Have you ever wondered what a play would be like without a director and without rehearsals? Come see Nassim Soleimanpour’s White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, a one-person show that has been performed around the world since 2010, and premiers in Taiwan on Saturday.
In the iconoclastic tradition of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, White Rabbit might be dubbed “actor in search of a director” for in this one-person play, the actor sees the script for the first time and performs it before a live audience with no assistance from a director or stage notes.
What is the plot? No one will tell. That is part of its charm and allure. The actor must perform the script, relying solely on instincts and training.
Photos courtesy of the Red Room
This play, co-produced by Infinity Key and Red Room, had been on The LAB Space founder Brook Hall’s bucket list and he agreed to return from Vienna as one of the actors performing it. He says, it’s the “best way to say thanks and goodbye.”
Seating is limited. For those who wish to see all eight performances, special “Golden Rabbit” passes are available for NT$1,500. Tickets are selling fast.
Admission for individual performances is free, (donations are accepted) but attendees have to queue up behind Golden Rabbits for what may be standing room only.
On Facebook a friend posted a dashcam video of a vehicle driving through the ash-colored wasteland of what was once Taroko Gorge. A crane appears in the video, and suddenly it becomes clear: the video is in color, not black and white. The magnitude 7.2 earthquake’s destruction on April 3 around and above Taroko and its reverberations across an area heavily dependent on tourism have largely vanished from the international press discussions as the news cycle moves on, but local residents still live with its consequences every day. For example, with the damage to the road corridors between Yilan and
May 13 to May 19 While Taiwanese were eligible to take the Qing Dynasty imperial exams starting from 1686, it took more than a century for a locally-registered scholar to pass the highest levels and become a jinshi (進士). In 1823, Hsinchu City resident Cheng Yung-hsi (鄭用錫) traveled to Beijing and accomplished the feat, returning home in great glory. There were technically three Taiwan residents who did it before Cheng, but two were born in China and remained registered in their birthplaces, while historians generally discount the third as he changed his residency back to Fujian Province right after the exams.
Few scenes are more representative of rural Taiwan than a mountain slope covered in row upon row of carefully manicured tea plants. Like staring at the raked sand in a Zen garden, seeing these natural features in an unnaturally perfect arrangement of parallel lines has a certain calming effect. Snapping photos of the tea plantations blanketing Taiwan’s mountain is a favorite activity among tourists but, unfortunately, the experience is often rather superficial. As these tea fields are part of working farms, it’s not usually possible to walk amongst them or sample the teas they are producing, much less understand how the
With William Lai’s (賴清德) presidential inauguration coming up on May 20, both sides of the Taiwan Strait have been signaling each other, possibly about re-opening lines of communication. For that to happen, there are two ways this could happen, one very difficult to achieve and the other dangerous. During his presidential campaign and since Lai has repeatedly expressed his hope to re-establish communication based on equality and mutual respect, and even said he hoped to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平) over beef noodles and bubble tea. More dramatically, as explored in the May 2 edition of this column,