If Fables Were Our Common Language
“This is a fable. It takes place a long, long time ago, or a long, long time in the future — not now, anyway, because people don’t want to hear stories about now. Apart from various humans, the story also contains speaking animals, which doesn’t conform to our current circumstances — and the location can’t be too nearby either. Closeness is strange. Closeness is gross. No one would listen. Closeness means no room for imagination, or beauty.
“So let’s choose the arctic as our setting, while adding in certain ideas that transcend the arctic. . . .”
The above is the opening of the introduction I wrote for the Taiwanese premiere of A Fable For Now in 2016 (it was presented by Creative Society with the title #, directed by Lee Ming-Chen). In fact, these words were meant to provide a little explanation and reassurance for the audience who would be stepping into the theater with no idea what the play was about, and who would be leaving equally baffled. (I don’t think we actually used this, in the end, haha.) I offer them here again to preface the English translation, and whether you’re reading this before or after seeing the script, I hope these words from the playwright, somewhat shyly proffered, have not spoiled by the time you open these pages.
This play was completed in late 2013, just as Taiwan was going through a heated debate about non- traditional families; the two Koreas were arguing once again over issues of nationality and community after a dispute over missile tests; the question of food safety reared its head, all the way from cardboard steamed buns and fake eggs on the Mainland, to tainted cooking oil across the strait here in Taiwan; I saw a polar bear who’d been reduced to skin and bones thanks to global warming, and felt as if I should apologize on behalf of all humanity; migrant workers moved all around the world; all over Taiwan, you heard cries of “ghost island1 .— get out of here!”; the so-called 22k program2 had come to an end, but young people in Taiwan were still only earning $22k; in any Taiwanese city with a waterfront, people would be trying to catch a glimpse of the giant yellow rubber duck traveling the world as an art installation, while Yuan Zai the panda cub had only been born a few months ago, so both the zoo and the harbor had long lines of people jostling each other. At the time of the Taiwanese premiere, none of these events felt very far away, but from the vantage point of 2020 (especially after humanity has been through a shared catastrophe), they seem impossibly remote. ago are nothing compared to being alive now. This random assortment of news items from all that time ago are nothing compared to being alive now. (Of course, discussing the state of the world today would be a matter for another play, so let’s come back to the point). All this information made my head spin (and so did my upcoming thesis deadline, which I was writing this script for), and I didn’t want to write a self-contained piece about just one of these topics. Instead, I wanted to present a cross-section of one particular moment in this wild spray of news. I worried Caryl Churchill’s A Mouthful of Birds around that time, and my eyes lit up! Presenting a collage would be no problem at all! This may seem like a serious play tackling a number of issues, but I’m usually happy to give people a sense of the absurd and make them laugh a bit, or maybe laugh and laugh until they cry.
In 2018, PEN America selected this play for a staged reading in New York. Before the performance, I was nervous about the New York audience’s reaction, because there were many points I felt were very Taiwanese, to the point only locals would understand them. Although I’ve never expected people who see my plays to howl with laughter or burst into tears, if they were to sit there in complete silence, my soul would freeze over too. (I’m sure all theater people understand the chilling sensation of an icy atmosphere when you weren’t intending for temperatures to plummet.) In the end, I sat in a corner of the audience during the reading, and ah — it turned out the messages I’d hidden behind these Taiwanese news items could be understood by an audience of a different culture, all the way across an ocean, or perhaps this is the so-called “universal,” which I hope will resonate with you, to whatever extent is possible, in a different country.
This is a little embarrassing to say, but what makes me happiest about this publication isn’t that my play can be in print, but that a Taiwanese play can have a place in an international anthology.3 Back when I was doing my postgraduate studies, I would look at the playwright bios in anthologies, and they made me curious about and fascinated by these distant countries I didn’t yet know anything about.
If this script makes you feel a similar interest in Taiwan (though it would be completely ridiculous to think it could help you “get to know Taiwan”), that would be the best possible outcome I could hope for.
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1. In 2009, the writer Kuo Kuan-ying coined the phrase “Ghost Island” (鬼島) to describe Taiwan’s ambiguous political status. The term quickly went viral, as people used it to express their various dissatisfactions with Taiwan
2. Between 2009 and 2011, the Taiwanese government ran a program of internships immediately after graduation, with a salary of TW$22,000 (less than US$800) per month. Even after the program ended, many young people continued earning at this low level.
3. Department of Dreams: Recent Dystopian Plays from Across the World, Laertes Press, Egret Imprint.