Video still from Peter Greenway’s Robert Ashley
Watching Dust － the first Non-English adaptation of American avant-garde composer Robert Ashley’s opera Dust
* Concept and produced by Hong-Kai Wang. Directed by Keng Yi-Wei. Music by Chen Bor-Wei. Sound Design by Wang Fu-Jui. Performed by Chuang Yi-Cheng, Wadan Wuma, Chang Manshu, Chiang Chun-Nian and Wen Hsiao-Mei.
SCHEDULE (BUY TICKET)
August 6 Friday- 7:30 pm
August 7 Saturday- 2:30 pm & 7:30 pm
August 8 Sunday- 2:30 pm
Prologue of Watching Dust
By Hong-Kai Wang
In 2007, I started discussing with Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation in Taiwan the possibility of collaboration in hopes of developing an art project for the surviving Taiwanese “comfort women” “- women forced into sexual slavery in Japanese military brothels during World War II. After watching the avant-garde composer Robert Ashley’s opera Dust at La Ma Ma Theater in January 2009, the idea of an interdisciplinary project Watching Dust began to take shape.
The surviving Taiwanese comfort women, now in their late 80s and early 90s, are faced with their inevitable mortality. In speaking with them, I found that most of them simply want to live their remaining years like other elderly people without the stigma of their past. The social setting of gatherings organized by the Foundation serves a paradoxical function between helping these women forget and remember their collective experience. In documentaries, political campaigns, public discourses and art works, they are protagonists in reality, history and fiction. Watching Dust was conceived for these women- here, they would watch other people’s stories being told on stage and thus become solely the audience.
In the autumn of 2009, I met Robert Ashley in his studio in Tribeca, New York. He told me that Watching Dust was a wonderful project and that he was perfectly happy to let me adapt it into a Taiwanese version in any way I see fit. He said that since he didn’t understand Chinese, he would love a copy of all the relevant documentations for his archive. Mr. Ashley has worked with English words all his life. I guess that it should be quite special for him to listen to his characters sing/speak in Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese.
In Dust, the setting is a street corner where five characters at old age who live on the fringes of society gather to recount their memories to each other and to themselves. The characters speak in musical tones, with pre-recorded Western pop melody in the background. Words in Dust are colloquial and melodramatic but reveal poignant, heartfelt personal reflections on life made by the composer through his characters.
Adapting Dust into Watching Dust involves largely how to explore the musicality and marginality in our own language. Luckily, theater director Keng Yi-Wei quickly agreed to come on board and subsequently invited other artists from various disciplines to collaborate. Yao Lee-Chun, director of Guling Street Theatre, has generously provided the performance space.
Mr. Ashley states in Dust’s program note, that he “imagine a place not really noticed, anywhere in the world. Some of us gather there to talk to each other and to ourselves, about things that changed our lives, missed opportunities, memory, loss and regret. Some of us have no other place to live”. Appropriating the sentimental nature in Mr. Ashley’s Dust, Watching Dust attempts to envisage a vicarious emotional space at an ordinary place in Taiwan, where audience can watch several fictional characters contemplating pain, agony, annihilation, relief, and eventually, grace.
結束時間： 2010年8月8日 16:00
地點： 牯嶺街小劇場2樓 藝文空間
地址： 牯嶺街5巷2號
活動簡介.當你無家可歸時，你也是流浪漢
五個紐約遊民的現代歌劇
探索自然語言的音樂性，聆聽來自法外的邊緣旋律
改編美國前衛作曲家Robert Ashley作品
微弱的/消音的/非法的/模糊的/壓制的/催眠的/陌生的/呢喃的/反諷的/群體的…
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《Watching Dust －微聲計畫》計畫緣起
由於因緣際會，我自2007年起與慰安婦對日求償運動社會工作者賴采兒開始討論合作的可能性，希望能為慰安婦阿嬤們做一件作品。2008年1月在紐約東村的La Ma Ma劇場觀賞了我仰慕已久的美國前衛作曲家Robert Ashley的歌劇《塵埃》(Dust)之後，《Watching Dust－微聲計畫》的概念逐漸發展成形。
社會工作者輔助的個案都有自己的故事，不管是值得或不值得回憶的經驗，當她/他們以輔助個案身份面對社會工作者時，似乎處於要遺忘還是要回憶的吊詭情境裡，在許多紀錄，社會政治運動，公共論述和藝術作品裡，她/他們其實是歷史和現實的主角和對象。《Watching Dust－微聲計畫》是一個獻給慰安婦阿嬤們的作品，她們只需要單純地來看表演，也因此，她們的角色變成觀看他者敘說故事的觀眾。
2009年的秋季，在Robert Ashley位於紐約Tribeca區的工作室裡，我在朋友的引薦下認識了他本人*。Ashley不停地告訴我他很喜歡《Watching Dust－微聲計畫》的概念，不僅同意讓我將《塵埃》裡的部份歌詞翻譯成中文，也贊同我計劃將原版的音樂換做臺灣的通俗音樂的想法。他說他不懂中文，希望我能給他一份臺灣改編版的錄影紀錄做為紀念。對於一生在作品裡處理語言(英語)的Ashley來說，我在猜，聽他自己創造出來的人物說中文應該很特別。
《塵埃》的舞台上，數名來自社會邊緣的人物坐在一個不起眼的公園角落裡，互相和對方和自己訴說彼此的回憶。這些角色有在戰爭失去兩條腿的退伍軍人、過氣的替身演員、喜歡對街上車子喊叫的、風韻猶存的半老徐娘、和賣一輩子酒卻因兄長過世而頓失依靠的。他們一邊說話，一邊唱歌，事先錄製好的西方通俗音樂不時貫穿他們說著故事。他們使用的語言很口語，甚至還帶點通俗肥皂劇的味道，在在表達對生命令人動容的體驗和反省。
改編《塵埃》的工作牽涉到如何尋找屬於我們自己語言裡的音樂性及邊緣性。很幸運地，劇場導演耿一偉爽快地應允合作，並邀請來自各領域的藝術工作創作者一起加入《Watching Dust－微聲計畫》。牯嶺街小劇場館長姚立群則慷慨地提供表演和彩排的場地。
Ashley說過，《塵埃》是關於幾個人來到一個不太顯眼的地方，像世界裡的任何一個普通的角落，互相傾訴那些曾改變他們命運的事情、錯過的機會、回憶、失去和遺憾，因為他們這些人其實沒有其他地方可去。透過改編《塵埃》的集體創作，《Watching Dust－微聲計畫》 借用《塵埃》裡細膩深刻的社會邊緣性和情感，試圖想像在臺灣某處的一個普通角落，創造一個具有同感心的共享情感空間。
1930-，美國現代作曲家，早期是Once Group的成員，作品實驗集中在樂譜記號、電子原音作曲、劇場與歌劇。
Once Group主辦的The Once Festival在1960年代是美國前衛音樂、劇場和電影的大本營，活躍的參與者包括John Cage、Morton Feldman、David Tudor和Karlheinz Stockhausen等。之後他研究人聲的口語模式和非自主的言辭表達(如《Automatic Writing》)，也是最早嘗試電視歌劇的作曲家(《Music with Roots in the Aether 》(1976)與《Perfect Lives》(1983))。Robert Ashley畢生的作品可以說是對美國歷史與口語模式的研究，及美國音樂做為一種社會政治表現形式的批判性思考。英國導演Peter Greenaway拍攝的影片《4 American Composers》中，他與John Cage，Philip Glass，Meredith Monk並列為當代美國四大作曲家。
關於《塵埃》(1998)這齣歌劇，他說:「我想觀眾之所以喜歡《塵埃》，是因為他們能聽見語言中的音樂性，而不必擔負理解這種語言的壓力。他們不必回答問題──你不是在問問題──你只是要給他們一些東西而已… 比如說，像是一份禮物。」