About Creation
Age of Audience: 10+
Number of Performers: 1 persons
Number of tour member: 6 persons
Stage Size: 10m (W) x 20m (D) x 5m (H)
Special Made for: Not suited for outdoor settings. It can be held in either traditional theater or alternative performing space.
Empty stage, hazy smoke, a beam of light, a 50-meter-long gigantic vinyl fabric, and one dancer, Masses responds to the incongruity of the masses with a solo dance that outlines the protestor’s complex inner psyche, unravels the loss and loneliness of the individual among the masses in social movements. Open auditorium offers audience democracy and autonomy. Watching from afar or immersed in close range,the audience is invited to bravely face the nuances of personal life amid street protests. While responding to the global unrest, Masses takes the audience to re-experience and re-think the personal and the social of being in a street struggle. It is political, theatrical and relevant.
About
Masses
Masses is a collaborative creation initiated by theatre director Wang Shih-Wei, working with dancer choreographer Tien Hsiao-tzu, sound artist Li Tzi-Mei and lighting and stage designer Helmi Fita. Apart from the excel achievement in each one’s independent artist career, their assemble work, Masses, earns Taishin jury panel’s praise: ‘a collective performance featuring abundant creative energies of four outstanding artists’ and wins them Performing Arts Awards of 2020 Taishin Arts Award. Masses is represented by Dynamo Management, proudly being invited to present 4 sold-out performances at Artquake in Autumn Festival 2021 by National Theatre and Concert Hall in Taipei.
How do you view the relationship between social movements and theater?
Whether it’s theatre or dance, a stage production that looks at mass movements would inevitably reflect political turmoil in reality. The politics of theatre lies in rational criticism and public participation, appealing to the audience’s emotional projection or intellectual thinking. On the other hand, the politics of dance accentuates the unique intensity of body and character. It gives more space for spectators to feel the conflict between body and mind, sense and sensibility, the reason and emotion. In Masses, I try to integrate the features of these two expression forms and enrich the audience’s perceptual effect..
What inspired you to create “Masses”?
I have always had conflicting feelings about the protest movements. I had another chance to rediscover the complexity of social movements while doing my doctoral research. It also allowed me to excavate the despair and chaos hidden behind the appearance of passion and justice, particularly the frustration and helplessness of one’s will being swallowed up by collective fate. Therefore, I explore the mass movements via presenting one protestor’s psychological changes, displaying how an individual deals with his/her inner bewilderment and struggle, even a strong sense of loneliness whilst being in a mass movement.