One criticism that the Taipei Times’ features department receives is that we run stories about shows and programs too close to the performance dates, when the only seats left are the most expensive or less desirable ones.
So we thought we give our readers a heads-up on this year’s Taipei Arts Festival, which runs from Sept. 9 to Oct. 16 at venues around the city and is offering an early-bird discount of 25 percent off on tickets purchased by Tuesday next week.
For its 18th year, the festival, which is organized by Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs and the Taipei Culture Foundation, has put together 12 programs under the theme “Art Can Change Lives.”
Courtesy of Riverbed Theatre
The organizers hope the programs will demonstrate that the act of creation can change both individuals and society as well as highlight Taipei’s role this year as World Design Capital.
As usual, the festival has encouraged inter-medium and cross-cultural coproductions.
The festival opens at the Taipei City Shuiyuan (Wellspring) Theater (台北市水源劇場), on Sept. 9 with Still Life (停格) by Riverbed Theatre (河床劇團) in conjunction with Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Girls High School, a show that is described as “documentary theatre” inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s 1878 experiments with stop-motion photography.
Pingung County-based Tjimur Dance Theatre (蒂摩爾古薪舞集), a Paiwan company, is teaming up with New Zealand’s Black Grace for 2 Gather (在一起) to explore the commonalities and differences of the Austronesian cultures through movement.
From overseas the organizers are also bringing Toshiki Okada’s experimental work, God Bless Baseball (棒球奇蹟), a joint production of Festival/Tokyo and Korea’s Asian Culture Complex — Asian Arts Theatre, and Europe Connexion by the Party Theatre and France’s Cie de Veilleur, as well as Germany’s Maxim Gorki Theatre’s production of Common Ground (共同境地).
There are also companies from the UK and Italy and programs as varied as a combination of juggling and ballet (4x4: Ephemeral Architectures) and the FOCA Formosa Circus Art (型男新馬戲團體FOCA) (How Long Is Now?, 一瞬之光).
The festival has a well-designed Web site in Mandarin and English (eng.taipeifestival.org.tw), with pages on each program and one describing all the special ticketing packages and offers.
While the early-bird offer expires on Tuesday, people who purchase of tickets to two or more international productions plus one or more local productions will receive 20% off the regular ticket prices.
However, there is one caveat: the programs are not aimed at families and children younger than seven are not allowed, while those under 12 must be accompanied by a guardian.
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