Performance Workshop Theatre Taiwan
Founded 1984
Stan Lai, Artistic Director
Nai-chu Ding, Managing Director
“The most exciting theater in the Chinese-speaking world.”
-- Far Eastern Economic Review
“The most recent piece of evidence that Taiwan is creating the boldest Chinese art in Asia today.” – Newsweek
“Creating a brand new tragi-comic experience for the world Chinese-language theatre.” – United Daily News, Singapore
“Performance Workshop has established itself as the company which sets the pace.”
–South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
“Like a beautifully woven Chinese knot. ” –Straits Times, Singapore
Performance Workshop is Taiwan’s leading contemporary theatre group, and has been called the leading theatre group in the Chinese language theatre world. Its plays have revived dying theatrical traditions as well as creating a new audience for theatre in Taiwan and the Chinese-speaking world. It’s mission is to continually create original new theatre works for the Chinese speaking world.
Led by Artistic Director Stan Lai (Lai Sheng-chuan) and comprised of a core of Taiwan’s leading theatre artists, the group makes extensive use of improvisation in the creation of its work, and over the past two decades has performed successfully in Taiwan and on tour around the world, forging a rare mix of experimental methods and wide, popular audience base.
The group’s productions focus on original new works that reflect current socio-political as well as universal concerns. They include acclaimed original works such as The Peach Blossom Land (1986), Circle Story (1987), Journey to the West (1987,a contemporary opera based on the classical Chinese novel Monkey), A Post-Martial Law Couple(1988), The Island and the Other Shore (1989), Come Dance With Me (1990), Strange Tales from Taiwan (1991), Red Sky (1994), I Me He Him (1998), Welcome to Shangri-La (2000), Sand and a Distant Star and Mumble Jumble (2003), bold adaptations of western works such as the Chinese language world premieres of Angels in America, Part I (1996) and Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1995) and Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay (1998).
At the center of the Performance Workshop’s sustained creative output are the husband-wife team of Artistic Director Stan Lai and Manging Director Nai-chu Ding. Lai is one of the most prominent playwright/directors in Asia, and Ding is one of its most respected producers. Together, they have not only produced spell-binding theatre, but highly creative and influential works of film and television as well.
Performance Workshop has also worked on reviving the traditional Chinese performing art of “xiangsheng,” or “crosstalk,” having created 5 works in the genre that have been called “a successful bridge between fine art and popular entertainment, “starting with Chinese Comedy in the Late 20th Century(1985, revived 1993) and ending with the recent Total Women(2005)
Since 1998, the Performance Workshop has been producing its plays in China, including Red Sky, Millennium Teahouse and Love on a Two-Way Street, bringing cross-straits cultural relations to a deeper level. These historical productions have met with enthusiastic response, and have been reported on by CNN, BBC and other world media. An excerpt from Millennium Teahouse was performed at the 2002 CCTV New Year’s Special, the first such performance from Taiwan to appear on the annual program that is beamed to 1 billion TV viewers in China.
With the establishment of “OFF PW” in 2000, the group has created a platform to stage alternative works in experimental settings by upcoming young theatre artists.
2005 was the 20th anniversary of Performance Workshop. Celebrations include the performances of Stan Lai’s new Total Woman, and of his epic 7 hour A Dream Like a Dream.
Videos and audio recordings of the Performance Workshop’s plays are available through its web site at “http://www.pwshop.com/”. An English version of The Peach Blossom Land is available in The Oxford Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama.
