What can you accomplish in 14 weeks? In idle hands, a season can easily pass in aimless fun. In the case of Mitch, he learns to love again.
Tuesdays With Morrie (最後14堂星期二的課), Godot Theater’s Chinese-language adaptation of Mitch Albom’s 1997 best-selling novel, is being performed at Taipei’s Metropolitan Hall (台北市社教館城市舞台) until March 11, before moving to the Taichung Chungshan Hall (台中市中山堂) on March 17 and March 18.
Since its premiere last month, the popular tear-jerker has clocked up more than 40 shows, and this is its fifth revival.
Photo Courtesy of Godot Theater
The production will move to Shanghai after its Taiwan run.
Directed by Daniel Yang (楊世彭), the production boasts theater thespian Chin Shih-chieh (金士傑) and popular TV actor Pu Hsueh-liang (卜學亮) in the leads.
Adapted from Albom’s autobiographical novel, the play follows the hotshot journalist Mitch as he reconnects with his college mentor Morrie.
Because Morrie is dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive disease of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement, Mitch opts to meet him every Tuesday for heart-to-heart conversations for 14 weeks.
The book has sold 14 million copies worldwide and was turned into an Emmy-winning TV movie by Oprah Winfrey in 2000. The book’s Chinese edition has sold more than 700,000 copies in Taiwan.
“This production has been an unexpected hit,” Yang told the Taipei Times in an interview on Thursday last week. “I approached Godot Theater about this heart-moving play and said it might lose money, but it actually became a crowd drawer.”
As the latest mentor/protege heart-warmer in the vein of Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester, this inspirational play’s unflinching depiction of death tackles the taboo surrounding the topic.
“The story covers marriage, family, father-and-son relationships and friendship,” Yang said. “Everyone will find something to relate to. The audiences really react to the performance and the story.”
At the heart of the story is the long series of candid chats on topics ranging from life to love. Because of its empowering theme, the play has been dubbed “chicken soup” theater in China.
“Most audiences have read or heard about this book and they come expecting an elevating experience,” Yang said. “The lessons between Mitch and Morrie are over, but our lessons with the audiences continue.”
From the last quarter of 2001, research shows that real housing prices nearly tripled (before a 2012 law to enforce housing price registration, researchers tracked a few large real estate firms to estimate housing price behavior). Incomes have not kept pace, though this has not yet led to defaults. Instead, an increasing chunk of household income goes to mortgage payments. This suggests that even if incomes grow, the mortgage squeeze will still make voters feel like their paychecks won’t stretch to cover expenses. The housing price rises in the last two decades are now driving higher rents. The rental market
July 21 to July 27 If the “Taiwan Independence Association” (TIA) incident had happened four years earlier, it probably wouldn’t have caused much of an uproar. But the arrest of four young suspected independence activists in the early hours of May 9, 1991, sparked outrage, with many denouncing it as a return to the White Terror — a time when anyone could be detained for suspected seditious activity. Not only had martial law been lifted in 1987, just days earlier on May 1, the government had abolished the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist
When life gives you trees, make paper. That was one of the first thoughts to cross my mind as I explored what’s now called Chung Hsing Cultural and Creative Park (中興文化創意園區, CHCCP) in Yilan County’s Wujie Township (五結). Northeast Taiwan boasts an abundance of forest resources. Yilan County is home to both Taipingshan National Forest Recreation Area (太平山國家森林遊樂區) — by far the largest reserve of its kind in the country — and Makauy Ecological Park (馬告生態園區, see “Towering trees and a tranquil lake” in the May 13, 2022 edition of this newspaper). So it was inevitable that industrial-scale paper making would
Hualien lawmaker Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) is the prime target of the recall campaigns. They want to bring him and everything he represents crashing down. This is an existential test for Fu and a critical symbolic test for the campaigners. It is also a crucial test for both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a personal one for party Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫). Why is Fu such a lightning rod? LOCAL LORD At the dawn of the 2020s, Fu, running as an independent candidate, beat incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and a KMT candidate to return to the legislature representing