Performance Workshop Theatre (表
Three women will challenge the traditional, male-dominated Chinese style of stand-up comedy called hsiang-sheng (相
PHOTO COURTESY OF PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP THEATRE
In a marathon of performances, veteran comedian Fang Fang (方
"We have always challenged ourselves to give different faces to the art of hsiang-sheng. Traditionally, women are not allowed to do hsiang-sheng. So this time it is a difficult challenge for us," Lai said.
Since it's a challenge to the male-dominated art, Lai did not just replace the male performers with women. Nor did he encourage his actresses to imitate the male performances, he said.
Rather, he tried to understand the differences between men's and women's speech, "and then find a special women's language," he said.
In the process, Lai found that women can listen and speak at the same time. A couple of women can even talk heatedly about three to four topics at the same time. On stage, though, dialogue recreating this speech style would be difficult to follow for the audience.
Lai said the play's content revolves around current women's topics, such as diets, fitness, beauty products and relationship problems, and content ranges from the ancient topic of feet-binding to the latest topic -- "doing the splits" (劈腿), otherwise known as cheating on one's significant other.
"These topics may somewhat be related to feminism, but we don't want to overemphasize the connection," Lai said. "We want to use jokes and laughter to present and explore the frustrations and choices women face."
The story of The Night Women Became Hsiang-sheng Comedians begins at a year-end party of what seems to be a direct-sale company called Total Women.
Two top saleswomen Blue Diamond (Hsiao) and Ruby (Teng) desperately wait for a mysterious old lady to show up, perhaps for some great tips about selling their products. But the old lady never shows up. Instead a woman claiming to be the lady's granddaughter (Fang) appears, but she cannot explain the old lady's absence.
A series of talk-show episodes then begins. The six episodes include monologue, dialogue, call-and-response and three-person group talk.
In one episode, Shouting Abuses on the Streets, actress Fang rants while playing an angry woman cursing everything she sees. She adopts Huang-mei opera voices and Beijing opera voices and also imitates Mando-pop singers.
Fang will also perform a solo episode about the thoughts and feelings of a woman coming out of marriage.
The three actresses lay it bare about their experiences with their "special friend" that comes every month for a few days.
"We just talk in a very straightforward manner about a biological phenomenon. And the result has been explosive laughter at the past few rehearsals, because the jokes were too realistic," said Fang.
And of course there will be performances about women's language used only in "very private" situations.
All three actresses were top choices for director Lai. Hsiao and Teng are winners of Golden Bell Awards (Taiwan's top TV award) and are some of the earliest members of the troupe.
Fang is no stranger to stand-up either. She is a senior TV variety-show hostess with 30 years of experience, 15 years of which were spent as a cabaret-show hostess.
She said, "From the beginning of the rehearsal, we felt that we have so much to talk about. And we could talk for three whole days about those stories and jokes."
The show runs from today at Taipei Municipal Social Education Hall. At press time, the troupe was planning two extra performances in Taipei on Jan. 28 and Jan. 29 because of the great demand for tickets.
After Taipei, the show will tour to Taichung on Feb. 27, Hsinchu on May 28, Zhongli on June 4, and Kaohsiung on June 10 and June 11.
Performance note:
WHAT: The Night Women Became Hsiang-sheng Comedians
WHEN AND WHERE:
Jan 14 to Jan. 22, Jan. 28 and Jan. 29, 7:30pm at Taipei Municipal Social Education Hall.
Feb. 27, 2:30pm at Chungshan Hall, Taichung City
May 28, 7:30pm at the Grand Hall of National
Ching-hua University
June 4, 7:30pm at Arts Hall, Chungli City
June 10 and June 11, 7:30pm at Chih-teh Hall,
Kaohsiung City
TICKETS: NT$300 to NT$1,800, available at Era Ticketing outlets
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located