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Politicizing the Pastoral: Taiwan's Homeland Performances
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 June 2016
Abstract
Since the Sunflower Movement of 2014, when thousands of Taiwanese students protested against a trade deal the Nationalist government had made with China, the issue of Taiwan's sovereignty has again been brought to the political fore. Home to twenty-three million people, not only is Taiwan beset by threats from China and isolated by international organizations, but in its rapid push to industrialize it also has incurred severe environmental degradation. Two contemporary theatre troupes incorporated the Sunflower demonstration's ‘pro-Taiwanese homeland’ agenda into their works about the environment. Addressing both the pollution of the countryside and the demise of rural communities, they idealized pastoral life and emphasized Taiwan's roots in agrarian culture. Sun Son's Mulian Rescues Mother Earth imagined a perfectly organized small agricultural community trying to sustain its success, and San Que Yi's Earth Project portrayed two examples of rural communities engaged in David-and-Goliath struggles against industrial pollution.
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References
NOTES
1 Interview with Ondine Woting Shiau, Taipei, 22 July 2015.
2 Chang, Ivy I-chu, Remapping Memories and Public Space: Taiwan's Theater of Action in the Opposition Movement and Social Movements from 1986–1997 (Taipei: Bookman, 1998), p. 150Google Scholar. For Chinese names, I use the spelling the people themselves use in publications about their work or the PRC pinyin for general terms.
3 On 28 February 1947 a cigarette vendor being struck down by military police sparked a nationwide revolt. The Nationalist government retaliated with the ‘White Terror’, the years of martial law (1949–87) during which thousands of Taiwanese were killed. It is now commemorated in the 2-28 national holiday. See Wu, Julie, ‘Remembering Taiwan's White Terror’, The Diplomat, 8 March 2014Google Scholar, at http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/remembering-taiwans-white-terror, accessed 14 February 2016.
4 Tsai also taught dance to the prisoners and guards at her prison on Green Island. See Wu, ‘Remembering Taiwan's White Terror’.
5 The population of Taiwan is divided into four main subgroups: the ‘native’ (benshengren) people include sixteen indigenous tribes (2 per cent), Taiwanese from Fujian (Hoklo – 72 per cent) and ‘guest people’ from Guandong (Hakka – 12 per cent), who are all earlier arrivals and distinct from Chinese Nationalists who came after 1945 (waishengren – 14 per cent). Indexmundi 2014, at www.indexmundi.com/taiwan/demographics_profile.html, accessed 14 February 2016.
6 Wright, David Curtis, ‘Chasing Sunflowers: Personal Firsthand Observations of the Student Occupation of the Legislative Yuan and Popular Protests in Taiwan, 18 March–10 April 2014’, Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 15, 4 (2014), pp. 134–200, here p. 137Google Scholar.
7 In 2011 the Fukushima nuclear disaster, costly food scandals and extreme drought reignited anti-nuclear and environmental concerns that were reflected in several television drama serials. See Grano, Simona, Environmental Governance in Taiwan: A New Generation of Activists and Stakeholders (New York: Routledge, 2015), p. 3Google Scholar.
8 Garrard, Greg, Ecocriticism (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 37Google Scholar.
9 Richard Edmonds, ‘Aspects of the Taiwanese Landscape in the 20th Century’, in Richard Edmonds and Steven Goldstein, eds., Taiwan in the Twentieth Century: A Retrospective View, China Quarterly (2001), special issue 1, pp. 1–18, here p. 10.
10 The formation of national parks has been contentious because they appropriated aboriginal lands and subjected the indigenous residents to Taiwanese law regarding natural-resource use. See Catherine Diamond, ‘Sacred Mountains or National Parks: The Native Peoples of Taiwan Protecting the Sanctity of Their Ancestral Spaces’, paper delivered at the fourth South and Southeast Asian Association for the Study of Culture and Religion Conference, Thimpu, Bhutan.
11 Hwai-min, Lin, ‘Grain of Truth: Lin Hwai-min on Cloud Gate Dance Theatre's Rice’, The Guardian, 18 February 2014Google Scholar, at www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/feb/18/lin-hwai-min-cloud-gate-dance-theatre-rice, accessed 12 September 2015.
12 ‘The Smangus story has been praised as a “utopia” by the media and attracted considerable research attention’. See Pina Wu, ‘Taiwan's Smangus, an indigenous village with an ecotourism cooperative’, 7 September 2015, at https://ecoclub.com/headlines/reports/977-150903-smangus-taiwan, accessed 14 February 2016.
13 Kevin Rittberger, ‘Director/Playwright's Notes’, Mulian Rescues Mother Earth programme, pp. 10–11.
14 Email interview with Kevin Rittberger, 6 March 2015.
15 Berezkin, Rostislav, ‘A Local Drama from Shaoxing’, in Mair, Victor and Bender, Mark, eds., The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), pp. 303–8, here p. 303Google Scholar.
16 Author interview with Ng Chong Leong (吳忠良), Guandu, 10 December 2014.
17 Keng Yi-wei, ‘Festival Director's Notes’, Mulian Rescues Mother Earth programme, p. 3.
18 Author interviewwith Ng Chong Leong.
19 Nittbaur, Gunter, ‘Stafford Beer's Syntegration as a Renascence of the Ancient Greek Agora in Present-day Organizations’, Journal of Universal Knowledge Management, 1 (2005)Google Scholar, at www.jucs.org/jukm_0_1/stafford_beers_syntegration_as/nittbaur.html, accessed 17 July 2015.
20 Only Mulian was dressed in contemporary clothes.
21 Between visits to Taiwan, Rittberger went to Chile to witness anti-Monsanto protests by local farmers and was perplexed to see people eating mayonnaise, which he considered both foreign and artificial. When he expressed the desire to use this name, the Sun Son members opined that mayonnaise had no such resonance in Taiwan, but the name stuck. Author interview with actor Wei Chang Loy, Tamsui, 31 July 2015.
22 Han, Wu Zheng (吳政翰), ‘Thousands of Idle Reflections, Many Monotonous Tones: Mulian Saves Mother Earth’ (千迴空轉, 多音單調 《目連拯救大地母親》), Performing Arts Review (表演藝術), 21 August 2014Google Scholar, at http://pareviews.ncafroc.org.tw/?p=12414, accessed 13 December 2014.
23 Citizen Journalism, 8 April 2014, at www.peopo.org/news/237957, accessed 14 February 2016.
24 Author interview with artistic director Li Yu-feng (李玉嵐), Taipei, 23 July 2015.
25 Han, Wu Zheng (吳政翰), ‘The Dangerous Balancing of Documentary and Narrative in “Earth Project”’ (紀實與敘事的危險平衡《土地計劃首部曲》), Performing Arts Review (表演藝術), 22 December 2014Google Scholar, at http://pareviews.ncafroc.org.tw/?p=14296, accessed 10 June 2015.
26 Ibid.
27 Author interview with Li Yu-feng.
28 Chang, Remapping Memories and Public Space, p. 150.
29 Beyond Beauty earned NT$11 million (US$373,868) in its first three days, a record for a documentary, and won the Best Documentary at the Golden Horse Awards in 2013. See Kevin Chang, ‘The Influence of the High Gross Viral Film, Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above’, Taipei Film Commission, 1 January 2014, at www.taipeifilmcommission.org/en/MessageNotice/NewsDet/3180, accessed 14 February 2016.
30 Guo Liang-ting (郭亮廷), ‘Uncomfortable Tomorrow and Earth Project's Mind Control’ 不舒 適的明日」與「土地計劃」的對照記), Art Talks, 12 January 2015, at http://talks.taishinart.org.tw/juries/klt/2015010904, accessed 20 June 2015.
31 Author interview with Li Yu-feng.
32 Fuchs, Elinor, ‘Another Version of Pastoral’, in Fuchs, , The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theatre after Modernism (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 92–107, here p. 107.
33 There are two versions of ‘Island Sunrise’ lyrics, the first composed quickly by the band FireEx. When it proved popular, it was rewritten by a group of songwriters to be the official version that I refer to. See ‘Taiwan Sunflower Student Movement’, at http://ucbmusicc134c.weebly.com/the-initial-cause.html, accessed 23 December 2015.
34 Ibid.
35 Wei Qing-shui (魏清水), quoted in Mulian Rescues Mother Earth programme, p. 1.