Abstract
From 2013 to 2014, a series of citizen demonstrations took place in Taiwan, reflecting the group conflicts, political traumas, and imaginings of identity layered and accumulated on this island over half a century. The Cyclops Troupe's experimental production ＂The Rose Colored Country＂, premiered in 2013 at Keelung Cultural Center, weaves together local historical events and social movements through rhizomic and heteroglossic narratives, presenting the performative subjects' possible agency and their limits. Employing national/insular identity theories, queer epistemologies, performance analysis, and concepts of political-aesthetic alliances, this paper develops Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou's notion of dispossession into a model that helps investigate the theatrical disposition of the piece, including the script, the narration, the staging, the acting, and the entire mise en scène of the theater space. This paper argues that the hyper-reflexive theatrical aesthetics of ＂The Rose Colored Country＂ reveal its ambivalent political character of being incorporation and resistance, underscoring the ways in which performative subjects struggle between constructedness and decolonization. These tactics expose the complex apparatus of the politicalaesthetic production and constitute a guerrilla form of protest that highlights how the performance on stage flexibly engages with and against performances off stage.