A look at Taiwan’s National Kaohsiung Center during the pandemic

The National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying) in Taiwan, which opened in 2018, “is one of several venues under the auspices of National Performing Arts Center, which also include Taipei’s National Theater and Concert Hall and National Taichung Theater,” writes Susan Elliott in Wednesday’s (3/17) Musical America (subscription required). In an interview, General and Artistic Director Chien Wen-pin speaks about the past year for the arts center, which is currently presenting La Traviata with an all-Asian cast. Chien Wen-pin: … Weiwuying has an amazing asset…. The building’s … roof covers a surface area of more than 140,000 square meters, so many pockets under the roof are completely covered, yet ‘outdoors.’ So as early as May 2020 we could many hold events and activities that still complied with COVID-19 measures…. This year of lockdowns and quarantines has merely reinforced what we’ve always believed, both about the importance of the arts and the need for the arts to be flexible…. You need to make that connection by whatever means necessary. If you have to reduce your audience to safe levels, so be it. If you have to migrate all your programming to the internet, so be it…. We may learn something for the future.”