MOCA Taipei_Contemporary Legend Theare, The Butterfly Dream

The 6th Taishin Arts Award Exhibition - Contemporary Legend Theare, The Butterfly Dream

Contemporary Legend Theare / Biography
• To integrate traditional Chinese Opera with modern theatre In 1986, a group of Peking Opera players, being keenly aware of the decline of traditional Chinese Opera, began thinking seriously about how to integrate traditional Chinese Opera with modern theatre. Thanks to the efforts of WU Hsing-kuo, WEI Hai-ming and other equally enthusiastic young Peking Opera players, the Contemporary Legend Theatre (CLT) was founded. Adapted from Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, The Kingdom of Desire—the CLT's first play—sought to fuse the singing, acting, reciting, and acrobatic fighting of traditional Chinese Opera with Western canons, and presented the performance in theatre forms. The performance successfully subverted the playgoers' recognition of Peking Opera and created a totally new aesthetic in Eastern theatre. Ever since its founding, the CLT has been invited to perform abroad many times, and in such venues as Royal National Theatre, UK; Festival d'Avignon, France; Asian Performing Arts Festival, Japan; 40th Anniversary of Odin Theatre, Denmark; and Lincoln Center Festival, USA.

• To fuse eastern and western theatre arts For years, audiences in Taiwan and overseas have applauded the CLT's repertoires. They include adaptations of Shakespeare, such as The Kingdom of Desire, War and Eternity, King Lear, and The Tempest; adaptations of Greek tragedies such as Medea, Oresteia; traditional repertoire Yin Yang River; new repertoires, such as The Last Days of Emperor Lee Yu, The Hidden Concubine; and an innovative Hip Opera, A Play of Brother and Sister. In 2005, the CLT took up the challenge of adapting Waiting for Godot, a play of the theatre of the absurd by Nobel Prize Winner for literature, Samuel Beckett. To adapt western canonic works with elements of traditional Chinese Opera, to fuse eastern and western theatre art, and to strike a new path for traditional Chinese Opera—such features have become the troupe's hallmarks.

• To create the era's contemporariness Two major forthcoming foci of the CLT are productions and cultivation. The first is to continue the experimentations with and explorations of performance in the quest for the productions' maturity and exquisiteness. The other is to select and cultivate promising talents--so as to foster playwriting, directing, and acting talents-- and to create for young theatre people opportunities for development. With the arrival of the new millennium, the CLT, with its insistence on cross-cultural theatre experiments, continues to produce for the stage in Taiwan and the rest of the world "contemporary legends" that belong to current Taiwanese theatre. In 2007, the company's new works include 108 Heroes-The Tales From Water Margin and The Butterfly Dream.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• MOCA
• Taipei
• Taishin
• Arts
• Award
• Exhibition
• Contemporary
• Legend
• Theare
• The
• Butterfly
• Dream