Abstract
This essay analyzes the adaptation of the play The Capon and reconstructs its performance text after reexamining its historical materials left by Kosei Theatre Society. This essay points out that Lin Tuan-qiu, the director and playwright of The Capon, adapted the original novel for the stage with a strategy of popularization and made it a tragicomedy with both a plain theme and an undertone reflecting social issues. Besides examining the national characters of the Taiwanese people, The Capon employed visual and audio elements to represent Han rituals and customs on stage, aiming to re-create the self-identification and self-esteem of the Han culture. Furthermore, the performance of The Capon in 1943 gained environmental support to reinforce its theatrical effects on stage. Kosei Theatre society chose to stage The Capon in Eraku-za, a theatre house located in Dadaocheng, an area abundant with traditional cultural implications. In short, against the backdrop of ＂Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere＂ under Japanese rule, The Capon inherited the line of artistic realism and cultural nationalism in the 1930s, and its considerable usage of folk music and ballads could be seen as having offered an aesthetic solution for the Shingeki (New Drama) Movement, signifying the reshaping of Taiwanese subjectivity and the localization of Shingeki.