2022TAF: Stuck in the Locker

In Stuck in the Locker, playwright Hu tells a fantasy of Taipei Main Station from the perspective of a giant head. In the massive traffic hub and landmark building of the capital city, two men fight over a locker. Finally, the locker opens and they see a head inside. It speaks: whoever gets the head out of the locker can have his wish come true.

Weaving different temporal fragments—the Japanese colonial era, the period of White Terror, all the way to the golden 1980s— the play looks at the parallel lives happening in this building where thousands of passengers transit, linger or get lost. It is a place everyone knows yet no one belongs to. Who got lost in this labyrinth? What stories has it witnessed?

Developed as part of the playwrighting project of the Festival, director Hung Chien-Han, together with the production team, uses objects to present this maze in surprising simplicity. Open the locker and see for yourself - perhaps it also holds a vestige of what you have lost.

Text: Hu

Born in Taipei, Hu has worked as playwright for the past 8 years, collaborating with various theatre groups such as Our Theatre, Shakespeare's Wild Sisters Group, Voleur du Feu Theatre and Kingkongwave. He has been screenwriter at Rustic Pictures Ltd. since 2018. His latest works in theatre includes: Taipei Vanishing, Corona Villa and A Beautiful Summer. His plays received literary prizes (First Prize at Tainan Literature Festival, Award of Excellence at Huangsi Literary Award and Literary Award of the Ministry of Education) and were nominated 5 times by Taishin Art Award. He just completed his second feature film script, Container Home in Bamboo Forest.

Direction: Hung Chien-Han

Hung Chien-Han is a co-founder of Taipei-based multi-creator collective, Co-Coism (with Huang Ding-Yun and Chang Kang-Hua). Adjunct Lecturer of National Taipei University of Arts. Central to her work is the further development of the re-adjustment of the relations between viewers and doers as well as the respective art fields to allow for unconventional views on our reality. Recent works include 2020 TAF Grandmother Paradox, 2019 TAF Family Romance, 2019 TIFA Play God. Directing work: Shi Shi Mien Liao Mi was the finalist for 2017 TaiShin Arts Awards. Ever Never was the finalist for 2016 TaiShin Arts Awards. Also, it will be performed in Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2017.

Co-coism is a multi-creator collective. The company was founded in 2016 by three emerging theater directors, Hung Chien-Han, Chang Kang-Hua and Huang Ding-Yun. We not only make theater performances individually, but also collectively. We prefer to work in cooperative/devised way then perusing for horizontal deliberation results. Recent year, we aim at Live Exhibition, Responding Creation, Activism Project and Immersive Project. We are also willing to collaborate with different artists who have different backgrounds to see more possibilities of art and culture.