LAMENT OF THE WANDERING HEAD to Play Voila! Festival London

Taiwan's Sun Son Theatre is presenting Lament of the Wandering Head, described as one of its most representative experimental works in recent years and an example of the company's approach of bringing acting, music and movement together in one performer. The piece draws on Southeast Asian folklore about the 'flying head,' a ghost story told across China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Malaysia. The image of a head torn from its body becomes a way to speak about the collective trauma and personal uncertainty of Chinese migrant communities since the twentieth century, pulled between nation, ancestry and land.

Combining theatre, live music, movement and chanting, the work follows women who drift from place to place like ghosts, lingering in the darkness of history. It tells its story by the flickering light between the real and the imagined. The work will be performed at Voila! Festival in London, from 12 to 14 November 2026.

'My body is a headless train. My body is a legless boat. How can I find my way, east or west?'

The play tells of a trait that appears only in women, the ability to 'fly' the head. Their descendants spread out and settle in different countries and cities. A Malaysian Chinese woman studying and living in Taiwan sets out to trace this history of movement. Like other little-known communities, the Wandering Head clan become myth, then ghost story, and finally history and present-day reality.

Since its premiere in 2025, Lament of the Wandering Head has been nominated for the Taishin Arts Award and for the Independent Spirit Award at the 2nd Taipei Theatre Awards. This summer it played at Durham Fringe Festival, where Fringe Review called it 'A unique, inventive and important piece of work,' 'A genuine and excellent theatrical spectacle here with such diversity, that spectacle is worth seeing on its own.' With a minimal stage, performers of great physical energy, non-linear poetic language and live music that carries the story, the work is both a ritual to call back the ghosts of colonialism and a moving question about identity politics today.

Sun Son Theatre was founded 27 years ago and has a distinctive style of musical physical theatre, in which each performer acts, plays music and dances as one. Alongside rich visual imagery, the performers play live on Taiwanese gongs, drums and cymbals, together with Southeast Asian gongs and flutes. The text moves between Penang Hokkien and Mandarin. Audiences are invited to connect with experiences shared around the world, such as migration and colonialism, and to think again about what identity and belonging mean.

Lament of the Wandering Head takes the audience on a journey home to Southeast Asia through a woman's eyes, writing a poem of memory and a song of longing on stage. It speaks gently and honestly of life far from home, and of identity in past and present lives.

Event Details

2026 Voila! Theatre Festival

Venue: Barons Court Theatre

Showtimes:

12 Nov 2026, 7:30 pm

13 Nov 2026, 7:30 pm

14 Nov 2026, 7:30 pm