Family Triangle: A same-sex couple’s plan to create new life leads to a tripartite relationship

A Brief History of Everything premiered at the 2022 Taipei Arts Festival. It focused on real-life issues faced by same-sex couple HUNG Chien-Han and Ray TSENG as they attempted to fulfill their dream of having a child together. Chien-Han hoped to use her brother HUNG Wei-Yao’s sperm and her partner’s egg to conceive a child that she would carry to term. This was their initial idea for expanding their family.

The first version of A Brief History of Everything opened with the three creators on stage, simulating an explanation to their child about how he or she was born. They discussed practical and ethical issues such as laws and regulations, how the child will be addressed, and relationships. They even invited amateur pregnant actresses to simulate dialogues with children, family members, and friends. In the second act, they focused on their families of origin. Through visuals and objects, they excavated images related to their physical and family memories, such as ancestors, ghosts, furniture, and family dinners, while gradually introducing mythological vocabulary and surreal symbolism. Finally, the performance shifted to dialogue and uninhibited communication. The three creators appeared on stage completely naked as they sincerely repeated this line to one another, “You are perfect as you are.” This symbolized their affirmation of themselves and one another and echoed a Japanese creation legend that says that words can grant perfection to people.

What does the new 2025 version look like?

Was incest involved in the origin of this world?

The title A Brief History of Everything is based on a concept of Laozi in the Dao De Jing. “Dao produces one, one produces two, two produces three, and three produces all things.” From this concept came the motivation for the three of them to create the next generation. From the generation of the universe and extension to a tripartite relationship of “me, you, and he,” they asked: Under the current technological and ideological conditions, are there more possibilities for creating families and life?

In 2024, during an artist residency in Barcelona, Chien-Han interviewed a Spanish man who had donated his sperm to his sister. Later, she created Qualified Mother and asked these questions of herself: Am I qualified to use this process to create life? Am I qualified to be a mother?

These three creators repositioned their roles and the focus of their thinking based on their own perspectives. This also led to speculation about how this future child will face the world.

Did God create everything only in binary?

When we talk about the origins of the world, no matter in the West or the East, it is always a story about a man and a woman, a brother and a sister, Adam and Eve, Fuxi and Nuwa…this kind of gender binary. This led Ray to explore the psychology and gender identity conflicts of a masculine-looking woman. In the face of marriage, reproduction, and artificial insemination, she had to confront the societal assumption that has followed her since childhood that a masculine-looking woman wants to transition. She referenced Plato’s myth of the “fused double body” – the idea that the world originated from spherical beings with two faces, four arms, four legs and no gender. This, in turn, influenced her to think about whether her own identity is constrained by a gender framework. It is precisely due to this questioning of the gender binary that she chose to carry out a dialogue in the nude with symbolic DNA structures to address the ultimate question of “How do I exist in the world?”

Equality in marriage, determined by a child’s surname and a table tennis competition

Starting with “the call of the womb,” Chien-Han navigated her desire to conceive, the pain of artificial insemination, and the complexities of her family. During her performance, she experienced physical tension and questioned whether women can actively possess the right to create life. In addition, she attempted to prepare a world in which her child can freely grow up. She said, “In recent years, we have not only been presenting our life experiences on stage, but also using them to raise questions.”

Does the act of donating sperm represent a permanent gap in same-sex marriages when it comes to fertility? Is it necessary for same-sex couples to grovel for a sperm donor?

From his perspective as an uncle/sperm donor/male representative, Wei-Yao reflected on the significance of his role as a biological male in a same-sex family. He thought back on his family of origin and the relationship with his sister, exploring non-traditional forms of fatherhood as he sought advice. In addition, he and his sister carried out a poignant yet frank dialogue. He stressed that, “In the past, we discussed a sperm donation plan and signed a contract, but there was no follow up. Now we are willing to speak clearly about our relationship, without retreat or avoidance. Perhaps there will be many things that we cannot handle. But we will lay it all out.”

It’s not only about childbirth, but also our predicaments

As part of their artist residency and field research work, this team visited fertility clinics in California and interviewed several lesbian couples from Taiwan and China. They observed the challenges faced by Asian lesbian couples wanting to have children, including institutional constraints, psychological pressures, family pressures, and the psychological effects of delaying planned pregnancies. These are issues that may not be exclusive to same-sex couples but can affect every individual.

The three of them began to realize that in their first work, they had used a mythological framework that was too broad to address personal questions and neglected to pay deeper attention to each other’s situations. Therefore, they decided that in their new work they would return to themselves and focus on the relationships among the three of them and their intertwining roles: siblings, in-laws, and partners.

This year: The direction for the new 2025 version

This new work is structured around three-person/two-person relationships to address the following topics:

*Sibling boundaries and inheritance issues

*Surname selection and discussions of fairness between partners

*Dialectic on sperm donation and shared DNA

*Possibilities for transgender and non-binary persons to be seen by their families

*The pain and power experienced by the female body during the reproductive process

*Redefined family roles (e.g., uncles, aunts, special people)

They also plan to explore the viewpoint of “queer ecology” with topics such as de-gendering reproduction, shared physical memories (such as cell remnants in the mother’s body), and psychological models of family triangles, enabling myths and technology, reality and fiction, personal experiences and social institutions to be interwoven into new theatrical thinking.

Following the performance of the first version, many audience members mentioned that they weren’t sure whether the work was based on the real lives of the three creators or whether it was a series of investigations based on characters. In others words was it a true story or was it fictional? This was left to audience members to decide for themselves.