Taipei Performing Arts Center is revitalizing Taiwan’s performing arts scene while diversifying live theater audiences in the country’s capital.
Officially opened in August, the center is drawing large crowds to its spherical 800-seat Globe Playhouse, 1,500-seat Grand Theatre and 800-seat Blue Box. It was selected by the U.S.-based Cable News Network as one of eight buildings worldwide set to shape the world in 2021.
One of TPAC’s major transformative aspects is the flexibility of its performance spaces. By reconfiguring the high-quality soundproof walls, the Grand Theatre and Blue Box can merge into one huge venue called the Super Theatre, while the Globe Playhouse can enlarge its stage by lowering and hiding the first eight rows of seats.
The 800-seat Globe Playhouse is one of TPAC’s three performance spaces. (Staff photo/Chin Hung-hao)
According to TPAC Chief Executive Officer Austin Wang, the well-equipped indoor spaces are supplemented by outdoor venues like a roof garden and a stage on the ground level for smaller shows. It can host performances on any scale, he added.
The 12-story center also houses five rehearsal spaces and manages another set at Taipei Backstage Pool located a five-minute drive from TPAC, providing much-needed choice for artists competing for practice and performance facilities in the city.
A total of 54 programs and 220 performances will have graced TPAC’s spaces during its opening season when it wraps up later this month. Sitting in Taipei’s Shilin District next to a bustling night market, the center has focused on shows featuring strong local links like “Dance Battle in Shilin,” a drama telling love stories set in the district through a variety of dance styles.
TPAC offers performing arts training for musical theater. (Courtesy of TPAC)
TPAC is committed to showing work that crosses genre boundaries, which Wang believes will attract curious audiences in freethinking Taipei. Among such shows are “unCloud-Meiyun X Wukang,” an interaction between a Taiwan opera performer and a contemporary dancer, and “NEXEN,” avant-garde director Hsieh Chun-te’s vision of a dystopian allegorical world depicted through dance, drama, music and projection mapping.
The center additionally serves as a training facility for the performing arts. Since 2016 it has organized a musical theater program offering courses in singing, dancing and acting, in addition to script writing and musical composition.
Committed to bringing extraordinary theater to its audience as well as developing closer ties between live theater and the general public, TPAC has exhilarating aspirations for performance in Taiwan’s cultural landscape. “We’ll make use of every aspect of this amazing building and explore all possibilities to raise enthusiasm for Taiwan theater,” Wang said. (E) (By Oscar Chung)
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Spirit of place infuses shows like “Dance Battle in Shilin” staged during TPAC’s opening season. (Courtesy of TPAC)
(This article is adapted from “Theater for All” in the September/October issue of Taiwan Review. The Taiwan Review archives dating to 1951 are available online.)