LIYA WU
There is such a thing as a mid-air me.
If you met Liya in mid-air (for instance on a plane on April 8 2013), this is what she had to say:
I will love and love and love, love all the people around me, love my friends and love my enemies, love all the plants and animals, love to love, love to give, love all the sounds around me, love all the silence around me, love all the happenings and non- happenings around me, love the process, love the transience, love the movement, love to move, love to sit still, love to sleep, love to love, love to grow, love for my love to grow, love for my capacity to love to grow, love to expect, love to wait, love the action and all the repercussion to the action, love the action and reaction, love the action and non-action, love so much that I can not contain it any more that I just have to expand and expand and expand till I am formless shapeless as wind, attached to nothing and hold onto nothing, I will love till I expand and till I transmit nothing but love, emit nothing but light, love to love, love to welcome the anger and sadness to wash over me, love for all the emotions to sweep past me, love to love, love to contain and love to explod, love to love, love to go all the way and go overboard into the unknown, into the other side, into the place where gods reside, into the space between A and B, into the space between movement and stillness.
Her time in the Uk (2003-2009)
Liya trained as a performer and theatre deviser in LISPA (2004-2006), a Lecoq-based physical theatre school. Before that, she was an accidental industry journalist for 3.5 years in Taipei reporting on the Telecom, Security and Electronics sectors.
In London when she was not rehearsing or writing, she was teaching Chinese to children and working part-time as a Chinese/English translator and volunteer Yoga teacher. Her other work experience in London included a short stint as a butcher's assistant, baby sitter, conservation worker, bar tender, waitress, drama workshop facilitator.
She once had a little affair with filming too:
Liya received her film and documentary training from Full Shot Image Company (Taiwan). She then made her first documentary with her sister Huiling about a former Comfort Woman, Lu Man-Mei, commissioned by Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation. Occassionally, just for her own amusement, she likes to stay behind the camera and enjoy the thrill and challenge of shooting short films without the sweat of post-production editing, which means, you edit as you film.
She was also the proud Artistic Director for Cul-de-Sac (Writer/Director: Alan Liang, 2008) which was selected for
2009 London Short Film Festival
2008 Krakow Philosophical Film Festival, Poland
(2009年倫敦短片電影節 最佳實驗片競賽項目
2008年波蘭克拉科夫哲學影展 最佳影片競賽項目)
Her first full-length play, Mr Whippendale, was invited to perform in the National Theatre of Bruges of Belgium for two weeks (Aug 2007). The play later won Arts Council funding for EAST Showcase in Soho Theatre (London). More info on Mr Whippendale can be seen on http://liya.burntmango.org/current.html. She has since been focusing on writing and directing plays mainly. Her second play, Cherry or Burgundy was developed with generous support of rehearsal space from Young Vic, London.
Outside London and and Taiwan:
She worked on a theatre-aid project in Ache, in Tsunami-affected areas, by way of theatre. Projects include theatre training for local charities and drama workshops in a local mental hospital. (Summer 2005)
While on a one-month Yoga teacher training course, she also conducted a drama workshop in a primary school in Rishikesh, India. (2008)
Since her return to Taiwan (2009):
Liya had worked with the Paperwindmill Theatre running drama workshops as part of the theatre aid programme for children in areas affected by the Morakot Typhoon (2009). She had also headed a summer actor training workshop for Apple Theatre (2010).
As an aside, Liya's proudest achievement in 2010 was to have nurtured a stray, paralysed and incontinent Golden Retriever to full recovery within 4 months.
Between 2009 and present:
Liya works as a freelance theatre director and actor and translator. Occasionally, she teaches drama to high school students.
For the year ahead (2013):
Liya will continue to work with her body, experiment with writing from the body, for the body. There is a wild world out there waiting for her to discover, via her body.
Liya once asked:
"As an actor on the stage of life, please give me a clear stage direction to work with, something concrete, something solid that my body can execute. Give me verbs, not nouns, not concepts.
So her request was one day answered (by the universe):
Listen, and pick up the clues, Wu."
For now, she maintains:
The body knows.
More details on Liya's past work can be seen on her CV.
Here is a short production footage of a play directed by Liya. The actors are a group of teenagers and adults with learning difficulties. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTYjbonZOPo
For more of Liya's writing samples, please go to http://liyawu.blogspot.tw/
For other work sample, please go to the Videos & Images page for production rehearsals and performance pictures.