A Mermaid Duet A Deaf performer and an Amis Indigenous performer retell the Little Mermaid, navigating loss of voice and shifting identities together. A Mermaid Duet brings together a Deaf performer and an Amis Indigenous performer to reinterpret The Little Mermaid through their own experiences of language, silence, and identity. In the fairy tale, the mermaid gives up her voice; in real life, the Deaf performer has spent years negotiating a hearing world built on sound, while the Amis performer’s move from her tribal community to the city led to the slow loss of her mother tongue. Their stories resonate with the mermaid’s “loss of voice,” forming the emotional core of the work.
The piece places Andersen’s tale alongside the Amis “Island of Women” myth, allowing the two performers to mirror one another between ocean and land, myth and memory. Through song, gesture-based movement, light, image, and sound vibration, they give form to experiences of displacement and return. Audiences enter a sensory world where spoken language recedes and the body becomes the primary narrator revealing cultural silence, forgotten histories, and a shared space of inclusive presence shaped by Taiwan’s diverse cultural landscape.