This is gonna be one helluva theatrical experience. This Iranian playwright/dissident has penned the ultimate actor challenge. Each of our 8 actors will be given a stage, an audience, and a one-person script in a sealed envelope. The actors are currently being kept in a hermetically-sealed pickle jar on the roof of The Red Room and cannot know, research or hear anything about the script. In all my 30+ years of acting on the stage, I have never encountered such a unique format. Once we hit the stage, we have nowhere to hide.
So listen, there are only 48 seats left for the Golden Rabbit All-Festival Pass. This is the only way to guarantee yourself a seat. The cost of a pass is only 1500NT. You can PM me to purchase one, two or 10.
That said, we want the actors to feel trapped, so we are going to open the doors to all comers once the Golden Rabbits have been seated and let everyone into the space for a suggested donation of 300NT per performance. If you are on a tight budget, please still show up to as many of the 8 performances as you can. It is more important to surround the actors with a huge audience than to make money,
Mark it down my flob brethren and sistren, Dec. 29th and 30th…gonna be epic.
Brook Hall, the heart and soul of English Theatre in Taipei, has left us for greener pastures. He is sorely missed. He leaves a huge hole in the arts community and those are gonna be some huge (tap) shoes to fill.
You have one last chance to partake of his artistry as he headlines The White Rabbit Red Rabbit Festival at the end of December. Pre-book your Golden Rabbit All-Festival pass today.
Bio
Brook arrived in Taiwan in 2001 for a “two-month stay” as a guest artist for a directing workshop at an international arts festival in Southern Taiwan. After performing in, directing, choreographing, and/or acting in over 80 shows in and around New York City and the regional and touring U.S. theatre circuit. He quickly established himself and worked as a freelancer until 2008 with several Taiwnese producing organizations. Highlights include touring to Moscow with Acme Physical Dance Theatre of Taichung and touring Taiwan with the hit Taiwanese Human Condition Series at Green Ray Theatre. He also instituted musical theatre dance training and was instrumental in the early success of VM (Yao Yen) theatre, working on several of their productions. In the South, he appeared in Tainan Ren’s BIG LOVE. Event and concert producers brought Brook onboard for over 50 press conference, fashion show, and annual gala productions. He also choreographed and danced in pop-star Tanya’s Asian tour. Brook produced his first show in Taipei, the hit Smokey Joe’s Cafe in 2008, quickly followed by Anything Goes at both the National Theatre and TICC. In between those two engagements, he directed the all-Taiwanese language Golden Banana History for the now-defunct Da Feng Theatre at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall. He registered his Butterfly Effect Theatre Co., with a production of Title of Show in 2012 and the month-long Mandarin Language premiere of the Rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Huashan Cultural Village. Seeing the difficulties of venue rental, he built THE LAB SPACE in S. Beitou in 2013. As the artistic director he was responsible for producing and directing Lab shows, activities, and classes. In film, Brook was Assistant Director for the Hollywood feature Stand, filmed in Dec 2013 in Ping Xi, and he concieved and directed the opening musical scene for Taiwanese CGI movie of Magic Riders Search for Pangu. He has worked with Neil Patrick Harris, Jesse Tyler Fergusson, JK Simmons, Richard Linklater, Kevin Spacey, Ethan Hawke, Ang Lee, Luc Besson, and was one of Adam Driver’s Stand-ins on Martin Scorsese’s Silence feature film. As of fall 2018, Brook has relocated to Vienna, Austria where he serves on the acting and dance faculty of the newly opened Vienna English Theatre Academy-VETA, a 2-year conservatory program with performing arts students from all over the world. He also serves as a consultant and instructor for POLY culture’s ShenYang (China) Musical theatre program.
Thanks for asking. Each performance is between 50 and 70 minutes. We hope to run a show every 90 minutes starting at 2PM and hopefully done by 8PM both nights. 4 shows perday.
The most interesting thing to hit expat Taipei in years and no one wants to ask me about it?
Something special going on folks…Only 25 Golden Rabbit passes remain. Be part of the history. You can say “I was there when Toe Save re-invented The Theatre.”
jk. I wish you all the best. The baked-in secrecy is so strong, though, that it might inhibit any investment of one’s valuable weekend downtime because one has absolutely no idea what it’s all about. “It’s powerful - but no superheroes” may not be enough leg in late 2018.
It’s 1500ntd isn’t it?
Honestly apart from the money I don’t have the time and not a huge interest in this kind of theater. Maybe for an hour or two would be interesting personally. Wham, bam, where’s the exit kind of guy… Also where are the hot chicks in the lineup ?
Again this is not negative commentary it is simply feedback.
Actually, 1500 is for the all-festival pass. It is the only way to get a seat guaranteed. Once pass holders are seated, Read Rabbits will be admitted to the space. They may then occupy any unoccupied seat. Then white rabbits will be let in.
White and Read Rabbits can enter for free and donate what they believe the performance to be worth upon exiting the space.
Read (sic) Rabbits are those that have seen at least one previous performance. White are, as the colour suggests, pure, unindoctrinated audience members.
John Brownlie, a British expat, is excited to step into the unknown in White Rabbit/Red Rabbit. He started acting from an early age and was soon accepted into a high school performing arts program, where he continued to train and develop his skills. John became involved in his local theatre company where he stage managed East Lynne and Blithe Spirit, did sound for Dial M for Murder and Little Voice, and took to the stage in The Magistrate, Naked Justice, Our Day Out, and Much Ado About Nothing. He then attended Leeds University to continue his education in acting. There he devised, wrote, and performed in several productions over a variety of different genres and styles. Graduating with a BA in Acting he formed Daft Mattress, where he co-wrote, directed, performed and toured with several productions. In 2009 he left the UK and spent three years in South Korea before traveling around the world for a year with his girlfriend. In 2013 they arrived in Taiwan, he was a long standing member at the Lab Space, attending Brook Hall’s acting classes, performing in Sylvia, Wait Until Dark, the Taipei 24 hour theatre festivals, male swing for The Diary of Anne Frank and most recently Tape.John will be a producing a showcase at the Red Room next spring, collaborating with local directors, writers and actors.
It’s an interesting concept and I’d attend if I was in-town. The length of each performance (an hour) marks it as a large investment in time to see / compare all 8 shows, which is surely part of the pull here. How will each actor interpret that script? So I’m wondering if the format would work better with a shorter script, where the audience can swallow a number of interpretations in one visit. But that’s just idle wonder, and I wish you all the best with this.
Thank you for the kind words. It is said to run between 50 and 70 minutes per, depending on how the actor chooses to interpret the text.
Here’s how I am thinking with my producer hat: Venues are few and far between and expensive to rent. By condensing the 8 shows into 2 days, I can actually afford to produce this. 1 show per night would not make financial sense.
Nor would I draw audience over 8 nights. I really believe the allure of this staging allows the audience to see how different the interpretations are without committing to 8 different days. I think this staging allows the audience to enjoy the struggles and triumphs of each performance in a palatable time frame.
I know it’s a risk, but the entire concept is about risk. I hope it’s an interesting enough concept to draw and keep audience for the two days.
Time will tell. With Brook out of the picture, I hope to discover if becoming an impresario myself is worthwhile. This seems like the perfect play for me to test the waters.
