The NT$215 million (US$7.15 million) musical Dreamers (夢想家) that the government staged in celebration of the nation’s centennial last month drew more criticism yesterday when it was revealed that students who performed in the musical were paid just NT$10,000 each.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) spokesperson Chuang Ruey-hsiung (莊瑞雄) told a press conference that 68 students from the Taichung National Taiwan College of Physical Education’s Department of Dance were invited to participate in the musical and were paid just NT$680,000 in total compensation.
Chuang said that Stan Lai (賴聲川), the director of the musical, used some of his relatives to get the students to participate, adding that the students had trained for the event intensively for over a month, during which time they even hired a bus to travel to Taipei for rehearsals.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
According to Chuang, the students and teachers from the school thought that the musical was a benefit performance, and only recently discovered that the musical was actually a big production with a huge government budget.
Chuang said the month of hard work earned the students only NT$680,000, which is just over 10 percent of the musical’s performance fee budget of NT$6.7 million for the production, management and execution of the piece, and only about 0.3 percent of the total budget for Dreamers.
In contrast with the hard work and affordability of the students, Chuang said, Lai had “garnered huge benefits for his creativity and [is] getting cramps from counting all the money.”
Chuang accused Lai of running a sweat shop and exploiting students, adding that Council for Cultural Affairs Minister Emile Sheng (盛治仁) should step down.
Getting paid NT$10,000 for a month’s work shows Lai is greedy and exploited students’ naivety and patriotism, Chuang said.
It raises the question whether Lai and others planned to exploit the students right from the start, Chuang said, adding that Lai and Sheng should offer an explanation to those who participated in the musical.
Sheng said in response that the DPP was making false accusations.
At a separate setting yesterday, the school’s secretary-general, Chang Wu-lung (張武隆), said the students cherished all opportunities to perform and that the school had not received any complaints from students about the pay.
The DPP last week filed a lawsuit against Sheng for allegedly favoring certain performance companies and individuals in the bidding process for staging the musical.
Translated by Jake Chung, Staff Writer
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