Stan Lai’s (賴聲川) widely acclaimed A Dream Like A Dream (如夢之夢), a major landmark in Chinese-language theater, will take the stage at Taipei’s National Theater from Aug. 19 to Sept. 1.
First staged in Taiwan and Hong Kong in 2002, the epic eight-hour production has returned with a new cast, and features actors Chin Shih-chieh (金士傑), Hsu Yen-ling (徐堰鈴), Hu Ge (胡歌) and Chinese pop star Chris Lee (李宇春). Thirty actors will portray over 100 roles in the show. Oscar-winning designer Tim Yip (葉錦添) created the design for the 300-plus costumes.
Epic, romantic, extravagant, metaphysical and engrossing, Lai’s masterpiece will run for a total of eight shows. The production will have no subtitles.
Photo courtesy of Performance Workshop theater
“This story is about life and people’s choices,” Lai told the Taipei Times in an interview in June. “It’s essentially about karma.”
The plotline tells several interwoven stories with one leading to another. The narrative follows the life of Gu Shiang-lan, who lived through much of the 20th century, first as a prostitute in 1930s Shanghai and then, after marrying an aristocrat, a painter in Paris. Following the death of her husband, she returns to China in the 1950s and experiences the Cultural Revolution.
Lai said he drew on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Tiananmen Square massacre and the Cultural Revolution to craft the emotionally complex story.
“The story moves ahead in time while referring to the past constantly, thus forming a unified whole,” Lai said.
To best present this complex story about love, life and enlightenment, Lai conceived a daunting 360-degree, two-story circular stage that surrounds the audience, who sit in the center pool section. Actors perform on the circular stage, sometimes with two or three actors for the same role appearing simultaneously.
“This story came to me organically, “ Lai said, adding that he thought up the story while attending a seminar in India in 1999. During a meditation session in front of the lotus tree where the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment, the inspiration surged into Lai’s mind and he quickly scribbled down the plotline. “When you fall into the spell of this show, you won’t feel the length at all,” Lai said of the play’s length.
The performance is divided into two parts and scheduling allows audience members to watch it on two consecutive nights or both parts at the same time.
This is the year that the demographic crisis will begin to impact people’s lives. This will create pressures on treatment and hiring of foreigners. Regardless of whatever technological breakthroughs happen, the real value will come from digesting and productively applying existing technologies in new and creative ways. INTRODUCING BASIC SERVICES BREAKDOWNS At some point soon, we will begin to witness a breakdown in basic services. Initially, it will be limited and sporadic, but the frequency and newsworthiness of the incidents will only continue to accelerate dramatically in the coming years. Here in central Taiwan, many basic services are severely understaffed, and
Jan. 5 to Jan. 11 Of the more than 3,000km of sugar railway that once criss-crossed central and southern Taiwan, just 16.1km remain in operation today. By the time Dafydd Fell began photographing the network in earnest in 1994, it was already well past its heyday. The system had been significantly cut back, leaving behind abandoned stations, rusting rolling stock and crumbling facilities. This reduction continued during the five years of his documentation, adding urgency to his task. As passenger services had already ceased by then, Fell had to wait for the sugarcane harvest season each year, which typically ran from
It is a soulful folk song, filled with feeling and history: A love-stricken young man tells God about his hopes and dreams of happiness. Generations of Uighurs, the Turkic ethnic minority in China’s Xinjiang region, have played it at parties and weddings. But today, if they download it, play it or share it online, they risk ending up in prison. Besh pede, a popular Uighur folk ballad, is among dozens of Uighur-language songs that have been deemed “problematic” by Xinjiang authorities, according to a recording of a meeting held by police and other local officials in the historic city of Kashgar in
It’s a good thing that 2025 is over. Yes, I fully expect we will look back on the year with nostalgia, once we have experienced this year and 2027. Traditionally at New Years much discourse is devoted to discussing what happened the previous year. Let’s have a look at what didn’t happen. Many bad things did not happen. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) did not attack Taiwan. We didn’t have a massive, destructive earthquake or drought. We didn’t have a major human pandemic. No widespread unemployment or other destructive social events. Nothing serious was done about Taiwan’s swelling birth rate catastrophe.
RSS