Cultural Alchemy: Theater Company Aims to Transform Taiwanese Theater

Code Switch Theater Company is a new Taiwanese-foreign collaborative theater company founded by Brandon Gergel, Sequoia Collier-Hezel, and Sigrid Yang. Its mission, and the impetus behind its play Love, a/Verse (反詩·愛), is a simple one: making theater for all who call Taiwan home.

Language has always been a significant hurdle for foreigners interested in exploring theater in Taiwan. While Taipei’s Mandarinlanguage theater scene is vibrant, and a core group of devoted theater makers fuel the English-language theater community, truly bilingual performances are still a rarity in theaters on the island, which can discourage potential audiences from experiencing all Taiwan’s rich theater scene has to offer. Stories that tackle the intersection of foreigners and Taiwanese are even rarer.

“We wanted to tell a story that would resonate with both Taiwanese and foreigners,” explains Brandon Gergel, playwright of Love, a/Verse , which premiered in August as part of the Taipei Fringe Festival. “Many of us have been in multicultural relationships, and we knew that each member of our diverse team would be able to contribute something that rings true. The production is more than the sum of its parts.”

Director Sequoia Collier-Hezel agrees: “I see Love, a/Verse as almost two different plays. I feel that the experience of foreigners will differ so greatly from the Taiwanese audience that they are almost separate shows. And I’m okay with that.”

Love, a/Verse comes at a time when cross-cultural unions are becoming increasingly common. The play tells the story of Emil and Yu Lin, whose love, nurtured through their shared passion for poetry, faces linguistic and romantic hurdles. To rekindle their romance, they must discover a language that transcends words, a poetic dialogue of the heart.

Love, a/Verse's characters code switch between Mandarin, English, and Taiwanese as they reflect on love and power through the lens of language. The core of Code Switch’s mission is building bridges between the various groups that call Taiwan home. To that end, the play is surtitled in Mandarin and English.

Love, a/Verse combines elements of physical theater, traditional drumming, and dance, weaving these diverse elements into a syncretic whole. Each night, a different local poet is selected to perform original poetry as part of the play as Emil, Yu Lin, and the Mask, characters, look on.

Gergel commented, “I know of a few foreigners who have lived here for years that signed up for Mandarin lessons after seeing Love, a/Verse. A few even asked me if I had interviewed their partners as I was writing. Apparently, some of the themes hit close to home.”

Love, a/Verse premiered over five nights at Thinkers' Theatre on Dihua Street in the Dadaocheng neighborhood of Taipei City. For those that did not have a chance to see the performance, a selection from Love, a/Verse is set to be revived as part of Taipei Shorts VI at Authentic Playground in Taipei from January 12-14 and 19-21. More information can be found on the Instagram page of Taipei Shorts.

Code Switch Theater Company plans to build on the energy generated from Love, a/Verse with its next production, Tale to Tale: Taipei (一「説」即發 ：台北), a multilingual storytelling competition. Performers will be invited to share a personal story in Mandarin, English, or their native language, and audiences will vote on their favorites. In keeping with Code Switch’s mission, simultaneous translations will be provided for the audience. The December show’s theme is “Wrap it Up:

Reflections and Endings”. More details, including a link to the application for storytellers, can be found on Code Switch’s Facebook and Instagram pages.

Director Valerie Lin says this form of devised, collaborative work has been like “piecing together a poem— collecting strengths from all corners. They seem unrelated, yet they pull on each other and give meaning.”

Sigrid Yang, actor and playwright, adds, “Working with a mixed foreignTaiwanese team is a learning process. There might be differences, but we all focus more on the parts that we share and what we are trying to accomplish.”

As Code Switch looks toward 2024, they continue to explore new avenues of expression, from adaptations to horror to puppet theater, all the while collecting strengths from the myriad corners of Taiwan. They invite all those who call the island home to connect with them on their journey of creation at the crossroads of cultures.

LINKS: instagram.com/codeswitchtaiwan/ facebook.com/codeswitchtheaterco instagram.com/taipeishorts/

Brandon Gergel is a Taipei-based writer. In addition to his work on Love, a/Verse, Brandon co-wrote Dream a Dream for you, which debuted at the 2022 Taipei Fringe Festival. He has also contributed works to the Taipei 24-Hour Play Festival, Grass Jelly Monologue Jam, and Stage Fight 30 in 60. His play New Year's Bird Count was staged at Taipei Shorts V, and Equinox will be staged as part of Taipei Shorts VI in November. He manages the writing program at an academy in Taipei.

Lutetia ART-at-TAC November Exhibition 11 November 3, 2023 Chang Yun-ming (張韻明) Solo Exhibition

For the winter 2023/2024 season, ART-at-TAC will present three monthly exhibitions. The first, opening on 3 November, is an exhibition of works by Taiwanese veteran artist Chang Yun-ming (張韻明). With a career spanning over five decades, Chang’s multimedia paintings have been collected by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. A long-term resident in Tianmu, this exhibition is an opportunity to connect and celebrate with the local community.

“Gazing down with an aerial view from the road’s higher shoulder, my perspective took on a quite different perspective from the traditional painting composition of ‘high and distant.’” ~ Chang Yun-ming (張韻明)

Born in a tiny fishing village in Kaohsiung where only six households were registered, Chang started imagemaking at a young age. Seasickness prevented him from following the family tradition of becoming a fisherman. Fortunately his family supported him through secondary education and he eventually enrolled in Taiwan Art College where he majored in traditional Chinese ink painting. As a Chinese ink painter, Chang sought and continues to seek an ink painting tradition that is uniquely Taiwanese. As a style immersed in literati traditions, Chang was one of the first ink painters that painted Taiwanese rural landscapes - green rice paddies, buffalos in the fields, banyan trees - as opposed to the imagined mountains and rivers of China. According to Chang, he would often sketch on the highway’s shoulder facing the plains of Yunlin and Jiayi.

This desire to innovate and find new perspective drives his entire artistic career. Dissatisfied with the successes he had with ink painting, Chang explored other media and content, while exploring new possibilities of painting. His desire to break moulds can be seen in his composition. He often uses the grid, an element more often seen in modern Western paintings than Chinese ink painting. Sometimes these are obvious like in The Leftover of Worldly Dream (2023) or Accompanied by the Moon (2022), but often they are subtle interplays between black and white on the painted surface. His use of texts/calligraphy not only echoes the traditions of written words, usually poems, in traditional Chinese painting, but also brings to the fore the inherent modern-ness of ink painting, namely the interplay of picture planes, the flattening of pictorial space.

His explorations of painting also encompass the different ways of mark-making. His canvases are full of textures, sometimes scratches, sometimes prints or rubbings, not to mention drips of paint as well as brushstrokes. This study in the elemental can also be seen in his interest in aboriginal paintings from different cultures, whose symbolic pictographs often make their way to Chang’s paintings too.

Chang’s art always maintains a dialogue with Chinese ink painting and philosophy as many of his paintings originated in poetic classics from Chinese literature. The myriad of shades and forms of the black ink is always present in his paintings, even the most abstract or symbolic ones. Sometimes his inspirations come in the form of direct calligraphic writing. For him, “Calligraphy most aptly expresses the abstract aesthetics of Chinese culture”. In his paintings, texts represent and signify; they are simultaneously textual and graphic. Chang Yun-ming’s exhibition will be on show from 3 November to 26 November. Join the artist for the opening on 3 November at Lutetia TAC Store (751 Wenlin Road, Shilin District), with a reception from 5:30pm to 8:30pm.

Lutetia ART-at-TAC’s monthly exhibitions continue in December with Eamonn O’callaghan’s solo exhibition of evocative and enigmatic figurative oil paintings. This will be followed in January 2024 by Elina Eihmane’s solo show of intuitive, poetic abstract paintings and musings.

All art sales at ART-at-TAC are commissionfree, with 10% of the proceeds of all art sales going to charities of the artist’s choice. The opening events are a space for people to meet and enjoy art; everyone is welcome.

Follow our Instagram @lutetiaartattac for the latest news and links to artists.

Jessica Wang Simula was born in Taiwan but has lived in six different countries since adolescence before relocating back to Taiwan with her family over three years ago. Having worked in the arts in Shanghai and London, she is interested in how the arts can start new conversations, build communities and connect people.