What I learned from my first Taiwan theatre competition
I was excited to participate when I heard about the local theatre competition for area schools. Still, I was also daunted by the task ahead and what to expect from other schools. However, since starting the theatre program at my school, I’ve learned that even if we were putting on name-recognizable shows like Annie JR and Seussical KIDS, it did not provide the clout that winning trophies and competing did. With that in mind and my conviction to put my money where my mouth was—that we had talented students and a real chance at building a performing arts program—I told our admin, "Let's do it."
We decided to attend the competition and submit three teams, one for each school level: elementary, middle, and high. Later, I discovered we were the only school able to submit more than one team. This makes sense, as few schools, particularly public ones, house grades one to twelve. Each team could have 20 students, including actors and tech, with additional students on a waitlist as understudies in case of anything unexpected. For our elementary and middle school shows, I went around and enlisted interested students. Our elementary team had 17 students, middle school had 20, and high school had 10.
In high school, I participated in our district's Individual Events (now known as Thespys) along with the "State" festival. However, this competition shared only a few similarities with what I experienced in high school. The most significant difference was that we had to write our own scripts. Unlike in the US, where schools choose from an assortment of published works, we had to create original shows here. The script could be inspired by a story or another work, but it had to be original. The shows had to be longer than 10 minutes but shorter than 20, ideally around 15 minutes. For the elementary and middle school productions, I wrote the shows myself. For high school, a student took a story idea we had from a previous improv class and wrote the first few iterations of the script. Needless to say, we had to "kill a lot of babies"—removing whole units, scenes, and characters we loved but couldn’t justify keeping—to stay under the 20-minute time limit. The performance could be performed in any language, and given that we are a bilingual school, we chose English. The only caveat was that the script had to be translated into Chinese and submitted a few weeks before competition day. Additionally, the script had to have a cultural, societal, environmental, or artistic theme.
Next came the time limitations. Our middle and elementary school rehearsals took place after school or during our 30-minute nap period after lunch. Ultimately, we only had about 26 hours of rehearsal for each of the three shows. We had to embrace minimalism for costumes and sets. Fortunately, our elementary and middle school shows were set in schools, so we could borrow desks and podiums. In fact, the competition hosts provided tables and chairs at the venue that we could use in our set, which is something I was not used to in the US. Looking at other schools' shows, I discovered that most used simple or no authentic set pieces. This is something I’ve found throughout my time teaching theatre in Taiwan, and I’ll discuss it in a later blog post. For costumes, again, the settings being schools worked in our favor. For two of the shows, students mostly wore their own clothes. The elementary school show featured a group of aliens, some of whom made their own tiny costumes and applied some makeup. The high school show was set in a fairytale courtroom, so we used various costumes and makeup pieces to transform the actors into different fairytale characters and creatures. For the animals, we added recognizable pieces to accentuate their portrayal.
The competition took place over three days, one for each school level, and few schools actually attended: three high schools, six middle schools, and five elementary schools. I should also note that the competition had three types of performance schools could participate in: modern puppetry (including shadow puppets), traditional puppetry, and modern drama (which could broadly be any type of performing art).
After three days of competition, here are my key takeaways:
Taiwanese theatre acting is performative or mechanical. Stanislavski famously began his school of acting to move away from the mechanical or melodramatic performances he saw at the end of the 19th century in Russia and Europe. He pushed for more natural or organic performances and trained his actors to find the truth in their choices. Watching these shows made it apparent that melodramatic performance is the norm. Confirming this theory was a visit to the National Theatre and a performance of Hamlet that I saw that weekend. Shamlet was written by Hugh Lee (李國修), a famous television and stage actor, director, and writer. Although the show was a comedy, it had dramatic moments. In these dramatic moments, the actors continued with melodramatic performances. My armchair anthropologist theory is that this tradition of mechanical performance is influenced by Taiwanese operas and other stage traditions from China and Japan.
Soliloquizing is okay, or "tell me what you are thinking and doing." In just about every show, the characters expressed their inner thoughts and feelings aloud to the audience. In one show, the characters even discussed exactly what they were doing on their phones and the messages they were receiving.
There is extensive use of non-diegetic music and stings. Every show incorporated music to emphasize dramatic, tense, scary, sad, and many other emotional moments. In fact, all the middle school shows incorporated a popular Taiwanese song that the actors sang in part or whole. Additionally, they included popular music from Taiwan, other Asian countries, or the US for small dance breaks. These dance breaks reminded me of dream ballets from the golden age of musicals. Sometimes these songs connected to the plot; other times, they felt like they were just placed there, like in a jukebox musical. Additionally, when something particularly shocking or revealing happened, there was often a short musical sting.
The performing arts community is small. If the few schools attending didn’t make this obvious enough, few schools came to watch others perform. When we inquired about watching other schools, the impression we got was, "Well, you can, but it isn't expected." The expectation was that schools would come, perform, and leave to return to school. We watched as many shows as possible, and at least two of our shows were viewed by one other school. Outside of the five judges, the theatre crew, a professional videographer, and the volunteers running the event, the vast 1,000+ seat auditorium was virtually empty. Some parents came to watch their children, but based on my observations, our elementary school team probably had the largest parent audience of any show. The low attendance is understandable, given that the competition occurred during weekdays and working hours.
Prep time and the director/teacher. The initial rules made it sound like the teacher/director was restricted from contacting the performers once they entered backstage. However, once we arrived, I learned that the director/teacher could help students during the 20-minute prep time. We had rehearsed our shows so that all students acted independently, with a dedicated stage manager orchestrating the entire operation. Later, a volunteer told me that we were the only school whose students acted entirely independently of their teachers.
The judges were all men, appearing to be in their 50s-70s. They were either performing arts teachers from higher education or directors and teachers from theatre troupes.
So, how’d we do? All three teams received an "Excellent." The ratings were Superior, Excellent, and Good. Our elementary and high school teams were chosen to move forward to nationals. The students and I are thrilled that we have the opportunity to perform in Taipei. This is the first time our school has ever participated in such an event, and the students are making history. The middle school team was disappointed not to move forward to nationals. I thought their show was the strongest of the three, but I reminded myself and them of that famous Stanislavski quote: "Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art."
As for the other schools, we saw some very talented artists. Some schools had impressive props and costumes, and others used Taiwan’s set-building limitations to create unique scenes and imagery. It was great to see so many students showcase their talents and have the opportunity to perform on a real stage with a professional sound and lighting system. Each show had something unique to offer, and I’m already imagining what we will do for next year's competition.
We haven’t received our feedback yet, but when we do, I’ll share it along with my thoughts. Until then, we’re all going to take a deep breath, enjoy our upcoming Lunar New Year holidays, and then dig in for Taipei. Oh, did I mention we will also start two shows at the same time we prepare for nationals? So yeah, we’ve got our work cut out for us.