2026 TIPRF- The School of Drama at Korea National University of Arts: The Thousand-Year Itch

Synopsis

The Thousand-Year Itch its perspective on a family of scabies mites, almost invisible to the naked eye, residing in the folds of the human body. By the bedside of the "Old Patriarch," who is on the brink of death but miraculously survives past the lifespan threshold, descendants take turns recounting stories of parasitism on human hosts over thousands of years. From the navel of an old soldier who came to Taiwan in the 1960s, harboring homesickness and anger, to the secret-filled nail gaps of a cross-sea couple in the millennium, and to a Macau casino during the pandemic, the scabies mites travel through the microscopic body map, coldly observing human desires and obsessions in different eras.

Playwright Chen Chiao-jung showcases a highly layered spiral narrative structure in this work, allowing actors to freely move between the roles of storyteller and multiple characters, breaking the boundaries of species and time. She transforms microscopic biological instincts into grand philosophies of life, dissolving the heaviness of history into a series of dreamlike, ephemeral "itches" with sharp, absurd, and rhythmic dialogue. This image-rich and structurally precise work won the 2025 Taiwan Literary Award for Drama Gold Prize.

Chen Chiao-jung, Playwright

Chen Chiao-jung actives in both Taiwan and Macau. In Taiwan, her work mainly focuses on theatre and musical creation. Her play The Thousand-Year Itch won the 2025 Taiwan Literature Awards, and My Sister's Keeper was nominated for the Taiwan Literature Awards. Her representative musical works include Freak and I Hate Musicals. Her works in Macau mostly focus on identity and local issues.

Other works include Drifting Shipyard, Sea Woman of the Edge of the Sky. The City of Timber Craftsmen and No One Sleeps Tonight were successively selected for the Macau Arts Festival. She is the author of A Series of Fantasies: Chen Qiao-Rong's Scripts. Besides theatre works, she is also dedicated to exploring the possibilities of narrative techniques, integrating elements from different fields through cross-disciplinary practice. She co-authored The Cat and the Other Side of the Sea with cartoonist Monday Recycler, which won the Silver Award at the 16th Japan International Manga Award and has been authorized for translation into Japanese, English, French, Russian, Malay, and Vietnamese.

The School of Drama at Korea National University of Arts

The School of Drama at Korea National University of Arts (K-Arts), founded in 1994, is the only national institution in Korea dedicated to professional theatre training. The school offers undergraduate and graduate programs across five departments: Acting, Directing, Playwriting, Stage Design, and Theatre Studies. With a curriculum that emphasizes both artistic practice and critical inquiry, the School of Drama provides intensive training for emerging theatre artists. The program maintains close collaborations with leading theatres and artists in Korea and internationally, creating opportunities for students to engage with diverse theatrical practices. Graduates of the school have played a significant role in shaping contemporary Korean theatre and are increasingly recognized on the global stage.

About the 2026 Taiwan International Play Reading Festival

The Taiwan International Play Reading Festival (TIPRF) is curated by the Prologue Center for New Plays and jointly organized with the Taipei Performing Arts Center, aiming to establish an international excahnge platform centered on playwrights and plays. Each year, the festival focuses on a specific country or cultural region, exploring the differences and resonances among theatrical traditions and textual aesthetics through staged readings and cross-cultural interpretation.

Here, plays are not only the starting point of theatrical creation, but also a medium for cultural exchange through which diverse social experiences and creative perspectives are reflected, opening up a space for cross-cultural dialogue.

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