National Chengchi University’s English Department yesterday defended its annual year-end production about man having a sexual affair with a goat as an appropriate choice and said they were puzzled why people would consider the play profane and foul.
“Sure the play touches upon the topic of bestiality but what’s so controversial about that? It has been around since ancient Greece,” said Patricia Ssutu (司徒芝萍), the directing professor, stressing that the central theme of the play is not about non-traditional sexual behaviors, but about family values and the complexity of the relations between a husband and wife, father and son, and extra marital affairs.
The 2003 Tony award winner for Best Play, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? by American playwright Edward Albee, was selected by the students after long deliberation, she said.
The student who complained about the show, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Taipei Times that “material of this nature is not the kind of thing impressionable young university students should be watching.”
He said that his interest was piqued after coming across a flyer for the show, which bears an image of a goat, which he said he thought looked satanic in nature.
After getting hold of a copy of the script one day before the show he decided to complain to the university vice-president, and said he had hoped the school would adapt the script into something “less ugly.”
Several other students apparently walked out in the middle of the show in apparent disgust at the graphic nature of the play and the string of profanities that littered the script.
“It was the students that picked the play and the school was not about the censor their choice,” said Ssutu, who has directed a dozen year-end plays for the English Department in the past 20 years she has taught at the school.
“If the use of a four-letter word can express the emotions of the character, then it is perfectly appropriate,” she said.
The student described a scene in the play in which a man was silhouetted behind a screen, simulating a sexual act with a goat. The script, he said, also included references to pedophilia.
The original play, starring Bill Pullman, first opened on Broadway in March 2002 and closed in December of the same year after more than 300 performances.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS