Wang Chia-Ming

Four novels are successively presented on the stage without any link or rupture between them. They are principally the stories of women whose lives have suddenly changed in response to a chance occurrence, pressing desire or casual lie. Set in the different districts of Taipei, they slip away and disappear or, sometimes, resign themselves to returning home, but what they always carry with them is a taste of the unknown. Dear Life dissects these ordinary destinies just as we might rummage through an old travel bag in search of unavowed secrets and lost emotions. Onstage, the different characters wrestle with these micro-upsets, pains, and hopes and build up a web of intrigues. These intrigues then constantly divert off in different directions, a reminder of the impermanent nature of our lives. In this latest creation, the director, a member of the Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group collective, examines the distancing effect of time via a near-cinematographic sense of rhythm and respectfully detaches himself from new eponyms in order to take us on an interior voyage to fresh, but not necessarily exotic, pastures.
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Running time : 2h
Performed in Mandarin with French subtitles