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The contemporary performing art form can take place anytime and anywhere, with any given location serving as the venue, unrestricted by space or time. Ways of thinking and performing styles, as with the formation of culture itself, both vary with the movement of society and the change of time, eventually resulting in a prevailing set of practices, common in form and content. Performing art not only originates from the foundations of social culture, but it also reflects the ear’s extent of freedom.Considering the innovation of stage forms throughout history, beginning with the Greco-Roman period, the medieval age, the Renaissance, and the Baroque period, and continuing on to Modernism of the present day, one can observe the evolution from the simplistic division of host and audience back in royal times, and the traditional “picture-frame” setting, to the semi-realistic ambience created by stage construction, breaking through the boundaries inherent to the stage. We will also take a look at the Chinese opera stage, as well as the Taiwanese outdoor opera stand and “electric festooned beauty-vehicle,” to illustrate changes and innovations in stage form and interaction between performer and audience. We conduct general analysis and comparison to bring new life to Taiwanese outdoor opera.After the Industrial Revolution, the performing arts once experienced exclusively by royal families became common among audiences comprised of members of the middle and lower classes, as going to the royal opera house was no longer a privilege enjoyed only by the upper class. Performers eventually began to cry out: “Step out of opera house and into the great outdoors!” Consequently, there have been many indoor- and outdoor- “environmental theaters” made possible in recent years, resulting in a multi-faceted “inter-territory” and “interactive theater” performance style.I have enjoined many experimental theater in Taiwan, this research will begin with the observation and documentation of space and performance theoris, as well as the spirit of space theory in order to explore their annotations regarding past conflicts among performer, stage, and audience. Two types of stage “atmospheres” can be realized from the aforementioned theories. The first of these is a “heaven, earth, god, and man” environment, in which the boundary between performer and audience is removed, and is referred to as “the spirit of place.” The second is the dialectic of space and time, in which there is a face-to-face, self-critical atmosphere that is right here, right now - irreplaceable, fictitious, and yet quite real. The performance atmosphere and feeling of being engaged by a performance cannot be “cloned”, nor can they be shot with a camera or captured by a motion picture. They help to create the “time and space dialectic,” “constellation,” and “correspondence” performance experiences (Benjamin). The aura and vibe cast forth by the performance atmosphere result in an engaging, almost palpable sense-stimulating demonstration. The audience not only watches, but also participates in, the performance, achieving a much stronger and much more vivid opportunity for stimulation and introspection, and making possible that which W. Benjamin refers to as “inspiration of the mundane.”
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