drama as if nothing happened," Chen said.
The scene then shifts to the deep of the night. Two men wake up to go to the toilet. They move in sync as if one is the mirror image of the other. Suddenly, both start to suffocate themselves in a suicide attempt. Without success, each lunges to strangle the other. In their struggle, the divide between a person and their mirror image breaks down.
After the characters fall asleep and wake up again, they begin to recite Butler Yeats' The Coming of Wisdom Through Time, which conveys the first moments of waking. "Though the leaves are many, the root is one/Through all the lying days of my youth, I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun/Now I may wither into the truth."
Video images are integrated into the play to further obscure the line between dreams and reality. One of the films by the play's stage designer Chen Jian-bei(
For Chen Jian-bei, the footage is more real than the actions that take place onstage. "The real does not have to be what's happening before your eyes. The real is what you feel is real in your heart. I shot the part of the rehearsal that moved me. To me, the film is the reality," he said.
Many scenes present a state of uncertainty, like dimly-lit body parts and a dancer whirling ghost-like in the dark. These sections illustrate Chen's philosophy that "all our life, we're living a dream. You may be busy every day doing a lot, but at the end of the day, you're not sure what it is that you have done, as if your day has been a dream," she said.
The play can be tiresome with its loose structure and illogical development, but the ending effectively leaves the audience wondering whether they have witnessed four sleepwalkers roaming the stage or a play. By blurring the border between dreams and waking, Chen Pin-hsiu succeeds in obscuring the divide between theater and real life.
What: "Ode to the Hundred Nights" by Rive-gauche Theater Group
Where: Whashang Art District (華山藝文特區), 1 Bateh Rd., Sec. 1, Taipei (台北市八德路1段1號)
When: Aug. 8 to Aug. 12, 8pm
Tickets: Contact the theater by e-mail at: rivegauche02@hotmail
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and