ABSTRACT:
Every year, the birthday celebrations for the ghost deity Niang Ma in Chiayi, Taiwan, transform the village into a cacophony of sound, light, and performance. Hundreds of simultaneous puppet shows, opera performances, and pole dances are staged as gifts to the goddess, offerings of thanks from supplicants whose prayers she has answered. And yet, for all this spectacle, something is missing: an audience. Or at least, a visible one. This article explores how Niang Ma’s ‘Peace Theatre’ unsettles assumptions about theatre spectatorship by centring an invisible, divine audience. It considers what it means to perform for an omnipresent but unseen spectator, where human audiences are not excluded but are ultimately unnecessary. In doing so, it argues that these religious performances, far from being simple acts of devotion, are also acts of cultural definition, shaping and affirming Taiwan’s distinct identity. Through the interplay of visibility and invisibility, presence and absence, the theatre of Niang Ma’s birthday forces a reconsideration of what an audience is and who, or what, performance is really for.

KEYWORDS:
Taiwan Folk Religion | religious performance | theatre audience | invisibility