Taipei: VMTheatre Company co-founder and director Tseng Hui-cheng has expressed immense pride in the success of his musical "Don't Cry, Dancing Girls" after its presentations in New York, marking a bold step towards a Broadway debut. The musical, which first premiered in Kaohsiung in January 2023, saw two sold-out tours in Taiwan before staging four Off-Broadway shows at Theatre Row in New York from January 23 to 25.
According to Focus Taiwan, Tseng shared during a news conference in Taipei that the Off-Broadway shows aimed to attract playwrights, composers, and songwriters for a potential Broadway adaptation. The musical delves into the story of three siblings reconciling with their deceased father through a "soul guiding ritual" at funerals, a scene that resonated emotionally with local producers and playwrights in New York.
Performed in Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien, with an English-speaking narrator, the musical has been well-received by audiences. Tseng announced plans to collaborate with Tony Award-winning Broadway producer Ken Dingledine to establish a company for creating an English-language production. He emphasized the importance of finding the right partners to effectively convey the story to Broadway audiences.
The process of developing a commercially viable Broadway production of "Don't Cry, Dancing Girls" is expected to take three to eight years. To bring authenticity to the musical, Tseng, along with playwright Zhan Jie and composer Kan Ho-hsiang, engaged with soul guiding ritual performers, who narrate stories about life and values through song and dance before funerals. Several script-reading sessions were conducted from 2021 until the musical's premiere in 2023.
Tseng recounted an encounter with an American playwright who was deeply moved by the script and expressed her admiration for the work of Zhan, a Golden Bell Award-winning screenwriter. While the music by Kan is anticipated to remain largely unchanged, VMTheatre Company has also announced plans for future productions, including a new show in May, a 10th anniversary version of "Reed Unbroken" in November, and a return of "Don't Cry, Dancing Girls" in mid-2026.