Since joining her Taiwanese husband’s gezai opera (歌仔戲) troupe in Chiayi County’s Taibao City (太保) 11 years ago, Juan An-ni (阮安妮), former lead trapeze artist at Vietnam’s National Circus Theater, has become a successful huadan (花旦) — lead female role — and the subject of an award-winning documentary, God’s Play (神戲).
Lai Li-chun (賴麗君), co-director of God’s Play, which in April won the Golden Harvest Award for Short Films, said that she saw Juan’s performance with the Sinlimei Theater Troupe (新麗美歌劇團) in Chiayi in 2013 and was surprised to find a 30-something Vietnamese engaged in an art that is predominantly performed by older artists.
Watching gezai opera at temples has been her favorite entertainment since her childhood, Lai said, adding that she had for many years wanted to make a documentary about Taiwanese opera.
Photo courtesy of Lai Li-chun
“Gezai opera is a traditional dramatic form that had fallen into neglect in Taiwan, where no one wants to perform it and no one wants to see it,” Lai said. “After talking to Juan, I realized that she had a dramatic life that should be told, and convinced Peng Chia-ju (彭家如) to co-direct the film with me.”
Lai said she spent three years making the film, documenting Juan’s marriage and training with the troupe while raising her children.
The documentary shows the hardships and joy that Taiwan’s new immigrants experience, Lai said, adding that she hopes that the documentary would be an encouragement for new immigrants trying to adapt to their new homeland.
Juan said that she was originally opposed to the project, but after realizing that the public needed to hear the voice of female immigrant spouses, she changed her mind and decided to work with Lai and Peng.
Juan said she was performing with the National Circus Theater in Chiayi 11 years ago when she caught the eye of the gezai troupe’s owner, Chang Chin-hu (張金湖), who recruited her into his troupe and introduced her to his son and her now-husband, Chang Fang-yuan (張芳遠).
Juan said that it took her many years to master Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) and her roles until she was able to take the stage in 2008, the year her youngest daughter was born with a congenital condition that required dialysis.
“When we left home to work, we had to bring her with us; we were burning the candle at both ends,” she said.
Lai said that when they began shooting the film, only NT$200,000 (US$6,251) of the NT$3 million budget was available.
Peng had to make sacrifices to save money, for example by surviving solely on plain noodles, Lai said.
“Fortunately, donors and subsidies were found during filming, although the crew had to tough it out with the troupe traveling to many places and usually showering with cold water,” Lai said.
The Minghsiung Cultural Foundation is to host an open screening of God’s Play at 7pm today in Minsyong Township’s (民雄) Shanjhong Village (山中), where Lai was born, foundation president Cheng Chin-chen (鄭金鎮) said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater