Soup of Forgetfulness is a solo inspired by the Taiwanese Folklore myth, Mong-Po-Tang, about the afterlife and process of reincarnation.
In the myth of Mong-Po-Tang, the bridge of Helplessness is the portal of rebirth. To go forward, one must drink a mysterious soup offered by Mong Po, known as the Soup of Forgetfulness. As the soup enters one’s system, it erases every memory she has of her past life. All her relationships, accomplishments, regrets, and wonders fade away with each step she takes crossing the bridge. All her longing, love, hatred, and grief dissipate as the soup works its way into the body. By the time she arrives at the other side of the river, she is reborn, as a blank canvas. Innocent. Free and liberated from the past.
Soup of Forgetfulness harnesses Juolin’s curiosity about the space between the living and the deceased and the grey zone between remembering and forgetting.
Soup of Forgetfulness opens with a piece of fabric draped from the back wall, with a hand emerging through the fabric. Acting as a guide into the underworld, the hand is the gateway to introducing an alternative logic, and set of roles inhabiting this alternative reality of the deceased. Throughout the piece Juolin shape shifts through different characters (such as an old lady doing laundry by the river, a cat licking, cleaning its paw, and a gang member smoking at a back alleyway) providing glimpses of lives one has previously lived. Towards the end of the piece, with thrust, effort Juolin indulged in the chaos of the ever-shifting emotions before finally arriving at the foot of the bridge where relinquishment, uncertainty, allowance, awaits with the mysterious Soup of Forgetfulness.