About the Author: Zara Huang

The art director of the Möbius Strip Theatre, a PhD candidate in the Cross-Disciplinary Arts Program at the Institute of Applied Arts, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, has over 20 years of experience in theatre and drumming. She believes that theatre is not merely about performance but should also highlight the processes of participation and creative development. Through exhibitions, performances, and discussions, she presents a holistic approach to art, expressing deep concern for contemporary issues and support for artistic equity.

About Möbius Strip Theatre

Inspired by the mathematical symbol of the Möbius strip, the name represents the concepts of starting anew, reversal, and sustainability. Specializing in cross-disciplinary integration, the Möbius Strip Creative Collective regards “Creation Commune” as its core practice and is committed to promoting the popularization of theatre and co-creation, enabling everyone to become a creator. In recent years, the Collective has focused on two main operational pillars. The first, “Co-Creation,” involves conducting field research and collaborating with local residents to translate their own culture and concerns into theatrical practices, telling their stories on their own territory. The second, “Inclusive Theatre,” draws inspiration from the unique perception of sound by people with hearing impairments, inviting deaf and hearing youth to collaborate in exploring cross-sensory aesthetics in inclusive theatre. In 2025, they were selected as a TAIWAN TOP Performing Arts Group.

Starting with the Drumbeat: The Birth of Non-Auditory Theatre

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, Möbius Strip Theatre (hereinafter “Möbius”) launched the inclusive theatre project The Elephant Flew Past My Ear, inviting deaf and hard-of-hearing friends into the rehearsal space. I am originally a drummer and have performed at art festivals around the world for many years. The pandemic suddenly made me realize that, although the sound of drums is so powerful, it might never have existed for some people. At that moment, a question came to me: “Who else has never heard the sound of drums?” I then recalled my experience in 2009 at the opening ceremony of the Deaflympics, when I performed with U-Theatre, drumming together with students from Taipei School for the Hearing Impaired. That experience planted a seed that became the starting point of this inclusive theatre project.

We began our creative process with “drumming with paint,” inviting ten deaf and hard-of-hearing participants into the rehearsal space. Through drama games and self-introductions, we reestablished our shared sense of rhythm. Finally, we dipped the drumsticks in paint and laid a canvas over the drumheads. As the drumsticks struck the drums, the paint splashed and scattered with the vibrations and rhythms, creating splashes, dots, and crack-like patterns. In that moment, we were delighted to discover that sound can not only be “heard” but also “seen.” I also realized that if we are willing to step outside our comfort zones, habitual patterns of creation can be broken. By embarking on new adventures with the people we meet and discovering the vocabulary we can share, theatre can truly become a space that embraces diverse body cultures and sensory modes.

When Sign Language Becomes the Language of the Stage

In the second year of the project, we further positioned sign language at the heart of the theatre practice. Through introductions from friends, we learned that in Europe and North America there is a practice called “Performing Arts Interpretation” (PAI), which brings sign language into theatre, enabling deaf audiences to enjoy performances in an accessible, immersive manner. PAI is not merely “translation”; it transforms sign language into theatrical vocabulary, showcasing the culture and aesthetics inherent in the language itself.

When Differences Meet: The First Site of Co-Creation

In 2023, the “Co-Creative Non-Auditory Theatre Creation Lab” officially launched, bringing together creators of diverse physical abilities, cultural backgrounds, and languages to collaborate. The platform operates through an open call and adopts a “1 + 1” collaborative model, pairing one creator with one deaf performer. Works are gradually developed over a timeline of “one year of incubation and two years of maturation.”

In the first year of the creative project, the invited creators came from a wide range of backgrounds, including theatre performers, drag queens, and contemporary puppetry artists. At first, everyone struggled with the differences in their bodily cultures. Hearing creators often unconsciously deferred, out of consideration, while Deaf or hard-of-hearing performers were used to relying on guidance from the creators. However, as the first year of incubation ended and the project moved into the second year of mature collaboration, both sides gradually discovered forms of inclusion that felt truly their own: sometimes through a shared sensitivity to light and imagery, and sometimes through the interplay of vibration and gesture. These explorations gradually revealed the distinct characteristics, overlaps, and contrasts between Deaf and hearing cultures in the details of the works.

The essence of inclusion is not about forcing everyone into the same mold, nor about expecting all parties to be fully compatible. Rather, it is a form of “more-than-one” collaboration: different individuals, communities, languages, and bodily cultures becoming partners in creation, challenging and inspiring one another in turn. Such a process often entails a resetting of identities, requiring us to remain open and receptive in our exchanges. Of course, this is not easy, as unconscious impulses within us often stem from the frameworks society has imposed since early childhood. Through repeated practice, we gain opportunities to recognize and attempt to unravel these influences, while also building trust and co-creative relationships along the way.

Perceptual Exchanges: Understanding and Misunderstanding on Stage

One of the most striking moments was when a queer artist, Hannah, delivered a three-minute spoken monologue about her life. The hearing audience laughed, while Deaf audience members were unable to grasp the humor, creating a subtle sense of distance in the atmosphere. Later, when the Deaf performer Chou Pei shared her life experiences through an extended passage of sign language, the hearing audience felt a quiet sense of bewilderment and unease, unable to discern what was being “spoken.” In that very moment, both hearing and Deaf audiences became acutely aware of how profoundly different their everyday realities are. These feelings of unease, distance, and difference were transformed through the work into a perceptual exchange, allowing us to truly encounter one another’s realities.

This kind of exchange becomes especially compelling when it unfolds in the audience as well. In the second edition of Language Boundaries, one group presented a manzai performance (まんざい [Manzai], a traditional Japanese two-person comedy structured around the contrast between the “fool” and the “straight man,” generating humor through rhythm and linguistic timing). When hearing and Deaf audience members were seated together, the punchlines landed at different moments, with laughter rippling through the space almost out of sync. In some passages, audience members quietly shed tears; at other times, silent discussions in sign language emerged among the seats. Here, the theatre was no longer merely a space for “watching,” but a site where multiple modes of perception coexisted. Even in co-created contemporary puppetry works, the “quiet” of the Deaf world and the “silence” of the hearing world evoked a similar sense of emotional immersion. These encounters prompt us to experience things from a different perspective: what we once took for granted in our perception can actually be deconstructed.

Theatre as a Pathway to Inclusion

If we are able to regard differences in physical abilities, cultures, and languages as assets rather than limitations, then theatre can become a vital site for experimentation and exchange. To date, Möbius’s non-auditory theatre initiative has completed three editions. Throughout this process, we have continuously reflected on and refined the platform’s mechanisms, allowing Deaf and hearing creators to present their works in a more secure and supported environment. For example, we invite experienced cross-disciplinary “creative companions” from the theatre community to assist Deaf and hearing creators in finding clearer contexts and expressive mediums for the issues they each wish to explore in their works. At the same time, “inclusion advisors” accompany both sides through the growing pains of cross-cultural collaboration. We also facilitate the integration of suitable sign language interpreters into each production, while providing rehearsal subsidies to ensure their sustained involvement. Over the course of three years, these interpreters have gradually become familiar with theatrical ecosystems and expressive vocabularies, enabling them to translate creators’ abstract concepts into concrete sign language expressions that are accessible to Deaf participants. At the same time, this process allows the ideas and intentions of Deaf performers to be conveyed more precisely to hearing creators. As these mechanisms continue to evolve and improve through practice, they have gradually formed an intangible infrastructure that supports inclusive creation.

In the creative process of non-auditory theatre, Deaf and hearing creators are often required to step beyond the paths they are most familiar with, both in their creative methodologies and in their everyday ways of thinking. This ongoing process of experimentation allows each participant to encounter their own characteristics through the presence of the “other,” while learning to embrace the uncertainty inherent in artistic creation. Such an adventure may not lead to a clearly defined destination, yet with mutual trust, it continually generates new sparks. This is precisely what makes inclusive theatre so compelling: within the performance, the performers’ courage to cross boundaries manifests as an organic and genuine sense of presence. At times, this presence may appear awkward, hesitant, conflicted, or even charged with resistance or aversion; at other moments, it may be disarmingly joyful. Audiences are able to perceive the performers’ “presence”: a quality of being fully in the moment, real and attentive, while co-existing with one another. This shared state produces an aesthetic experience that is both intimate and collective. It is through the creators’ sustained efforts, experiments, and willingness to take risks that the stage becomes capable of holding a greater multiplicity of voices and creative expressions. This practice is not only a form of relational aesthetics, but also a narrative mode with the potential to generate social transformation. It is here that the magic of theatre emerges, when different voices are seen and heard, new energies are born in every encounter.