LAB Space had its audience laughing up a storm last weekend with its rollicking presentation of American playwright David Ives’ Ives’ Shorts.
Diverse existentialist conundrums is the name of the game as Ives delivers six distinct “shorts” and clearly challenges actors and actresses to handle multiple roles with a variety of witty and changing dialogues. Guest directors Ting Kao (高詩婷) and Andrew Chao (周厚安) have chosen and directed their cast well and found new talent in the process.
James Lo (羅濟豪), one of many newcomers to LAB, is at his best in Words, Words, Words, the classic test to prove the “Infinite Monkey Theorem.” In Sure Thing, he had run a gamut of pick-up lines with a blossoming Carrie Mo (莫少宣) and in The Philadelphia, he enjoyed the carefree spirit of being in “Los Angeles,” as opposed to Victor Stevenson’s “funky Philadelphia.” But here as the pragmatic “Milton,” he shows how a chimp can manipulate the system to get smokes. At the same time, of course, he argues practically with the plotting Swift, Charlie Storrar, that they should just type “Hamlet” (whatever that is) and get out of there.
Photo courtesy of Cheng Yi-lee
Out for revenge on the unseen yet “observing” Dr Rossenbaum, Storrar fiendishly plots a poison-tip sword death reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Laertes to do the job.
Storrar is not done; he adroitly handles other roles. In Degas C’est Moi, he pontificates as an imaginative and whimsical Degas for a day while other cast members as typical New Yorkers condescendingly ignore him. In Variations, as the pondering, cerebral Trotsky, he seeks reprieve while his inquisitive and “sometimes dutiful,” wife Sharon Landon assists.
Not to be ignored in this ensemble is Angela Collengberg. As the more focused chimp Kafka in Words, she actually gets the play done. But her best role is when she transforms from stuttering shyness to masterful “linguist” with the coaching effervescent Stevenson in Universal Language.
The set is minimalist and a merry-go-round concept of entering and leaving provides a neat, systematic way to change sets. This is live theater at its best.
Nine Taiwanese nervously stand on an observation platform at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport. It’s 9:20am on March 27, 1968, and they are awaiting the arrival of Liu Wen-ching (柳文卿), who is about to be deported back to Taiwan where he faces possible execution for his independence activities. As he is removed from a minibus, a tenth activist, Dai Tian-chao (戴天昭), jumps out of his hiding place and attacks the immigration officials — the nine other activists in tow — while urging Liu to make a run for it. But he’s pinned to the ground. Amid the commotion, Liu tries to
The slashing of the government’s proposed budget by the two China-aligned parties in the legislature, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), has apparently resulted in blowback from the US. On the recent junket to US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, KMT legislators reported that they were confronted by US officials and congressmen angered at the cuts to the defense budget. The United Daily News (UDN), the longtime KMT party paper, now KMT-aligned media, responded to US anger by blaming the foreign media. Its regular column, the Cold Eye Collection (冷眼集), attacked the international media last month in
A pig’s head sits atop a shelf, tufts of blonde hair sprouting from its taut scalp. Opposite, its chalky, wrinkled heart glows red in a bubbling vat of liquid, locks of thick dark hair and teeth scattered below. A giant screen shows the pig draped in a hospital gown. Is it dead? A surgeon inserts human teeth implants, then hair implants — beautifying the horrifyingly human-like animal. Chang Chen-shen (張辰申) calls Incarnation Project: Deviation Lovers “a satirical self-criticism, a critique on the fact that throughout our lives we’ve been instilled with ideas and things that don’t belong to us.” Chang
Feb. 10 to Feb. 16 More than three decades after penning the iconic High Green Mountains (高山青), a frail Teng Yu-ping (鄧禹平) finally visited the verdant peaks and blue streams of Alishan described in the lyrics. Often mistaken as an indigenous folk song, it was actually created in 1949 by Chinese filmmakers while shooting a scene for the movie Happenings in Alishan (阿里山風雲) in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投), recounts director Chang Ying (張英) in the 1999 book, Chang Ying’s Contributions to Taiwanese Cinema and Theater (打鑼三響包得行: 張英對台灣影劇的貢獻). The team was meant to return to China after filming, but