National Salvation Corporation

1. National Salvation Corporation Unraveling Fact from Fiction

2. The Man Behind the Curtains Lee Kuo Hsiu Comedian Actor Playwright Director “Money can be saved in a bank, but why should tears be saved? There are many things in life that touches you, it’s just that people tend to suppress their emotional side. Much of the mess in society is caused by the suppression of emotions.”

3. Theme Fact vs Fiction Separating one from the other. Or is it even possible? Media and Journalism Police Corruption Relations with the ‘Outside’

4. Techniques Style that Li uses to bring out the theme Usage of Television Flashbacks Stage Directions Play within a play

5. Kuo: News is just media report, they read out whatever we supply them with. To put it bluntly, we control the media. You’re a fabricated murderer, and they get fabricated news. Two wrongs make one right, so fabrications turn real. The important point is: The news satisfies the public ~end of Scene 1

6. Why the TV? • Perhaps Li’s most interesting and appealing aspect in the play. • Instead of having actors coming out to play the characters, he uses the television to bind the play together. • QN: Why do you think he used the TV and what was its impact on the audience? • blatant, outright attack on the media and its professional ethics • absurdity and incoherence of the reporter, while amusing, poses us with the question of whether what we see is always real • connect with his audience because watching tv is part of everyday life. • moves us in and out of the interrogation room to sort of get a bigger perspective of how the situation is viewed beyond the four walls.

7. Flashbacks • Flashbacks are very common in books. Writers use them to fill in the gaps about different characters and situations to complete the book. However, while Li uses flashbacks to try and fill in the big gaps in the play, we don’t seem to get this sense of coherence. In fact, it seems to get more confusing. In this case it also breaks the flow of the play and wanders off to events unrelated to the case that they were trying to solve. • Why make it more confusing than it already is? • to get a sense of uncertainty and unfamiliarity with the characters (do you feel esp connected to any character?) • unable to differentiate if what the character says is real or not • reinforces the idea of fact and fiction, if these characters are merely making up a fictitious account of their past to sensationalize who they are. • this leaves us with the idea of identity and if we feel that we know these characters

8. Play within a play Reading of Scene 6 Police Corruption Relations with Japan Do we plan what we are going to do or say beforehand? So are we just all acting out what seems right in society? Zhang Xue Liang Nanjing Massacre Marco polo bridge

9. In the end… (last scene) It tied together the entire play by putting a new perspective to all the chaos that was going on. I think it encompasses the techniques of a flashback and a play within a play. Why do you think the character Li suddenly becomes X at the end of the play? What were the director’s motives for doing that? Why do you think the title of the play is National Salvation Corporation? “Like flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport.” ~Gloucester in Shakespeare’s “King Lear” If like Lee’s play suggests, we live in a ‘puppet-like’ existence, then are our identities shaped and controlled by other people or a bigger unknown factor?

10. Bibliography Definition of Marco Polo Bridge incident, World IQ. <http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Battle_of_Lugou_Bridge> Introduction of personality, the Cyber Stage, Taiwan. <http://www.cyberstage.com.tw/artist/people/people_page.jsp?id=1024&type=%A4%48%A6%57> Fastload.org, Zhang Xue Liang. http://www.fastload.org/zh/Zhang_Xueliang.html Spence, Jonathon. In Search of Modern China, New York: W.W Norton & Company, 1999