Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist

Swinging between desire and regret, this piece presents the type of imaginings of true love, death and the immortal soul that will never fall out of fashion. Add in some airy light pop songs, and this mix of beauty and sadness displays the director’s wonderful ability to grasp the taste of his specific audience. The piece is exactingly produced, and its aesthetics and experimentation are of surpassing excellence. A double-sided transparent partition splits the audience into two sides of the theater, creating a special quality and serving as a visual guide. At the same time, several characters are in an indefinite state between life and death, adding to the development of the narrative and highlighting the ambiguity between reality and illusion. This all echoes the psychological mechanisms in the original script, which relate to voyeurism, love’s blindness and personal identity.  ( Committee member/ Wei, Shu-Mei)

Jury’s Comments for the Performing Arts Award

Director and writer Wang Jia-Ming has harnessed the talents of Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group and connected these with his ambitious and complete vision for Once, upon Hearing the Skin Tone.

Expertly produced and executed this production of intricate storytelling uses an innovative approach to design, a rich experience that engages its large and notably youthful audience.

It is relevant to its time and place but also has a broader resonance.

Director Wang and the Company have shown courage and curiosity and discovered new ways to interpret and present their ideas.

Artwork Introduction

Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group performed Once, upon Hearing the Skin Tone on April 10, 2009 at the Eslite Xin-Yi Store. Once, upon Hearing the Skin Tone, a detective story with 12 actors, contains an intricate and complicated method of storytelling such as a montage technique with 12 separate point-of-view monologues, while the unique stage design includes an obstructing wall that divides the stage in half.

With a 90cm see-through gap at the bottom of the obstructing wall, certain parts of the play are obscured and can only be seen by the audience via a live video feed projection. The video feed is at times purposely erratic. This way of seeing the action – in fragments, and partially obscured – creates tension and frustration in understanding clues. It adds to the mysteriousness of the play and creates suspense, while arousing the audience’s curiosity, anxiety, and attention.

The source of the live feed video comes from DVD players set at both sides of the stage. Monitors are also placed across the stage to provide different angles for the audience to spy on and be pried upon. The live feed video and shooting angles are ingeniously designed to poetically correspond with the emotions of the characters.

Musician Cheer Chen specially composed the pop music for the play. The music is used in a non-conventional way, and not as background music; various styles are included such as a capella, rock, and Arabic which help to corroborate or contradict the story.

The actors’ scripted lines of classical slogans sound like they are situated between daily conversations and music lyrics. Using this type of language technique helps to condense events, leading to succinct performances. By challenging the conventional narrative found in theater and also in the media such as TV and films, SWSG creates another innovative work of contemporary

theater.

About the Artist

Production Team

Wang Jia-Ming