In In Search of the Miraculous, artist Vee Leong, who hails from Hong Kong, recruits men in Taipei to become her own fathers - in the plural form. Together with these impossible fathers, the artist embarks on an adventure across the sea: an open rehearsal of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a game of role-playing between the real vs make-believe against the background of the pandemic era and Hong Kong’s political turn. Based on her real family connection with Taiwan, Vee Leong, whose father passed away when she was young, works with lay actors and situates the project at the heart of an action-research performance. The father figures are mere projections, unlikely but recognisable. A work of many destinies drifting between the two cities, charged with bittersweet humour and self-irony as many failures - of breaking through; of reclaiming freedom and justice; of coming to terms with history’s absurd repetition - are to be carefully studied and celebrated towards more possible futures.

Commissioned by Taipei Arts Festival 2021 (postponed to 2022); supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council