I wake up with a throbbing headache on the floor of an unfamiliar room. Where am I? Ah, I remember now. I’m at the Super Heroic Justice Doom Squad’s headquarters, where we partied hard last night to celebrate the capture of Reptoman.
Being the secret president of Captain Amazing’s online fan club, I was more than thrilled when the man himself asked me, officer Jones, to escort Reptoman to prison, and even more so when Whizzo Girl invited me to the party. But something isn’t right. There’s a dead body on the floor, the “world in danger” light is flashing and we’re locked up in the basement with no way out.
Nobody has any recollection of what happened last night, but as a police officer, solving murders is my bread and butter. This is also my perfect chance to find out more about Captain Amazing — just wait until I tell the folks in the club what toothpaste he uses! And so begins Taiwan Interactive Theater Society’s latest live action role playing scenario, with 22 actors in founder Brian David Phillips’ basement in New Taipei City.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
In interactive theater, the players, each with their own character guidelines and agendas, interact without a script and the story progresses and concludes according to the their actions. The group has recently started hosting public events after a decade-long hiatus, although Phillips, a National Chengchi University English professor, has been adapting the games as a classroom language practice tool for the past 15 years.
Phillips is the scenario’s director. He pre-assigns roles, makes update announcements — such as the room’s oxygen levels are running low — and gives players new information about the story. For example, I was handed a card with my recovered memories when my hangover was cured.
‘STAY IN CHARACTER’
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
He announces some rules before the game starts.
“Stay in character,” he says, pointing to a man wearing a cardboard snail on his head. “This is not Kevin. Kevin is dead to us. This is Snail. If at any time you think you’re talking to Kevin, he sucks.”
“Find the people you know, find those you trust, trust them, find those you distrust, don’t trust them. It’s really simple, folks,” he continues.
Phillips says it’s not always a murder. Sometimes it is saving the world, sometimes it is choosing a new king. It is far more chaotic than your average murder mystery, as some people have more than seven tasks at a time and there’s also groupings of players with common aims.
“(Murder mysteries) are often set up where you sit around and talk,” Phillips says. “This is like, ‘Let’s go find a secret space and screw people over.’”
People can play the scenario however they see fit. One can play dumb, deflect attention and secretly work on a sinister agenda or even choose to ignore the murder and spend the entire game collecting superhero trading cards.
“I don’t really care about goals or achievements, I like the acting,” Viktoria Olofsson, who plays Whizzo Girl, says.
Phillips says this is “deconstructive theater,” where the viewer and performer are the same person, playing out a nonlinear plot with numerous outcomes. One time, the murderer accidentally revealed himself within the first five minutes of the scenario, and that was game over.
TELLING A STORY
Chengchi University English professor Michael Cheng (鄭傳傑), who plays Captain Amazing, says this type of conversation practice is more effective than reading dialogue.
“Here you think of your story, how you express what your goals are, how to shape someone’s impression of you, there’s persuasion, negotiation, you get pushed and learn where your weaknesses are,” he says.
Things indeed get complicated as the game goes on. People approach me looking for a variety of items, fingers are pointed, alliances are made, and Captain Amazing is, well, being amazing. There’s mind reading, shaman visions, theft, blackmailing … the list goes on.
Some characters withhold key items for money, power, or fear that it might fall into the wrong hands. I spend NT$100 to learn a superhero’s secret, which turns out to be useless, and later I use my interrogation skills to find out more useless information.
Of course, we don’t know what each other is up to until the debriefing after the scenario, where all secrets are revealed.
Four hours after I awaken, we’ve made little progress and oxygen finally runs out. We drop like flies as the killer emerges victorious.
I did, however, find out Captain Amazing’s favorite brand of toothpaste — of course, it’s Dazzle. My death was not completely in vain.
For information about future events, join the society’s Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/ taiwaninteractivedrama.
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