活動
The 16th Grasstraw Festival “Tng tshing-tshun”
活動
The 16th Grasstraw Festival “Tng tshing-tshun”
A Platform for Youth and Art
Founded in 2009 by Our Theatre, the Grasstraw Festival was established with the core belief of “a group of people accomplishing something together.” The festival aims to accompany and support young people through theater, connecting high school drama clubs and university students by providing them with a platform to learn and showcase their theatrical work.
Starting in 2014, the festival expanded its scope beyond traditional theater performances, incorporating aesthetic lifestyle markets, outdoor performances, film screenings, short talks, and lectures. By collaborating with external groups, the festival has evolved into a more diverse and dynamic cultural event.
In 2018, the Grasstraw Festival took another step forward, transforming into a ticketed professional arts festival. This shift allowed for broader collaborations and a stronger emphasis on sustainability, local engagement, and the fusion of art with social concerns—promoting zero-waste dining and inclusivity for diverse communities. Through curatorial efforts, Our Theatre has turned the festival into a cultural exchange platform, blending theatrical expression with social responsibility and actively advocating for issues they care about.
The 16th Grasstraw Festival is themed “Tng tshing-tshun” (Being Young). Curators Huang Ming-Chang and Wang Jhao-Cian introduce innovative design and curatorial strategies, combining local cultural elements with modern experimental approaches. This year’s festival breaks traditional frameworks, spreading across Minsyong Town and Chiayi Performing Arts Center to present the multifaceted essence of youth. It offers audiences a cross-media artistic experience, fostering deeper connections with the local community.
By merging cultural festivals with regional revitalization, the festival’s spatial planning and visual strategies emphasize cultural expression and interactivity. It balances local identity with artistic vision, enhancing audience engagement while reinforcing the festival’s role as a platform for cultural exchange.
About "Tng tshing-tshun"
Inspired by the Taiwanese coming-of-age tradition “Tsò-Tsa̍p-La̍k-Huè” (Celebrating Sixteen), we have named this year’s theme “Tng Tshing-Tshun” (Being Young)—a tribute to that uncertain yet boundlessly hopeful stage of life that everyone has once experienced.
If time is a butcher’s knife, then “Tng tshing-tshun” (Being Young) is an even sharper blade.
It slices through everything, revealing a cross-section of youth before our eyes.
This blade exposes growth, sweetness, and wild abandon, yet at the same time, it unveils confusion, pain, and the inescapable ordinariness of life—because youth has never been just a time of shining brilliance.
This blade compels us to remember the moments we can never return to. It cuts open the essence of youth, exposing its raw and contradictory nature—a mind and body both pure and conflicted. It allows us to see ourselves in our youth once more: so tender, so sensitive, so beautifully sweet, yet also so angry, so lonely.
We long for youth. But youth never looks back.
This blade marks the 16th year of the Grasstraw Festival.
Flexible Adaptation, Multiple Meanings
Visual director Lu Wu-Long collaborated with Grasstraw Festival volunteers, the “Scare-crew,” to co-create two glowing, prism-textured walls as the festival’s entrance installation. These walls, connected by ceremonial guiding straps and fluttering flags, form a symbolic blade—slicing open the space, cutting into youth itself.
At the boundaries of the six themed areas, two installations, “Photo Booth” and “Voice Recorder”, define the festival’s spatial framework. While these structures provide intimate interactive experiences within, their exteriors subtly reflect and merge with the surrounding landscape.
As visitors move through the festival grounds, their bodily presence engages with the space in dynamic ways—at times encountering colorful play spheres for families, at times passing beneath fabric banners inscribed with thought-provoking phrases for the arts community. The “Ordinary Exhibition” mirrors the faces of Generation Z, while the aluminum foil stage amplifies rebellious energy. This interplay of elements balances both cohesion and individuality.
The design echoes the organic nature of the curatorial process, embracing flexible adaptation and multiple layers of meaning—revealing endless possibilities in form and interpretation.
Walking on the Cross-Section of Youth
In response to the theme “Tng Tshing-Tshun,” the festival grounds are divided into six thematic areas based on the “bright side” (growth, sweetness, and wildness) and the “dark side” (confusion, pain, and ordinariness) of youth. A narrow, flat rope suspended above the lotus pond precisely divides these two aspects, with the Taiwan Professional Highline Team and various drama and music groups performing highline ceremonies on weekends. This thrilling act, combined with performers’ explorations of youth, cuts through the state of youth and presents the pure yet contradictory mind-body cross-section, holding the audience’s breath throughout the entire festival grounds.
In the six sections, “Photo Booth” and “Voice Recorder” installations have been set up at the “village head” and “village end.” These devices, designed to blend with the terrain and vegetation, serve both as navigational guides and spaces for interaction and reflection. “Photo Booth” is a specially designed visual station that uses transparent materials and light effects, allowing the audience to document their youth. “Voice Recorder” is an anonymous audio recording device that encourages people to share the bittersweet, tangy, and sometimes painful moments of youth—both intimate and public.
With their modular, multifunctional design elements, “Photo Booth” and “Voice Recorder” captivate visually while enhancing interactivity, offering a deeply immersive experience for the audience.
Local Integration
Satellite venues and partner stores extend the Grasstraw Festival from the Chiayi County Performing Arts Center to the entire Minsyong area. The selection of locations is based on the imprints of everyday life and key cultural and historical sites that cannot be missed in Minsyong.
The National Radio Museum and Minsyong Dashiye Temple both reflect memories of traditional Taiwanese life. Meanwhile, Runway Bookstore and It Lok Restaurant are important local landmarks symbolizing “youth returning home” and “intergenerational co-creation”.
Visual Design
For this Grasstraw Festival, the main visual design by Yang Shi-Ching captures six types of youthful experiences through photography. The body is portrayed as a vessel that accumulates many stories throughout the process of growth. From childhood to old age, every stage leaves traces on the body, recording and reminding us of past stories.
In terms of visual technique, the design returns to the most raw, handwritten form of text, unrefined, showcasing the impulsiveness and emotionality of youth. The final composition integrates photographs, and the main color palette evokes the vibrant hues of youthful appearances.
