The National Theater Concert Hall opens this year’s International Theater Festival in satirical style with Dulcinea’s Lament, a multimedia performance by Montreal-based theater group Dulcinea Langfelder & Co. It begins Thursday at 7:30pm.
Dulcinea Langfelder, the show’s principle actor and writer, said in an e-mail exchange that the work is based on the female character who is referred to but never appears in Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote.
“I haven’t come across many Dulcineas in my life, and most of them have been pet dogs,” wrote Langfelder, whose last Taipei performance, the 1996 Portrait of a Woman with Suitcase, received rave reviews. She added that the name Dulcinea is “charged with romantic and grandiose connotations” — nuances that she examines through wordplay, much like Cervantes’ novel.
“The show is based on associations one can make with this famous (and famously misunderstood) name,” she said. Dulcinea is often portrayed as a prostitute.
And the lament?
“Since Dulcinea del Toboso never speaks in Cervantes’ novel, I wanted to give her a voice. And since she is Don Quixote’s ‘raison d’etre’ — his reason for attempting to save the world — she laments his failure to do so. Today’s ‘Post 9-11’ world is woefully reminiscent of the time of the crusades. The discovery of a ‘New World,’ with all its hope for something better, has led to yet another superpower ... yet more war, after war, after war,” she said.
Audiences shouldn’t be put off by the seriousness of the themes — which she uses to examine the roles of men and women throughout history — as Langfelder handles them with considerable doses of satire.
Mythology, philosophy and literature are all touched upon through music, dance, monologue and video images projected on to several moveable screens. The action never wavers thanks to the snappy rhythm of the movement and the spoken lines, which one reviewer said, “border on stand-up comedy.”
But much of the narrative explores feminism and the feminine.
“I believe that Cervantes imagined Dulcinea to represent the feminine side of human spirituality,” she said. “The word, ‘devil,’ comes from ‘devi’: the Sanskrit word for ‘Goddess.’ Dulcinea is the Feminine: a damsel in distress worth fighting for.”
Langfelder also examines another timeless theme in the performance: physical intimacy and its taboos.
“How did sex become such a ‘bad’, forbidden thing? Why do we have pornography? Why did we pervert sex from an essential, natural thing to something so threatening? Dulcinea represents (among other things) ‘good’ sex!,’” she said.
It’s only half the size of its more famous counterpart in Taipei, but the Botanical Garden of the National Museum of Nature Science (NMNS, 國立自然科學博物館植物園) is surely one of urban Taiwan’s most inviting green spaces. Covering 4.5 hectares immediately northeast of the government-run museum in Taichung’s North District (北區), the garden features more than 700 plant species, many of which are labeled in Chinese but not in English. Since its establishment in 1999, the site’s managers have done their best to replicate a number of native ecosystems, dividing the site into eight areas. The name of the Coral Atoll Zone might
On Monday morning, in quick succession, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) released statements announcing “that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) have invited KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to lead a delegation on a visit to the mainland” as the KMT’s press release worded it. The KMT’s press release added “Chairwoman Cheng expressed her gratitude for the invitation and has gladly accepted it.” Beijing’s official Xinhua news release described Song Tao (宋濤), head of the Taiwan Work Office of the CCP Central Committee, as
The US war on Iran has illuminated the deep interdependence of Asia on flows of oil and related items as raw materials that become the basis of modern human civilization. Australians and New Zealanders had a wake up call. The crisis also emphasizes how the Philippines is a swatch of islands linked by jet fuel. These revelations have deep implications for an invasion of Taiwan. Much of the commentary on the Taiwan scenario has looked at the disruptions to world trade, which will be in the trillions. However, the Iran war offers additional specific lessons for a Taiwan scenario. An insightful
Polling data often confirms what we expect, but sometimes it throws up surprises. When examined over time, some patterns appear that speak to something bigger going on. In this column, whenever possible, Formosa’s polls are used. Despite the sometimes cringeworthy antics of Formosa’s Chairman, Wu Tzu-Chia (吳子嘉), the data produced includes detailed breakdowns crucial for analysis. It has also been conducted monthly 11-12 times a year for many years with many of the same questions, allowing for analysis over time. When big shifts do occur between one month and the next it is usually in response to some event in
RSS