Welcome to National Chiayi University

　　The Musical Theatre of National Chiayi University offers its annual public performances, in its 18th edition, on the Tony Award-winning production Titanic. As a tradition, the troupe gave public performances in the Chiayi region. The first two performances took place at the Chiayi Performing Arts Center, winning unprecedented accolades from local audience. They also take the challenge of performing at a national-level performance center. The tickets for their performance at National Taichung Theater on April 7th have been snatched up half a month before the performance. The stirs that have been created long before it actually takes place bear witness to the enormous attraction of Titanic, a classic musical licensed by Broadway. It is also a testament to the word of mouth the NCYU Musical Theatre has enjoyed for their performances in the past 18 years. It is a culmination of joint efforts by teachers and students of the Music Department, NCYU, throughout the years.

　　The musical performances by the Music Department, NCYU, are major productions made possible with collaborations across colleges and departments. A performance on a classic musical formally licensed by Broadway has been staged each year since 2001. The Broadway musicals that had been rendered by NCYU Musical Theatre included Mulan, Roland Coast, The Sound of Music, Beauty and the Beast, Titanic, Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and Hairspray. All the classic works boast a mesmerizing mixture of plots and change of scenes, and a large group of performances. With the annual performance as a platform, the students, under teacher guidance, assume their respective roles and take challenge to pull off masterpieces one after another. In the process, they have also honed their professional perspective and skills.

　　To achieve spectacular musical and theatrical effects, NCYU spared no cost for renting original music scores and scripts by Tams-Witmark, US. They hoped to take the audience back to 1912, when the “unsinkable” Titanic, an embodiment of wide-ranging life stories and dreams, embarked on its voyage. The piece offers a peek into different sides of humanity, and explores the values of life. Through the musical, all the members of the Musical Theatre demonstrated great skills learned at NCYU. Their performances are expected to win wild applause from music lovers.

　　According to Tzeng Yu-fen, Chairman of the Music Department, NCYU, the annual public performances of NCYU Musical Theatre have become a well-received tradition in the Yunlin-Chiayi-Tainan region for 18 years. In recent years, they have been offering performances with admission fees, and tickets have been snatched up in an instant. The popularity of their public performance is especially noteworthy in the midst of frustrations faced by the performing arts world nowadays. The phenomenon reveals that the musical, a form of performance that is both classical and popular, is highly popular in the art world of Taiwan. On the other hand, it unveils the fact that the musical performance skills displayed by the Music Department, NCYU, throughout the years have won recognition from the audience in the Yunlin-Chiayi-Tainan region. The performance this year is a result of great cohesiveness and morale among the teachers and students of the NCYU Music Department, and is bound to bring out a fad for performances.