Hemingway described courage as “grace under pressure” and such courage, as well as professional dedication, was needed and shown by all involved in the LAB Space’s second annual 24 hour theater festival held over the weekend.
Starting at 8pm on Friday of last week, eight directors drew by lot a playwright and a group of actors for the play they would direct. After that, each writer also drew a setting, a prop and a line that had to be included in the script, which they would spend the next 12 hours writing.
The script was then given to the director and crew. End result? By 8pm the following night, the audience was treated to eight plays that had been memorized, rehearsed and to be performed. It was an unusual display of ingenuity and creativity, theater at its most raw, most improvisational and most exciting.
Photo courtesy of Jay Jay Chen
All plays had difficulties to overcome given the time constraints. However, the award for most grace under pressure has to go to the team that performed The Evaluation.
James Lo (羅濟豪) wrote this Chinese-language play for 11 characters, but only 3 people showed up — and the director was nowhere to be seen.
Derek Kwan (關顯揚) stepped in to direct and the remaining team of Lin Rou-chun (林柔君), Ho Kang-ting (何岡娗) and Fox Lee (李亞臻) put on a slam-bang performance with Lee and Lin using talking heads and multiple voices in lieu of actual human actors.
Next in the challenge of the draw, Lisa Kang’s House of Days was the most creative and revolved around a black wig. When worn, it allows every member of a family of four living on a remote farm to express their inner dreams and wishes. The play closes with dreamy-eyed actress and step-in director, Miriam Laerke Harkenskov, slyly introducing a new blond wig.
Shashwati Talukdar gets the writer’s “Say what?” award having to work zombies, outer space and the line, “You are not thinking of selling our camel to that madman are you?” into the delightful script of No Space for Brains.
It was great to see many established actors and actresses return, but new faces we expect to see more of are Lucie Liu, the “jilted” wife in Rick Monday’s turnabout comedy Skullduggery and Althea Guiao, the sassy but savvy rocket mechanic in No Space for Brains.
The full program can be found at in English at: thelabtw.com.
In Taiwan’s politics the party chair is an extremely influential position. Typically this person is the presumed presidential candidate or serving president. In the last presidential election, two of the three candidates were also leaders of their party. Only one party chair race had been planned for this year, but with the Jan. 1 resignation by the currently indicted Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) two parties are now in play. If a challenger to acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) appears we will examine that race in more depth. Currently their election is set for Feb. 15. EXTREMELY
Last week saw the appearance of another odious screed full of lies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian (肖千), in the Financial Review, a major Australian paper. Xiao’s piece was presented without challenge or caveat. His “Seven truths on why Taiwan always will be China’s” presented a “greatest hits” of the litany of PRC falsehoods. This includes: Taiwan’s indigenous peoples were descended from the people of China 30,000 years ago; a “Chinese” imperial government administrated Taiwan in the 14th century; Koxinga, also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), “recovered” Taiwan for China; the Qing owned
Jan. 20 to Jan. 26 Taipei was in a jubilant, patriotic mood on the morning of Jan. 25, 1954. Flags hung outside shops and residences, people chanted anti-communist slogans and rousing music blared from loudspeakers. The occasion was the arrival of about 14,000 Chinese prisoners from the Korean War, who had elected to head to Taiwan instead of being repatriated to China. The majority landed in Keelung over three days and were paraded through the capital to great fanfare. Air Force planes dropped colorful flyers, one of which read, “You’re back, you’re finally back. You finally overcame the evil communist bandits and
They increasingly own everything from access to space to how we get news on Earth and now outgoing President Joe Biden warns America’s new breed of Donald Trump-allied oligarchs could gobble up US democracy itself. Biden used his farewell speech to the nation to deliver a shockingly dark message: that a nation which has always revered its entrepreneurs may now be at their mercy. “An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms,” Biden said. He named no names, but his targets were clear: men like Elon Musk
RSS