Correction: During the editing process, incorrect gig dates were added to the performance notes. Cabaret is Saturday and Sunday and not Friday and Saturday as stated in the original notes. The Taipei Times regrets the error.
Since it’s inception two years ago, Taipei Players, which provides an outlet for actors who have relocated from their home countries, has put on four sold-out shows.
“There’s no money in it,” said cofounder, director and actress Mandy Roveda, “but we love it.”
A week before the group’s newest offering, this weekend’s A Night at the Cabaret, it was crunch time, and she and fellow cofounder, assistant director and actress Sarah Zittrer squeezed in a lunchtime interview with the Taipei Times, along with fellow thespian Brandon Thompson.
Thompson, who acts and sings in the show, is the group’s poster boy, and today he is the only one who seems relaxed — the other two are busy trying to schedule rehearsals and keep the performance under three hours.
“It’s about two hours long,” says Roveda, as Thompson motions to me with three fingers, indicating that it may be longer.
Roveda is wide-eyed, with blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, no makeup, and a frantic expression on her face.
“We wanted to take everyone [who auditioned], but we couldn’t make it an eight-hour show,” says Roveda. “There were a few American Idol moments that left us bug-eyed, but over all there were a lot of talented people auditioning.”
Roveda and Zittrer asked hopefuls to prepare five songs each. “We want people to be singing what they want to sing — that’s part of the fun,” says Zittrer. “People brought in stuff I’d never heard of — we listened to it and fell in love with it — it was a great way to learn what’s out there.”
Selections will be performed from a variety of shows including Cabaret, Chicago, Nine, Les Miserables, The Little Mermaid, Little Shop of Horrors, Rocky Horror Picture Show and Oliver! Some of the best acts come from popular musical Avenue Q, an adult version of Sesame Street where everyone has grown up and realized they may not be so special after all. The songs are hilarious and because they follow the format of the children’s show, are especially easy to understand.
The cast is talented, comprising blues singer DC Rapier (founder of the Blues Society on Taiwan), director of Smokey Joe’s Cafe Brook Hall, the Artistic Director of VM Theatre Company Chris Tseng (曾慧誠) and more than 10 other actors and musicians from a variety of theatrical backgrounds.
Roveda hopes that including more Taiwanese actors on the bill will attract a wider audience.
Zittrer is especially excited to have Chicago native Rapier on board. “His voice gives you goose bumps,” she says. Both directors have been very hands-on with the performances to give guidance so that each segment is like a mini-scene, not just a song.
The performers will be accompanied by a live band with Tony Tung on piano, Slawek Kolodziej on drums and Maxx Ta on bass.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless