Saturday December 1, 2012
9:37 a.m. 7-11 on Chang-An Road in Taipei

I am at a second 7-11 very close to my apartment in Taipei. I thought I’d give my usual one a break and hang out at this second one. It’s December 1st. It’s not pouring rain right now, but it is still gloomy and overcast. Sprinkling a little bit. It is supposed to rain all week. However, next weekend is looking more promising. A bit of sun might peek out.

I have a ticket to a Chinese opera performance for this afternoon at 2:30. I don’t know anything about the performance itself. I am mainly interested in seeing the theater. It is the Dadaocheng Theater on Dihua street. I’ve never been there and I wanted to check it out. The ticket was relatively expensive a NT$1,000. I bought the ticket yesterday, and the performance was almost entirely sold out. There were only two seats left, one for NT$800 and a second for NT$1,000. That is one advantage to going on one’s own. You can get these single seats that are left.

Yesterday, I went to see a 3D movie called Air Racers at the Astronomical Museum. It turned out not to be the best choice. They give you an RF transmitter in order to hear the English soundtrack, but my transmitter didn’t work. I heard a minute or two of English. But beyond that, I spent most of my time fiddling with the dials and switches to try to get it to get a signal. The 3D aspect of the show was much more of a distraction than anything else and the glasses hurt my ears and just bugged me overall. Finally, it was field trip day at the museum, and I shared the screening with a good 200 junior high school kids. They were actually okay, and I didn’t mind sitting with them. Watching them enjoy the movie was more enjoyable than the movie itself.

I returned to my apartment after that and hung out for an hour or two until it was time to leave for the night’s entertainment. This was a performance by a troupe called “The Puppet and Its Double Theater”. I selected this event because it was taking place at the Wenshan Theater – another place I’d never seen before. Considering the way the evening began, I was very lucky with how it turned out. The performance was scheduled for 7:30, and I had left fairly early because I wanted to leave time for getting lost and finding the theater. The theater was easy to find, so I didn’t really need to leave so early. Since I did, however, I ended up right in the middle of Friday night rush hour crowds in the MRT system. I’d totally forgotten that it was Friday and that rush hour was going to happen. It was quite uncomfortable in the MRT car with many people getting on and off the entire time. Plus, I was extremely tired. I started to wonder how other people go to the theater. Even when I do something pleasurable like that, I still manage to make it hard work. Not sure how that happens.

Wenshan Theater is located inside a branch of the Taipei Cultural Center right beside exit 1 of the Jingmei MRT station. It took about fifteen seconds to get there from the MRT exit. It looked like an interesting neighborhood with a market and that kind of thing. The cultural center had a large lobby area with an art installation of some kind. A camera was set up there, and someone was filming either an interview or an advertisement. The lobby was filled with young people with what looked like an older chaperone, like a teacher. I got the impression they were part of a drama group at a high school or something like that. That didn’t bode well for the quality of the performance that night – assuming they were there for the performance. It was not likely going to one of the bigger venues with older people dressed up in their best clothes. This was more like the friends and relatives of amateurs putting on a show.

I did some investigating while I waited, and I found out that the theater was in the basement. It wasn’t open yet, and I had to return to the lobby to wait. I sat outside and listened to a podcast about the life of Mel Blanc while I waited.

It was possible to go to the theater by elevator, but the regular way was to take the stairs, and the Cultural Center had taken the unusual and interesting step of putting a set of elaborate and colorful curtains over the entrance to the stairs. It looked like the entrance to a big marquee rather than a stairwell, like you were going somewhere magical and wonderful.

The theater was quite nice with comfortable seats. There was no balcony seating – just 20 or so rows on the main floor. With perhaps 20 seats in each row, the theater could seat perhaps 400 people. The place seemed quite empty to me, but that doesn’t mean anything in Taiwan. People arrive either late or at the last minute. I don’t know why. So though the theater looked empty to me, it was about half full when the performance began. There was a cozy and intimate atmosphere in the theater, which told me that many of the people in the audience were, in fact, friends and relatives of the performers or even members of the acting troupe itself. A foreign man sat in the row in front of me and I started a conversation with him. He answered two of my questions briefly and then turned away. He definitely wasn’t interested in chatting. I asked him if he knew anything about the performance. He said that he was friends with the set designer, but he didn’t know anything about the performance. That told me basically that he wanted me to shut up and leave him alone. How could he be there with the set designer and know nothing about the show?

The set was fairly simple. The floor was covered in long sheets of crumpled up paper. There was a screen on the right with a projected image on it. And there was a chair to the left at the back. I started to get worried that this was going to be a regular drama – lots of overwrought and emotional acting all in Chinese. If so, I was going to listen to a podcast and just tune out. However, it wasn’t like that at all and I enjoyed it immensely. I couldn’t have asked for a better performance.

It began with a giant creature – half human and half fly – tap dancing. This, apparently, was one of the puppets. It wasn’t a puppet in the usual sense but a full body-size puppet. Bigger than a body, actually. It’s hard to describe, but the lower half was simply the actor’s legs. Then he had a contraption strapped around his waist, and the huge puppet device was attached to that. He used his arms to manipulate the creature’s long and spindly limbs with claws at the end and he used something else to manipulate the head. It was very creepy and very interesting. The fly seemed to be a Cassandra kind of character foretelling woe and trouble. It was very pleased with itself and laughed evilly and rubbed its belly in glee and then tap danced around the stage and the other actors all night long. He was great. I got the impression that the man playing the fly was the writer and creator of the piece.

Four other huge puppets made an appearance in the performance. They put me in mind of the creatures in Miyazaki’s films – the spirits in Spirited Away, for example. They were creatures of dreams and even nightmares. One was a squat and powerfully muscled humanoid. Perhaps apelike is better. Another had a face like the one used by the killer in Scream. Another was a big hunched over worm-like creature with a long face sticking out the front like a pipe – very creepy. This creature typed on an invisible typewriter and controlled the actions of the people on stage. Another puppet was styled after a Japanese dancer/courtesan. The actors sometimes came out with the puppets and sometimes on their own. When they were on their own, they spoke to each other and played out some small dramas. This was in Chinese and I couldn’t understand it, but it was probably better that way. I got the impression that they weren’t saying anything of importance and actually understanding it might have been worse. It might have been pretentious nonsense.

There were occasional flashes of humor. Once, for example, all of the puppet creatures got into an elevator together and they had to jostle and push to make room for the giant worm creature. Then the fly pushed his way through and tap danced and giggled his way around. There was also a lot of music and singing. The singing was the weakest link for me.

The play ended with all the actors removing their puppet skeletons and laying them down on the stage. Then they were given fishing rods and they fished for nothing. A hook came down from the ceiling and the rock and roll singing girl took a glass shoe out of her purse and hung it on the hook. The hook rose into the air and hung suspended there. All the lights went down until just the glass shoe was glittering there. I couldn’t even begin to guess what all the fishing and fish hooks were about. I’m sure it was all deep and meaningful. I didn’t care. I just thought the puppets were cool. It was a great performance, though I have to admit I couldn’t help but see connections with other things. It felt like I had seen these puppets all before – as if they were imitating things they had seen elsewhere. Still, it didn’t matter. It was very cool.

It was still raining when I left the theater, and I simply got back on the MRT and rode it home. I read some more of “The Heart of the Matter” and then I went to bed. I’m looking forward to the opera today. If it isn’t raining, I’ll bring my Olympus and take some pictures around Dihua Street.

Tags: fly, MRT, NT, Taipei Cultural Center, Wenshan Theater