Liu Ruo-yu (劉若瑀) has been best known in recent years for her work with the Zen-based drumming troupe U-Theatre (優人神鼓) that she founded in 1988 and the rather ascetic lifestyle it entails.
The company is renowned for its drumming, martial arts training system and its very long yunjiao (雲腳, “cloud feet”) walks — around Taiwan and in several other nations. It just held a three-day walk for young drummers early last month in Taitung County.
So pictures of Liu dressed in a bright red, flower-bedecked cheongsam, hair in a bun, might come as a shock to those who are used to seeing her in more simple cotton and linen outfits.
Photo Courtesy of U-Theatre
However, those who remember Liu from her days as one of Taiwan’s most prominent stage actresses with the Lan Ling Theatre — she won a Golden Bell in the early 1980s — are less surprised by the glamour shots for the company’s new show, Town of Gold (淘金去), which opens in New Taipei City’s Jiufen District (九份) on Friday next week.
Liu quit the stage to go to the US to study for a masters’ degree in theater arts at New York University. After graduation, she was selected to join a one-year-workshop in California led by famed avant-garde Polish director Jerzy Grotowski.
It was Grotowski’s challenge her to explore herself and her heritage that led her found U-Theatre upon her return home, and focus on more traditional Taiwanese folk rituals and music. She wanted to create theater works that would enable both the performers and their audiences to transcend conventional visions.
Photo Courtesy of U-Theatre
The company’s latest production, which is a big departure for U-Theatre, promises to do just that. It is a musical and its 21-member cast includes several actors, actresses and singers, in addition to Liu herself.
Liu and U-Theater were invited to create a show by the New Taipei City Cultural Affairs Bureau, which wanted to give visitors a better understanding of Jiufen’s history.
Company members spent about a year interviewing elderly residents of Jiufen and surrounding area, looking for stories about the town’s history, its culture and the changes it has seen, as well as collecting folk songs and once-popular tunes.
The show focuses on changes to the town during the Japanese era and after World War II and is largely told through the eyes of the women in the story.
While Liu’s skills as an actress focused more on straight theater, she said singing is something she enjoyed as a child, and she grew up listening to her father singing.
Town of Gold will be performed in Jiufen’s Shengping Theater (昇平戲院), which was built in 1914 during the Japanese colonial era. It was Taiwan’s first — and for the time, biggest — modern theater.
The Baroque-style building was renovated in 1961, but closed in 1986 amid the decline of the town’s mining industry.
The theater, like much of Jiufen, was highlighted in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s (侯孝賢) 1989 award-winning film A City of Sadness, which triggered a revival of interest in the town, and the theater became a popular backdrop for several commercials and other productions.
The theater was renovated and reopened as a cinema in September 2011. Now it will serve as the backdrop for a new telling of Jiufen’s story.
Jiufen is a bit off the beaten track for a theater production, but the town can be reached by bus No. 1062 from the Taipei Zhongxiao Fuxing MRT stop, or by a combination train/bus trip to the train station in Rueifang District (瑞芳) and then changing to bus numbers 788, 827 or 825.
Performance Notes
WHAT: Town of Gold
WHEN: Dec. 25 to Dec. 27, Dec. 30, Jan. 1 to Jan. 3, Jan. 6, Jan. 8 to Jan. 10, evenings at 7pm and matinees at 2pm
WHERE: Jiufen Shengping Theater (九份昇平戲院), at the intersection of Hsuchi Road and Chingbian Road, Jiufen, New Taipei City (新北市九份豎崎路與輕便路交接處)
ADMISSION: NT$800 and NT$2,000; available online at www.accupass.com/go/utheatre (phone: 02-8978-1001) or through U-Theatre at 02-2938-8188
On the evening of June 1, Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) apologized and resigned in disgrace. His crime was instructing his driver to use a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon. The Control Yuan is the government branch that investigates, audits and impeaches government officials for, among other things, misuse of government funds, so his misuse of a government vehicle was highly inappropriate. If this story were told to anyone living in the golden era of swaggering gangsters, flashy nouveau riche businessmen, and corrupt “black gold” politics of the 1980s and 1990s, they would have laughed.
When Lisa, 20, laces into her ultra-high heels for her shift at a strip club in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, she knows that aside from dancing, she will have to comfort traumatized soldiers. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, exhausted troops are the main clientele of the Flash Dancers club in the center of the northeastern city, just 20 kilometers from Russian forces. For some customers, it provides an “escape” from the war, said Valerya Zavatska — a 25-year-old law graduate who runs the club with her mother, an ex-dancer. But many are not there just for the show. They “want to talk about what hurts,” she
It was just before 6am on a sunny November morning and I could hardly contain my excitement as I arrived at the wharf where I would catch the boat to one of Penghu’s most difficult-to-access islands, a trip that had been on my list for nearly a decade. Little did I know, my dream would soon be crushed. Unsure about which boat was heading to Huayu (花嶼), I found someone who appeared to be a local and asked if this was the right place to wait. “Oh, the boat to Huayu’s been canceled today,” she told me. I couldn’t believe my ears. Surely,
This is a deeply unsettling period in Taiwan. Uncertainties are everywhere while everyone waits for a small army of other shoes to drop on nearly every front. During challenging times, interesting political changes can happen, yet all three major political parties are beset with scandals, strife and self-inflicted wounds. As the ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is held accountable for not only the challenges to the party, but also the nation. Taiwan is geopolitically and economically under threat. Domestically, the administration is under siege by the opposition-controlled legislature and growing discontent with what opponents characterize as arrogant, autocratic
RSS