Who-Ga-Sha-Ga (嬉戲: Who-Ga-Sha-Ga), Creative Society’s (創作社劇團) envelope-pushing 2004 satire that became the first emerging theater piece to win a Taishin Arts Award (台新藝術獎) for performing arts, is being revived.
It will play at the Huashan Living Arts Festival (華山藝術生活節) in a series of performances between Oct. 1 and Oct. 16 at Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914).
Who-Ga-Sha-Ga has its origins in writer Chi Wei-jan’s (紀蔚然) monthly commentary columns for the literary magazine Ink (印刻文學生活誌) that were later adapted for the stage.
Photo courtesy of Creative Society
“This play was written in the year when the Taiwan Thunderbolt Fire (台灣霹靂火) TV series and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) were all the rage,” producer Lee Huei-na (李慧娜) said at a rehearsal on Friday last week. “You’ll find social commentary and reflections underneath the comedy.”
The play was written by Chi, who is best known for the The Mahjong Game trilogy (夜夜夜麻三部曲), and is being directed by Fu Hung-cheng (符宏征), of The Impossible Times (渭水春風) fame. It stars theater veteran Winnie Chang (張詩盈), who won the best supporting actress award at the Taipei Film Festival for her role in Seven Days in Heaven (父後七日), and Alex Kuo (郭耀仁) as the leads. Wang Hong-yuan (王宏元) and Aboriginal actress Maital Dakiludun (買黛兒．丹希羅倫) have supporting roles.
Written shortly after the 319 shooting incident, an alleged assassination attempt against former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) in Tainan on March 19, 2004, one day before the presidential election, Who-Ga-Sha-Ga is a sci-fi political satire that imagines Taipei plunging into anarchy after the event.
In the play, the Taipei City Government is forced into exile in Kaohsiung and Keelung and Yilan declare independence.
“With this revival, I decided to make minimal changes and kept the script mostly the same,” director Fu said. “Audiences will be surprised to find that the story still resonates and many of the social phenomena depicted here persist in today’s society.”
The plot unfolds in a post-apocalypse Taiwan, with a lowbrow theater troupe auditioning for a performance. Kuo and Chang act out satirical scenes based on Crouching Tiger and Taiwan Thunderbolt Fire, while Wang and Dakiludun portray the two leads’ alter egos. Audience members at the rehearsal laughed out loud at the jibes at oppressed sexuality and overblown hammy acting.
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