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.
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
May 18 to May 24 Pastor Yang Hsu’s (楊煦) congregation was shocked upon seeing the land he chose to build his orphanage. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the only way to access it was to cross a river by foot. The soil was poor due to runoff, and large rocks strewn across the plot prevented much from growing. In addition, there was no running water or electricity. But it was all Yang could afford. He and his Indigenous Atayal wife Lin Feng-ying (林鳳英) had already been caring for 24 orphans in their home, and they were in
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
RSS