Performance

Travelling salesman and sole breadwinner for his family, Gregor Samsa awakes one day to discover that he has been transformed into a giant insect. Unable to communicate and shocking to anyone who sees him, he is forced into a solitary existence confined to his room. As he becomes insufferable to himself and a burden to his family, when death finally comes it is a relief, freeing him from the anxieties of everyday life.

 

Contemporary Legend Theatre’s Wu Hsing-kuo returns with a mesmerising deconstruction of Franz Kafka’s seminal novella. Through poetry, music and live interplay with video projections, Wu showcases the spectacular techniques, colour and flair of traditional Peking Opera to transport Kafka’s early 20th-century tale of disaffection, anxiety, solitude and loneliness from industrial Europe to a fantasy world laced with the beauty of ancient Eastern cultures.

 

About Contemporary Legend Theatre

Among the groups of performing arts in Taiwan, the Contemporary Legend Theatre is one of the few groups that catch attention on the international stages. It was invited to perform in the British Royal Theatre, the British Edinburg Arts Festival, the American Lincoln Center Arts Festival, the French le Festival d'Avignon and to tour a total of 16 different countries. Founded in 1986, the Contemporary Legend Theatre under the leadership of Wu Hsin-kuo, was always dedicated to the goals of inheriting the heritage of traditional drama and innovating theatrical performance. 

For over 20 years since its first establishment, it has adapted “Macbeth”, “Hamlet”, “King Lear” and “The Tempest” by William Shakespeare, the Greek tragedies “Medea” and ”Oresteia”, the traditional play “River of Yin and Yang”, the newly written work “Infinite Landscape” and “The Hidden Concubine”, the self-created hip-opera “Episodes by Brothers and Sisters”, the rock and roll Peking opera “the Water Marsh Series” and the newly created Kun Qu opera “The Butterfly Dream”. They all earn acclaim from the domestic and international audience. In 2005, the theatre of the absurd “Waiting for Godot” which challenged Samuel　Beckett, the Nobel laureate, was rated highly by Ariane Mnouchkine, the authority on Samuel Beckett and the artistic director of the Theatre du soleil in France. Its most recent work “The Loyal Hall of the Water Margin” created not only a sensation in the Hong Kong Arts Festival, but also set a record of being sold out four days in a roll and its National Theatre Hall performances in Taipei was so popular that even one ticket was hard to get.

Blending the theatrical arts of the Orient and the Occident as well as establishing new road for the traditional drama have become the unique spirit and special feature of the Contemporary Legend Theatre. In particular, “the Legend School” is held every year to cultivate new talents for the traditional opera. Thus we dedicate ourselves with
wholehearted efforts to inherit the past and enlighten the future.

 

Reviews

Taiwanese answer to Orson Welles... there is no denying the actor’s extraordinary virtuosic power… He is quite brilliant.’

The Guardian