Imagining the Future in the Anthropocene on the Taipei Stage: What Colour is the Cloud? (2016), Taipei Notes (2017), and 1984 (2017)

在台北舞台上想像人類世的未來：《雲係麼个色？》（2016），《台北筆記》（2017）與《1984》（2017）

10.6184/TKR.202112_52(1).0001

Lia Wen-ching Liang

human extinction ； contemporary theatre ； Taiwanese theatre ； Wang Chia-Ming ； Voleur de Feu Theatre ； 人類滅絕 ； 當代劇場 ； 台灣劇場 ； 王嘉明 ； 盜火劇團

Tamkang Review

52卷1期（2021 / 12 / 01）

3 - 21

英文

Given our reliance on planetary resources for survival, the worsening global environmental conditions are now becoming a source for artistic reflections. In theatre, curiosity is increasingly turned to the ecological impacts of modern society, especially in regard to the future of humanity. As a form of art that constantly prompts the audience to consider new problems and perspectives, theatre can become a significant vehicle for alerting the general public to our current anthropogenic environmental transformations. Addressing three theatre productions in Taipei, this paper explores how theatre artists in Taiwan have been grappling with planetary environmental crises. The first production is Taipei Notes (2017), the result of collaborations between the Japanese playwright Hirata Oriza and Taiwan's Voleur du Feu Theatre, which presented a revision of Hirata's award-winning Tokyo Notes (1995). Set at a future time that exhibits many similarities to our society, fragments of multiple stories were presented in the lobby at a gallery in Taipei, where famous paintings evacuated from a warring Europe were displayed. The production thus delved into a shifting world order in the aftermath of disruptive patterns of human activities. Next, I examine 1984, The Family Life of Three Sisters, which was the collaborative work of Wang Chia-Ming (Shakespeare's Wild Sisters Group) and Kouhei Narumi (Seventh Theatre) staged in 2017. Evoking the omnipresent surveillance in George Orwell's 1984, this production also paraphrased Chekhov's Three Sisters and explored a futuristic setting in which the scarcity of natural resources easily led to widespread military conflicts and pervasive social control. Finally, the focus turns to What Colour is the Cloud?, another production directed by Wang for the SWSG in 2016. Delivering an overwhelmingly pessimist message concerning the future of the world, this production depicted the survival and destruction of humanity on a damaged earth that had seen vortices of both natural and human-induced disasters. By pointing to a future profoundly unsettled by our ambitions and activities, all three productions offered different cues for viewers to critically consider the question of the Anthropocene.

有鑑於地球的自然資源對於人類社會的生存至關緊要，不斷惡化的全球環境條件正逐漸引發更多的藝術反思。在戲劇界，已有許多製作開始注意到現代社會對於自然環境造成的衝擊，並深入探討了環境變遷對於人類未來的影響。作為一種時常鼓勵觀賞者用不同觀點思考新問題的藝術形式，戲劇已成為讓公眾警覺人類社會所引發之當代環境變遷的一種重要途徑。以此趨勢作為脈絡，本篇論文將聚焦於近年來在台北演出的三個劇作，探索製作群如何針對全球環境危機提出探問。本文首先分析由日本劇作家平田織佐和台灣的盜火劇團根據平田織佐得獎作品《東京筆記》所改編的《台北筆記》（2017），該劇的時間設定雖在未來，卻與我們現處的社會有許多近似之處，場景為台北某畫廊之中，展出著處於戰亂之中的歐洲移送來台北安置的著名畫作，隨著劇情推展而昭顯人類活動如何擾動世界秩序。接著探討在2017年上演，由台灣導演的王嘉明（莎士比亞的妹妹們的劇團）和日本導演鳴海康平（第七劇場）於2017年共同製作的《1984，三姐妹一家子的日子》，該劇援引喬治．歐威爾的小說《1984》中無所不在的社會監視，並改編契可夫的劇作《三姐妹》，探討在未來情境裡，由於自然資源逐漸稀缺而導致頻繁的大規模武裝衝突和普遍的社會控制。最後，我將討論王嘉明為莎士比亞的妹妹們的劇團於2016年所執導的《雲係麼个色？》，該劇描繪了在經歷了許多自然和人為災難的全球環境裡，人類社會力圖生存卻幾乎遭到毀滅的故事，藉此傳達了關於人類未來的悲觀訊息。這三個劇作皆指向了一個因為人類的野心和行為而遭到徹底改變的未來，也提供了觀眾對於人類世議題的不同觀點。

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