Highlight
Tokyo screamo/electro rocker Aonami plays Underworld (地下社會) on Monday night, with Japanese electro-crash trio Clarabell. Aonami (www.myspace.com/aonami) uses a Nintendo Game Boy and the Little Sound DJ tracking program to make 8-bit music and has appeared at the Knitting Factory in New York, South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and Taipei’s Formoz (野台開唱) rock festival. Monday’s event is organized by Back 2 the Future, which brought Canadian electro-rock group Dandi Wind and Berlin breakcore artist Drumcorps to Underworld this spring. B2TF (back2thefuture.tw) will release its second compilation CD at the show.
■B1, 45 Shida Rd, Taipei City (台北市師大路45號B1). Call (02) 2369-0103 or visit www.upsaid.com/underworld for more information
■Monday at 9pm
■NT$300 admission
In terms of music, Pingtung County is probably best-known for the annual Spring Scream by the sea in Kenting. Pingtung is also home to Taiwan’s “country music” tradition, and the county now has aspirations to become the country’s Nashville. To further these hopes, this year sees the first incarnation of the Wind and Tide International Folk Music Festival (風與潮:國際唱遊節). This event, which will feature well-known names such as Lin Sheng-xiang (林生祥), Chen Ming-chang (陳明章) and Kimbo Hu (胡德夫), in addition to a host of lesser-known folk groups, in concerts that begin tomorrow and run until Aug. 25. International guests include Samovar from Russia, Inka Marka, a South American group now based in Australia, Khac Chi from Vietnam, A First Light from Ireland and Sundiata from Uganda. Concerts will take place at various venues around Pingtung. Detailed information can be obtained at www.cultural.pthg.gov.tw/folkmusic/activity.html.
Theater
New Wave Guling 2008 (2008第三屆新潮實驗室) is a series of experimental performances held at the famed Guling Street Theater. Play in the• (在•的世界裡，我們只能盲著瞎彈) is a production inspired by Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Blinds. The interpretation combines lines from the original play with sound experiments, where actors playing different instruments alternate with the spoken word. The gates of hell have been thrown open and lonely ghosts are wandering the earth looking for humans to haunt; Easy come, easy go (黑白切), however, takes a different approach to Ghost Month. Rather than scaring people, the ghosts want to gossip. This multimedia production uses dialogue, music and puppets.
■ Guling Street Theater (牯嶺街小劇場), 3F, 2, Ln 5, Guling St, Taipei City (台北市牯嶺街5巷2號3樓)
■ Play in the• runs tonight, tomorrow and Sunday at 8pm and tomorrow at 11:55pm; Easy Come, Easy Go will be staged tonight, tomorrow and Sunday at 9:30pm
■ Tickets for all performances are NT$250, available through NTCH ticketing
An early Hakka and Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) musical, April Rain (四月望雨) returns to the stage tonight. The multilingual performance — Hoklo, Hakka, Mandarin and Japanese — is based on the life of Teng Yu-sian (鄧雨賢), a Japanese-colonial era composer who has been hailed as the father of Taiwanese folk music. Teng is portrayed as an artist caught between different cultures and torn between idealism and reality.
■ Cultural Affairs Bureau of Hsinchu County (新竹縣文化局), 146 Xianzheng 9th Rd, Chubei City, Hsinchu County (新竹縣竹北市縣政九路146號)
■ Tonight at 7:30pm and tomorrow at 2:30pm
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