A writer of gruesome short stories is arrested and interrogated by two policemen in connection with a series of grizzly child murders that closely resemble the plots of his works.
Adapted from Martin McDonagh’s Laurence Olivier Award-winning play of the same name, The Pillowman is a Kafkaesque black comedy.
“There is a clear class division between the policemen and the prisoner in the interrogation room,” said Fan Tsung-chi (樊宗錡), the play’s director. “We aim to establish a terrifying tension that builds from their unequal power relationship.”
Living in a totalitarian state, detectives Tupolski (Chang Chia-chen, 張家禎) and Ariel (Huang Shih-hsun, 黃士勛) are free to use torture to get the “truth” out of Katurian (Wang Hong-yuan, 王宏元) and his mentally impaired brother Michal (Hsu Wei-ting, 徐維廷).
Beneath all the violence and depravity, the play poses a number of questions, including how much responsibility a writer has for his works, and on what basis trust is built.
“An intriguing thing about the play is how the division between good and evil, in mind as in deed, seems completely blurred,” Fan said.
In one of Katurian’s stories that is interwoven with the play’s storyline, a character named Pillowman travels back in time to urge children to kill themselves to avoid leading lives that are full of suffering. The job proves too painful for the man, who desperately seeks a way out.
The mission of Renshin Theater (仁信合作社劇團), established in 2007 by eight students who graduated from the fifth class of the Department of Drama and Theater at the National Taiwan University, is to “search for the reasons and answers to being a ‘human.’” Group members are mostly alumni and current students of the university and are dedicated to introducing works by contemporary playwrights to local audiences.
“We mainly choose foreign classics that have created a stir in the theatrical field,” said Liao Huei-li (廖慧麗), the group’s technical director and graphic designer. “Like The Pillowman, our first work The Goat: or, Who Is Sylvia? was first adapted and performed in Taiwan by us.”
“In July next year we will be running the Pulitzer Prize-winning play I Am My Own Wife,” Liao said.
— Derek Yiu Pui-yung
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