The Taipei Arts Festival opens tonight with two avant-garde theater productions by companies from opposite sides of the world that both specialize in visual-heavy productions that often focus on the minutiae of life.
French director Philippe Quesne and his Paris-based Vivarium Studio team have taken up residence at Taipei Zhongshan Hall (中山堂) for three performances of his 2012 play, La Melancolie des Dragons (龍之憂鬱), while over at the Wellspring Theater in Gongguan District (公館), Taipei-based Riverbed Theatre (河床劇團) will premiere Still Life (停格), which it developed with students from Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Girls High School (中山女高). “Expect the unexpected” might serve as a motto for both productions.
Quesne, the 46-year-old artistic director of Nanterre-Amandiers Theatre, studied visual arts and turned to directing after spending 10 years as a set designer for theater, operas and exhibitions.
Photo Courtesy of Martin Argyroglo
He has said that his work “can be seen as a series of entomological studies, watch[ing] human beings evolving as if under a microscope,” with his sets as miniature ecosytems.
La Melancolie des Dragons tells the story of six long-haired heavy metal fans who want to build a hard-rock theme park as a form of protest against cheap consumerism.
Stranded in a snowy forest when their old Citroen breaks down and almost out of beer and potato chips, they decide the clearing they are in might be the perfect location for the theme park. After all, the trailer the Citroen has been towing has a rock-and-roll light show that still works. Into this scene wanders a helpful stranger and her dog.
Photo Courtesy of Martin Argyroglo
Quesne mixes minimal dialogue — which has helped make the show a hit on the international festival circuit, classic rock music from the Scorpions, medieval recorders and large inflatable sculptures into a story about the joy and absurdity of life and friendship.
La Melancolie des Dragons will be performed in French with Mandarin subtitles. Tonight’s show will also include English-language subtitles, but the other two will not.
The play runs 80 minutes without intermission and comes with a warning that because of “narrative demands,” alcoholic beverages will be consumed. There will also be fog.
Photo Courtesy of Riverbed Theatre
The warnings should not matter to most Taipei Arts Festival patrons because organizers have made it clear that the festival’s shows are not aimed at family audiences; children under the age of seven are not allowed entrance, while children under 12 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
There will be a 20-minute pre-show talk before each performance of La Melancolie des Dragons and a 30 minute post-show discussion tonight.
While La Melancolie des Dragons carries an alcohol warning, Riverbed’s 50-minute Still Life comes with the warning that latecomers will not be admitted.
The company describes Still Life as “documentary theatre” inspired by 19th century English photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s experiments in the 1870s with stop-motion photography, such as Horse in Motion, which settled the age-old question of whether all four feet of a horse were ever off the ground at the same time when a horse was trotting or galloping.
Muybridge, who had established himself as a landscape and architectural photographer, became interested in images that documented the passage of time as well as a desire to show what was beyond the limitations of the human eye.
His desire to investigate the microscopic details of life has found resonance in generations of artists since his time, including US director Robert Wilson and David Lynch, two of Riverbed artistic director Craig Quintero’s artistic heroes.
Quintero, who said that Still Life, which he served as both director and set designer, is a continuation of Muybridge’s quest and a looking glass for the 21st century.
The play is a sequence of tableaux vivants, a series of living sculptures, with a cast made up of actress Chung Li-mei (鍾莉美) and Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Girls High School students. The show is in Mandarin with English surtitles for tonight’s performance only.
Riverbed, which has continued to thrive despite Quintero’s move back to the US several years ago to become an associate professor at Grinnell College, has built a strong reputation for unconventional image-based performances that defy verbal description.
It is an interesting coincidence both the 13-year-old Vivarium and the 16-year-old Riverbed were formed almost as collectives by visual and performing artists, though under the leadership of strong directors.
It is too bad that members of the two companies will be so busy with their own shows to see the other’s production — imagine the creative sparks that could fly then.
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