Sun Son Theater's (身聲演繹社) members are all experienced street performance artists. They regularly perform in Hsimenting and at other locations around Taipei. This weekend, they will stage The Forgotten World (被遺忘的世界), their third formal theater performance.
A crossover between theater and dance, the performance is an exposition of the principles the group has stuck to over its three-year history. "We want out performances to reach out to everyone. That's why we choose street performance. This style connects performance with daily life," said Leonson Wu (吳忠良), leader of the theater and director of the show.
The Forgotten World appears more like a tribal ritual with its song-and-dance around a bonfire and its open air stage.
The show begins with a musician trying to make a group of black-clad animals release themselves from bondage and move their bodies by playing different musical instruments. The beating of a drum sends all the animals into a frenzy. The animals begin to shout, jump, and even fight by the fire.
This liberating ritual culminates in the musician leading the animals in a dance, and eventually inviting the audience to join them in their dance around the fire.
This unconventional show has enormously unrestrained vitality. Wu aims to remind people through the performance of an ancient past when humans still used their bodies a lot, as in running and hunting. The audience will have to see it "with their hearts rather than their minds," Wu said.
The Forgotten World will be performed tomorrow at 7pm at the outdoor theater in Makung Park (馬公公園戶外劇場), located at 92 Peihsin Rd., Sec. 1, Hsintian City, Taipei County (台北縣新店市北新路一段92號). Admission is free.
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