Curious in Taipei

Family Hold Back performances

Sat, 24 May 2008 09:56:38 +0800

Family Hold Back opened on Thursday to a full house and we were all delighted to see that the subtitles Juan and Betsy slaved over worked like a charm and the very British humour seemed to translate really well. Now Helen can settle in and enjoy performing to Taipei audiences for the rest of the run.

Helen and Betsy at press call

Thu, 22 May 2008 07:25:08 +0800

Today was the press call for the show, so Helen performed a 10 minute excerpt from the show to photographers and then answered questions. Betsy spoke on behalf of the festival and translated the Q&A for Family Hold Back. Afterwards we had a dress rehearsal in prep for opening night tomorrow...

translating FHB script into 國語 subtitles

Tue, 20 May 2008 22:22:25 +0800

After a long weekend of conference activity there was no rest for Juan or Betsy (or us!) as we continued work on the subtitles translation of the Family Hold Back script over a few Taiwan Beers at ‘Old Five’s’ Hunan restaurant. Lois Keidan acted as dramaturge even though none of us knows what a dramaturge actually is. But she was there and weighed in on the translation, so we figured she needed a fancy credit of some kind. Unfortunately for the production, one of the key lines that doesn’t translate into Chinese is ‘family hold back’. Hmmm... Still, Jaun did a fantastic job on the translation and Betsy on the fine tuning session.

artist talk & workshop presentation

Tue, 20 May 2008 21:59:12 +0800

Curious gave a talk about their work as part of the Taiwan Women Theatre Festival, followed directly by a presentation from the workshop group. The 14 participants showed a range of group and solo work developed during the week and then talked to conference delegates about their experiences of making performance work rooted in their own experience as opposed to working with playwrights, choreographers or directors. The women did a fantastic job and did curious and the conference proud!

Site Specific Performances & Suitcase Revelations

Fri, 16 May 2008 21:03:00 +0800

Today the group performed ‘site specific’ works. This involved choosing a particular place or space which informed or perhaps juxtaposed the story they wanted to tell. After the two performances in two different sites we returned to the space and devoted the rest of the workshop to the suitcases. Each person experienced a ‘one to one’ moment with another persons suitcase, reading the letter of instructions left in it by the owner and in turn leaving a message or word of thanks. Each person then performed a gesture in response to their experience with the suitcase. Finally each person returned to their own case and created an installation/performance with the objects inside. The final task was to position themselves within the installation so that each piece was imbued with a live presence and shared with the group.