A Storyteller in Theatre – Chiu An-chen and His Journey into the White Terror History

When the percussive clamor, the Robin Hood-like legend of Liāu Thiam-teng, and the stunning fighting scene of “Wu Song and the Tiger” from Taiwan’s traditional glove puppetry (known as pòo-tē-hì) are brought into a modern theatre and placed onstage beside a long solo performance, what kind of fascinating story will emerge?  At its premiere in 2017, White Storyteller by The Party Theater Group was considered a bold experiment that ventured toward the unknown. 

What made it more challenging was the play’s setting during the Martial Law period.  “It certainly combined the three major elements that guarantee box-office failure – pòo-tē-hì, the Taiwanese language (Taigi), and the White Terror,” jokes Chiu An-Chen, founder of The Party Theater Group.  Yet no one could have foreseen that the so-called box-office poison would become a winning formula.  The play earned the nomination for the 2018 Taishin Arts Award, followed by tours to cities such as Changhua, Tainan, Taichung, and even reached the SPIELART Festival Munich in 2023, while its decade-long journey continues.        

Presented under “TPAC select” at Taipei Performing Arts Center in June 2026, the new production of White Storyteller features puppeteer masters Huang Chiao-Wei and Huang Wu-Shan from the original cast, and welcomes Mo Tzu-Yi, Golden Horse Best Actor and a celebrated performer on stage and screen, to take on the solo role previously played by Chiu. 

Although this is Mo’s first time collaborating with The Party Theater Group, as the only human actor onstage, he has spoken positively about their work on social media and even participated in a Taigi workshop organized by the company in 2024.  The new collaboration in the new production, as Chiu notes with relaxed confidence, is sure to bring fresh possibilities to the character.  He is also eager to see how the revised script, suggested by and co-developed with Mo, adds surprising nuances to the “old play.”  

In the past several years, The Party Theater Group has presented a series of works set between the 1940s and 1970s, focusing on historical themes such as the White Terror and comfort women.  What might now be considered “The Taiwanese History Series” includes Father Mother, Cinderfella, Burning Butterfly, The Mandarin Class, and others, with Father Mother winning Best Play at the inaugural Taipei Theatre Awards in 2025.  Among these endeavors, White Storyteller marked a key starting point.  

It was with White Storyteller that Chiu embarked on a quest to explore the history of the White Terror history.  Yet, to everyone’s surprise, he used to be a theatre artist with little interest in politics.  

The first step in his transformation came in 2008, when Chiu worked with American director Dan Chumley.  As he recalls, Chumley took a trip to China and became curious about cross-strait issues (the political tension between Taiwan and China) after hearing local Chinese’s unification ideas and rhetoric.  “In the beginning, I tried not to offend either the Blue or Green political camp, so I avoided such topics,” says Chiu, “but Chumley told me that I was actually offending both camps if I did not take a stand.”  This conversation made Chiu change his mind and led to the creation of The Sky Crisis as a political satire and dark comedy discussing gender and national identity as well as the Unification-Independence issues.        

About ten years later, White Storyteller was created based on playwright Chan Chieh’s idea to write a solo performance tailored for Chiu that incorporated the traditional puppetry elements Chiu always loved.  “I imagined it to be something like Macbeth, or similar, with pòo-tē-hì elements, but when I received the script from Chan, I realized it was actually a story set against the White Terror.”    

Chan has mentioned in an interview that his inspiration for the play came from Once Upon a Time When Robin Hood Grew Old, a documentary about the pirate radio show host WU Le-tien, as well as several White Terror-themed books such as Last Will Undelivered, which all left a deep emotional impression on him.  “Wu had been a voice actor of pòo-tē-hì and was imprisoned for hosting shows on pirate radio,” says Chan, “I believe that Taiwanese pòo-tē-hì went through a period of severe oppression, similar to the father in White Storyteller, where many people’s destinies were manipulated by invisible hands.”

However, the challenge they faced was to put together the grave subject, multi-layered metaphors, and the bold experiment of bringing a human actor and traditional glove puppets onto the same stage.  Chiu scratched his head and gave an awkward laugh as he recalled seeking the expertise of Tai Chun-Fang, known for her experimental Kunqu practices, and master puppeteer Wu Rungchang.  The three of them felt like trapped warriors, trying every possible approach to find a way out during the initial play-reading stage.  

His lack of related knowledge urged him to enroll in a course given by White Terror scholar Lin Chuan Kai at the Community College.  He attended the class and studied the materials, gradually piecing together the history which had long been overlooked.  “The more I studied, the more deeply this subject moved me, and it has become a motivation for my later artistic practice.”  Yet, rather than a sense of mission, it is more a personal reflection, as he wishes to convey the strong impact on himself through stage performance.   

So what about the box office?  Chiu now chooses not to be affected by the thought of it.  He quotes with frankness what he once heard in a talk: “if your company has an audience larger than 1000 people, you should consider every possible aspect as carefully as you can; but my works usually have fewer than 1000 audience members, so why not just do whatever I want?”  The freedom of letting go thus allows him to focus on and further explore these historical subjects.  

Unexpectedly, the obscure topic has drawn in a different group of audience who do not usually go to the theatre, just as White Storyteller has expanded its reach to campuses and human rights organizations through the simple form of play-reading.  A high school teacher told Chiu after seeing the play, “my entire semester of history class feels like talking to a brick wall, but if my students are here to see this play, they will immediately understand what Taiwan has been through.”  

With history as a point of departure, Chiu does not confine his playwriting, as seen in Father Mother and The Mandarin Class, to historical archives and materials, but centers the stories on humanity rather than cold, hard facts.  “Characters and emotions should always come before historical knowledge,” says Chiu. 

Just as White Storyteller, set against the backdrop of the Martial Law period, dwells on love, nostalgic memories, and the emotionally complicated father-son relationship – rendering the heartbroken truth, revealed eventually, not only as an unavoidable cruelty of its time but also human choices of mutual understanding – the struggle of homosexuals in Cinderfella and the awakening of women in The Mandarin Class likewise touch upon the dilemmas of humanity.     

When White Storyteller premiered nearly ten years ago, the topic was far from common in theatre.  As Chiu recalls, when his friend heard that the play was about the “White Terror,” he immediately exclaimed, “Ah, that sounds scary – I don’t want to watch it!”  However, over the following years, with an increasing number of films and stage productions telling White Terror stories, public awareness gradually grew.  Among these works, the feature film Detention (2019) impressed Chiu the most: “by employing the supernatural horror genre, it opens up storytelling ossibilities I have never imagined.”

He admits that rendering such subjects “in an innovative and unexpected way” can be challenging, and the Korean film I Can Speak provides a perfect example for him, as it transforms the story of comfort women into a comedy-drama.  Similarly, “humor” is an important approach in his own works, such as the use of tongue-in-cheek of pòo-tē-hì or humorous conversation as comic relief to lighten the grave tone, and he certainly hopes to continue expanding the diverse artistic expression in storytelling.    

White Storyteller has another highlight – pòo-tē-hì, the traditional Taiwanese glove puppetry.  Unlike many other theatre productions that “modernize” pòo-tē-hì, White Storyteller keeps its traditional format but gives it a new life in modern theatre.  

White Storyteller does not define itself as contemporary pòo-tē-hì, but a fascinating encounter between the human actor and glove puppets.  The performance features a mix of Mandarin and Taigi, captivating skills of puppet manipulation and a variety of vivid storytelling techniques, interweaving the pòo-tē-hì tradition, father-son relationship and the silenced era into an intriguing narrative.   

The performance begins with the middle-aged Wang Wen-pin keeping vigil for his late father, while the simple household furniture and traditional paper funeral offerings bring a distinctive folk touch to its scenography.  Wang remembers his childhood when his father would always take him to watch outdoor pòo-tē-hì, using the story of the folk hero Liāu Thiam-teng to boast of his own heroic deeds.  As the story proceeds, famous repertoires such as the Monkey King’s uproar in the heavenly feast, Madame Pan decorating herself, and the Drunk Monk with his supernatural healing power take the stage one after another to gradually reveal the past moments shared between Wang and his father.  

In the play, the historical context of the Martial Law period is juxtaposed with Wang’s present reality, reflecting the mirrored relationship between the puppets and the human actor, thus creating an impactful narrative.  Through the story of an ordinary, underprivileged individual, it leads us into lived experiences of political suppressions, presenting what has been praised as “a magical-realist play with a vivid local spirit.” 

Speaking of his fascination with pòo-tē-hì, Chiu smiles like a little boy.  He plays with the puppets in his hands and mentions how he became familiar with it at a young age through the then-popular Toshio Huang TV puppet shows – although, he notes, he has a general interest in all kinds of puppetry.  He was formerly a member of Puppet & Its Double Theater and had participated in the pòo-tē-hì workshops led by national treasure puppeteer Chen Xi-Huang for several years, where he learned manipulation, puppet-making, and the crafting of costumes, props, and weapons from the great master.  Throughout the journey, he has remained true to his original intention – to integrate pòo-tē-hì into modern theatre.    

From White Storyteller to Grandma’s Amulet, Chiu experiments with combining the two completely different performance formats, while in Father Mother, he centers the story on a pòo-tē-hì puppeteer and personally crafted the two puppet tigers that serve as major symbols in the play.  

Despite the positive feedback he has received, Chiu is clearly aware of the sharp contrast between their performance logics.  In pòo-tē-hì, it is what behind the stage that supports the visible actions onstage, where improvisation plays a crucial role, allowing puppeteers to depend on reactions from the audience to extend a fight scene or add lines.  It enjoys an organic, flexible, and dynamic interplay between performers and audience, but once placed within a modern theatre’s framework, the performance becomes restrained.   

During the rehearsals for White Storyteller, Chiu noticed how puppeteers “missed the right feeling” without the percussive clamor in traditional practices, but since they could not afford live musicians, pre-recorded music became their only option.  In addition, surtitles were required due to the mix of languages, which further minimized the improvisational nature of the performance.  

Chiu’s intention is not to expand his career into pòo-tē-hì or to revive the traditional practice, but to remain true to his initial purpose – integrating what he loves to his theatre work as a way of “playing” that may lead to different stage possibilities.  When White Storyteller toured to Germany, he was worried about how the audience would respond, given cultural differences and their little knowledge of Taiwan’s White Terror history.  Yet one German audience member approached him and said, “I finally realize why my parents never wanted to talk about the Second World War.”  The paper offerings as part of the setting also sparked curiosity about traditional Taiwanese funeral customs.       

Either crossing performance formats or national boundaries, theatre becomes a universal language that transcends time and space.  Every performance sees the birth of a new story – so let us look forward to what the 2026 production of White Storyteller is about to tell.    

The Party Theater Group: White Storyteller ▶ Learn More