新作坊 Humanity Innovation and Social Practice

Abstract

In 2018, a team organized by Tunghai University for the purpose of conducting the Humanity Innovation and Social Practice (HISP) project, sponsored by Taiwan's National Science and Technology Council, at the Old Downtown – officially indicated as the Central District – of Taichung City. The team had an office located on the 11th floor of Ching Guo Building, part of school property, in the Central District, and its mission was to carry out action plans according to the goals of the HISP project, aiming to deepen interactions between the university and selected local communities. With the university offering the resources of knowledge, creativity, and social practice, it was expected that the efforts made by the Tunghai HISP team would help to activate the continuously declining Old Downtown, and research papers and academic discourses could also be produced or generated in the process.
This essay aims to contextualize the relationships between story, theatre, and social practice through the exploration of the strategies applied by the "story unit" of the Tunghai HISP project team during the period between 2018 and 2022, as well as the action plans made and conducted by the unit within those years. It then focuses on a theatre production, purposefully named as Our Youth in the Old Downtown, initiated by a group of young adults concerned with different local issues of the district and supported by the Tunghai story unit. By examining the ideas, ideals, and the operational strategy of this production, this essay will conclude with an analysis of the meaning that this piece of theatre has created within the context of social practice.