Swedish author and playwright August Strindberg’s groundbreaking look at class differences, sexual politics and theater staging, Miss Julie, has been dissected, analyzed, criticized and reworked in various genres since it was written in 1888.— as has he.
For generations, stage and film directors around the world have given their takes on his story of an aristocrat, Miss Julie, and her encounters with her father’s manservant, Jean, after an alcohol-fueled Midsummer Eve’s party and the repercussions for all involved.
British theater and opera director Katie Mitchell gained fame for her multi-media works and for telling stories from a female perspective, and her 2010 production of Miss Julie for Berlin’s Schaubuhne theater was no exception.
Photo courtesy of Thomas Aurin
Her production will be performed at the National Theater in Taipei this weekend, for three shows starting tomorrow night.
Alhough Mitchell has worked primarily in Europe in recent years, Miss Julie was her first in Berlin and her first for the Schaubuhne, which was founded in 1962.
Thomas Ostermeier, who took over as Schaubuhne’s artistic director in 1999, turned it into a repertory-style theater with a permanent ensemble of actors. The cast that will be performing at the National Theater is largely the original one, with Jule Bowe reprising her role as Kristin, with Tilman Strauss as Jean and Luise Wolfram and Miss Julie.
Photo courtesy of Stephen Cummiskey
The big difference with Mitchell’s take on Strindberg’s play is that she utilized a film crew on stage to capture the action, and shifted the focus of the story to the perspective of what was traditionally one of the minor characters, the family cook Christine (Kristin in this production), who is Jean’s fiance and a witness, albeit sometimes a sleeping one, to Julie and Jean’s pursuit of one another.
Mitchell tapped Leo Warner, cofounder of the Britain-based Fifty Nine Productions and a frequent collaborator, to work with her on the live video side of the production and they share director credits for the show.
Mitchell and Warner have been credited with pioneering a new medium — “live cinema” and that concept seems well-suited for Miss Julie because Strindberg’s play was conceived as a new medium, a call to revolution of the standard Swedish theater conventions of his day. He wanted to see theater that was as natural as possible, free from all artifice, because he fell that this would lead to a greater understanding of humanity.
By using a black-clad film crew to provide video footage of the stage action, the audience is provided with a much closer look at the character’s actions and interactions as they occur on stage.
There are a couple of caveats that come along with this Miss Julie production. One is that it is not suitable for those under the age of 12, which one would think would be self-evident. The others are that there is partial nudity, and that latecomers might not be admitted.
The play runs 75 minutes and will be performed in German with Chinese and English surtitles.
There will be a post-show discussion in the theater lobby after Sunday’s matinee.
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
When the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese forces 50 years ago this week, it prompted a mass exodus of some 2 million people — hundreds of thousands fleeing perilously on small boats across open water to escape the communist regime. Many ultimately settled in Southern California’s Orange County in an area now known as “Little Saigon,” not far from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, where the first refugees were airlifted upon reaching the US. The diaspora now also has significant populations in Virginia, Texas and Washington state, as well as in countries including France and Australia.
On April 17, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) launched a bold campaign to revive and revitalize the KMT base by calling for an impromptu rally at the Taipei prosecutor’s offices to protest recent arrests of KMT recall campaigners over allegations of forgery and fraud involving signatures of dead voters. The protest had no time to apply for permits and was illegal, but that played into the sense of opposition grievance at alleged weaponization of the judiciary by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to “annihilate” the opposition parties. Blamed for faltering recall campaigns and faced with a KMT chair
Article 2 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China (中華民國憲法增修條文) stipulates that upon a vote of no confidence in the premier, the president can dissolve the legislature within 10 days. If the legislature is dissolved, a new legislative election must be held within 60 days, and the legislators’ terms will then be reckoned from that election. Two weeks ago Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) proposed that the legislature hold a vote of no confidence in the premier and dare the president to dissolve the legislature. The legislature is currently controlled
RSS