Press File

Amusing and Delicious ArtWritten and translated by River LinArt Plus Taiwanno.38 p.50-53 12-2014

Night Market Theatre is a real stall in the night market. Curated by Yoyo Kung and Juan Chin of Prototype Paradise who collaborated with UK artist Joshua Sofaer as artistic director, Night Market Theatre juxtaposes art and business as contemporary performance practice. It borrows the format of night market trading: the stall, the façade, the menu, and the queuing system, and is located in the Zhiqiang night market in Hualien, Taiwan. Artists have become the stallholders serving perfor-mances which you can’t quite take out or eat in but are nevertheless made for you in real time as you savor and experience them.

With a sign that reads ‘Night Market Theatre’, the design of the stand attracts the general public. The conventional stall from which food would be provided to customers has been transformed into a miniature stage. The sense of drama has been heightened by two layers of black curtains, in what looks like the styling of a traditional Taiwanese puppet theatre. This theatrical stall in a jungle of food booths becomes a spectacle, and makes people aware that something interesting and out of the ordinary might happen.

The performance begins. People congregate around the booth discussing the 35 dishes with un-usual titles made by 8 artists, such as ‘Eat Your Sorrow’, ‘Bitchy, and ‘Sissy gets you high’. People are startled when a woman orders the performance ‘The Emperor is Coming’. A performer hands her a handmade traditional Chinese crown, then hits a gong and shouts: ‘The emperor is coming!’. Out of nowhere, the entire company gather round the audience member, kneeling down around her and shouting ‘A thousand blessings upon your majesty’. The performer hints that perhaps the audience-emperor should give the order for her ministers to stand. She does so and her assembled subjects fade away. The woman is embarrassed and amused. People clap and laugh and instantly get the concept of this dish and what Night Market Theatre is about. Performances are delivered one after the other over the coming hours, while the audience busy themselves cheering, taking photos, filming and laughing, in the air filled with the smell of BBQ and fried chicken.

The enjoyable atmosphere reminded me of traditional open-air Taiwanese opera or puppet per-formance although I could sense that what Night Market Theatre was doing was different. Some questions came to mind. Why is it necessary to be in a night market? Is it a sort of environmental theatre*? How is it different from street theatre? What would happen if we changed the location to a creative market? How can we view Night Market Theatre as site-specific art?

Let us examine how Night Market Theatre functions. Performers as stallholders stand by the count-er and take the orders from the audience, giving them a numbered queuing card. Performers may introduce and recommend some dishes to you but still you have no idea about what you are go-ing to get. You have to wait after ordering until your number is called. You go to the frame of the stall, the curtain opens, and now you get to see who is the artist/stallholder/chef for you. You pay. The artist presents a performance for you, the duration of which could range from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. The dish here is a participatory one-to-one performance aiming to create a personal, sensory and intimate experience. Not only is the audience member expected to interact with the artist but also to complete the performance with their collaboration. Sometimes the outer curtain is shut and sometimes it is open. This brilliantly transforms the area from an intimate private space

to a border space somewhere between private and public. Then there is an opportunity for people to watch at a distance.

In the performance ‘Bitchy’, for instance, the outer curtain was open. After receiving the payment, the performer began to insult the audience member in public. At first the audience may well feel confused or shocked. The person on the receiving end of this abuse is also the person who is in the condition of making the performance workable. The wider public is invited to witness the changing process of the audience member’s emotional reaction: being upset, confused, embarrassed, laugh-ing, or angry. Or, in the performance ‘Embrace’ the outer curtain is shut. The artist came round from behind the stall to where the audience member was standing, and the public could only peep at the lower part of their two bodies below the curtain without fully accessing what they were do-ing. The audience members become additional performers and the one-to-one interactions subtly shift. The operation of opening or closing the outer curtain encourages visitors to become a certain kind of audience in relation to the public realm as well encouraging them to become participants in the performance scene.

In terms of the artistic strategies here, the ‘general public’ who go to the night market is conceived as the target audience that every performer tries to work with. The approach of Night Market The-atre has left behind the stereotyped language of traditional theatre. Artists take social interactions in daily life, such as telling a story, singing, dancing, party games, fortune telling, and massage as a point of departure to devise their performances, which aim to be accessible to everybody. Building up performances within the social context of ordinary night market life was the aim. It was fitting then, that the duration and price of performances were ‘bite-sized’, and the costumes and props handmade, and low tech. These devices combine to reveal an understanding that Night Market Theatre revolves around the night market as a specific site, rather than the space of a black box.

Interestingly, artists as stallholders sell their own bodies as an art meal. They use their bodies to create performance in which there coexist many possible meanings. They invite the audience to participate with their bodies too, creating an interactive process that refers to the state of social relationships in daily life.

If strolling in a night market to buy and eat food is the social life-style in Taiwan (or in Asia more generally) from the outsider Joshua Sofaer’s view, then from concept to practice, we can see Night Market Theatre as an art intervention in civic culture that has brilliantly engaged artists and audi-ences to re-experience the social interaction as contemporary performance. It leads us to rethink how art is something that comes from, and is part of, our everyday life.

Theatre makers have been trying to leave the black box. Audience development and marketing strategies have become trendy ways of trying to get attention. It seems Night Market Theatre has managed to inadvertently generate and realise the campaign slogan: The whole city is a theatre. It has successfully integrated site-specific audience participation and social interaction. As par-ticipatory performance practice in a local neighbourhood, Night Market Theatre is a remarkable cross-cultural collaboration.

*Environmental theatre is a branch of the New Theatre movement of the 1960s that aimed to heighten audience awareness of theatre by eliminating the distinction between the audience’s and the actors’ space.

ARTCO 268 CROSSOVER

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夜市劇場的藝術經濟學Economics of the Arts With Night Market Theatre

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Economics of the Arts in Night Market Theatreby Shi-fong Wu (Translated by Yoyo Kung)Artco no.268 January 2015 p.132-3

It’s dinner time or late night snack time; you are hungry or you just want to hang out there with friends; soon you arrive; you park your scooter at the roadside or in the squares painted with white lines. The night market is still a bit dirty and messy, but this is night market, right? You walk around; you hear laughter from the booth at the other side. You walk towards the sound; you are curious at the crowd of by-standers. It’s the first time you see such a booth in Zhiqiang night market, which is almost entirely filled with food stalls, a market which is more than 20 years old, and has moved from place to place until 2000 because of land property problems. This booth didn’t exist when you came here two days ago! The staff outside hand you a piece of paper with the menu; in the upper left corner is written ‘18:30-22:00, Nov. 11 to 15, 2014’, and in the upper right corner is written Night Market Theatre. The items on the menu can be divided into 5 categories. They are: Very Deep, Good to Play, Good to Hear, Good to Feel, and Good to Learn. You read the names of the items in your mind: ‘Sissy makes you high’, ‘Eat your worries’, ‘Mother’s hands’, ‘Gangster’, etc.; you wonder what they are exactly. For a moment, you even doubt if you are really in the night market.

Night Market Theatre was conceived and directed by British artist Joshua Sofaer, who led 8 performing artists through a devising process to create ‘participatory art’ that lasted 3 weeks. Following the economic transaction principal of ‘paying and receiving products’, they converted a booth in the famous sightseeing spot Zhiqiang Night Market in Hualien. What they sold was private or public-viewed participatory art works. Sometimes the performers would close the curtain of the stall because the service was made for one person only, and sometimes the curtain would remain open and the public around could watch what was going on; only they couldn’t participate in the works themselves as the paying customer did. No braised pork rice could be bought here, but the customer could buy ‘Bitchy’ and let himself be scolded and insulted by the performer who acted like he was a real bitch but at the same time the audience listened willingly and felt kind of good. Here there are no jackets of former President Jiang’s favorite style for sale, but once the customer ordered ‘The Entrance of the Emperor’, he would be crowned, and all the performers and staff would immediately run to him, kneel down in front of him and shout ‘long live his majesty’.

For Prototype Paradise, who curate this project, Night Market Theatre is not a sudden act out of nowhere. Prototype Paradise was established in 2010, based on the idea of ‘working with artists full of imagination, looking for non-conventional and non-stereotyped ways of creation to reflect the world, especially emphasising activities which can engage the audience’. They have organised participatory projects from 2012 including Workshops and Demo Performances by Creating Together, Home Visits by Scooters (Beta), and I-Journey. But Night Market Theatre is the first time they have produced a project outside of Taipei, and through educational collaboration, they let a class of college students join in, working on the documentation, promotion, and administration. This ‘rethinking of resources’ is another landscape hidden behind the scene. Pei-Wei Huang in her review ‘Specifically Sold in the Night Market, Exclusive for This Region’ points out that ‘…they don’t take the whole professional team from Taipei to Hualien untouched, but they take the experienc-es and resources gained from the main cultural battlefield to Hualien. Cultivating people by doing things and accomplishing things with people. Night Market Theatre gets rid of the exploitative consuming behavior of most curatorial projects and provides practical thinking and action to the fundamental construction of art production. This ought to be the objective of why Night Market Theatre chose Hualien, and also ought to be the most valuable thing it creates.’

Research about night markets points out that it is the interim space that oscillates between the regulated normal daytime space and unregulated nights. But it is also not unregulated at all; normality is just looser in the night market. For example, you can change your business trousers to jogging bottoms, but you cannot only wear underwear. You can curse, but you will also watch your volume. Another thing the night market contributes is that since the late 1970s, it provides a space for the mini enterprises, small companies and economic-minority people to make a living or to sell their products. Produce with defects, that have been returned, or are excess stock, can be re-sold through night markets. This function is especially prevalent with economic downturns or when industries transform and shift. In short, the night market is a space characteristic of rebellion, edge, of the people, and without class division. Night markets allow more imagination for society and the economy.

What Night Market Theatre focuses on however, is the economy of affection between people. During the devising process, Sofaer kept reminding the artists that they ‘should focus on the paying audience member and not address the wider audience standing around’. It is the normal rule of such transactions that whoever pays is the customer and you should pay attention to them, but the focus of this reminder is ‘attention’, not ‘transaction’. ‘Attention’ and focus’ also embody the ‘release of emotions through eye-contact’ which makes purchase behaviour less concerned with economic transaction. For example, the chain convenience stores are part of a big enterprise structure; you can buy almost anything there and even utility bills can be paid there. The 24-7 convenience makes our living space smaller in a way. But if the clerk in the convenience store smiles and says thank you to you when taking your money, or if the clerk provides some extra service, at that moment, there still seems to be a real and sincere interaction. The night when I visited Night Market Theatre, a pregnant woman who is a theatre practitioner herself ordered a performance called ‘The Inner Voice of a Night Market Performer’. The artist stood in front of the pregnant woman; he started to run on the spot to speed up his heartbeat; then he let her listen to his heart beating. Words were unnecessary; suddenly the world became quiet. Then, the woman did something that surprised everybody there: she indicated the artist to kneel down and listen to the baby move inside her belly.

To elaborate this further, ‘attention’ and ‘focus’ produce a relationship flow between people; they extend the possibilities of the economic imagination. The model is close to community money that relies on economic mutual help and local circulation. Whether or not the thing you buy is worth it depends not so much on the quantity or weight, but on the bond of trust that is established at the moment of the performance. (Are you willing to accomplish this performance with me? Do you think it’s worth it?) This economic detail allows Night Market Theatre to hide art in daily life. It corresponds indirectly but magically with the community economy that can be found in a many corners of Hualien. This community economy is diligently promoted by many Hualien local organizations or tribes, such as Hualien Farmers’ Market, Chi Mei Tribe River Rafting and Trails, Hualien Homemakers Union, Consumers Co-op, etc.. And it is on this point that Night Market Theatre re-explores and re-investigates the economics of art that uses trust as its cultural currency.

Joshua Sofaer: Seeing through to the heart of humanity in Hualien Night Marketby Kai-Ping Fang (Translated by Tsai-Chun Huang)Performing Arts ReviewNo. 264 December 2014 pp.120-123

Earlier this year Joshua Sofaer directed a well-known oratorio in Sweden’s capital Stockholm: Bach’s St Matthew Passion. This classical, conventional, well-known sacred story has been arranged by many different composers and even given new lyrics; it has also been on the big screen, we still remember Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ, which received mixed reviews from the film industry and Jewish groups.

This oratorio has been formed into a new version as never been seen before in the hands of Joshua Sofaer. He completely deconstructed the work, removing the biblical text and he emphasised the parts of the composition focussing on human emotions: pain, comfort, guilt, love. Before the performance took place he filmed the singers’ and musicians’ confessions: the birth of a child, parents separation, death of relatives, and these were later screened to the audience. The inclusion of this footage alongside the familiar melodies, summon completely different emotions than before.

In the Science Museum London, UK, Joshua Sofaer presented rubbish in an exhibition. He invited museum visitors to spend time with the rubbish of the museum, the stuff thrown out by fellow visitors, staff, operations, and exhibitions, through daily collecting, categorising, and photographing. A month later he created an exhibition that displayed the rubbish at different stages of processing. The project clearly conveyed what we all need to remember, that the rubbish does not just disappear.

In the night market of Hualien, Taiwan there is vendor that doesn’t sell steak, barbeque, or any small snacks, rather what it sells is drama, directed by Joshua and performed by 8 artists with cheap homemade props, and the prices for the shows are like those of the night market. For 5 nights, performers, audience and those passing by, whether they understand what’s happening or not, all contribute to the performance.

Joshua Sofaer is the kind of artist that inverts tradition and enjoys life through eyes that see through to the heart of humanity with wisdom.

A child’s encounter with Asia

Winter 2009, Joshua presents a brand new art piece in Newcastle, UK. He works with members of the public to become tour guides, and to turn their homes into theatres. The audience went into the most private spaces as if they were attending a theatre to see a performance, to experience and appreciate a new kind of tour from these home owner guides. Two of the founders of Prototype Paradise, Yoyo Kung and Juan Chin saw this piece and invited Joshua to Taiwan in 2012 to give a workshop which was focussed on engaging audiences. It was during this visit that the idea for working in Zhiqiang night market was conceived.

The day after the opening of Night Market Theatre, Joshua revealed the reason why he is happy to come here, besides the art; it is a memory of his childhood that he seldom mentions to others.

More than 30 years ago when Joshua was 5, his father decided to clean the attic to create a space for rent to overseas travellers, letting them stay and to reduce the pressure of expensive living costs. “The first one who lived in our attic was a Japanese writer in his 40s.” The Japanese writer wanted to teach in English in Japan but he couldn’t speak the language fluently, therefore he devoted himself to a completely strange environment to force himself to learn English without any distractions.

That strange and foreign ‘Uncle’ often played and chatted with Joshua, and Joshua listened to him describe his hometown with fractured English. The scene Joshua remembers most from this time is this: his Japanese ‘Uncle’, his newly born younger sister, and him, crowded in the playroom that his parents made for their children, shouting out short sentences in children’s books.

When Joshua went to Japan for the first time, he went especially to see this man, now a white-haired man in his 60s, and Joshua in his 30s. When the old writer said to the artist, “Oh you’re all grown up”, Joshua was surprised to find himself in tears.

“At that moment, in the reunion with him in Japan, I suddenly realised that my link with Asia had already been secured on the day I first met him all those years ago.” Joshua smiled.

Insisting on the gym

The gym has been an iron principle from which he never waivers. This trip to Taiwan is about one month in duration but he still insists on going to the gym to train his body, travelling on a motorbike, which he has never ridden before, on streets he is not familiar with.

“When I was in primary school I was always the one who was left until last when my classmates chose their team members. Now I’m grown up I want to train and my body and become stronger.” When he mentioned this, the short, skinny-limbed Joshua could not help but tear up. He follows the training plan that his friend set up for him and he trains the core muscles all over the body. Every movement and action is precise.

He says that everyone has their own way to find inspiration and his way is through physical exercise. “When my body feels exhausted my spirit, in contrast, is more sensitive and this can create more focus.” He believes that artistic creation is a very tiring process, and that he can gain focus through exercise, he finds inspiration when he is lifting weights. As a reader of Murakami he agrees with the opinion that there is a relationship between physical and mental discipline and creation: “In order to deal with difficult issues, you have to stay strong.”

Besides this there is another reason for insisting on the gym.

“For several years I didn’t sleep well and had serious insomnia. I visited several doctors, and took a lot of pills but still had difficulty sleeping.” Maybe the process of creating art over a long time exhausted his spirit, the string snapped, Joshua’s life lost balance in a short ephemeral moment, his physical and mental condition deteriorated and switched a warning light. Luckily he found a good doctor and his sleeping improved through altering his diet and instituting a rigorous routine.

This experience encouraged Joshua to put more emphasis on wellbeing, wherever he travels to work, he always makes sure that he goes to the gym to maintain the best possible energy for his

life and for his creative practice.

Cross-cultural rehearsal

Being in a country that he is not familiar with, both the people and the geography, is a regular occurrence. This is not the first time for Joshua to have a rehearsal with language problems through translation. He has to change his British style that he is used to because of the cultural differences, to adjust to the local way in order to make the process move forward smoothly.

For example, when he was in Japan he realised how important it was for the Japanese to meet face to face, “In Japan, no matter for a big thing or a small thing, they have to meet in person and talk; in the UK we deal with everything in an email.” At the beginning he was not used to this obsessive culture, and resented the time it took to go to meetings, thinking it inefficient but after several encounters he came to appreciate the subtle emotions that the Japanese sought to convey underneath their language, through tone and facial expression, and he became converted to the power of face to face meetings.

“The culture shock I felt in Taiwan is not as strong as in Japan. If you want me to sum it up, I would say that people here compromise easily but find it harder to reveal their true feelings,” said Joshua. When he is faced with Taiwanese actors he sometimes feels powerless, everyone’s attitude is always calm, and he is unable to clearly understand whether the motivation behind it is careless or fully devoted. When he gives some suggestion or change, people seem to accept it immediately and do not easily oppose it. For example in the last dress rehearsal besides performing their own parts well actors need to receive money as part of their performance and people were stuck as to their direction: what if the customer does not have the right change? Do we need to offer change or receive money first? Would it be better if we had tokens that people could buy? These minor daily issues that night market vendors need to deal with all the time became a kind of nightmare for the actors. He became anxious because he couldn’t get feedback from the actors and the atmosphere became soured. Luckily, the closer it came to the performance, the actors became more forthright in expressing their opinions, eventually shifting the atmosphere with an agreement and offering him some relief.

Joshua doesn’t think these cultural differences are necessarily a disadvantage although he said: “If you look at it from another perspective, this is probably why Taiwanese are more hospitable and easier to forgive.”

Remember to smile

“I am not like many other directors, they like to completely destroy their actors and then take their hand and lead them in a new direction.” He doesn’t think that shouting at actors ‘your performance is crap!’ can generate positive energy for either directors or actors, especially for new performers, excessive or harsh criticism will only encourage them to turn their backs. Joshua Sofaer prefers to teach by observation and humour, and to give one or two sentences for reflection at the critical moment.

When the performance, which has been in preparation for a long time, becomes a reality and the actors open the curtains to face the actual paying customers rather than friends or colleagues,

anxiety levels rise dramatically, “At this moment directors need to let go”. He said, “It’s only when the director leaves that the actors can focus on the audience”.

The first public showing is quite lively and they attract a substantial audience who order shows. Ac-tors present their performances to strangers for the first time, and the unfamiliar cannot be avoid-ed. When the showing is finished Joshua closed the notebook he had been writing in all afternoon and brushed off the grass from his clothes, ready to discuss his thoughts with the performers, “I will not give too many individual notes, just some general feedback. Most of the time if your words are too harsh or too proscriptive there is no space for personal growth which hinders future development.”

When Joshua viewed the documentation photographs, he was surprised, no matter whether he was writing, observing performance, laughing, his facial expression was always scowling. “I thought I covered my emotional ups and downs perfectly, I can’t believe they are revealed so obviously in the photographs!” He explains that a lot of people tell him that he looks kind when he smiles and fierce when he doesn’t. He always reminds himself to laugh, relaxing the muscles on his face, especially as a director, because actors will read his facial expression to score their own performance.

“I have read reports about the British Queen. She said that because of the needs of her image, she always keeps smiling, even until her mouth aches. As the Queen, a lot of people are watching her.” He says with a smile: “I am just and ordinary person, but I have to pay attention to this. I should never let my facial expression give the wrong message and lead to a misunderstanding. It’s the same case whether I’m working professionally as a director or in my private life.”

Psychological Research in the Night Market

“Why is a professional drummer willing to spend money letting an amateur teach him how to play drum in front of the public in the night market?” “When the curtain is open and there is nothing to be seen and nothing to be heard, why don’t the audience leave? What are they waiting for?”

While Joshua observes the performance technique of each of the actors to see if they are achieving a satisfactory level, he also focuses on the reaction of the Night Market Theatre audience. He understands the performance techniques of each of the actors, however, the audience reaction is surprising to him, some audience members come back again and again, some stand there from the very beginning until the end, not ordering any performance, nor leaving the spot. Some were as hyper as the actors, others observe them, as if it was a social-psychological research project.

At the same time he also watches to see whether his instructions have been fulfilled or not. “When first discussing the project there was more than one performance format. For example, we had the idea that performers might occupy spaces across the night market to make their own site-specific work, just like street artists. But I insisted on building a vender booth, like those that generally appear in the night market. Also charging for the performance is a fundamental principle of the piece. When you are in the night market you pay money for food and the vendor receives your money, and the vendor hands food to you, Night Market Theatre is the same.” Judging by the result, the insistence is correct: the booth itself attracts a lot of attention; the cheap prices usually paid for food are popular when applied to theatre; behind the booth, the slow speed of one show

at time, does not dissuade the audience, further more it becomes the focus.

Due to the linguistic barrier, Joshua can only understand the audience’s thoughts, feelings and the atmosphere, through expression and gesture, he can’t receive first hand information. Even when someone is translating for him, the performances that heavily rely on language, such as ‘Bitchy’, ‘Performance Academy’, and ‘Chinese Soap Opera’ he looks at through a kind of fog, playing catch up to work out the plot. “I really wish I could understand Chinese, then I could know what the audience was saying and what the actors are performing.” He had mentioned this problem to some of the actors and was surprised by one of the replies. “I’m glad you don’t understand Chinese. This way you can see the real me.”

He is momentarily frozen, he traces back the interactions with the actors over the course of the last month. As there is a linguistic barrier he has to observe the gesture, intonation, and expression, in order to obtain the information he needs. Just like people who cover their eyes and notice that their hearing becomes more sensitive, he doesn’t understand Chinese, so he spends more energy reading everyone’s character. As a result, he can see through generally constructed images and read people’s minds.

This statement, “I’m glad you don’t understand Chinese. This way you can see the real me”, makes him think for a long time. It seems like another door has opened for him.