Georgetown Festival 2024 - Close To You: A Suitcase of Taipei

 

The second show in the Close To You series was title "A Suitcase of Taipei". I just love the poster of the event, cause it's so colourful. And Taiwan is all about scooters! 

So ten minutes walk from the first venue, which was an ancestral temple, we next arrived at a modern French Cafe. The guide lead us in a packed cafe full of customer, and the pastries and cakes there were mouth watering. But we had no time to linger, as we were lead upstairs where the performances were to be held.

Here is my fellow volunteer. He was so quiet the first few times I met him. I even had to show him where the Komtar bus terminal was when we were doing a night shift at Komtar. Yet here he was now, leading a tour group around in Georgetown! I met a few other outstanding young people in the festival too, one of which was a fellow Peranakan guy named Alden. He was the most funny guy I met in the festival. Full of funny stories and super easy to talk to. 

Anyway, back to the performances. This time, the stage was a suitcase. Yes, that's right, an old suitcase like the one you see in the photo above. The lady with the glasses was one of the 'puppeteer'. The other was his husband who works the projector next to the suitcase....You can refer to the last photo for more info.

And above is how the show is conducted. The 'puppets' are actually props instead of characters. And the projector is used to show scenes of Taipei, or objects on the screen of the suitcase. Sound and lights are also part of the performance.

Of all the props, above was my favourite, the scooter, and the city outline of Taipei. When they actually show the projection scenes of streets of Taipei while the scooter above move around it, I felt really nostalgic and misses the city watching it. I told the performers after the show that the scene of the scooter really has the 'feel' of being transported to Taipei.

I also asked what was the above red cardboard symbolises. There were actually many scenes with symbols or abstract concepts. There was even a sex scene! The lady told me that these were how the old housing of Taipei looked like. This was their main door, with their apartment unit shown outside. Wow, I didn't know that. I will pay more attention and look out for these the next time I happen to be in Taipei.

The star of the show, Taipei. The two helmets represent the two lovers who went dating on the scooter, before eventually getting married and living together. There were some weird market scene as well, and fish cooking.... lol. Super interesting! Mind totally blown!

And so I leave you here, my last post of my involvement in the GTF2024. As volunteers, we were also given a free ticket to another dance performance on a separate weekends as a token of appreciation. That show too was interesting. It was titled Convergence, and it was a mixed of Chinese martial art and dance. Here is a sample of their performance: