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March’s Taiwan Traditional Theatre Festival suspended for COVID-19

  • Date:2020-03-21
March’s Taiwan Traditional Theatre Festival suspended for COVID-19

The 2020 Taiwan Traditional Theatre Festival, a flagship event of the National Center for Traditional Arts (NCFTA) that was about to enter its third year of facilitating conversation between the classics and the contemporary, has been suspended for the betterment of public health during the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The 2020 Taiwan Traditional Theatre Festival was set to host 13 productions surrounding two themes — "women breaking boundaries" and "cross-genre experiments" — from March 27 to May 17 in Taipei. With the former exploring feminist consciousness and the latter manifesting Taiwan's boundless creativity, the curators sought to make the voices of once-silenced women heard through variegated forms of theater.

The three performance units supervised by the National Center for Traditional Arts — GuoGuang Opera Company (國光劇團), Taiwan Bangzi Opera Company (灣豫劇團), and National Chinese Orchestra Taiwan (臺灣國樂團) — will also halt all public indoor performances through the end of April.

The NCFTA's Yilan Park on the northeastern coast and the Taiwan Traditional Theatre Center, the Taipei-based host of the postponed festival, will remain open to the public. These venues will abide by the epidemic prevention guidelines stipulated by the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) and the Ministry of Culture to protect all staff and visitors.

Although the festival is suspended rather than cancelled, the organizers have decided to offer full refunds for all pre-purchased tickets. Online purchases and credit payments can be refunded via the national ArtsTicket system, while cash purchases can be refunded via postal services or at the ticketing system's physical offices in Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung.

More information will be made available at https://festival.ncfta.gov.tw/2020tttf/zh-tw and www.ncfta.gov.tw/en/.