Time: 4:00 pm. Nov. 12th, 2006
Place: Daitian Temple in Kaohsiung
Director&Playwrite: Han Jiang(Firefly Troupe)
It’s already autumn, but Kaohsiung, the city of southern Taiwan, is still hot.
As a city with international airport and harbor, Kaohsiung is rising. The MRT system, the Stadium of World Games 2009, the National Theater and the Concert Hall are under construction. The Firefly Company witnessed the change of Kaohsiung for ten years.
We may see three theatrical elements in the Firefly Company’s Goodbye, the Moon of Kaohsiung Harbor. They are the role of storyteller, the style of Taiwanese opera, and the genre of “Dacuigo” (the Taiwanese burlesque).
The stage was set on the square before the temple. The storyteller started with the history of Takao (the former name of Kaohsiung) Harbor, which included the Portuguese, the Japanese, and the American government periods, and ended up with the flood in 1959. The Taiwanese opera mixed with pop music and the Dacuigo performed the female situations in the history of Kaohsiung: departure with her Taiwanese lover, waiting for her foreign boyfriend, and the theophany of Mazhu (the Heavenly Empress) in the flood.
Though the situations were sad, but for the audience, this production was entertaining. The playwright combined demotic culture with riddles and caught the audience’s attention. The Taiwanese Opera and cross-acting made a creative narration. Heterophonic elements gathered on the stage at the same time but felt harmonious.
Dacuigo performed by Han Jiang and Cai Shu Fen bound three parts of the story. The sexual hints in Dacuigo accommodated this sad story with some space to breath.
The Picture of Mazhu’s Theophany seemed to be the climax of this play. After the worship offered, six actors took bows with fan dance. Two actors were left on the stage continuing their Dacuigo and entertaining the audience.
However the transformation of female images, including a woman who sent her husband to the army, a prostitute who waited for a foreign officer, and a goddess who saved people in the flood, were not clear. When husbands and lovers were gone, the only powerful female figure was a goddess. It’s a pity that women could not save themselves on their own. Only a goddess could make miracles.
After watching this play, the audience could understand the history of the Kaohsiung Harbor with amusement. The flash of visual shock left a black and white photograph of this harbor, and we saw time and tides of Kaohsiung passing by.
感謝JW Lee與YT Lee
