Paper as Story-making : One Day with Death

One Day with Death opens to cunningly let the paper perform. Death, a paper-made character personified as the god of death, is the soul of figure to whom we easily get much close. As the audiences are watching the play, they are also watching the papers in display, and the paper unmask what we think of the story can be made in the play.

The intrigue part of the play is the paper in performance via the artists' techniques. In terms of language, one may easily imagine that the usage of the paper is mainly for drawing and writing upon. As to the language, speaking marks the way to conversation. While receiving the words whether in listening or reading, one may directly obtain the messages from the other one. In the play, however, the paper becomes functional as it challenges the audiences' imaginations. These sheets on the table, a message of life that has come to an end of their life, must be gone through by the Death who helps accomplish their final step of the life. This marks how the paper discloses a process from a meaning conveyance tool to the meaning productive in material. Paper, used to be a means to write one's words down, becomes the role in it self. When the plays unfold, the papers are characterized as every human being in their entire life, for they are put on some artifacts with diverse colors, deeply dyed, rinsed, fired, soaked, and again and again in their pictures-like.

The play may be described as the journey in exploring the death, but the death itself is not fearful. What makes us fear is the dead-like response to the living. Crucial for me is the problem caused by the loss in relationship between the unnamed living and Death. In the last part of the play, the unnamed living seems dying as Death tries to wake him up. Although Death is portrayed as the man with self-contained personality, his temper shows no less than what the audiences can expect by the time Death emerges from the small figure to the bigger one. When the unnamed living, a puppet composed of paper, in his last moment, transforms himself into a sheet, Death does not make it clear about the change of the unnamed living but only accompanies him for the rest of his journey, and this part leads me to think that if one faces such a condition, then how can one confront himself or herself with the dead? Basically its idea can extend to the vision of any building, object, or even people with whom you've become familiar. And for me, it brings me the question that bears in mind: The one has gone, but how can I perceive the one with a new form in living?

--- visit on July 31, 2020

One Day with Death《親愛的戴斯》, a Taiwanese play that stands out in the Emerging Artist Project from National Taichung Theater, is created by Taiwanese artists including the main creator and performer LUO Fei-tsuei, puppet performing artist HUANG Kai-lin, and percussionist YU Rho-mei.

*Picture source: https://www.facebook.com/npac.ntt/photos/pcb.1479700088881665/1479698615548479/

(照片取自臺中國家歌劇院臉書專頁 National Taichung Theater Facebook)