Theater troupes from Germany, France, Israel and South Korea, as well as two from Taiwan, have drawn inspiration from Athol Fugard, Bernard-Marie Koltes, Sophocles, and Ingmar Bergman and others for this year's International Theater Festival.
Ticket sales have been brisk for the event, which will be held at the National Experimental Theater (國家實驗劇場) from Monday through April 13: Gutes Tun and Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (directed by world-famous theater innovator Peter Brook) have already sold out.
Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, a play written by Athol Fugard, is a morality tale about apartheid in South Africa's townships that focuses on identity, survival and race.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF NTCH
In the production, Siswe Banzi adopts the identity of a dead man so he can find a job and escape the grinding poverty of the slums. One day he enters a photography studio where he is forced to confront the deeper meaning of his actions. The performance focuses on the cost of freedom and the power of art to transcend oppression.
Roberto Zucco, written by Bernard-Marie Koltes and adapted from the original by Taiwan-based theater group Creative Society (創作社), was inspired by a real-life killer.
Directed by Wang Jia-ming (王嘉明), the plot of the 15-scene play follows the last years of serial killer Roberto Zucco's life and the motives behind his killing spree.
Three actors play 20 nameless characters and pull the audience along in an avant-garde plot that follows Zucco's prison break and subsequent crime rampage. No specific protagonist is ever seen or heard in the play, which incorporates several viewpoints and uses constantly changing scenes strewn with monologues. Performances begin on March 13.
In Gutes Tin, two women intend to do good by providing people with what they desire most. Those who want buns shall have them. Stewed apples, no problem. However, these two are not very serious and spend most of their time in front of a cabin singing, joking and brawling. Though the characters might not bring happiness to the world, Tismer's snappy dialogue in this mad comedy is sure to keep audiences crying with laughter.
Comedy is not on Hana Snir's radar. The Israeli director working in with Habimah National Theater and Cameri Theater is staging an updated version of Sophocles' tragedy Antigone.
The story revolves around Antigone, who defies human laws in order to follow a higher one. She chooses to bury her fallen brother, though he has been declared an enemy of the state by her uncle and is ineligible for any funeral rites.
Snir's adaptation from a translation by Shimon Bouzaglo is interesting because it sound like breaking news.
In Woyzeck, a shattered wooden chair represents a soldier's life. Written by Georg Buchner just before his death at the age of 23, the play is a tragedy about love, betrayal, jealousy and murder.
In the hands of South Korea's Sadari Movement Laboratory, however, chairs take on an added dimension conjuring up physical contexts and revealing the inner states of the characters. A riveting musical score by Astor Piazzolla accompanies the production, which begins on April 4.
Off Performance Workshop's (外表坊) adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's Scener Ur Ett Aktenskap (Scenes From a Marriage), which begins on April 10, makes up the final performance of the festival. The Taiwan-based theater group uses a somber interpretation of Bergman's tale of the vicissitudes of marriage and its eventual breakdown.
Tickets for the International Theater Festival are NT$500 to NT$1,000. All performances will be held at the National Experimental Theater, Taipei. Tickets can be bought at www.artsticket.com.tw.
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
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless