The 2018 NTCH International Theatre Festival

Known for its avant-garde, contemporary, innovative and experimental nature, the NTCH International Theatre Festival is coming for the ninth time! With the game as a metaphor of life, this year’s festival will focus on the theme of Battle for Life, demonstrating all sorts of adversities and difficulties that become the keys to survival. In the face of the predicaments for survival and challenges in life, how are we going to meet and fight against them? With ten programmes, this year’s festival proposes ten questions toward ten different stages in life with ten different approaches to explore different sentiments in life and to fight against the unknown adventures.

This year’s festival presents various situations that cover a wide spectrum of realities in modern society, including the survival struggles within the framework of political power, the huge seesaw struggles of personal life against the torrent in the history, as well as the inevitable propositions of aging and death in life. In addition, from the perspectives of gender and self identities, it also showcases the combats and confrontations between individuals and the group/society that are interdependent yet mutually oppressive.

Facing the changes in the global situation, world-renowned and award-winning director Ivo van Hove adapted three of Shakespeare’s historical plays into Kings of War in 2014, exploring the leadership’s impact on the whole country. In reference to the rise of strongmen’s regimes across the world in recent years, the artist’s insightful and prophetic observation is self-evident. Out of the survival game in the political domain, we are not only able to glimpse the calculating and manipulative mindset of those who have power, but also foresee the rise and fall of livelihood for millions of people in the conflicts between national crises and personal interest.

The Dress (Photo credit: Lin Yu-Chuen)

Vader by Peeping Tom Theatre from Belgian and The Dress by NTCH Artist-in-residence Inred Liang, on the other hand, explore the issues of people’s aging and death respectively in the forms of dance and musical as well as from the perspectives of the male and female. In response to the contemporary aging society, how are we going to cope with the situation?

Dealing with human beings’ wounds left by wars, Children of the Ocean by Japan-resident Korean playwright and director Chong Wishing tries to heal the historical wounds with laughter, while Malaysian director Au Sow-Yee’s The Nanyang Intelligence Bureau explores the changes and variations in the Asian history. How is the present of human beings accumulated and derived from the past? If we are closely entangled with historical pains, how shall we carry out the future that is full of hopes?

God Knows (Photo credit: Chen I-Tang)

In depicting modern people’s predicaments, God Knows, written by Birdy Fong and directed by Baboo, portrays in depth the contemporary situation of drug abuse as well as the mindset of modern people, who escape from the reality to embrace the virtual reality. With the interdependent relations between human beings and puppets, The Ventriloquists Convention by French director Gisèle Vienne exposes the deliberately-disguised inner isolation of modern people. Our Theatre’s Later, wrapped with black humor, subtly grabs hold of the estranged and fragile interpersonal relationship in modern society.

Later (Photo credit: National Theater & Concert Hall)

Both of the two productions featuring the collaboration of internationally-renowned directors and Taiwanese performers in this year’s festival explore human beings’ struggles for survival in the adversities of life. With Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca’s Yerma, Greek director Theodoros Terzopoulos reveals the common destiny and predicaments of women with his unique performing system of physical and vocal energy. French director Roland Auzet interprets French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltès’ In the Solitude of Cotton Fields with philosophic thinking and the immersing sound theatre, where he sees through the nature of human desires from the attacks and defenses in a commercial transaction.

Yerma (Photo credit Chen Yu-Wei)

In The Solitude of Cotton Fields (Photo credit: Chen You-wei)

Visit National Theater & Concert Hall’s website here.