--- id: "post-39-en" title: "Karaoke: The Earlier the Memory, the Deeper It Is Imprinted in the Heart" type: "review" authors: ["Liao Jianhao"] publicationDate: "Fri Aug 21 2026 17:14:40 GMT+0800 (Hong Kong Standard Time)" publisher: "Taipei Fringe Festival" originalUrl: "https://tpac.org.taipei/en/festival-fringe/2026/comment-writer/1636" tags: [] relatedEvents: ["Karaoke"] liveUrl: "https://www.rooftopproductions.hk/en/review/karaoke-tff-1636" --- # Karaoke: The Earlier the Memory, the Deeper It Is Imprinted in the Heart **Post Details:** - **Type:** review - **Author(s):** Liao Jianhao - **Published:** 21 Aug 2026 - **Publisher:** Taipei Fringe Festival - **Original Source:** [Link](https://tpac.org.taipei/en/festival-fringe/2026/comment-writer/1636) - **Related Events:** Karaoke --- ## Content Michelle Li takes the Cantopop golden hits and karaoke culture of the 1980s and 90s as her entry point, utilizing a documentary theater format to weave a narrative where three threads advance in parallel: family history, the rise and fall of Hong Kong music, and the broader plight of Hong Kong. The production utilizes archives such as childhood photos, celebratory performance footage, Hong Kong SAR passports, and official speeches, interspersing them with live singing and audience interaction to trace her personal life history from childhood to her current age of forty. Radiating outward from intimate private experiences to the macro-level shifts in Hong Kong and international politics, all three narrative axes intertwine to map a trajectory moving from prosperity to decline, and from intimacy to alienation. Through the evolution of pop culture, the play transforms family experiences and the destiny of an era into concrete metaphors with a well-paced rhythm that avoids becoming preachy, revealing the gap between the beautiful future promised by official rhetoric and the reality of a fading era. I particularly loved *Karaoke*'s design of transforming the real-time document projector into an "airport passport scanner." Unlike most documentary theater pieces that merely treat projection as a neutral tool for displaying archives, this device—carrying strong connotations of international relations and politics—forges a highly organic relationship between form and text. It ties perfectly into the script’s discussions of dual passports during the British colonial era, the political shifts before and after the handover, and the transnational migration experience of her father applying for a US green card for the family. While a passport is indeed an official credential of identity approved by the state system, the true makeup of an individual's life is far from something a birth certificate or ID number can fully capture; rather, it consists much more of those photos, videos, and songs that hold no official, legal validity. Furthermore, if the scanner itself inherently possesses the characteristic of "inspection," then on an official dimension, formal documents examine Hong Kong's positioning amidst shifting regimes and international relations. Meanwhile, on an individual dimension, unofficial archives subtly transform the medium into an inspection of life memories. This is especially poignant when linked to the narrative in the latter part of the play about her father suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. A hallmark of this medical cognitive decline is that the earlier the memory, the more deeply it is carved into the patient's heart. This provides a solid anchor for the production’s choice of karaoke—an inherently highly nostalgic medium—as its starting point. At the same time, the inspecting nature of the device's form also served to remind me to a certain extent: behind nostalgic memories, there may exist elements that have been retrospectively constructed or romanticized. Finally, I appreciate a contrast that the piece allowed me to explore: Hong Kong emigrants, spurred by the decline of the times, migrate *"towards a prosperous land of the future"*; yet, individual memory and emotion, amidst the physical aging of the body, naturally look back *"towards the dawn of a golden age in the past."* This led me to ponder: will these two opposing forces ultimately converge on the unavoidable, universal themes of aging and forgetting? *Originally published in: Taipei Fringe Festival. We create a mirrored version of reviews and articles about our shows for archival purposes, so that we can retain a version if the original disappears. We always link to the original publisher and credit the author. However, if you are the owner of this material and you would like us to remove it, please get in touch.*