Theater groups from Italy and Taiwan are teaming up to perform Buchettino as part of this year’s Taipei Children’s Art Festival.
A festival favorite (it’s the fifth year that it has been performed), it is adapted from the fairy tale Thumbkin by Charles Perrault, the father of French children’s literature, but given an avant-garde touch with sound driving the performance.
The story is about a lumberjack and his wife who abandon their children in the forest because they are too poor to care for them. Deep in the forest, Buchettino finds a house and leads his brothers inside. But they aren’t going to get the kind of welcoming they were hoping for and have to use their wits to escape. For more information, visit the festival’s English and Chinese Web site at www.taipeicaf.org.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Children’s Art Festival
■ Guangfu Auditorium (光復廳) at Taipei Zhongshan Hall (台北中山堂), 98 Yanping S Rd, Taipei City (台北市延平南路98號). July 26 until Aug. 7.
■ Admission is NT$200
Before the recall election drowned out other news, CNN last month became the latest in a long line of media organs to report on abuses of migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing fleet. After a brief flare of interest, the news media moved on. The migrant worker issues, however, did not. CNN’s stinging title, “Taiwan is held up as a bastion of liberal values. But migrant workers report abuse, injury and death in its fishing industry,” was widely quoted, including by the Fisheries Agency in its response. It obviously hurt. The Fisheries Agency was not slow to convey a classic government
Not long into Mistress Dispeller, a quietly jaw-dropping new documentary from director Elizabeth Lo, the film’s eponymous character lays out her thesis for ridding marriages of troublesome extra lovers. “When someone becomes a mistress,” she says, “it’s because they feel they don’t deserve complete love. She’s the one who needs our help the most.” Wang Zhenxi, a mistress dispeller based in north-central China’s Henan province, is one of a growing number of self-styled professionals who earn a living by intervening in people’s marriages — to “dispel” them of intruders. “I was looking for a love story set in China,” says Lo,
It was on his honeymoon in Kuala Lumpur, looking out of his hotel window at the silvery points of the world’s tallest twin skyscrapers, that Frank decided it was time to become taller. He had recently confessed to his new wife how much his height had bothered him since he was a teenager. As a man dedicated to self-improvement, Frank wanted to take action. He picked up the phone, called a clinic in Turkey that specializes in leg lengthening surgery — and made a booking. “I had a lot of second thoughts — at the end of the day, someone’s going
The next few months will be critical in determining the future of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). Following party founder Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) arrest in September last year, Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) effectively became the de facto face of the party and officially became chairman in January. While Ko frequently criticized the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and insinuated sinister intentions on the part of the DPP’s New Tide faction, his era was largely defined by the TPP slogan “rational, pragmatic, scientific,” albeit defined largely by his definition of what that meant. The tone and language used by the TPP changed dramatically