Joyce Chiou, General and Artistic Director

Let There Be Light

In the open­ing verses of the Book of Gen­e­sis, God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

But what we per­ceive as light is not light it­self. It is the re­flec­tion we see, the way light touches the world around us. Only when every­thing fades into dark­ness do we begin to rec­og­nize its pres­ence.

In Plato's Al­le­gory of the Cave, light rep­re­sents truth and lib­er­a­tion. Dur­ing the Re­nais­sance, painters often ren­dered light as a sym­bol of hope, rev­e­la­tion, in­spi­ra­tion, or a bridge to the di­vine. In the En­light­en­ment, light came to em­body rea­son it­self, dis­pelling the shad­ows of ig­no­rance.

Light gives birth to cre­ation. In Light­house, dif­fer­ent forms and sources of il­lu­mi­na­tion are plot­ted in five rooms await­ing for ex­plo­ration. Vis­i­tors fol­low the jour­ney of an as­tro­naut, cast shad­ows with a search­light, and in­ter­act with mir­rors and spe­cial ef­fects to wit­ness how light breathes life into the the­ater. As long as there is a child within you, you can speak to the light, and it will speak back.

A child­like heart is the be­gin­ning of play, where games are born, sto­ries un­fold, and the spark of cre­ation takes flight. Cre­ativ­ity asks for no guide, and the world of per­form­ing arts sets no thresh­old. Sim­ply fol­low your heart, and it will lead you into the the­ater. This is where the cu­ra­to­r­ial jour­ney of this year's Sum­mer FUN Time be­gins.

As in­no­cence gives way to im­pulse, we enter the re­bel­lious years of youth, begin to chal­lenge the rules, and push against every bound­ary. El­e­ments of Freestyle brings to­gether ten world-class ex­treme sports per­form­ers who refuse to obey the laws of grav­ity. They defy lim­its, ques­tion what is pos­si­ble, and dis­cover new forms of cre­ativ­ity through play.

In the next stage of life, we grow into adults who have learned the art of play­ful mis­chief. The Play That Goes Wrong is a beau­ti­fully or­ches­trated mess, where pro­fes­sional ac­tors fail on pur­pose with ex­quis­ite pre­ci­sion. It isn't about break­ing the rules, but rather about gen­tly teas­ing the grown-up world and all its se­ri­ous­ness. In the past, an­i­mated films like Rata­touille and Find­ing Nemo in­tro­duced an­thro­po­mor­phic an­i­mal char­ac­ters shaped by human traits. This year's Oscar-win­ning Flow moves in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion. With no di­a­logue and no human pres­ence, the film al­lows an­i­mals to ap­pear just as they are, within the quiet beauty of the real world.

LIFE OF PI also takes a step away from an­thro­po­mor­phism, por­tray­ing the tiger not through speech but through the raw ex­pres­sive­ness of its body. Shifts in per­spec­tive guide the flow of the story, at times lift­ing us into a god's-eye view, look­ing back at a tur­bu­lent Earth from above. The Peony Lantern cen­ters on east­ern clas­si­cal pup­pet the­ater and shadow play, yet it reimag­ines the re­la­tion­ship be­tween per­former and pup­pet. Its un­usual form re­flects a strange and haunt­ing ro­mance be­tween the liv­ing and the dead. Both works ex­em­plify un­con­ven­tional forms of pup­petry.

This sum­mer, four mu­si­cal pro­duc­tions high­light a rich di­ver­sity of mu­si­cal styles. Each began with a staged read­ing, fol­lowed by au­di­ence feed­back and re­vi­sions, and on-route to enter full-scale pro­duc­tion. The process re­flects a shift to­ward greater scale and pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion in Tai­wan's mu­si­cal the­ater scene. Sep­tem­ber Dreams is a juke­box mu­si­cal filled with iconic hits from the 1990s, telling a story of friend­ship and ro­mance among mem­bers of a girl group. PLANET: A Boy-Band The­ory fol­lows a group of men in their early thir­ties as they re­unite their high school band, re­dis­cov­er­ing the fire of youth through music.

In tra­di­tional Chi­nese opera, there is a say­ing: “Male per­form­ers fear Into the Night, while fe­male per­form­ers fear Long­ing for the Mor­tal World.” These roles are renowned for test­ing both the tech­ni­cal and emo­tional lim­its of their per­form­ers.

Into the Night is a well-known Kunqu opera ex­cerpt, and this new adap­ta­tion blends nar­ra­tive fic­tion with the form of mu­si­cal the­ater. It tells the story of Lin Chong from Out­laws of the Marsh, cap­tur­ing the tur­moil and inner con­flict that drive him to take refuge on Liang­shan. Meet tells the love story of a boy with As­perger's and a girl with a phys­i­cal dis­abil­ity. De­vel­oped over five years, this mu­si­cal thought­fully weaves to­gether live video chat and real-time stream­ing, cre­at­ing a mov­ing and con­tem­po­rary the­atri­cal ex­pe­ri­ence.

These are the nine sum­mer pro­duc­tions we have lov­ingly pre­pared. We hope that au­di­ences at every stage of life will find a piece to call their own, and within the the­ater, dis­cover a light that speaks to them.

Siraya Pai | NTT Observer, Theatre Critic

In the Realm of Musicals,
a Summer Journey Toward Freedom

At some point, though I can't quite say when, going to see a mu­si­cal at the Na­tional Taichung The­ater in sum­mer sim­ply be­came the nat­ural thing to do.

What's re­mark­able is how I've seen mu­si­cals in every space here—in the Grand The­ater, com­plete with live or­ches­tra and el­e­gant set de­sign; in the Play­house, where a closer stage-to-au­di­ence dis­tance brings out the full magic of the­atri­cal in­ti­macy; in the Black Box, known for its ex­per­i­men­tal ex­plo­ration and cre­ative flex­i­bil­ity; and even in the Cor­ner Salon, where just a few chairs and music stands open up room for imag­in­ing what might be, through play read­ings. At NTT, mu­si­cals take many forms. Some con­tinue in es­tab­lished tra­di­tions, some aim to break bound­aries, and oth­ers search for a sense of free­dom.

This sum­mer, the NTT pre­sents four mu­si­cal pro­duc­tions: Red The­atre Group's Meet, KOKO En­ter­tain­ment & Punc­tum Cre­ative's Sep­tem­ber Dreams, NTT+ Mu­si­cal Play­wright In­cu­ba­tion Pro­ject's PLANET: A Boy-Band The­ory in con­cert read­ing for­mat, and Into the Night. Each, in its own way, tells a story about free­dom. Not the kind that comes with­out lim­its, but the kind that is felt most clearly within them. Lin Chong, the leg­endary mil­i­tary in­struc­tor from Out­laws of the Marsh, is one such fig­ure. So are the girl with ALS and the boy with As­perger's in Meet.

In Into the Night, play­wright WANG Juin-yi and com­poser HSU Chi-yang reimag­ine the tale of Lin Chong from Out­laws of the Marsh, who is dri­ven to seek refuge at Liang­shan. The mu­si­cal mir­rors the orig­i­nal novel's chap­ter-based struc­ture through its songs and em­ploys a cho­rus to em­body the pres­ence of fate in the sto­ry­telling. Once a high-rank­ing fig­ure within the sys­tem, Lin Chong is forced by cir­cum­stance to join the out­laws in the moun­tains. His re­sis­tance to fate has long made him a fa­vored sub­ject in the­ater and drama, often sur­pass­ing kings and no­bles in pop­u­lar­ity. Per­haps this re­flects the lin­ger­ing sense of de­fi­ance that many carry within them­selves. The mu­si­cal be­gins with oud, a plucked strings in­stru­ment, to set a mys­te­ri­ous tone. As the rhythm shifts, it some­times re­calls the rap stylings of Hamil­ton, herald­ing a new era, and at other times brings to mind the deca­dent chaos cap­tured by Amer­i­can mu­si­cals com­poser John Kan­der. Through these mu­si­cal turns, a clas­sic tale is given new voices, awak­en­ing a re­bel­lious spirit we may have long since learned to sup­press.

The girl with ALS is not nearly as for­tu­nate. Struck by a rare dis­ease, she is pow­er­less against fate, yet har­bors the same yearn­ing for free­dom and un­will­ing­ness to sur­ren­der. Meet is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween play­wright Daniel WANG, a 2017–2018 Artist-in-Res­i­dence at the Na­tional Taichung The­ater, and com­poser Inred LIANG, artis­tic di­rec­tor of Red The­atre Group. Like Into the Night, the piece was first de­vel­oped as a staged read­ing per­for­mance at the NTT and re­ceived wide ac­claim. On­stage, Meet fea­tures just one man and one woman. Each is un­usual in their own way, yet they grad­u­ally grow closer through shared un­der­stand­ing. The boy be­gins to chal­lenge his own pat­terns for her sake; the girl, in turn, won­ders what she can still do with a body no longer free, in her quiet fight against fate. The songs are laced with humor and charm, like a live-ac­tion ro­man­tic com­edy. Their play­ful back-and-forth not only dri­ves the re­la­tion­ship for­ward but also sharp­ens the poignancy of their strug­gle and the courage it de­mands.

These two pro­duc­tions clearly re­flect the Na­tional Taichung The­ater's mul­ti­fac­eted com­mit­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of mu­si­cal the­ater. As a con­tem­po­rary form of total art, mu­si­cals rely heav­ily on the seam­less co­or­di­na­tion of var­i­ous the­atri­cal el­e­ments. Equally im­por­tant is the in­ter­play be­tween the script and the score, and how the nar­ra­tive and music in­form and en­hance one an­other. Through ini­tia­tives such as the NTT+ Mu­si­cal Play­wright In­cu­ba­tion Pro­ject, the NTT has de­voted sig­nif­i­cant re­sources to fos­ter­ing new and com­pelling works. One of the most cru­cial phases in early de­vel­op­ment is the play read­ing pre­sen­ta­tion. Al­though less vi­su­ally pol­ished than a full pro­duc­tion, these read­ings often allow for greater imag­i­na­tive free­dom, un­con­strained by the prac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions of stag­ing. They en­able music and text to carry both the char­ac­ters and the au­di­ence into un­charted ter­ri­tory. (After all, who would have imag­ined that a bright and play­ful mu­si­cal like Meet could take on the pro­found ques­tions of life and eth­i­cal choice?) Au­di­ences are not only in­vited to em­brace the un­known, but also gain a sense of ful­fill­ment in wit­ness­ing a work's evo­lu­tion from its ear­li­est stages.

PLANET: A Boy-Band The­ory and Sep­tem­ber Dreams are sto­ries about grow­ing up. In­ter­est­ingly, they each turn to mem­o­ries of a high school band as a way into their themes. The pro­tag­o­nists re­main en­tan­gled in un­re­solved events of the past. Only through rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, both with them­selves and with oth­ers, can they come to know true free­dom. PLANET was co-cre­ated by CHEN Jia-bao and LIU Tzu-chi, and is pre­sented in the form of a stage read­ing. Sep­tem­ber Dreams , a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Punc­tum Cre­ative and KOKO En­ter­tain­ment, takes the form of a juke­box mu­si­cal fea­tur­ing a lineup of iconic Man­darin pop songs in the 1990s. These fa­mil­iar tunes call up a wave of col­lec­tive mem­ory, grounded in the spirit of the era. The shared motif of being in a band also al­lows both pro­duc­tions to ex­per­i­ment with di­verse mu­si­cal styles.

Per­haps mu­si­cal the­ater is, by its na­ture, a form that seeks free­dom from within struc­ture. It fol­lows cer­tain pat­terns and con­ven­tions, yet al­ways in­vites chal­lenge and rein­ven­tion. Whether it is Lin Chong, forced to leave every­thing be­hind; the girl with ALS who must fight for her own life; or the high school bands that carry the weight of youth­ful dreams and lin­ger­ing shad­ows from the past, each re­veals a dif­fer­ent facet of free­dom. And within these sto­ries, we are given a space to set­tle our­selves.