Shih Ju-fang is a professional playwright, professor at NTU College of Performing Arts, and has extensive experience with new adaptations of Chinese opera. She is deeply interested in history, and excels at combining contrasting forms of creativity and profound cultural meaning in the same performance. She wrote the time travel drama Sunlight After Snowfall for the Guo Guang Opera Company, and was heralded as “the greatest interpreter of contemporary Taiwanese opera” by literary critic David Der-wei Wang.
Her works span a wide range of genres, such as opera, stage drama, musicals, interactive theatre, and environment theatre. They include works for Beijing opera, like Sunlight After Snowfall and Farewell to a Melon; Taiwanese opera works like I See You Mr. Fox, Sparrow’s Song, Sufferings of Princess Chang Ping, Somewhere for True Love, Who Is My Bride, Frozen Peony III; Kunqu works Wild Red and Dream Catcher; works for Henan opera such as Wings of Horses, The Sorceress Bride, and Women Are Renamed; musical dramas such as Sayonara 1945, A Tribute to Li Shutong, Battle of Tamsui, and Daylight; musical theatre works such as Mackay the Trekker, and Hero of Spring – In Memory of Chiang Wei-shui; stage play Crystal Boys; and Shanghai Yue Opera House’s Yue Opera At the Red Mansion. In recent years, Shih has collaborated with modern theatre troupes to experiment with puppetry theatre in productions like Time Slipping Through Fingers; Metamorphosis: Of Tiger and Man; Whale Island; Behind the Hidden Painting. She also worked with director Lee Xiao-pin on the projects Sunlight After Snowfall (2007); Me, Myself, and I (2019), both of which include historical figures and press the limits of drama and narrative. In 2021, Shih also served as a co-exhibitor at the Taiwan Traditional Theatre Festival.
Her published works include The Collected Taiwanese Opera Works of Shih Ju-fang and Sunlight After Snow: Three Pieces by Shih Ju-fang. Her works have been included at the Taiwan International Festival of Arts, Taishin Arts Award, Golden Bell Awards, and the Golden Melody Award for Traditional Arts. In 2023, Whale Island was listed as a Co-production Project of NPAC.
