Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist

The “Just for You” series by the Riverbed Theatre breaks the myths of magnitude and multitude, and is fearless of the limits of diminutiveness and scarcity; with stereoscopic thinking that incorporates performance, space, and audience to display the essence of modern theatrical art. The series demonstrates and discourses in depth, the definition and practice of the concepts of curated theater, and at the same time, showcases the efforts of the continuous pursuit of perfection, and its consequent quality. The series consists of four plays taking place in different hotel rooms. The performances are carried out in specific sites, providing the audience, at each session, a viewing experience that stimulates all five senses. As the play leads the audience back and forth over the border between reality and fantasy, it explores the sweetness and bitterness deeply hidden in each individual’s social memory, and focuses on the interaction and power relationship between the audience and the performance. Through sensitivity and speculative space, it attempts to establish defined, interesting, and rich possibilities for the audience-performance relationship.   Committee member: Yang, Mei-Ying

Artwork Introduction

The Just for You Theatre Festival has two unique characteristics: “It was the first theatre festival in Taiwan staged for one audience member per performance. It was the first theatre festival in Taiwan staged in a hotel.” The four productions in the Just for You Theatre Festival were closely linked by a set of three rules: “Four directors each direct their own different performance in hotel rooms. Only one audience member can see the performance at a time. Each show is only performed twenty-eight times.”

Although the rules were simple, the four resulting performances were mesmerizing in their diverse creativity. The performances ranged from a production addressing issues of aging using life-sized puppets to an interactive production in which blindfolded audience members were led on a sensory journey, to a painterly image-based performance to a more playful cinematic production. Each director had to develop a production that addressed the unique audience/performer intimacy. The lone spectator could not hide among audience members in a dark auditorium. The actors could not relax in the comfort of their safe distance from the audience. Consequently, the performers and audience found themselves immersed in the immediacy and intensity of honest, direct communion.

About the Artist

Since its groundbreaking production of Burnt Rice in 1998, Riverbed Theatre has staged more than twenty cutting-edge performances that have promoted a creative dialogue between the visual and performing arts. As advocates of image-based theatre and total theatre, Riverbed has played an active part in challenging the dominant role of text-based, narrative theatre in Taiwan.