Beautiful Shakespeare (
Shakespeare's plays were created and performed at a time when pestilence was rife, but this did not put a stop to cultural life, Quintero said during rehearsals at the Experimental Theater in Taipei.
PHOTO: IAN BARTHOLOMEW, TAIPEI TIMES
Although taking part in the Shakespeare in Taipei series of plays, Quintero questioned the relevance of Shakespeare's works for modern audiences. Unlike the other four groups who have performed at this event -- Shakespeare's Wild Sister (
"There is so much death, murder, mutilation and suicide in the tragedies," Quintero said. "It leads one to ask why these are such prominent elements."
So instead of a play by Shakespeare, Riverbed presented a play about Shakespeare. "Shakespeare is not something I would normally do," he said. "If you gave me the opportunity to present a Shakespeare play, even in the National Theater, I would turn it down."
But given the freedom that the experimental nature of the presentations in the CKS Cultural Center sponsored series allowed, Quintero decided to tackle the iconic playwright, but approached him from a decidedly unexpected angle.
"I like to see the stage as a mirror," Quintero said. "You don't come away from the show saying how much you liked this or that, but rather that it makes you reflect on some part of yourself or your experience."
For Quintero, going to the theater is a journey of self-discovery rather than an escape into a theatrical world and this is probably what gives Beautiful Shakespeare its meditative quality.
In direct contrast to Sonata of the Witches, The Macbeth Verses, which premiered last week at this venue and in which director Lu Po-sheng sought to bring the language of Shakespeare to the Taipei stage, Quintero was dismissive of the canonical texts and has sought to create a play which is primarily a visual experience.
"The language of Shakespeare is so distant from us," he said. "Even as I read the words I must refer to notes. If we don't understand the words, then putting them onto the stage serves no purpose."
The play is predominantly staged without words, though there is piano accompaniment and some simple Chinese dialogue. Images are the driving force and great attention has been paid to the costume and set design. The remarkably familiar Shakespeare masks created out of latex by visiting sculptor Carl Johnson prove remarkably effective in creating a surreal mood.
Although the image of Shakespeare is present in the play, the connection to familiar tragedies is tenuous. Though one can easily recognize a sequence of bloody hand-washing as coming from Macbeth, the reference is probably not that essential to an understanding of Quintero's play.
"I don't feel like I am acting Shakespeare," said Isaac Lai (賴志成), a student of international business who has been with Riverbed Theater for one-and-a-half years. "It is about loss and death, discovering my own experience of these things."
It is probably not unfair to say that Quintero has sought to get as far away from the Bard as he could while still staying in the context of a Shakespeare in Taipei event.
But this is not to question the validity of Beautiful Shakespeare as theater, for the play certainly touches on interesting aspects of the creative process, and for those familiar with Shakespeare, does draw aside the veil of character, of time and of place to address some universal human experiences.
But is this theater as therapy? Rather than the escapist fantasy of alternative worlds that theater often offers? There is an uncomfortable suggestion that this is the case.
Quintero is dismissive of the intrusion of the Elizabethan playwright, taking the opportunity to focus on his own dramatic concerns. The result is interesting contemporary theater -- intimate, committed and occasionally playful but lets not pretend we are doing Shakespeare.
If so, the necessity of encumbering modern experimental theater with the presence of Shakespeare probably says more about the prevalent mentality of theater administrators than about the performers and directors who are eager to take advantage of the outstanding venue offered by the Experimental Theater.
Performance Notes:
Beautiful Shakespeare, by the Riverbed Theater, at the Experimental Theater of the National Theater Taipei. Today, tomorrow and Sunday, 7:30pm. Tomorrow and Sunday 2:30pm and 7:30pm. Tickets NT$400, available from CKS Cultural Center.
Recently the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its Mini-Me partner in the legislature, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), have been arguing that construction of chip fabs in the US by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is little more than stripping Taiwan of its assets. For example, KMT Legislative Caucus First Deputy Secretary-General Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) in January said that “This is not ‘reciprocal cooperation’ ... but a substantial hollowing out of our country.” Similarly, former TPP Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) contended it constitutes “selling Taiwan out to the United States.” The two pro-China parties are proposing a bill that
March 9 to March 15 “This land produced no horses,” Qing Dynasty envoy Yu Yung-ho (郁永河) observed when he visited Taiwan in 1697. He didn’t mean that there were no horses at all; it was just difficult to transport them across the sea and raise them in the hot and humid climate. “Although 10,000 soldiers were stationed here, the camps had fewer than 1,000 horses,” Yu added. Starting from the Dutch in the 1600s, each foreign regime brought horses to Taiwan. But they remained rare animals, typically only owned by the government or
It starts out as a heartwarming clip. A young girl, clearly delighted to be in Tokyo, beams as she makes a peace sign to the camera. Seconds later, she is shoved to the ground from behind by a woman wearing a surgical mask. The assailant doesn’t skip a beat, striding out of shot of the clip filmed by the girl’s mother. This was no accidental clash of shoulders in a crowded place, but one of the most visible examples of a spate of butsukari otoko — “bumping man” — shoving incidents in Japan that experts attribute to a combination of gender
Last month, media outlets including the BBC World Service and Bloomberg reported that China’s greenhouse gas emissions are currently flat or falling, and that the economic giant appears to be on course to comfortably meet Beijing’s stated goal that total emissions will peak no later than 2030. China is by far and away the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, generating more carbon dioxide than the US and the EU combined. As the BBC pointed out in their Feb. 12 report, “what happens in China literally could change the world’s weather.” Any drop in total emissions is good news, of course. By
RSS