A Season of New Encounters: From the 2026 Taipei Arts Festival to Asia Discovers Asia

This year, TAF runs from 4 Sep to 25 Oct. Audiences are invited to witness artists shed their mature facades and confront life’s greatest difficulties and vulnerabilities. According to Chairperson and Artistic Director Victoria Wang, these creators have achieved much. Not satisfied with convention, they have chosen to continue creating and to challenge the unknown. She says, “This I think is the most fascinating aspect of theatre, the constant encounters with perspectives that differ from those of existing frameworks and are more exploratory.” 

Revealing life events 

The first creative path is a return to artists’ life events. When traces of exile, family, and history become difficult to explain, the theater is transformed into a place for reorganizing memories and facing traumas and emotions.  

Littoral (Photo credit: Tuong-Vi Guyen)

For his Taiwan debut, prominent contemporary French-language playwright Wajdi Mouawad chose not his latest, but his most representative, works: Littoral and Seuls. Drawing on his own experience of exile, he reveals senses of loss and displacement through the language, family, and cultural identity of an exile.  

She Says, She Says is also based on personal memories. It is presented by Creative Society Theatre Group, which returns to this festival after a long absence. Playwright-director Katherine Chou pulls back the folds of history. From women’s life experiences and family memories, difficult to describe emotions and history neglected for over 70 years are brought out of the shadows.  

In Epilogues, Wang Mo-Lin, a pioneer of the Taiwanese Experimental Theater Movement and National Award for Arts recipient, faces his late friend Zhuo Ming. Through audio, archival documentation, and fragments of memories, he returns to the breaking point in Taiwanese theatre history, adding a chapter not previously recorded.  

Reshaping viewing forms 

The second creative path begins with “viewing.” Artists are no longer satisfied with established forms of viewing. This has led to the search for new ways to perceive time and existence through physicality, timing, and performance methods.  

The Big Dance – HORSE Dance Theater

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, HORSE Dance Theater presents Big Dance with the support of the CTBC Arts Festival. This work, choreographed by Su Wei-Chia, can be described as a summary of this dance company’s phases. Among dancers there is a sense that talent cannot outpace time and that dance solos are duets with the years.  

Director Wang Shih-Wei chose to challenge himself with a theatrical interpretation of I Am the Wind by Nobel Laureate in Literature Jon Fosse. His first instruction to actors Lin Zi-Heng and Mo Tzu-Yi, both nominated in the Best Actor category for this year’s Taipei Theatre Awards, was not to search for clues in the script or lines but in the pauses between words. Audience members gain a renewed sense of time and existence amid the contemporary pursuit of big data.  

Experiencing contradictions and rituals 

The Sun (Photo credit: Huang-Chin Huang)

The third creative path involves leading audiences into difficult-to-define emotional and sensory states. This year marks the return of 4 CHAIRS THEATRE’s highly acclaimed production The Sun, which won in the Best Director category and received six other nominations at the inaugural Taipei Theatre Awards. In the contemporary context of increasing division, this work explores the possibility for creating understanding among people with opposing views.  

Ocean Cage is a collaborative work by Chinese artist Tianzhuo Chen and Indonesian choreographer Siko Setyanto that transcends the boundaries of theatre and ritual and performance and sensory experience, as well as blends visual art, sound, and physicality. Audience members walk into the performance space and become immersed in an experience that is part ritual and part theatrical performance.  

During this year’s TAF, as audiences observe the lives of others, they also see themselves in a new light. When artists choose to no longer portray lives of ease, the theatre is transformed into a place where audiences regain their courage and appreciation for life’s joys.  

Extending the Encounter 

Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary Performance (ADAM) is an artist-led platform initiated by TPAC in 2017. Bringing together artists, curators, and performing arts practitioners from across Asia, ADAM creates space for exchange, experimentation, and cross-cultural collaboration. 

In 2026, its ninth edition features ADAM Artist Lab, ADAM Kitchen, and ADAM Assembly, connecting artistic practices across Manila and Taipei. We look forward to welcoming our partners from around the world back to Taipei, where we can watch, think, and initiate new collaboration opportunities together.