Synopsis
Walking home from a show, Wang lectures his future brother-in-law, Jian, on the "necessity" of male supremacy. At home, their partners, Zhao-Zhi and Yu-Yan, lament the suffocating weight of this dominance. To prove his point, Wang puts on a cruel display of authority, performing his "superiority" for the others. However, the next morning, atomic fallout triggers a global gender inversion. Forced into the domestic drudgery they once mocked, the men must now navigate a world where the women hold the power—leading both couples to realize that life on the other side is far more difficult than they imagined.
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).
Credits
Playwright: Lin Tuan-chiu
Director: Kim Chen
Dramaturg: Shih Wan-shun
Cast: YouJen, Wu Pin-fei, Xu Jun-jie, Kuo Te-fu
Wig Artist: Lin Xi
Play Translator: Huang Shu-qian
Korean Subtitle Translator: Im Mi-ju
English Subtitle Translator: Chen Yi-ming
English Subtitle Translation Editor: Johan Amatsakio
Taipei Theatre Lab
Taipei Theatre Lab engages in artistic creation and exchange in the spirit of two main principles: openness and experimentation. Our work crosses genre and discipline divides, taking on a spectrum of aesthetic styles while always tackling topics pertinent to the world we live in. In 2013, Taipei Theatre Lab’s inaugural production Cabaret de L’amour received the Yongchen Fringe Award, the grand prize of the Taipei Fringe Awards. Our sophomore effort, Bitch Cabaret followed in 2016. In 2018, Taipei Theatre Lab co-created Queer Night, a Taipei Arts Festival commission, with five other extraordinary groups of Taipei Fringe regulars. Created around the central theme of “assembly”, the production was nominated for the 17th Taishin Arts Award. Aside from producing efforts, since its founding, Taipei Theatre Lab has hosted regular acting workshops on the Michael Chekhov Technique. Over the years, we have established a platform for training and exchange for performers and artists through international artist workshops, aiming to bring in new creative energy for the Taiwanese theatre world.
About the 2026 Taiwan International Play Reading Festival
The 2026 Taiwan International Play Reading Festival is curated by the Prologue Center for New Plays and jointly organized with the Taipei Performing Arts Center, aiming to establish an international exchange 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. In the festival, 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.
Taiwanese Dramatic Literature Translation Project
Four of the plays featured in this year’s Taiwan International Play Reading Festival were translated in collaboration with the National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL). These works were selected from the NMTL’s ongoing initiative to translate both canonical masterpieces and award-winning contemporary scripts.
The NMTL is dedicated to bringing Taiwanese literature to a global audience. By building a multilingual foundation in English, Korean, and beyond, this project provides the essential texts needed for international theatre platforms, academic research, and global publishing. Through these cross-cultural collaborations and staged readings, we ensure that Taiwanese drama continues to be seen, read, and reinterpreted on the world stage, paving the way for future international co-productions.
Organizer
