【Art & Culture】The Largest in the Chinese Community – Life Is Theater: The Small Theater Arts Festival

By the MOOK Scenic Spots Family Travel Lifestyle Network Editorial Department
 

The 2015 “Life Is Theater Live Your Life” festival debuted in Beijing on April 25, touring and performing in Beijing, Taipei, and Kaohsiung with nearly 50 performances in total. For the first time, it also included teams from Hong Kong and scripts from Singapore, making it the largest small theater arts festival in the Chinese-speaking region.

This year’s 2015 “Life Is Theater Live Your Life” takes the concept of life as theater as its festival spirit. Building on the collaborative performance model over the past three years, it has given Taiwanese audiences a deeper understanding of the creative works of young generations from both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Through this arts festival, organizers hope to take a step forward in cross-strait cultural and artistic exchanges. This year, the festival is once again jointly held in Taipei, Kaohsiung, and Beijing, inviting productions from both sides and featuring, for the first time, a team from Hong Kong. A total of ten works will showcase how emerging creators from both sides can understand and collaborate with one another, while also using the cultural language of theater to engage in dialogue and exchange with the general public through performances.

◎5/22 - 24Macbeth by Huang Ying Studio
Venue: Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, Multi-functional Performance Hall

A brave Scottish general, Macbeth, encounters three witches in the wilderness who prophesy that he will become the King of Scotland. Full of masculine vigor and ambition, Macbeth, spurred on by his wife, seizes the throne. To cover his tracks, he murders his former comrades-in-arms, suppresses political opponents, and brutalizes their wives and daughters. Terror and paranoia consume Macbeth. Staged using Tadashi Suzuki’s training method and directed by Huang Ying, this production presents a unique take on Macbeth.

◎5/29 - 31Hello, Robbery by Zheteng Culture

Venue: Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, Multi-functional Performance Hall

Two sincere and kind-hearted robbers, four indifferent bank employees, numerous profit-driven Royal FBI agents, and countless cautious citizens all coincidentally, encounter, meet, romance, or clash on a black Friday afternoon. Thus, their anxieties and confusions, impulses and desires, repressions and tempers, rebellions and affections—all pile up, intertwine, and entangle on that black Friday afternoon.

◎5/29 - 31Ten Directions, One Thought by Alice Theater Lab(Hong Kong)

Venue: Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, LAB Creative Lab
The story is based on the lives and works of four literary masters: Eileen Chang, Salvador Dalí, Richard Wagner, and Antonin Artaud. Directed by Chapman Chen (winner of the Hong Kong Drama Awards and Hong Kong Small Theater Awards for Best Director), the actors explore the theatrical theory of Cruel Theater through devised theater. With poetic stage imagery, the production unveils the love, hate, life, and death of these four iconic figures.