"You're pretty hot...for an Asian" - NZ Herald interviews the cast for Theatre Week

Check out Natasha Daniel and Mayen Mehta from the cast of Orientation talk about the twists and turns of dating as diaspora with director Chye-Ling Huang and Dionne Christian from The Herald.

Redefining what are our stories

Dionne Christian talks to theatremakers about their contributions to NZ Theatre Month and how the stories we tell are changing

• Weekend Herald
• 1 Sep 2018

Mayen Mehta, actor

Today marks the start of the first New Zealand Theatre Month, started by playwright Roger Hall to “celebrate and elevate” local plays and playwriting. It sees some 600 performances and 100 events staged by more than 70 organisations, including professional theatre companies, community theatre groups and schools.

‘YOU'RE PRETTY HOT — FOR AN ASIAN.’

It was a first date and drinks were going well — until Chye-Ling Huang's date uttered those six words loaded with generations of social conditioning, racist attitudes and pre-conceived ideas.

Huang, who co-founded Auckland-based Proudly Asian Theatre with comedian James Roque, admits to feeling confused.

After all, the person blurting out the backhanded compliment was herself bi-racial with Asian heritage but had just said she only ever dated white people.

“I said, ‘If you were white, I probably would have thrown my drink at you and just left,' '' Huang says.

“It would have been game over but, because they were Chinese, I was so conflicted because I've been there with this internalised racism toward your own people.

“I just felt a huge empathy toward her because I know that, as diaspora, you do grow up learning that white people are the goal, white people are the prize. I stayed to talk about what she said but, in the end, I decided I didn't have time to be anyone's learning curve.''

The timing of the experience was uncanny given Huang has written and is directing the play Orientation. It's a social satire that follows a young Chinese-Pa¯ keha¯ woman, Mei, in a brazen “sexploration” of Asian love and sexuality in contemporary New Zealand.

With an all-Asian cast, Orientation digs deep at social attitudes towards Asian people as lovers and considers what part race plays in decisions made around love and sex. Natasha Bunkall plays Mei, the young woman working through some identity issues.

“She feels that she's only ever dated white men in the past; she's working out why that is, her personal and identity issues around being biracial, so she's decided to date Asian men and see how she goes to get to a point that she's not seeing race.''

Natasha Daniel, Kiwi-Asian actress

Huang says many of us think attraction is inherently biological but she believes it comes down to socialisation too: “If you're raised to think white people are better than your own race . . . and let's not forget there are white men who fetishise Asian women. No one is born thinking like that.''

Huang and Proudly Asian Theatre's work centres around identity politics but she acknowledges its last play, Call of the Sparrows, was far removed from modern-day New Zealand. She says Orientation is “close to the bone” because it's set in the here and now and she wanted it to reflect the Auckland diaspora experience in 2018.

Ask Bunkall and fellow actor Mayen Mehta if Huang's script rings true and they'll tell you they recognise the characters and the situations they find themselves in. They're both familiar with the term “no rice, no spice” on dating websites, which indicates no one Asian or Indian should bother “swiping right”.

They're quick to add that it's only one Asian story in a region teeming with tales waiting to be told, but they're pleased Huang and PAT are challenging stereotypes and moving Asian voices into the mainstream.

‘I DON'T WANT TO BE PIGEON-HOLED.’

Playwright Albert Belz, who's written about everything from life in a village at the foot of the Urewera Ranges, a Ma¯ ori showband touring during the Vietnam War and Jack the Ripper, is reflecting on his latest play.

Called Cradle Songs, it's produced by Te Re¯ hia Theatre and will continue re-defining what we think of as “New Zealand plays”, in particular work by Ma¯ ori playwrights. Belz won the 2018 Adam Award for Best Play by a Ma¯ ori Playwright for the story, which is set in the southwest of Ireland in 1999, at a nunnery near the fictitious village of Sibeal (County Kerry). Here, two young women — one Ma¯ ori, one Australian — are on their big OE when they come face-to-face with the supernatural force of Briar Faith.

Belz says it's a horror that follows Yours Truly, his thriller about Jack the Ripper. Partly inspired by seeing the production Horror at last year's Auckland Arts Festival, he and Cradle Songs’ director Tainui Tukiwaho have taken some of the tricks and tropes they saw to create a story about a vengeful spirit seeking utu.

“Getting to explore the horror and thriller genres of this show on the stage is something I'm really looking forward to,'' says Belz. “I want to put up a damn good ghost story that is both intriguing in the real-world setting and has real moments of fear and tension for our audiences.''

The story has its genesis in a real-life tragedy. Belz was so saddened and angry when he found out about Ireland’s Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, that he wanted to write about it.

The home, run by Roman Catholic nuns, ran from 1925-61 ostensibly to care for unmarried mothers and their children. It offered anything but care. In 2012, it was revealed that up to 1000 children had, without their mothers' consent, been illegally adopted and sent to the United States and amateur historians published evidence about widespread infanticide at Bon Secours. The Irish Government responded by setting up the ongoing Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation. It's now believed at least 800 babies and toddlers died there.

“I think any sane person who's heard about this will feel angry,'' says Belz. “I think there's something very human about wanting to take

those emotions and tell a story. Although I want my story to be entertaining, I don’t want to step on anybody’s dignity when I do that. It’s about acknowledging that these things happened and starting to tell the stories.”

He says Cradle Songs asks questions about blame and responsibility and reckons it would be extremely boring and limiting if, as a Ma¯ ori playwright, he was expected to stick to the script of telling stories set in New Zealand, of New Zealand and about New Zealand.

The production itself is led by a Ma¯ ori theatre company, director and writer who are dedicated to embedding tikanga Ma¯ ori into the way they work.

“The diversity of the voices that the man [Belz] puts out there is good for New Zealand writers but also for audiences to see the breadth of some of the story-telling,” says Tukiwaho, who believes Cradle Songs will break new ground in our thriller and horror theatre.

It’s the first premiere of the year for Belz, who also debuts Astroman this year with simultaneous productions by the Melbourne Theatre Company and The Court Theatre, featuring full indigenous casts on both sides of the Tasman.

The Cradle Songs cast includes sisters Donogh and Amanda Rees, Nicol Munro, Briar Collard, Anna-Maree Thomas and newcomer Ariana Osborne. Belz says getting the tone of his story right, devising the special effects and starting rehearsals went well but the most challenging aspect was finding a young Ma¯ ori actress to play one of the lead roles.

“They were all busy. Everyone had something else on, which is a great thing because it shows there’s work out there.”

Cradle Songs is presented in association with Ko¯ anga Festival and Going West at Corban Estate Arts Centre from Tuesday, Sept 5 to Saturday, Sept 8, and in collaboration with Q Theatre from Tuesday, Sept 18 to Saturday, Sept 22. Te Pou Theatre’s Ko¯ anga Festival is a fortnight-long celebration that also marks the theatre’s move to the Corban Estate Arts Centre. As its contribution to NZ Theatre Month, Te Pou continues its focus on works in development.

“It’s definitely gotten better now, but growing up, it was… There was just nothing.” - Chye-Ling Huang on the SpinOff

“When people think about dialogue around race, they always think it’s angsty, it’s messy and yuck. Yes, it’s all those things, but it can also be joyful and funny and weird and interesting in other ways.”

- Chye-Ling Huang

Asian representation in New Zealand in the age of Crazy Rich Asians

River Lin from the Spinoff interviews Alice Canton, JJ Fong and PAT's own Chye-Ling Huang about representation and the media in Aotearoa. 

Check out the full interview here or below.

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Crazy Rich Asians has been lauded for its groundbreaking representation of Asian-Americans – but how is Asian representation looking in our own country?

“Why would you actively try and get into a space where no spaces exist for you?” says Alice Canton, an Auckland-based actress and theatre artist. “If I wasn’t creating my own opportunities, those opportunities would just not exist.”

While ‘yellowface’ has long since disappeared from Hollywood, the erasure of Asian stories from our cinema and televisions screen has been far more enduring. Often cast as bespectacled nerds or the exotic “other”, there has been little respite from the dominant narrative of whiteness as the norm, with Asian faces the rare exception – even when the character is explicitly written as Asian.

A recent example of this was the whitewashing controversy surrounding the movie version of the anime series Ghost in the Shell. Screenwriter Max Landis defended the casting of Scarlett Johansson as Major Kusanagi, arguing that there were no “A-list female Asian celebrities” whose star power could translate into high box office numbers.

This is reflected in UCLA’s 2018 diversity report, which found that minorities made up 13.9% of lead film roles in the 2015-16 season, compared to its peak of 16.7% in 2013.

The report also found that, of the scripted TV shows debuting in 2017-18 across all platforms, only 28% of its leads were minorities, and 24% debuted with a largely minority cast.

That isn’t to say things haven’t improved for Asian representation in recent years, with films and shows such as Killing Eve, Fresh off the Boat, Master of None, Kim’s Convenience, The Big Sick and, most recently, Crazy Rich Asians and Netflix cult hit To All the Boys I Loved Before all gaining both critical and commercial success.

Crazy Rich Asians, in particular, is a rare show of force for Asian-American visibility on screen – not only due to its strong US box office (it opens here in New Zealand on Thursday), but also as the first film since The Joy Luck Club in 1993 to feature an Asian-majority cast. The film, about an Asian-American woman meeting her boyfriend’s wealthy Singapore family for the first time, far from perfectly represents the Asian experience (its erasure of South Asian faces has been noted elsewhere), but it does pave a way forward for more nuanced Asian-American representations on screen. It also proves that minority-led films can translate into success at the box office.

The issue of systematic erasure of East Asian faces and stories within the film and television industry hasn’t just rampant in Hollywood but at home, too.

According to New Zealand’s 2013 census, 11.8% of the population identified themselves as Asian. On screen, however, the numbers tell a different story.

Half-Chinese and half-white, Alice Canton often struggled with coming to terms with her cultural identity growing up in the lily-whiteness of the South Island (she was born on the West Coast and grew up in Canterbury).

While her Hakka mother was obsessed with The Beatles and cricket, Canton’s idols growing up were local stars like Shortland Street‘s formidable Dr Grace Kwan, played by Lynette Forday.

“My sisters and I were obsessed with her as kids because she had danced with the Royal Ballet. I grew up idolising her, right through high school to my early 20s, where I was sure I would be cast as her Eurasian bastard daughter.

“She was the only Asian New Zealander on my screen. Her and Jane Yee, who I also used to fangirl over. When I was in sixth form I wrote her an email, which was a big deal because no one emailed back then, telling her I’d written about her in my school speech.”

Opportunities for people of colour have continued to be in short supply, Canton says – the roles reduced to cardboard cut-outs like that of the bumbling sidekick or the ferocious ‘dragon lady’ popularised by the first Asian-American film star, Anna May Wong, in the 1930s.

JJ Fong, who plays Filipina nurse Ruby Flores on Shortland Street, says growing up with Asian media only helped to heighten her sense of difference from an early age.

“It made me think more deeply [about race] because I was in the thick of it and experiencing it, whether that was at auditions using Asian accents or just growing up as a Chinese-Kiwi among a lot of white kids who made fun of my eyes.

“I wasn’t observing the issue – I was the issue.”

Unlike Canton and Fong, the first time Proudly Asian Theatre co-founder Chye-Ling Huang saw an East Asian face and story reflected on screen was Disney’s animated feature film Mulan (1998).

“[Fa Mulan was] really revolutionary when I first saw her as a kid. I was, like, 10 or something and it just changed my life, which is sad when you think about it. It was a cartoon, but it was pretty much the only thing I saw on screen.”

It was years later, in 2009, when Huang experienced a play featuring real Asian faces and stories: Chinese New Zealand director and playwright Renee Liang’s Lantern. The play, which follows a Chinese family struggling with identity after immigrating to New Zealand, would later become Huang’s first play to be performed under the Proudly Asian Theatre banner.

“It’s definitely gotten better now, but growing up, it was… There was just nothing.”

Canton says the problem lies in the perpetuation of damaging stereotypes on stage and screen – compounded further by an already lacking number of roles to be filled.

“When there is a character or casting for someone who is Asian – it’s always Asian, it’s never specified – sometimes, it’s the most broad-stroke, bullshit characterisations imaginable. There are such limited opportunities that when you are the only person, you have to be all those things.”

Huang says part of the problem lies in Hollywood’s whitewashing of Asian stories – and the white actors who perpetuate it by agreeing to portray them.

“There are enough white actors and enough white stories out there to inspire and motivate white people. We don’t need more white stories – we need more Asian stories, we need more brown stories. Anyone who’s looking to take those opportunities away from us has got to be extremely short-sighted to think that it doesn’t matter.”

However, Canton says the characters on screen are merely a product of what goes on behind the scenes, in the writer’s room.

“You’ve got no one to call out on it when her name is Mei-Ling and she’s a lawyer in her 20s, her parents are strict and she just wants to fit in. No one is there to do that in the writing room, behind the camera, in the crew – let alone the visible, on-screen [characters].”

Nathan Joe, an Auckland-based playwright, says the drive to write nuanced Asian characters and stories is often born out of the recognition of its absence.

“The pin-drop moment usually is when you start asking yourself, ‘Where am I on screen? Nowhere, so do I wait or do I produce something?’ You’re driven by that need and that lack.”

For Canton, the “pin-drop moment” was when she started studying drama at high school. Over the years, the theatre artist has written and starred in shows like White/Other and Orangutan, which explores feelings of difference and belonging through performance art.

As well as performing in her own shows, Alice has collaborated with others who share her desire to change narratives of race, such as the makers of Proudly Asian Theatre’s 2016 show, Call of the Sparrows. The show borrowed heavily from elements of Chinese history, values and superstitions, and featured an all-Asian cast.

Perlina Lau starred in the comedy web series Flat3 and its TVNZ spin-off Friday Night Bites. Written and directed by Roseanne Liang, Flat3 (2013-14) came about after Lau and fellow actresses Ally Xue and JJ Fong created a theatre show, before eventually finding their way to the web.

“The whole Asian thing was kind of just a bonus. We didn’t intentionally set out to do that, but at the same time, it gave us a point of difference. From the get-go, we looked different – you didn’t see many all-female casts doing comedy. It didn’t get much more ‘minority’ than that.”

Like Canton, Lau says the women didn’t “see ourselves out there or in any context”.

“We thought, ‘Let’s be a version of ourselves. Let’s appeal to people like us – all the 20-year-old Kiwis that we see, let’s put them on screen with an Asian face.'”

Indeed, part of Flat3‘s appeal is its authentic portrayal of young adults navigating grown-up life, helped by its diverse array of writers behind the scenes.

“Fair enough that you write what you know – but get diverse writers in, because they’ll be writing what they know and that’ll be diversity. It’s a conscious decision because it’s not a level playing field.”

Chye-Ling Huang and James Roque co-founded Proudly Asian Theatre as a way of levelling the playing field without relying on the strained budgets of film and television.

“We didn’t have anywhere else to go,” says Huang. “We had no path to follow; there was no one we could really attach ourselves to that could help us get that leg up in the industry. In the end, we connected with Renee Liang after we did our first show and she really helped us.

Their more recent projects, Asian Men Talk About Sex, was made after receiving funding from Loading Docs, a platform which helps producers launch short documentaries.

The documentary, which features Yoson An who is set to star in the live-action remake of Disney’s Mulan, came about as a means of self-reclamation for Asian men’s sexuality in a way that wasn’t confrontational but “celebratory and empowering” in its conversations about race.

“There’s a lack of representation in New Zealand for Asian men of any kind,” says Huang. “It’s slim pickings out there and we really wanted to make something that was tipping the scales back in Asian men’s favour.”

Her work – from the Chinese opera-inspired Call of the Sparrows to the melodrama of David Henry Hwang’s FOB – addresses the messiness and dissonance of identity politics without being confrontational.

“When people think about dialogue around race, they always think it’s angsty, it’s messy and yuck. Yes, it’s all those things, but it can also be joyful and funny and weird and interesting in other ways.”

They’re still difficult conversations to have, but the dialogue around race has improved in recent years, says JJ Fong, who co-starred with Lau in Flat3.

“It’s definitely gotten a lot better in the last five years with casting, being open to other ethnicities and seeing them in a different light, rather than ‘That’s just an Asian or Māori role.'”

However, despite her early experience with racism and what may be seen as its continuation through stereotypical casting practices, the actress isn’t quick to lay blame on the writers and producers alone.

“We can write articles about it, we can whine about it on Facebook – but the fact of the matter is, if you’re not in there doing it, creating it for yourself, then things won’t change because people won’t see it”.

“It’s about fostering and mentoring talent as well,” adds Huang. “Often people will say, ‘I just don’t know any people of colour, women writers or Asian writers,’ but you have the responsibility as a person in a position of power to turn the tide. It’s not going to happen on its own and the work will be better for it.”

"At this point, there are no excuses." - Podcast with Saraid De Silva and Chye-Ling Huang

"Who the F*** knows how to get it right?"

Q Theatre brings you a podcast series called Meet the Makers - where interviewers get inside the minds of the Matchbox creatives for 2018. Playwrights, actors and directors get into the gnarly questions about what drives their work.

Have a listen here to Chye-Ling Huang, director and writer of Orientation, chatting to Saraid De Silva about sex, love, and relationships, and how they intrinsically intersect with race and identity.

Photo: Nahyeon Lee

"Nobody is the wokefied paragon of sex and race and dating. So, I hope that people don't feel intimidated by the work, because they'll see very clearly and very quickly that the people of colour are super flawed in this discussion as well."

Catch Orientation from September 5th at Q Loft! Tickets available here. 

Tickets are LIVE for Orientation!

PAT's steamy new show ORIENTATION is on sale NOW!

A hot mess where love and race clash in Aotearoa, Chye-Ling Huang's Adam Award shortlisted play will premiere at Q Loft this September.  

Huang says, "I wanted to explore how sexualized and desexualised tropes of Asian people in western cultures impacts on sex, love and dating. It's an irreverent way of diving into the confronting questions I often encounter in my own dating experience."

Check out the first trailer below!

Tickets here: http://www.qtheatre.co.nz/orientation

What do Jackie Chan, Steven Yuen, and Raybon Kan have in common? They're all on Mei's list of eligible men to tap, gap, or tie down. We're stripping Asianess naked as Chinese-Kiwi Mei begins her quest to root herself back to her roots.

Workshops kick off for Orientation

Creating worlds is one way Jahra 'Rager' Wasasala describes her movement practice, and PAT were lucky enough to work with her to get a taste of what our world looks like for Orientation, our latest show.

Our central question for our Asian cast - how do we perform whiteness? What is whiteness? How does living as an Asian person in a western country change you, your voice, your body, your outlook? 

Chye-Ling Huang and Jahra Wasasala.

Catch Orientation from September 5th at Q Loft. 

http://www.qtheatre.co.nz/orientation