Performing nation, imagining Taiwaneseness in twenty-first century theatre in Taiwan

This dissertation interrogates the various ways that modern theatre (Western-style drama) from 2000 to 2008 envisioned a Taiwanese nation and explored what it means to be Taiwanese. These eight years during the presidency of Chen Shui-bian, first president from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, witnessed the peak of on-going bentuhua ("Taiwanization" or "nativization"). Due to rapid democratization in Taiwan and the rise of China as a superpower in the international arena, bentuhua, as Hsiau A-chin observes, has transformed from a post-colonial identity quest into a type of Taiwanese nationalism against China's claim over Taiwan's sovereignty. Treating nation as a discursive and cultural construct, I examine the dramatic narratives in five plays and compare them with the public discourses that redefine Taiwan and the Taiwanese, which I refer to as Taiwanese nationalist discourses. Such discourses as ocean country, New Taiwanese, and multiethnic cultures, although all proposed in the 1990s, have become widespread in the twenty-first century through reiteration and elaboration by both intellectuals and the state. These discourses, constructed to come to terms with the colonized past and deal with globalization, to resolve ethnic divide, and to emphasize the multiple sources of Taiwanese culture, gradually form people's self-knowledge and help forge a distinct nationhood. What conclusion can be drawn if the dramatic narratives demonstrate a tendency to correspond to or react against these nationalist discourses? In addition to this inquiry, my study includes the following focal points of analysis: how Taiwan's colonial history is reinterpreted and represented; how conflicting ethnic relations are negotiated; how theatre, as a performing medium, constructs and expresses the characteristics of Taiwanese culture; how globalization problematizes national imagination and the invention of Taiwaneseness. By discussing five productions staged by five major theatre troupes chronologically, I trace the trajectory of transformation of identity issues and explore the various strategies of imagining a nation.