The Golden Bough TheatrePerformance of Selected Scenes from Memory Island
The Golden Bough Theatre
Performance of Selected Scenes from Memory Island
Memory Island is a three-year art-making project (2019-2021) by the Golden Bough Theatre. The play draws modern life experiences in Taiwan from three different times, 1980, 2000, and 2020, through three characters, who live together on the island, each having their own unique threads of memory, which are eventually interwoven into our common image of the isle. The play allows us to keenly observe how our life is moulded and how our memory is constructed through individual personal experiences.
Narrated in a nonlinear fashion, the play intends to show how Taiwan has become the Taiwan we know today, and how paths taken in the past affect our present and even our future. In the end, one realizes that the play is not about any specific setting anymore, but rather, it is depicting the roaring river of Taiwanese history.
The premiere is scheduled to take place in the Cloud Gate Theater by the end of 2021. This year, we would like to invite you to a trial performance of selected scenes and witness firsthand the Theatre’s milestone achievement of building Memory Island from scratch with Bough-style avant-garde aesthetics.
Pre- and post-show events
Walking onto the Memory Island: Opening up the backstage of the creation process
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Lectures on the creation of Memory Island (September-November): Dialogues among the artists on the creation process of the play will be held.
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Open rehearsal of Memory Island (11/19): A fascinating opportunity to watch the Golden Bough at work
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Post-show forums (12/5 and 12/6): These are scheduled to be held after each performance, and will include the “inside story” of how the team creates and produces the play, an analysis of the stage design, an introduction and a demonstration of the technical matters, and a video documentary of the creative materials used. The audience is invited to have a deeper appreciation of how the work is created by attending these forums.
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.)
