Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Jury’s Comments for the Annual Shortlist Award Winner 

Using garbage as objects, the play depicts our daily life. The seemingly non-existing acting by performers on stage constantly reverses the images; as the storyline further expands into absurdity, amount of garbage on stage also increases, reflecting our life that is continuously turning into waste. Li plays with symbols of stage to create a unique style of theatre, exploring new forms for Taiwan’s performing art and expressing social concerns for the environment and humanities.

Comments on the Finalist

Through the form of “object theater”, a space of waste is created, allowing us to see from another angle the material life of contemporary time.

Just like soap opera, the scenes of loss, betrayal, sorrow, and death, the multiple dimensions of sadness and emotions of “Dear us” are thus laid in front of us. The director utilizes methods of reversing and rewriting, so that the seemingly normal relationship a brief moment ago will suddenly be reversed in the next, juxtaposing absurdity and comedy. The most interesting part is, the director reverses layers of relationships through collective improvisation, and at the same time, “improvises” the props and stage; consequently, objects that seem to be garbage are scattered on the stage, and they all become the visual image, suggesting a life assembled from garbage. “Dear All” can be regarded the skilled “deconstruction” of language, storyline, and structure by a young generation small theater worker of the post-1980s, showcasing high maturity in the ability to separate semantics and symbols. The director is not just playing with reversals, but also attempts to venture deeply into the bottom of the society or the dark places of life, allowing us to see the head-on attitude of the young generation when faced with social realities. (Commentator/ CHI Hui-Ling)

Artwork Introduction

In Dear All, the basic principle for the stage is to use light and easily movable objects with the aim of creating numerous theatrical spectacles by accumulating objects of various sizes in a landfill. At the same time, the general scheme of the theatrical work is developed by employing theatrical spectatorship and the characteristics of space, as well as scenes of everyday life and the environment such as prime time television programs, wholesale shopping, partying and drinking with friends, gathering for a protest, visiting patients at the hospital, and taking public transit. Such scenes occur primarily within a landfill on stage, presenting common life experiences with the illusions created through performance and the metonymic object, and acting out the mundane, senselesness in the background of life and everyday experience. The work aims to reflect the possible consequences when people indulge in popular entertainment and emotional repression.

The seemingly non-existent acting by the performers on stage constantly inverts images as the storyline further develops into absurdity. The amount of garbage on stage also increases, reflecting our lives, which are continuously turning into waste.

About the Artist

Artistic director of StyleLab. Graduated with a major in directing from the Theater department at Taipei National University of the Arts. His works often explore the relationship between objects and the environment, employing collective improvisation as an artistic methodology together with installation or  bestowal of audiovisual texts to highlight spatial properties and the essence of human relationships. His directing credits include Retenu, Dyken: The Golden Age of Superman, Not Universal Comedy, and Happy Days.