Focus: The Everyman of Taiwanese Theatre

Focus: The Everyman of Taiwanese Theatre

In recent years, Taiwanese Theatre has made an attempt to reach out to ordinary people in Taiwan. Trying to span the crevasse between the traditional theatre-going audience, mainly consisting of the upper middle-class and the imaginary of the Taiwanese "everyman", those who have never set foot in a theatre before. This has led to a new cacophony...

Read more: The Everyman of Taiwanese Theatre

Focus: The Everyman of Taiwanese Theatre

In the sixties, Taiwan’s main ideology was determined by Cold War ideology and the fight against communism. In such a dry and discouraging intellectual atmosphere, the youth aspired to a radical and subversive modernism which would acknowledge their existence. At that time, the only opening for modern art was probably at the United States...

Read more: Avant-garde in dialogue: Buds of Modernism on Infertile Land

Focus: The Everyman of Taiwanese Theatre

Wang Molin （王墨林）is clad in a Che Guevara t-shirt, the same one angry teenagers and naive politics students across the world are probably wearing at that same moment. His manner is distracted during the Q&A, and, as in the interview we conducted with him previously, he brushes off any difficult questions with a sneer and a "Do I have...

Read more: Mom, Bye: A Review of Wang Molin's Play

Focus: The Everyman of Taiwanese Theatre

At the end of April of this year, the Dark Eyes Lab launched their new collaborative production ‘A Crash Course in Modern Theatre: Theatre of Cruelty, Absurd Theatre and Anti-Theatre’, a part of which was the stunning Beauty 2011, which was put under the label of Theatre of Cruelty, a play that was first performed in 2000 by the Oz Theatre...

Read more: Beauty in Cruelty

Focus: The Everyman of Taiwanese Theatre

Born out of 1980s’ Taiwan, modern drama nowadays is often based on Western theatre, including French, English, German and American contemporary drama. The work of playwrights such as Kantor, Koltes, Duras, Bond and Müller has been adapted to the Taiwanese stage over the course of the last few years. Experimental performances, dealing very...

Read more: Modern Drama in Taiwan: A Mirror for Taiwan’s paradoxes

Focus: The Everyman of Taiwanese Theatre

For the fifth consecutive year, Avignon Off Festival, located in the South of France, welcomes several Taiwanese groups. Among the invited companies are WC Dance Company created by Lin Wen-Chung, who used to work with the famous Taipei Folk Dance Theatre, and the internationally recognized Ten Drum Art Percussion Group, led by the talented...

Read more: Taiwan's 5th appearance at local Avignon festival

Focus: The Everyman of Taiwanese Theatre

Sakurai Daizō, director of the Haibizi theater troup, discusses his tent theatre performance in the video below. Touching on issues such as the perils of capitalism in postmodern society and the simulated world and life choices of the youth of the 21st Century:

Read more: A Tale of the Moon's Eclipse

Focus: The Everyman of Taiwanese Theatre

This article is part of the special issue of Renlai#84 dedicated to theatre in Taiwan. Also watch an interview of director Zheng Zhizong.

Act I: The challenge Artaud

On the 6th of April 1933, Antonin Artaud (1896 -1948) gave a lecture at the University of La Sorbonne. This lecture, entitled “Le Theatre et la Peste”, would become an...

Read more: Artaud in acts