TAKE CARE
Take care
Directed by HSU YEN LING
Taipei Blooming production
Length: 1 hour and 30 minutes
“Take care” is the first production of TAIPEI BLOOMING, a theatre group founded by Hsu Yen Ling last year: the show will be performed in Guling Avant Garde Theatre from 2011 July 1st to 2011 July 10th. The main question held in this new production deals with abandoned and injured animals through the story of a lesbian couple; one is a veterinary, the other a teacher. It also raises the question of the complexity of the relationships between human beings, human beings and animals, and animals.
Hsu Yen Ling, well known as an over gifted performer, presents her fifth show as art director: “I tried to find a new way to write a script. Before, I was used to write it first and ask my actors to play. For this production, we started from improvisation and wrote the script together; talking about the issues we wanted to focus on, cutting or rewriting some parts.” This collective work is based on the main characters life: the veterinary, the teacher, the business man and the student. She wants to show their relation to their peculiarly jobs and their relationships the one to the other, using a very ordinary talk, classical stage design and everyday life costumes to stick to the reality she wants to portray. “How can we take care of the other?” This is the question lying under the story told by Hsu Yen ling. “I wanted to talk about the animal issue too. In the big cities, many abandoned cats and dogs can’t take care of themselves alone. We have to pay attention to them and take care of them.” This issue leads her to think about animals relationships more based on the touching. “I also ask the actors to play the animals in order to focus more on the touching; work on the emotion, the movement and gesture. We often pay too much attention to the sight or the talk. But there are other senses we can use to have contact we the other and in Taiwan, few people touch each other; Taiwanese are not used to physical contact.“ For example, when we say bye-bye in Taiwan, we never kiss the other on the check. In this show, the animals talk and can be seen as examples that the main characters could follow in their own life, they even advice their masters when they face difficult situations in their everyday life or couple. To embody one of the animals, she asks Fa Tsai to join her production: Fa Tsai, a famous talented artist had already played with the most famous art directors in Taiwan and we can assure you that his performance in this show is really excellent and detailed. Hsu Yen ling, in her art director, work on every detail with her actors, even with the non professional ones such as Liu Nien Yun. This latest used to be Hsu Yen ling producer on ‘Sister Trio’ and ‘a date’, two achieved shows she presented a few years ago in Taiwan.
“When Yenling asks me to be her actress in ‘Take care’, I could not refuse it: I was really interested by the topic and wanted to support her production. I know her since I was in senior high school, before I began to study the women working condition in University: she was our teacher in our theatre club. I also wanted to try to be an actress even I can feel sometimes a little scared. For me, it is difficult to act a relation. But I really want to work more on theatre projects because since I work for the labor organization* I did not have so many times for theatre.” Her role is to be the veterinary and take care of the injured animals and the people who bring them to her office. “When Yen Ling told me the story she wanted to write, I found a connection between my actual job and the character of the veterinary. In my job, I have to take care of the injured laborers –the women who used to work more than 20 years ago for RCE, an American electric company sold to Thompson, and who got cancer after: they are fighting for 10 years to get compensation for their disease. Many questions come in my mind when I am tired: why do I want to be an organizer? My character has the same questioning and feeling.” One could have seen Liu Nien Yun on TV on the morning the legislative yuan passes the budget for the Fourth nuclear plan; she was one the persons thrown out by the policemen in front the legislative yuan. As activist, she is involved in No Nuke movement and Labor protest, yet, deeply implicated in her work, listening to the injured people and helping them the best she can.
So, if you want to know what lies behind TAKE CARE, we recommend you to have a look on the show yet partly presented as a comedy, an ordinary life comedy we should say. DIANE VANDERMOLINA
* Taiwan Association For Victims of Occupational Injuries, based in Shongshan District, Taipei City. www.hurt.org.tw
PICTURES DIANE VANDERMOLINA
