2026 TIPRF- Chungbuk Theatre Company: Takasago Inn

Synopsis

By the Keelung Harbor, the hotel owner Wu Yuan and the daughter of the snack bar owner, A-Xiu, are each waiting for their son, Kimura, and lover, Guo-Min, to return from their venture in Manchuria. Whenever they hear that a big ship has entered the port, they excitedly head to the harbor, but their hopes are always dashed. The snack bar owner, A-Fu, cannot approve of this obsession, and the mother and daughter often clash over it. The alcoholic old man, Niu Song, brings a resentful couple returning to Taiwan from Guangdong to stay, and the ferry helmsman, a widower surnamed Zeng, proposes to A-Xiu. The resentful couple staying at the hotel also go their separate ways. After experiencing all this, Niu Song suddenly returns with Wu Yuan's son, Kimura, but A-Xiu only receives news that Guo-Min's affections have already changed. Soon after, Kimura proposes taking his father and A-Fu's mother and daughter to North China. The father reluctantly agrees, but A-Xiu does not give a positive response.

Lin Tuan-chiu, Playwright

Lin Tuan-chiu, a playwright, stage and film director, and industrialist from Taoyuan, Taiwan. He graduated from Meiji University with a degree in Political Economy. During his university years, he joined the campus drama club and simultaneously organized the "Sōyōkai" (Double Leaf Society) with local youth in Taoyuan to study drama. Around his university graduation in 1942, he first entered TOHO Film Company to participate in film production, and later joined the literary department of Moulin Rouge Shinjuku-za, famous in Japanese drama history for its "New Comedy Movement," becoming the first Taiwanese playwright in the Tokyo theatre scene. After returning to Taiwan in 1943, he served as a drama instructor for the Taiwan Drama Association and, together with Wang Jing-Quan and Zhang Wen-Huan, established the "Kōsei Drama Research Society," directing and producing plays such as The Castrated Rooster and Takasago Inn, ushering in the "Dawn of the Taiwanese New Drama Movement." After the war, he founded the "Renjuzu" (Human Drama Troupe) in 1946. Shortly after the performance, he left the arts due to political turmoil and returned to his hometown to work in mining. In 1957, he established Yufeng Film Company and built the Hushan Studio, whose scale was unmatched in Taiwan. Yufeng's film production was rigorous, adopting a non-profit approach to cultivate film talent, which was unique in the history of Taiwanese cinema. After completing the film Six Suspects in 1965, it was not released, and he shifted his focus to manufacturing, no longer involving himself in cultural affairs. He passed away from heart failure in Taipei in 1998. During his involvement in the drama and film industries from the 1940s to the 1960s, he continuously created scripts, and in his later years, he returned to his desk to revise The Castrated Rooster for the third time. The scripts he created throughout his life were mainly written in Japanese and Taiwanese. Six stage plays and 17 film scripts are currently preserved and collected in The Complete Works of Lin Tuan-chiu (edited by Shih Wan-Shun). 

Chungbuk Theatre Company

Chungbuk Theatre Company was established in 2024, through years of effort from Chungbuk’s citizens and the local theatre artists. It aims to enhance the competitiveness of performing arts creation in Chungbuk and to provide its residents with diverse and high-quality cultural enjoyment. It is the 4th provincial theatre company established in the country, acting as a creative performing arts platform that encompasses artistic creation, enjoyment, and distribution. The Chungbuk Theatre Company will strive to create a local theatrical ecosystem, promote art in Chungbuk residents’ daily lives, and pursue the identity of Chungbuk and contemporary art under the slogan, "One United Heartbeat of Chungbuk Through Art." Together with its community, it pursues arts on stage that everyone in Chungbuk can enjoy together.

Kim Naghyung, Diretor

Artistic Director (2024-present)
Kim Nag-hyung, the inaugural Artistic Director of Chungbuk Theatre Company, is an artist who listens to the unconscious and absurdity of modern life. As a playwright, Kim considers both the completeness of the play's text and its performance aspects, creating a spectacle on stage. He continuously strives to communicate with his audience using black comedy that critiques contemporary society and theatrical language that is light but not trivial, heavy but not burdensome.
 

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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