Now in its fourth year, the Wave Art Festival (
Opening the festival this weekend is Dojyoji by the Japanse group Rukaden (
PHOTO COURTESY OF TAI SHUN CHIEH CHORUS
"The festival invited the group because of its ingenious use of stage props, an element most Taiwanese groups can't handle well," said Lin Si-wei (
PHOTO: DAVID VAN DER VEEN, TAIPEI TIMES
Rukaden visited Taiwan for the first time in 1997 as part of the Asia Minor Theatrical Network event. Its REM -- a silent play about the hypnotization by a depraved storyteller won it a Best Performance Art Award from the China Times (
Dojyoji is adapted from a popular Kabuki drama Kyoga No Komusume Dojyoji and a classical Japanese romance novel Arashigaoka. According to director Kawamatsu Riu, both stories are about unrequited love and tragic death. Riu has not included any dialogue, and uses a narrator instead.
PHOTO: DAVID VAN DER VEEN, TAIPEI TIMES
Against an eclectic mix of Western folk-like music, an expressionless girl robot in exquisite kimono moves onto the stage. The girl robot starts to play with a ball. The bizarre scene is then interrupted by the appearance of an injured girl. Adoring the robot's body, she attempts to swap bodies with the robot, but her overtures are spurred and the robot flees. With this, the girl's tragic journey begins. Punctuating the silence are occasional lines spoken by the storyteller, but for the most part, the audience is free to interpret the actions taking place on stage.
Going on stage next weekend is Tai Shun Chieh Chorus' (泰順街唱團) play Tai Shun Chieh (鈦瞚椄). The Chinese title of the play sounds the same as the name of the group but is composed of different characters, all of which are extremely obscure. Though the wordplay may seem meaningless, language and the changes imposed on it is exactly what the play is all about.
The story centers on a girl and her beloved brother. The girl incidentally knows about an extinct tribal practice which eliminates one word from the vocabulary of its language whenever one tribesperson dies. Fascinated by the practice, she carries it out in her own life, eliminating one word from her vocabulary whenever someone dies.
When her brother dies, she eliminates so many important words in her speech that no one in the coroner's office can understand what she's talking about. Tragi-comic episodes like this occur throughout the play.
This will be followed a week later by Drama Theater's Strawberry Smoothie in Summer Days (
Liu Liang-yen's (
In the multimedia performance, only the mother character is on stage, as part of an installation, while her son only appears on a video screen. Another innovation is the play's language, which draws heavily on Taiwanese Aboriginal languages to change the tones and rhymed sounds of Mandarin.
The festival includes a mysterious performance by Huang Pi-wei(
What: Wave Arts Festival
When:
From Aug. 17 to Sept. 23 Dojyoji by Rukaden
Aug.17, 18 and 19 Tai Shun Chieh by Tai Shun Chieh Chorus
Aug. 24, 25 and 26 Strawberry Smoothie in Summer Days by Drama Theater
Aug. 31, Sept. 1 and 2 That One is Actually Not Anything by Huang Pi-wei
Sept. 14, 15 and 16 Ours, the Serpent by Liu Liang-yen
Sept. 21, 22 and 23 WHERE Second Chungcheng Police Precinct Theater, 2, Ln. 5, Kuling St. (牯嶺街五巷三號)
Tickets: Tickets are available at Acer ticketing outlets or call (02)2784-1111
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