Now in its 16th year, the Taipei Children’s Arts Festival (台北兒童藝術節) keeps its spirit young and dynamic by focusing on the imagination and fairy tales, featuring an extensive lineup of theater, music, opera, puppetry, acrobatics, exhibitions, film screenings and do-it-yourself workshops at venues across the capital until Aug. 9.
There will be eight paid theatrical performances that should prove popular with children. Teatret Gruppe 38 from Denmark will perform its Hans Christian, You Must Be an Angel. The performance features characters Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales and invites audiences to guess which stories the characters come from.
Spanish artist duo, La Maquine, use music, puppets, everyday objects and projected images to create an audio-visual spectacle without dialogue in El Bosque de Grimm, a work inspired by the Brothers Grimm’s classic tales. From France, physical comedian Patrice Thibaud and pianist Philippe Leygnac perform Cocorico, a screwball comedy that draws inspiration from Italian spaghetti westerns. Sobre la Cuerda Floja, a Chilean production by Teatro y Su Doble, addresses the subject of death and loss through a lyrical story using puppetry and animation.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Children’s Arts Festival
While the paid performances usually sell out early, there remain a few tickets for Cocorico, Sobre la Cuerda Floja and The Snow Prince (雪王子), a theatrical adaptation of Andersen’s The Snow Queen by Puppet & Its Double Theatre (無獨有偶工作室劇團).
COMING TO A THEATER NEAR YOU
As in previous years, there are a great variety of free community performances and outdoor events that take place at community centers, parks, schools and cultural venues across the city, aiming to expose children to diverse forms of art.
Highlights include Naked Lunch by Ouch-Zirk Co-production, a street theater and circus group from Belgium that features two gastronomically-challenged characters cooking up a French banquet. Specializing in interactive theater, Les Goulus from France, brings Les Horsemen, which mixes actors’ performance and acrobatics.
The richest visual feast among the outdoor performances is Wanted, produced by eVenti Verticali from Italy. Noted for their gravity-defying shows, the performers will dazzle the audience with wire-enhanced acrobatics performed on a vertical stage.
Organizers are also collaborating this year with the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (台北當代藝術館) to put on an exhibition of installation art by artists and art groups from home and abroad, including acclaimed multi-media artist and scholar Yien Chung-hsian (顏忠賢) and scientist and kinetic artist Alexander Tang. The exhibition is slated to start Tuesday at the Bopiliao Historical Block (剝皮寮歷史街區).
For animation lovers, nine award-winning animation films from France, Germany, South Africa and the US will be screened at Bopiliao at the same time. Admission is free.
Complete details can be found at the festival’s bilingual Web site at www.taipeicaf.org.
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