The Village is the performance of an original fable, and fables are a curious thing. Fables play with stereotypes and archetypes to tell the story of how humans live. Fables, more than many other types of story, utilize symbols to indicate the complex undercurrents of their seemingly simple structure. They are often stories told easily to children by adults who interpret them through a lens of irony and moralism.

When presented with a fable, I immediately look to the symbols that appear. In “Little Red Riding Hood” we have a young woman covered in red (the color of blood) going into the woods (the world away from home) and encountering a dangerous wolf who lies to her (“wolf” is often used to describe sexually devious men). The story changes in the light of its symbols. So after receiving a very nice program, I entered into the theatre space of The Village, where each audience member had to choose an English name for herself or himself and sit in the forest listening to mellow English-language electronic folk music while waiting for the play to begin. I felt immediately immersed in the symbols of this new world. The characters all wore western-style clothing, ate bagels for food, and spoke in the vernacular of Christian religion, with their “let us pray” “God (上帝 shangdi) help us”. As the symbols piled on, I found myself questioning more and more what this play, is aiming to teach. By the end of the play, I decided that I could make one of two conclusions: either the creators of this play made a fable without thinking too deeply about its symbolism, at which I wonder why they wrote the fable at all, or that they were very aware of the symbols and were making a strong critique of a (western) culture that doesn’t seem to have a strong connection to the actors, audience or community it’s being performed for. I tend to think the former conclusion is the one that applies here.
There’s a saying about how you can tell if a restaurant’s food is good: the less a restaurant cares about its décor, the better the food. Unfortunately, judging from the posters, program and visual marketing of this play, the décor is beautiful.

其它意見：Spend more time thinking about how this story applies to your audience. Create visual symbols that communicate to your audience in their language.
Fables are wonderful in their flexibility, but they also require a lot of applied dramaturgy and analysis to make them effective for the time and location of the place they are being presented.

演出場地：Elsewhere 那裏

瀰漫著低抑，甚至詭異的氣氛中，演繹著類似中世紀歐洲流傳的民間故事——保守封閉的村落，一群被神權意志統治，失去靈魂而如機器人的村民，以及被賦予神秘象徵的森林。也許可以更具體的說，劇中的「蘑菇村」，是一個完全被謊言包圍與控制，所有人都昏聵盲昧而聽信於神父，還有神父口中未知的「祂」所言之一切。

若細加琢磨，這個文本故事有機會發展成一個殘酷探索真理與謊言的有深度劇本；可惜在外來的商人這個角色設定上，怎麼從不信謠言，到輕易臣服於神父，進而取代成為新任神父，心理的衝突轉折處理太過倉促不夠有說服力。
衝突的力道折損了，那麼戲的呈現上也打了折扣，村長之死、女孩之死和商人靈魂之死，都營造不出所謂審美接受的高潮，反而顯得刻意匠鑿。不過，戲前半段重複村民工作搬運蘑菇的場面，演員運用被規訓般機械的身體，面無表情的工作，唸祈禱詞……卻又刻意得理所當然，充滿愛爾蘭風味輕鬆恬靜的配樂，此時就像漂亮的包裝紙，包藏著這村子已經腐朽的一切人事物，因反諷而叫人心驚。

演出場地：Elsewhere 那裏