小又短命：1990年代小劇場與咖啡空間

The paper tries to enact a close reading of the little theatre at small coffee shops in an attempt to derive a differentiation process upon the classical theatre history reading, the use of space and the activities of artists. It is divided into two main parts. The first part foregrounds how coffee shops function as a small business, by analyzing three mutual characteristics of small, short-lived, and face-to-face consumption, to demonstrate that short-term gathering and continuous dialogue are the core of this relationship. The second part focuses on the performance cases at coffee shops of the 1990s, in order to show how the coffee shops inherits the classical discourse of the Little Theatre as a political movement or a social taboo breaker in the 1980s. At the same time, it also set on a trajectory for the 21st century performing towards a more fundamental issues such as gathering, participation, community, or city. As a result, although seemingly failed, the characteristics of small, short-lived offer opportunities for little theatres to escape the dependence on the art production system, and to maintain the cafe and small theater in Taiwan's history continued to emerge dialogues in a spirit of disobedience.