Taipei’s first venue for alternative performance, and now one of the most important, the Crown Theater (皇冠藝術中心小劇場), established in 1984, opened the 14th Crown Arts Festival (第14屆皇冠藝術節) with La Belle Dormant (我的天使魔鬼—睡美人) by Move Theater Group (動見体劇團) over the weekend.
In an interview with the Taipei Times last week, Ping Heng (平珩), the founder of Dance Forum Taipei (舞蹈空間舞蹈團), which runs the venue, talked about the role the theater space has played over the festival’s 14-year history.
The event, instituted in 1994, was the first arts festival to be sponsored by the private sector in Taiwan, and has played host to many groups and individuals, some of whom have gone on to become established names in the world of theater.
Ping said that festivals such as the Crown Arts Festival play an important role in exposing audiences to a wide array of performance styles through inexpensive package deals on tickets, and minimize publicity costs.
The opening show by Move Theater Group combined multimedia and a strong literary sensibility and emphasized physical movement. EX-Theatre Asia’s (EX-亞洲劇團) The Island (島), which opens Thursday, is notable for its “Asian body language” and draws on the talents of Indian director Chongtham Jayanta Meetri. In the following two weeks, the festival hosts The Two of Us (我們) by Comedians Workshop II (可以演戲劇團), which sees Huang Shi-wei (黃士偉) and Hsieh Yi-ching (謝宜靜), two experienced local performers, take on directorial roles, and 8213 Physical Dance Theatre’s (8213肢體舞蹈劇場) Comic 1.0 (卡漫1.0), which has former Dance Forum performer Sun Chuo-tai (孫梲泰) returning to his old stomping ground.
“We hope that new talent can be developed through this festival. We want the Crown Theater to be a stepping stone for young artists as they move forward … Crown Theater is positioned between the Guling Street Theater (牯嶺街小劇場), which does fringe, and the National Experimental Theater (實驗劇場),” Ping said.
The Crown Theater is a highly versatile black box theater. The simplicity of the environment means that it is ideal for both creative artists and audiences.
“Creating a performance for a black box theater is really very challenging,” Ping said.
In addition to interaction with audiences, Ping also sees interaction between artists as a crucial factor in raising the quality of experimental theater. She pointed to a lack of production talent that means many works are driven by ideas from a single creative personality. “There is too much scope for self-indulgence in this situation,” she said.
In curating the festival, Ping said that the emphasis was on selecting groups with fun material, “otherwise people will stop coming back.”
“I think we are at the beginning of a new stage. At the time when martial law was lifted, many people used theater as a means of expression,” Ping said. “Now there are so many avenues of expression, only people with a real interest in performance will be drawn to the theater … Now the best groups have moved on to more mainstream venues such as the Experimental Theater. Things need to be restarted.”
A preview of EX-Theatre Asia’s (EX-亞洲劇團) The Island (島) will run in Friday’s Around Town.
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