Mapping Taiwan Theatrically: The Problematic Narration of Home-Nation

魏淑美(Shu-Mei Wei)

theatre studies ； Taiwanese identity ； national space ； theatricality ； spatial-temporal polemic

小說與戲劇

18卷2期（2008 / 03 / 01）

125 - 150

英文

This paper aims to explore the spatial-temporal polemic of Taiwanese identity as theatrically expressed in two productions-Mundane Orphan and Little Town of Tamsui in which Taiwan was imaged as a self-generating Mother Nature figure and as a utopian hometown preserved in the past. Mundane Orphan began with, and ended in, the symbolic birth and re-birth of Taiwan; what lay in between was a realistic presentation of the actors' family stories in which Taiwan was portrayed as a place of crime and corruption. Redemption came in the form of a ritualistic ending where social problems and cultural differences that were previously delineated, disappeared into the homogeneous home-nation space, equated with nature. However, the totalising national space and identity was fractured by the previous delineation of social upheaval and cultural diversity as a consequence of the history of colonisation and modernisation. Little Town of Tamsui (adapted from Thornton Wilder's Our Town) aimed for a collective identification with Tamsui, an ideal hometown whose identity was secured by the transmission of cultural customs and family values. Tamsui incited nostalgia in all the Taiwanese as it signalled a shared good old past and thus constituted as a national space. Little Town of Tamsui misappropriated Wilder's universal humanism into Taiwanese cultural nationalism based on identification with the past in Tamsui. However, the alienating presence of the omnipresent stage manager and Emily's return from death undermined the uncritical formulation of historical continuity that was essential to the narration of national space in Tamsui. Both tried to make a utopia of Taiwan but failed for two reasons. Firstly, Taiwan was delineated as a multi-ethnic community where diversified identities were pitted against the singular form of national identity. Secondly, the attempt to formulate national space through theatrical representation is doomed to failure as this representation always invokes the other space of lived reality that is absent on stage, and thus any identity predicated on the pure reproduction of the other space is not possible.

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