For some, theater conjures images of a distant domain for the cultured classes. However, for Heidi Wiley, executive director of the partially EU-funded European Theatre Convention (ETC), it serves a far more egalitarian function: strengthening democratic values in a world fraught with geopolitical challenges.
Wiley, who was in Taipei for the National Theater and Concert Hall’s (NTCH) biennial “Taiwan Week” from April 9 to 15, said in an interview with the Central News Agency that the purpose of her visit was to establish relations and explore possibilities for collaborations, which she said was “very political.”
“I don’t think that it [theater] can be separated from political realities,” she said.
Photo: Wen Yu-te, Taipei Times
Art should reflect the world in which people live and its complexity, and motivate them to look for answers through “artistic intervention,” she said.
Theater’s function is not limited to presenting people with a world where they can temporarily “disconnect” from their daily lives, but it also drives engagement, provides stimulation, and offers a place for people to meet and engage in dialogue, she said.
Wiley said that this was a notion that ETC, which comprises 57 member theaters from 30 countries, is keenly aware of.
“The reason why theaters [and] public theaters join our organization is basically to look for opportunities for artistic international collaborations, but also to use ETC as a democratic platform to exchange inspirations and to share democratic values,” Wiley said.
For example, ETC had been working together with the EU to hold a theater forum on the ongoing war in Ukraine, she said.
Asked if theater could help Taiwan, whose sovereignty, like that of Ukraine, is threatened by a hostile neighbor, to tell its story and rally support from international audiences, Wiley said: “Absolutely.”
Wiley said that during her six-day stay in Taiwan, she met with artistic directors and representatives in Taiwan’s theater with whom she discussed the systems and business models of European and Taiwanese theaters to explore realistic ways of collaboration.
Meeting Taiwan’s theater professionals in person helped to build trust, which she hoped would serve as the basis for “valid and healthy” relations and long-term collaborations, she said.
Artistic exchanges have paved the way for future collaborations, she said, citing the frequent collaborations ETC has had with Ukrainian artists since 2014 in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea as an example.
These collaborations saw a “network of support” emerge, which has led to artists outside of Ukraine “fighting on the art front to help Ukraine win the war,” Wiley said.
ETC hopes to offer Asian partners an entry point into European theater, thereby creating an international theater community, Wiley said.
There is already a “strong interest within ETC” to explore possibilities to work with Taiwan, as evidenced by the presence of ETC president Serge Rangoni and several prominent ETC board members representing theaters and performing groups from France, Germany, Hungary, Portugal and the Czech Republic on her delegation, Wiley said.
Asked about the possibility of Taiwanese theater companies being invited by ETC to perform in Europe, Wiley said that is a dream ETC hopes to realize in the not so-distant future.
Wiley said she will brief ETC’s network theaters about her discoveries in Taiwan and opportunities for collaborations in the coming weeks.
Taiwan is already an active member of the international theater community through projects such as Sustainable Theatre Alliance for a Green Environmental Shift (STAGES), an experimental theater project cofunded by the EU that “reimagines how the cultural sector interacts with the concept of sustainability.”
“Here we test new ways of introducing sustainable measures in running a venue and setting up your own sustainability policy,” Wiley said.
The NTCH has commissioned theater director Lin Hsin-i (林欣怡) to produce Taiwan’s version of A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction by Miranda Rose Hall and first directed by English theater director Katie Mitchell.
STAGES’ 14 members are putting on their own interpretations of the play, and Wiley said Taiwan’s participation made it a “leading and inspirational example.”
The play features actors pedaling stationary bicycles to power the lights and sound system, among other things, and Wiley said that each participating theater created its own localized interpretations, Wiley said.
The NTCH’s version of the play has been selected as one of the five STAGES productions to be featured at the Theatre Times’ International Online Theatre Festival this year, alongside productions from Belgium, Croatia, Denmark and Italy, Wiley said.
However, climate change is just one of the common challenges facing European and Asian countries, as there are still the issues of how they can reduce their reliance on Russia’s energy supply, how every country inevitably has to work with China and what is the US’ role in today’s geopolitical landscape, she said.
These geopolitical issues indicate that now is a crucial time for the world, which compels ETC to think about what kind of dialogue it wants to create with audiences and what kind of narrative it wants to put forward, she said.
It is also important that ETC, representing a European network, establish close relations with partners on the other side of the world, she said.
To Wiley, the fact that countries on the other side of the world have the same issues as Europe highlights that the world is a highly interconnected community.
“Being able to travel to the other side of the world shows you its ends and that we are all in this together,” she said.
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