Just four weeks after staging Taiwanese Flavor -- Asshole Life as part of the Basement Open 2003 at Taipei's Eslite Bookstore, Chen Amou (
Love to Die (
Love to Die -- the Chinese title means "if you love me, then go lie on the street and die" -- is a "foolishly optimistic" play about love.
PHOTO: VICO LEE
"People always want their lovers to prove their love for them, when it's totally unnecessary," said Chen.
The three characters in the play, two women and a man in a love triangle, thus make many futile and ludicrous attempts to prove their love, only to ruin the relationships.
The performance opens with the three characters complaining to themselves about their lover. Their meaningless grumbles go on and on till all three are tired out. What follows are mock scenes featuring the banter of intimate lovers, on uneventful workdays, or about the bad novels they've read. Intending to reveal the true nature of the conversations between two people in love, the talk is unforgivingly silly, but kind of amusing at the same time.
Interspersed between the lovers' scenes is the battle between three "rainbow fighters" and three "assassins," all played by the same cast.
"Eveyone has positive and negative sides to their personality. Rainbow fighters are the positive self that seeks a perfect love affair, but these fighters always turn into assassins from time to time to sabotage, with jealousy and suspicion, their almost established relationships," Chen said.
That battle, Chen said, is still going on, when the show ends with the voice-over recitation of Woody Allen's quote, "Lovers are like sharks, if they don't swim, they die."
"Everyone is still looking for the rainbow, of love and that's what gives them the energy to go on living their lives," Chen said.
Chen will follow up his most feel-good piece so far, with Pie in the Sky next week, which puts him back in the mindset of a sarcastic social observer. Chen's dry humor, which has come to define most of Walker's productions, will come to the fore here.
Based on the life of late president Chiang Ching-guo (
"His education and relations with Stalin made him a socialist, and his policies, his distrust of capitalists during his presidency, clearly showed his leftist beliefs," Chen said.
Set during the Cold War period -- between the US and the former Soviet Union, the Chinese Communists' rise and the Nationalist Party's retreat to Taiwan -- the play will look at how the young Chiang gradually lost his leftist ideals.
Love to Die will be performed at 7:30pm tonight through Sunday and at 2:30pm tomorrow and Sunday.
Pie in the Sky will be performed at 7:30pm Nov. 14 through Nov. 16 and at 2:30pm Nov. 15 and Nov. 16. All performances are at Ku-ling St Theater, 15 Ku-ling St, Taipei (
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