Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalists

Heiner Müller believed that adaptation restores classical political nature, and re-politicizes the classics. Assessed by this standard, director Hung Hung has successfully connected the mutiny of Wagner’s goddess to the current state of crisis in Taiwan. This political adaptation is exceptional in its resistance from politically correct stereotypes. The characters in the play do not espouse specific political ideals, but instead seek possibilities for resistance and learn how to organize actions. This is educational theater in its truest form. One that does not educate the audience, but learns alongside the audience. In light of current social movements, this play cannot be relegated to becoming a political tool. Just as the process of learning requires a constant questioning of established ideas, the play repeatedly questions the effectiveness of law. Nor will it be confined to issues of consumerism, since all issues have a period of relevance. Learning is an act that enables confronting the future and imagining a new world, like a revolution that no longer worships heroes nor depends on strongmen that is summoned at the end of the play. (Commentator / KUO Liang-Ting)

About the Work

Der Ring des Nibelungen: A Revolution Unarmed—Die Walküre adapted by Hung Hung highlights the manipulation of political power and the potentiality of revolution through the darkness and tension lurking in familial relations. Meanwhile, the production also reflects the riotous social scenes of the anti-nuclear movement and the Sun Flower Student Movement during the creative period of the work (from January to June, 2014). In the pompous music of “Ride of the Valkyries,” a power plant arises, with a group of laborers silently working on the waste at the lower level. Two unfortunate families are in an antagonizing relationship—the love and hate between a father and a daughter, the silent treatment between a husband and a wife, a comparison between two mistresses, an elopement of a brother and a sister, an unnatural father-and-son relation, a failed husband, and a rebellious youth. Wagner’s 19^th-century depiction of a collapsed family contextualized in a more intense time in the 21^st century becomes an even more vivid portrayal of social and political issues. 

In this modern society shaped by innumerous “contracts,” the “god of contracts” follows the rules to take care of every matter on the one hand, and engages in explicit and implicit ways to bend the rules on the other. Such a politician/entrepreneur is a familiar sight today. He convinces himself that he is saving the world, but at the same time, he is probably the source of all disasters. At the end, when Brynhild falls deep into the slumber and does not wake up to take a bow, who could bring her back from her dream? When the audience wake up from the performance, could they also wake up from the collective nightmare and change the world? 

About the Artist 

Being a poet, a movie and theater director, a curator and an art critic, Hung Hung founded Dark Eyes Performance Lab in 2009. Although Dark Eyes Performance Lab primarily produces theatrical works, it is also actively involved in various kinds of cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural performances that also span time and space. It attempts to combine artistic experimentation with public amusement, accumulating experiences in producing small-scale theater. They also aim to produce and promote medium and large theater in the future.