● Duration is 210 mins incl. 1 interval of 20 mins
● Suitable for age 7+.
● Performed in Mandarin. No surtitles.
● Latecomers must follow staff instructions for entry and re-entry.
● Pre-talk will be held at the 2nd level of Opera House 40 minutes before the performance.
【Kaohsiung Local Hi】The Apocalypse of Fudingjin (Program changed)
※The program duration will be adjusted to 210 minutes in total with an interval of 20 minutes.
This play is adapted from Hsieh Hsin-Yu's novel, The Secrets Stolen by Five Ghost Children.
Rumor has it that the elementary school teacher, Wang Sheng-bang, is bereaved by the death of his son, Wang Sheng-ren. Sheng-bang’s wife, Huang Shu-hua, has gone mad, and the couple has since divorced and separated. Is it true? Meanwhile, Sheng-ren’s teacher Jiang Wan-rong reveals a secret: Sheng-bang suffers from memory disorder! He often willy-nilly recounts things that never occurred as though they were real happenings, and speaks about past events in the manner of a fortune-teller predicting the future. However, is Wan-rong telling the truth? With its twists and turns to and fro from south to north, the demolition of a public cemetery transmogrifies into an urban and rural legend. Do the living and the dead really part ways? Am I in the end you, and you, I?
This play is adapted from Hsieh Hsin-Yu’s novel, The Secrets Stolen by Five Ghost Children, a story set in Kaohsiung and its Fudingjin Public Cemetery. The playwright-director is especially impressed by the novel’s magic realism, created by the ways in which reality and virtuality reflect each other in the novel’s supernatural setting. This ambience originates from the mystery of gods and ghosts in Taiwanese culture—hence the work’s local aesthetics—but its implicit cultural psychology is otherwise universalistic; thus, it motivated this adaptation.
This theatrical adaptation mainly adopts the novel’s wonderful characters and triple plot structure, and foregrounds the many painful losses of children, which it blends with the traumatic loss of affective and cultural memories in the city’s process of demolition and resettlement as depicted in the source novel. The adaptation rewrites the funerary customs and supernatural legends indigenous to Taiwan, signifying people’s age-old yearning for healing, consoling magical powers.
Dramaturgically, the actors are cast to perform multiple characters. Night brilliant Taiwanese artists of different generations are invited to play three times the number of roles alongside puppets, and to explore in a triple-layered universe the profound cultural psychology in the lines: “six feet under lie a hundred years of souls / who slumber deep unaware of the morning.” More than twenty characters roam and chant across a space where fantasy and reality intersect, while revealing their soul-shattering, unimaginable lives over against the drastically changing landscape of the country and the city. They believe the living and the dead are ever interdependent, and that life and death mirror each other. Truth and illusion are too deeply and lovingly intertwined to tell apart.
Pre-talk
12/11(Fri) 18:50-19:10 2nd level of Opera House
12/12(Sat) 13:50-14:10 2nd level of Opera House
12/12(Sun)13:50-14:10 2nd level of Opera House
Artist Introduction
Katherine Hui-ling Chou, distinguished professor of Eng. Dept., National Central Univ., Taiwan; founder of ETI, a digital archive collecting over 700 visual recordings of Taiwan’s modern theatre since 1985.
After receiving her PhD of Performance Studies at NYU, USA, Chou co-founded Creative Society Theatre Troupe in Taipei, and has been the troupe’s core member, director and playwright since 1997.
She is the author of numerous refereed journal articles and chapters of books by MIT (USA), Harvard U. Press (USA), Palgrave (UK), Routledge (Canada), etc. Her theatre works have been discussed and collected in academic publications in Germany, English and Chinese. In 2014, Chou initiated the World Sinophone Drama Competition for the Young Playwright, and has chaired it, with the collaborations of nine universities and institutes from China, Cananda, USA, UK, Singapore and Taiwan.
Creative and Production Team
Director／Playwright｜Katherine Chou KC
Performer｜Lin Zi Heng、Hsu, Yen-Ling、Lin, Ding Chen、Shih-Wei, Wu、Liu tingfang、Lu Ming Yao、Tzu-yang Li、WU,WEI-WEI、Liu, Yu-Jane、
Set Designer｜Hui Chen
Lighting Designer｜Kuo Chien Hao
Image Designer｜Chieh-Jen Hsieh
Music Designer｜Chen Chien-chi
Puppet Consultant｜Pei-Yu Shih
Puppet Design｜Liang Mong-Han
Puppet Movement Coach｜Chenchiahao
Movement Design｜Nai-Hsuan YANG
Stage Operations｜Ridge Studio
Photography｜Chen,You-Wei
Short film shooting｜Zhang,Neng-Zhen
Major Sponsor
Theater Art Experiential Education Project Sponsor
柯珀汝、義美食品
【Kaohsiung Local Hi】The Apocalypse of Fudingjin (Program changed)
※The program duration will be adjusted to 210 minutes in total with an interval of 20 minutes.
This play is adapted from Hsieh Hsin-Yu's novel, The Secrets Stolen by Five Ghost Children.
Rumor has it that the elementary school teacher, Wang Sheng-bang, is bereaved by the death of his son, Wang Sheng-ren. Sheng-bang’s wife, Huang Shu-hua, has gone mad, and the couple has since divorced and separated. Is it true? Meanwhile, Sheng-ren’s teacher Jiang Wan-rong reveals a secret: Sheng-bang suffers from memory disorder! He often willy-nilly recounts things that never occurred as though they were real happenings, and speaks about past events in the manner of a fortune-teller predicting the future. However, is Wan-rong telling the truth? With its twists and turns to and fro from south to north, the demolition of a public cemetery transmogrifies into an urban and rural legend. Do the living and the dead really part ways? Am I in the end you, and you, I?
This play is adapted from Hsieh Hsin-Yu’s novel, The Secrets Stolen by Five Ghost Children, a story set in Kaohsiung and its Fudingjin Public Cemetery. The playwright-director is especially impressed by the novel’s magic realism, created by the ways in which reality and virtuality reflect each other in the novel’s supernatural setting. This ambience originates from the mystery of gods and ghosts in Taiwanese culture—hence the work’s local aesthetics—but its implicit cultural psychology is otherwise universalistic; thus, it motivated this adaptation.
This theatrical adaptation mainly adopts the novel’s wonderful characters and triple plot structure, and foregrounds the many painful losses of children, which it blends with the traumatic loss of affective and cultural memories in the city’s process of demolition and resettlement as depicted in the source novel. The adaptation rewrites the funerary customs and supernatural legends indigenous to Taiwan, signifying people’s age-old yearning for healing, consoling magical powers.
Dramaturgically, the actors are cast to perform multiple characters. Night brilliant Taiwanese artists of different generations are invited to play three times the number of roles alongside puppets, and to explore in a triple-layered universe the profound cultural psychology in the lines: “six feet under lie a hundred years of souls / who slumber deep unaware of the morning.” More than twenty characters roam and chant across a space where fantasy and reality intersect, while revealing their soul-shattering, unimaginable lives over against the drastically changing landscape of the country and the city. They believe the living and the dead are ever interdependent, and that life and death mirror each other. Truth and illusion are too deeply and lovingly intertwined to tell apart.
Pre-talk
12/11(Fri) 18:50-19:10 2nd level of Opera House
12/12(Sat) 13:50-14:10 2nd level of Opera House
12/12(Sun)13:50-14:10 2nd level of Opera House
Artist Introduction
Katherine Hui-ling Chou, distinguished professor of Eng. Dept., National Central Univ., Taiwan; founder of ETI, a digital archive collecting over 700 visual recordings of Taiwan’s modern theatre since 1985.
After receiving her PhD of Performance Studies at NYU, USA, Chou co-founded Creative Society Theatre Troupe in Taipei, and has been the troupe’s core member, director and playwright since 1997.
She is the author of numerous refereed journal articles and chapters of books by MIT (USA), Harvard U. Press (USA), Palgrave (UK), Routledge (Canada), etc. Her theatre works have been discussed and collected in academic publications in Germany, English and Chinese. In 2014, Chou initiated the World Sinophone Drama Competition for the Young Playwright, and has chaired it, with the collaborations of nine universities and institutes from China, Cananda, USA, UK, Singapore and Taiwan.
Creative and Production Team
Director／Playwright｜Katherine Chou KC
Performer｜Lin Zi Heng、Hsu, Yen-Ling、Lin, Ding Chen、Shih-Wei, Wu、Liu tingfang、Lu Ming Yao、Tzu-yang Li、WU,WEI-WEI、Liu, Yu-Jane、
Set Designer｜Hui Chen
Lighting Designer｜Kuo Chien Hao
Image Designer｜Chieh-Jen Hsieh
Music Designer｜Chen Chien-chi
Puppet Consultant｜Pei-Yu Shih
Puppet Design｜Liang Mong-Han
Puppet Movement Coach｜Chenchiahao
Movement Design｜Nai-Hsuan YANG
Stage Operations｜Ridge Studio
Photography｜Chen,You-Wei
Short film shooting｜Zhang,Neng-Zhen
Major Sponsor
Theater Art Experiential Education Project Sponsor
柯珀汝、義美食品
● Duration is 210 mins incl. 1 interval of 20 mins
● Suitable for age 7+.
● Performed in Mandarin. No surtitles.
● Latecomers must follow staff instructions for entry and re-entry.
● Pre-talk will be held at the 2nd level of Opera House 40 minutes before the performance.
