The Golden Bough TheatreWalking onto the Memory Island: Opening up the backstage of the creation process

The Golden Bough Theatre
Walking onto the Memory Island: Opening up the backstage of the creation process

If the memory of an island is lost, would the island still stay the same?

You are invited to walk into the backstage of the creation process of Memory Island by attending a rehearsal session of the play and listening to the artists of the Theatre sharing their artistic concepts, allowing yourself to have a deeper understanding of how the piece is formed. As you stand by the roaring river of history observing the past, the present, and the future, you will be awed by the vitality and tenacity deeply rooted in the Taiwanese culture.

Lectures on the creation of Memory Island
Held once a month on Saturday afternoons between September and November, the lectures are dialogues on artistic creation of the script, the music, and the stage. You are invited to go on the Memory Island to find out how each thread of our unique memory has been interwoven to form our common image of the island.
Open rehearsal of Memory Island
The door to the rehearsal room is open for you to observe how Director WANG Rong-yu and the acting team polish and refine the work, and to see the myriad of details that need to be addressed behind the scenes. After the rehearsal, you will have a chance to talk to the director face-to-face, and listen to him sharing his firsthand experiences in working on the play.

The Golden Bough Theatre

The Golden Bough is a famous work in anthropology. A priest and a prophet sneaked into the Hades to have an adventure by bribing the gatekeeper with a golden bough. Director WANG Rong-yu used this mythological title to name the troupe, and leads the audience to venture into the unknown territory of Taiwanese musicals.

Founded in 1993, the team has always believed that a heart-warming culture is one that is cultivated from its native soil. The troupe not only creates original Taiwanese musicals, which received high praise from LIN Hwai-min, the founder of Cloud Gate, as opening up a new era for such a genre, but also walks out of the theater to establish the “environmental epic theater” by holding several large-scale presentations in outdoor historic sites. The genre is a true Taiwanese classic, and has won recognition from both local and abroad. The Golden Bough is indeed a modern troupe that emphasizes the distinctive aesthetics of Taiwanese culture.

(The troupe has been selected for funding by the National Culture and Arts Foundation in 2010 as one of the top performing arts groups in Taiwan.)