Following the success of Taipei Shorts I in March, John Brownlie, Red Room and Fu Jen University gathered 10 talented playwrights for Taipei Shorts II — two weekends of original short plays, five each weekend.
In week one of Shorts II, the plays thematically expose how the Internet and modern technology may enhance communication but don’t always resolve issues of intimacy, meaning and relationships.
Canadian Chase Lo makes his Taiwan debut with Lucky Stars, a-slice-of life-comedy where lonely guys use an app to find a “professional cuddle buddy” to solve their woes. It gets complicated.
Photo Courtesy of Alicia Haddad
For Lo, the visceral experience of theatre is where “anything is possible depending on how far you let your imagination take you and the audience gets fully on board.”
Experienced screenwriters Deni Carson and Chris Lanning, on the other hand, had their first plays in Shorts I.
Carson’s comedy, Swipe Right, examines how people communicate more openly online than face to face. A divorced man helping a young protege to meet women online finds himself in an awkward situation when his “attractive match” turns out to be the wife he divorced.
Count Mount, Chris Lanning’s play, treats a different miscommunication where people taking words out of context too easily become offended. Here a court case on obscenity is impacted by a term’s archaic use.
Barry Hall and William Chen are well-known, familiar faces in Taipei acting, writing and directing circles.
Hall’s Slot is a tragic comedy of a relationship in crisis. A man is outside the door, and a woman is inside. He wants to be where she is, but what does she want?
For Hall, theater becomes “alive and present in a way that film can never be.” That the audience can be “nearly within physical reach of an intensely feeling, acting human being is an unmatchable experience.”
Chen notes how theater makes a difference as audiences “sees actors at close range.” His satire, Living in the Tube, examines how new Internet technology affects lives and society taking some to “new levels of intimate yet isolated, fragmented interactions while tearing others apart.”
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