九年代台湾小剧场的身体策略论辩-国立中央大学英美语文学系.docVIP

Trista WuPro. Katherine Chou Thesis Proposal 15 December, 2005 Narrating Body: The Debate of Body Strategy in Taiwan’s Little Theatre, 1990-1999 (論述身體：九０年代台灣小劇場的身體策略論辯) The body in the Little Theatre of the 1990s is the most extraordinary and riotous in the history of Taiwan’s modern theatre. The radical body movement in the Little Theatre of the 1990s could be viewed as the follow-on of the anti-literary theatre after the mid-1980s, which body begins to predominate over literary texts, and becomes the main subject of theatrical creations. Theatre worker, Wang Mo-lin (王墨林), explains the social and political condition of the rise of body trend in the Little Theatre after the mid-1980s that: Because of the release of martial law in 1987, the civil power of Taiwan was activated for the first time in 40 years. It was reflected on the materialized body. The political value of the body was therefore stressed. For instance, the conflicts between demonstrates and the police, and the fighting at the congress could both be viewed as some kind of body performances. Wang comments further on the meaning of body for the society as well as theatre workers that “Body is an instrument. The government, society, and culture all use it to complete their space installation. What the theatre workers look for is a subjective body, which extricates itself from all kinds of constraints, retuning to the simplest origin.” Theatre theorist, Chou Hui-ling (周慧玲) elucidates Wang’s commentary that the Little Theatre of the 1980s tries to search for a body emancipated from the governmental control and capitalistic consumption, i.e. a body without societal, political, and economic restrictions. The political upheaval of the late 1980s ceases fire after 1990. Wang Mo-lin therefore claims the death of the Little Theatre in Taiwan. Wang thinks because the Little Theatre of the 1990s loses its political stance, it loses its stage. The fact is, however, the body display of the