The second International Theatre Festival with its theme of the spoken word continues this weekend, when local troupe Tainan Jen Theatre
Formed in 1987, Tainan Jen Theatre was one of the first companies in Taiwan to focus solely on western-styled rather than traditional Chinese spoken drama. Since then the troupe has built up a reputation as one of the nation's leading intercultural troupes, with productions of Antigone and Macbeth both lauded by critics as two of the most successful Taiwanese-language adaptations of Western theater to have been staged in the country in recent years.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CKS CULTURAL CENTER.
For its latest production, and one with which it has chosen to represent Taiwan at the biannual International Theatre Festival, the troupe has opted to perform an adaptation of Beckett's Endgame -- a classic work of modern literature and a play in which nothing happens once.
The production of Beckett's post-modernist masterpiece sees the performers portraying characters not from a psychological perspective, but instead setting out to embody their stage personas through physical and verbal actions. It is a style of theater created by the Tainan-based group that has been dubbed the "performance score of voice and body" (
Endgame revolves around the verbal relationship between Nagg and Nell who live in trashcans, their wheelchair-bound son Hamm and his attendant Clov. Like a game of chess, from whence the term "endgame" originated, the play's protagonists are constantly trying to checkmate each other in a womb-like environment from which Clov is desperate to escape before Hamm can murder him.
Performance notes:
Tainan Jen Theatre will perform Samuel
Beckett's Endgame
Where: The Experimental Theatre
When: Today through Sunday. Performances begin at 7:30pm. Matinees will take place at 2:30pm, tomorrow and Sunday
Cost: NT$600 from the CKS Cultural Center box office, or from Acer Ticketing Outlets nationwide. More: For full festival performance schedule, visit the CKS Cultural Center Web site at www.ntch.edu.tw.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby