A man for all seasons

Jos van Kan:

A man for all seasons

Taipei Times: What is your background in theater?

Jos van Kan: When I was 16 I knew I wanted to do something in theater. I discovered that being a director was the best place for me - not on the stage but in the rehearsal studio. I studied to be a director of drama, and I began to introduce songs, because I like singing and music, and it slowly developed that I became a director of opera. I am very interested in crossovers, so sometimes I do a Baroque opera by (Henry) Purcell, and sometimes I do very modern operas for small audiences. ... When I did a play of Brokeback Mountain, from the novel of Annie Proulx, I took the text of the novel and asked the composer to write songs, so the cowboys were singing songs in the show.

TT: Why were you interested in studying Asian theater?

JVK: For me, you cannot go further from home (Holland) than Asia. There is no culture that is stranger to me than Asia, and that has appeal to me. As to the theater, I have a great love of stylization on stage and the Asian performing arts are highly skilled in using stylization.

TT: What did you get out of studying gezai opera in Ilan?

Being lonely around many people. Getting to know a culture that is very social, based on doing things in groups. ... Also to accept that there are things you cannot understand. Everybody should have this experience in their life. In the rehearsal studio there are many things that I don't understand, but still I go strong and I rehearse. I also try to accept the things I don't understand, that maybe I can go around them and get what I want in other ways; or don't get what I want, and get something else that also has its beauty. This is even more important as an experience than to see how fabulous people can fight on stage.

TT: What was working with a Taiwanese performance group like?

JVK: It can be a very positive feeling when you don't get what you want. You think we should go left, ... but you end up going right, and you find there are beautiful possibilities when you go right. It opens up the piece of art. I often say that I know how a show should "smell," from the very first rehearsal, even if you don't know what it will look like at the end. But here, sometimes even the smell changes, and in very surprising ways; to be open to that makes it interesting.

TT: Is the fusion of East and West just a dramatic gimmick?

JVK: I have forced myself to pick the disciplines only to serve the intent of the story in its best way. As long as this is done, I have no objection to this hip idea of fusion (of East and West), that we should shop (around) and mix and combine everything. I like The Second Goodbye because it is not a showy show, although we use many elements. I want to entertain, of course, because people go to the theater to be entertained, but besides this entertainment we should also talk about important things - communicate with an audience about things that touch our heart and brains. … You don't want to be superficial, but you don't want to bore the audience.- Ian Bartholomew

Puppets with no strings attached

BY Ian Bartholomew
Staff Reporter, Taipei Times
Friday, Nov 02, 2007, Page 13

Puppeteer Ulrike Quade manipulates the main puppet character. Photos: courtesy of Taiyuan Puppet Theater Company

With The Second Goodbye (重別), which opened at the National Experimental Theater last night, the Taiyuan Puppet Theater Company (台原偶戲團) takes another step in its journey toward making puppet theater an established part of Taiwan's contemporary art scene. Taiyuan, with its many original shows that combine Western opera, Italian marionettes, various regional Chinese opera styles, and contemporary experimental theater, pushes the boundaries in fascinating ways, and has done more than any other group to open up puppetry and take it outside the framework of folk performance. The company explores puppetry as a medium for serious expression in contemporary theater.

The Second Goodbye, a puppet play based on a combination of the Buddhist fable Mulien Saves his Mother (目蓮救母) and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, explores how people respond to the loss of someone who is believed to be irreplaceable.

"We started with the idea of losing someone you love. We tried to get that feeling of loss, of being left behind, and wanting to get this love back ... ." Taiyuan's artistic director Robin Ruizendaal said. "The concept is a voyage through hell, which, also in this play, translates as an internal journey through your own internal hell. It all happens in the mind of the main character."

The play is the product of a discussion between Ruizendaal and Dutch theater director Jos van Kan, who two years ago spent six weeks in Ilan studying Taiwanese opera. "We met, we talked about things we were interested in ... . Love and death, they are never far away, the two main constants of life, and there we were," Ruizendaal said of the show's conception.

Further discussions brought in German performance artist and puppeteer Ulrike Quade and contemporary Dutch composer Marlijin Helder, who contributed their own unique elements. Helder created a score based on recordings of Chinese music and readings of the libretto, which is sung by a narrator who sometimes sits with the ensemble and sometimes on stage, and by Chiu Chiu-hui (邱秋惠), a gezai opera (歌仔戲) singer and former member of Taiwan's U-Theatre (優劇場).

Quade's body puppet - she wears the bottom-half of the puppet, and remains completely visible in her manipulation of the puppet's upper body - is not only fascinating to watch in terms of pure performance, but the "double vision" of the main character also plays off against ideas of the link between the spiritual and physical, of exploration and discovery of the self, and of the relationship between performer and the performance.

As with most experimental productions, the doubling up of roles among some of the cast is a matter of necessity, but The Second Goodbye manages to make a virtue of such logistical constraints, allowing this multitasking to generate ideas, both intended and unintended, that further enrich the work.

In many ways, The Second Goodbye makes an interesting counterpoint to The Firmiana Rain (梧桐雨), which also opened last night, just across the way so to speak, in the National Theater. Despite the significant difference in scale - Rain uses a full symphony orchestra, whereas The Second Goodbye has three musicians who also double as cast and crew - both shows are about seeing what can be produced by a cross-fertilization between vastly different performance traditions.

Performance notes What: The Second Goodbye When: Today, tomorrow and Sunday 7:30pm; tomorrow and Sunday at 2:30pm Where: National Experimental Theater, Taipei Tickets: NT$450, available through NTCH ticketing Details: There are no subtitles either in English or Chinese, but a brief introduction to the story is given in the program

The Second Goodbye is part of a series of works brought together by the National Theater Concert Hall (NTCH) for its New Idea Theater Festival: Love Is ... (新點子劇展:愛情說) series of shows at the experimental theater. Following The Second Goodbye is Next Hour (雙姝怨) by the Mr Wing Theater Company (人力飛行劇團), which will complete the series. After finishing its run in Taipei, The Second Goodbye has been booked to perform at the Beijing International Contemporary Theater Festival (北京國際當代戲劇演出季, Nov. 7 to Nov. 10) and the Contemporary Theater Festival in Shanghai (亞洲當代戲劇季, Nov. 13 to Nov. 14).

Detailed information about the show and the performers can be found on the Taiyuan Web site at blog.roodo.com/taiyuanenglish.

Here's the beef ... noodles

By Ian Bartholomew
Staff Reporter, Taipei Times
Thursday, Nov 01, 2007, Page 13

You only need to be in Taiwan a couple of days to know that beef noodles is the dish most widely regarded as the nation's signature culinary achievement. There are beef noodle stores everywhere you look, and the dish takes many different forms. More often than not, it is a thoroughly unremarkable concoction of limp noodles, salty soup and tough beef that has been marinated in soy sauce to within an inch of its life. But when made well, it can also be the ultimate comfort food, but seeking out the beef noodle shops of distinction is no easy matter.
This of course is what the 2007 Taipei International Newrow Mian Festival (2007臺北國際牛肉麵節) is all about. The qualifying round last Sunday has reduced the field to five contenders each in the traditional dark broth, light broth and creative categories, with finals scheduled for this coming Sunday to find the best of the best in the field of beef noodles. For the participants concerned, victory in this competition is no small matter, for the shops that gain recognition from the panel of judges can count on packing their restaurant for the next year and beyond as people line up to taste the best beef noodles in town.
To put the "international" into the event, there will be an "International Teamwork Intercourse Competition" -- the title given on the event's Web site shows off the Taipei City Government's unique flair with the English language -- will bring in six teams of international chefs who will put their own spin on Taiwan's beef noodles on Saturday. This event, and the local competition finals on Sunday, will be held at the Xinyi International Club (信義公民會館). Over the two days, there will also be a variety of performances and an estimated 20 stalls selling beef noodles, so the public to get a taste of the huge variety of dishes that are encompassed under the label of "beef noodles" -- or "newrow mian" if you subscribe to the Taipei City Government's interesting take on romanization.
In announcing the finalists last Sunday, Cheng Yan-chi (鄭衍基), chief judge of the panel who presided over 45 bowls of beef noodles under consideration, pointed out that a primary consideration in assessing a bowl of beef noodles was balance between the broth, the noodles and the meat. Cheng, a former chef to ex-presidents Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) and Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), praised the high level achieved by the competitors, and underlined the complexity of achieving that elusive balance, even in a competition were all commercial considerations were removed. "A bowl of noodles that cost NT$800 to make will obviously taste different from one that sells for NT$80 in the shop," he said. An event like this can do no more that point customers in the right direction, and for this coming weekend, it will provide an opportunity for the public to try many different preparations at a single venue.

What: Taipei International Newrow Mian Festival
When: Saturday from 3pm to 6pm; Sunday from 9am to 2pm
Where: Xinyi International Club, 50 Songqin Rd, Taipei (台北市松勤街50號)
On the net: http://www.new-rowmian.com.tw/en/index.html (English)