A dead sparrow was found in a warehouse, reminding the workers of a horror urban tale, and they are not the only one being messed up. Somewhere in the city, a man is forced to disown his sister, while a mother becomes a victim of domestic violence. A second-handed bookstore owner is making a tough decision and a Kendo apprentice is trapped in a fight with her master.

As the five performers leap among more than a dozen of roles, fear grows within everyone until the sun rises. The work is inspired by Roland Schimmelpfennig’s Der Goldene Drache.

Playwright: Alastor CHOW

Post-90s Hongkonger, graduated from HKUST majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Have been participating in professional and community productions under various positions, including playwright and producer. Currently a freelancer.

Dramaturg: Cheng-Han WU

Cheng-Han Wu is a dramaturg, playwright, and theatre critic. He has served as dramaturg for over 50 productions and new plays, including Tropical Angels the Musical (Taichung National Theater), Love and Information (National Taiwan University), Measures Taken (Taipei National University of the Arts), Mulan the Musical (Studio M & Tainaner Ensemble), Teahouse (Shanghai Theatre Academy), The Piano Lesson (Yale Repertory Theatre), Angels in America (Yale School of Drama). He is a member of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. He has also translated many plays into Mandarin, including August: Osage County and Wit. His English translation of the Taiwanese playwright Wei-Jan Chi’s Playing the Violin has been invited for a staged reading hosted by Lark Play Development Center and Signature Theatre in NYC. His plays won Top Prize for New Taipei City Literature Award for Drama and Taipei Literature Award for Drama. Currently, he teaches dramaturgy at National Taiwan University, organizes the Musical Theatre Writing Program at Taipei Performing Arts Center, and also serves as Regional Managing Editor for The Theatre Times. He received his MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama.

Director: HSU Yen-Ling

Hsu Yen-Ling has developed her career in various domains that represent the wide range of her talents and skills. As one of the founders of the theater company “Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group,” she has developed a multiple activity. Well known as an actor on stage, Hsu has also a broad activity as director and writer, and teaches at the Department of Theatre Arts at Chinese Culture University in Taiwan. She was rewarded by The Golden Bell Award, the Asian Cultural Council, and the Taishin Arts Award.

Creative Team: Department of Theatre Arts at Chinese Culture University

The Department of Theater Arts is one of the first 15 departments established by Chinese Culture University in 1963 , and is the first in the history of higher education in Taiwan. At the beginning of its establishment, we uphold the founding spirit and philosophy of promoting Chinese culture, importing Western culture, integrating old and new, and communicating things; Considering the limited reality of the employment market in theater practice, the talents trained, in addition to drama expertise and skills, are also involved in film and television and other related fields, with a view to meeting the needs of the diversified society and the rapidly changing development situation and the ecological environment of arts and culture.

This text draws from many real-life incidents involving undocumented migrants in Taiwan, with the question “Who am I?” at its heart. Through cases of Taiwanese people of irregular status and undocumented overseas Chinese as well as identity documents, it explores the issues of identity and belonging in Taiwan. In addition, the topic is connected to Taiwan’s uncertain position within the international community, which affects how the Taiwanese people see themselves, emphasising the contradictory and ludicrous circumstances of the real world. All of this is presented with strong pacing, alternating sections of narration and performance, and puppetry.

The story begins with a young vocational high school student whose parents departed when he was very young. After his father’s death, he goes to the household registration department to change his guardian, only to find that his birth mother is someone else altogether, which throws his identity into doubt. As he searches for his mother, he encounters a young “black household” undocumented woman, and decides to help her, so the pair go on the run together. As the police come after them, a lorry suddenly arrives out of nowhere and rescues them. The police and army then surround the vehicle by land, sea and air in the middle of Taipei Bridge. As the loudspeaker remorselessly counts down, the boy can only watch the tragedy that unfolds before his eyes, sighing that the world does not care about their stories, but only about whether you can prove who you are.

Playwright: KUO Chen Wei

I was born in Wan Li district of New Taipei City. After my parents divorced, I lived with my grandmother and moved to Dayuan Township of Taoyuan County. When I was a vocational high school student, my original goal was to be a chef. However, around ten years ago, I suddenly developed a strong interest and fascination for dramas. Because of this, I started to work as an actor in the theatre. I was determined to become a professional theatre worker to express my way of thinking and views about this world. I loved to take on challenges and enjoyed working in various positions in the theatre, such as director, actor, crew, writer and artistic administrator. My goal is not only to seek the meaning of life persistently but also to keep trying something new to make this world a better place.

Dramaturg: Betty Yichun CHEN

Born in 1983 in Taipei, Betty is a dramaturg and translator (Chinese/English/German). She studied English literature and theatre studies in Taipei and Bochum. Since 2009, she has translated a dozen of contemporary plays from German into Chinese, including authors such as Elfriede Jelinek, Dea Loher and Roland Schimmelpfennig. She has worked intensively with the Taipei Arts Festival as interpreter and dramaturg for the co-productions between Taiwan and Germany from 2012 to 2015. Her contribution as translator goes beyond the linguistic level and involved communication between different cultures and procedures. She has also co-organized various workshops and lectures on documentary theatre practices and dramaturgy in this framework. She also works as independent dramaturg and collaborates with artists/groups such as On & On Theatre Workshop, Vee Leong, Snow Huang, Fangas Nayaw and Christine Umpfenbach. Since 2019, she was commissioned as dramaturg for several new productions in Taipei Arts Festival. Her translation of DRAMATURGY IN THE MAKING: A User's Guide for Theatre Practitioners by Katalin Trencsényi is the first book on contemporary dramaturgy in the Chinese speaking world.

Director: Shih-Hue TU

Shih-Hue received her M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College (New York) in 1997, and has produced, written, directed and performed for the Playbox Ensemble Theatre since 1998 and as a guest artist to work with other contemporary Taiwan theatre companies. She was awarded the British Council Arts Scholarship of 2001 and 2004 International Artist-in-Resident Program (Australia) held by Taipei Artist Village. Three of her works have been published and produced, Breakfast For One in 2002, A Voyage To The Island ~ A Solo Operetta in 2003 with its premier production in the same year and re-creation in Avignon Off 2010 and A l’Est du Nouveau 2012, Road Kill in 2007. In 2008, she published a book Solo Performance that is so far the only book discussed on this particular subject in Mandarin speaking society. She now is an assistant professor of the Department of Theatre Arts at National Sun Yat-sen University.

Creative Team: Department of Theater Arts at National Sun Yat-sen University

An absurd family tragedy. The bulk of the script consists of monologues by four young people. Unable to return home for New Year’s Eve, they guess and imagine the family gathering they are missing. On the one hand, these speculations are mixed with their own anxieties and fears, making them overblown and one-sided; on the other hand, the details brought into collision in their fevered imaginations blur the truth. The story revolves around four households in a large family, going through mundane social interactions while speaking of illness, dreams and strange encounters. Alongside their stories, hidden secrets are gradually revealed. Their dialogue paints a picture of a family that is constantly moving and reproducing; at the same time, it reveals deep-seated mental disorders caused by cycles of bad behaviour that are hard to break. As 2020 arrives, unshakeable despair overwhelms the family. The play is divided into five sections with eleven main characters. The narrator of the first section is Wenwen, a 23-year-old overseas student, big sister Dongying and her husband Gaosheng’s son; the narrator of the second section is Pengpeng, a 35-year-old mother-of-two, Dongying and Gaosheng’s eldest daughter; the narrator of the third section is Tiantian, a 30-year-old unmarried attending physician, the only daughter of second sister Xiaohong and her husband Shidong; the narrator of the fourth section is Jiajia, the 15-year-old school-dropout only daughter of Jiamin, the youngest brother. The fifth section does not have a narrator, but instead presents an objective view of how this family gathering is most likely to unfold, in contrast to the first four sections.

Playwright: Jasmine HAN

Jasmine Han Jing was born in 1999, and is a third-year undergraduate at Nanjing University’s Department of Drama, Film and Television. During her studies, she participated in a playwriting workshop led by Sebastian Kaiser, as well as a performing workshop with Japan’s Shelf Theatre Company. She directed Trout Quintet at Nanjing University’s Black Box Theatre in December 2020. She is currently participating as a dramatist in the first project of an experimental community theatre: Cancer Buddies – Hamlet.

Dramaturg: Wei-Ger TONG

Director: I-Fan HO

Dr. I-Fan Ho received his PhD in Aberystwyth, University of Wales in UK. He is now an assistant Professor of the Department of Theatre Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA) in Taiwan, and responsible for the courses about the history of Western drama and theatre, dramaturgy, and research methodology. He is also the author of two books, Things Shakespeare Never did (in Chinese, Taipei, 2016) and Theatre Narratology: Seven theses of Play Analysis (in Chinese, Taipei, 2018), and some articles. According to this background, he is thus better defined as a scholar and teacher and very far from being a director.

Being deficient in practical experiences of directing and visual communications, he is more prone to narrative and oral representations. This might give him an advantageous position of directing play-reading, in which the playwright’s ingenuity is respected first and foremost and actors’ understandings of their lines and characters are expected to come into emphatic beings.

Serving as a dramaturg is the way by which his recent interests in and engagements with theater practices can be attained. The dramaturgical analysis of a play can prompt him to pay more attention to the responses of audience, who, in his view, are supposed to be ordinary people attending theater with a commitment. It is also the principle that guide his directing mindset for tonight’s performance.

Creative Team: Department of Theatre Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts

The Department of Theatre Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts has been the most outstanding training institute in the field of theatre arts. Since its foundation in 1982, faculties, students and graduates from this school have brought forth remarkable developments in the fields of theatre, academics and education. So far, we have two teaching units, which are the Department of Theatre Arts and the Graduate Institute of Theatre Performance and Playwriting. With professional facilities and Theatre Hall, the school provides students with high quality training and practices of theatre production and practicum.