TSMC Education and Culture Foundation Sponsors the Premiere of the Youth Version of The Peony Pavilion to Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Performance and Bring Traditional Chinese Opera to a Wider Audience

In alignment with its vision to uplift society, TSMC Education and Culture Foundation is committed to promoting arts and culture. The Foundation makes it its long-term goal to fund outstanding artists and groups and to grow audiences for arts and Chinese Opera, thereby deepening the public’s culture understanding through four major actions: organizing arts and culture performances, carrying forward the traditional Chinese Opera heritage, funding broadcasting programs on arts and humanities, and organizing the TSMC Lectures. This year marks the 20th anniversary of literary maestro Pai Hsien-Yung’s production of the classical Kunqu Opera The Peony Pavilion - the Youth Version. The Foundation exclusively sponsors the premiere of The Peony Pavilion - the Youth Version at National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying) for the first time to celebrate its 20th anniversary. The full performance ran for nine hours in three consecutive days. The Foundation has invited students from nine different high schools, vocational high schools, and universities to watch the performance, aiming to educate the public and the younger generation on how to appreciate the enduring charm of traditional Chinese Opera.

Injecting Long-term Resources to Cultivate the Public’s Cultural Sensibility

Kunqu is one form of the traditional Chinese theatre and was listed as a masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2001 for its unique artistic merits. Mr. Pai Hsien-Yung chose the Ming dramatist Tang Xian-zu’s famous work The Peony Pavilion as the major piece to showcase in the Kunqu Opera Renaissance campaign. To attract more young audiences to learn about Kunqu opera, Mr. Pai adopts the contemporary aesthetics and concepts of modern theater into the remaking of this canonical piece, condensing the original 55 episodes into the current 27 episodes, The Peony Pavilion - the Youth Version. The TSMC Education and Culture Foundation has accompanied the Youth Version’s 20-year journey all along since its premier in 2004 until now. The Foundation has invited the Youth Version production team to perform across Taiwan, touring from Taiwan’s Hsinchu to Taichung and Tainan. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Youth Version’s premier, the Foundation exclusively sponsors its first revival performance in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Meanwhile, four talks on the production of the Youth Version have been held at National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying), Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Girls’ Senior High School, and National Cheng Kung University. The talks not only invited Mr. Pai Hsien-Yung to share the story of making of his performance, but also screened the documentary, Peony Pavilion in Renaissance, which looks back at the production history of The Peony Pavilion - the Youth Version on its 20th anniversary. 1,190 community residents attended the screening.

As part of the Foundation’s goals to increase the public’s interest in artistic appreciation and theatre, the TSMC Education and Culture Foundation will continue to fund outstanding groups from Taiwan and abroad to perform and provide a platform where the public can experience the embedded poetics and aesthetics of “every utterance has to be musical and every movement is dance” in Kunqu opera so that the beauty of traditional arts, which can stand the test of time, would be able to continue into the long future.