Stay Connected...?

I was walking down the road to the beach. The bus that I used to take to go to my previous job went roaring pass me downhill like a pouncing lion. On the side of the bus there was a huge tech related advertisement saying, "stay out of the office not out of the loop" (or something along that line). It is an ad for some cloud service office suite. For the readers who might not know, cloud service is a service that keeps your "electronic stuff" online so you can access them anywhere from any computer. Yup the days of carrying memory sticks, optical discs or floppy disks are well and truly over. This is one of the greatest technological trends developed in the recent years.

As our technology advances the convenience brought by it has made our lives so much easier. We have got used to everything available at our fingertips at our command. We are like a bunch of high-level sages who can command anything at will. The only difference is that instead of using a tome, we use our computer. Also the days of waiting for the alchemy pot to conjure the tonic we need is over. Everything is loaded (almost) instantly and waiting for more than two seconds for a screen to load is already too much. I am from a spoiled instant noodle generation who at one stage thought that food that takes time to make is "inefficient". I love what we have now and think that there is no better time to live in than the present. However seeing that bus ad suddenly made me think do I really want to stay connected with the office all the time? The idea itself is not quite that appealing.

As an actor and writer I do need to stay connected because job opportunities come and go like a snap of fingers. Your missed out opportunities could be other people's big breaks. That is part of the reason I joined the smartphone movement a few years ago. I just need to be “out there” all the time. I spun a cobweb of online profiles in the cyberspace so that all suspecting and unsuspecting jobs could hopefully come into my way. That, what I believe, is what I need to do as an independent artist. However if I work in an office environment do I want that kind of connectivity? I have always insisted to have my work life separated from my personal life. When I am at work I am there to get things done. However the moment I left the office I would want nothing to do with work. Having me connected to work or people calling me about work after office hours are just unacceptable. I did have occasions that I brought work home but most of the time was just an excuse to go home. For me if I want to bring work home it has to be something I have the passion for - and this would be acting and writing related. I am a firm believer of if it is an office job there is a reason for it to have "an office". Staying connected outside the office, as enticing as it sounds is nothing too appealing for me.

One of the things that sometimes puzzled me was that despite having better technology helping us doing our jobs as compared to my parents' generation we ended up spending more time working than appreciating life. I remember when my parents came home from work they were about us (that is a second job for them already I reckon) but nowadays we are about "getting this proposal done" or "waiting for a business call" at home. No doubt the nature of work itself has changed across generations but is it changing for the better? This is a question I sometimes have.

As a creative person trying to strike out a career in the creative industry it is not an easy thing, and I was well aware of what I was getting myself into. At some point I would need to get back into an office job so I could pay my bills unless a truly creative job came along and rescue me from the drowning ocean of job seekers. If that happens I might need to compromise and stay connected with those jobs because as an actor and writer I am maintaining my brand and my own business. However until that happens I would still insist that I am not staying connected to an office 24/7 as that bus ad suggested but instead trying to stay connected to the bigger world that I am living in.

A Clockwork Orange - The Play

I have never been a big fan of the physical theatre. Neither do I like overly stylised theatrical pieces. However there is something about this stage adaptation of "A Clockwork Orange" that attracts me. Is it because of the brilliant book written by Anthony Burgess that investigates whether one’s freewill should be stripped because of who he is? Or is it because of Stanley Kubrick remarkable film adaptation that still resonates in my head? I don't know. But what I do know is that by instinct this stage adaptation of this brilliant book would be a night of interesting theatrical experience.

This is a production directly from UK after a sold out season in its birthplace. As I was eagerly waiting for the show to start, I was bombarded with a mixed of rocking Beethoven, something that would not fail to remind you that you are going to see "A Clockwork Orange". The show started with the cast slowly descending the stairs onto the stage (this staging might differ according to the theatre the show is being performed). The movement was well...very stylised. That immediately rang an alarm for me. But then this is "A Clockwork Orange" you got to give it some credits right? As the cast delivered the first line, you know the director had got it right. The roughness in speech delivery contradicted sharply and directly with the stylised movements of the body and immediately created a conflicting world that "A Clockwork Orange" resides in. That was sheer brilliance to me.

In the next hour and a half I was completely absorbed into the world this production has created. The stage was simple and during the progressed of the show trashed (and I am not a big fan of trashing the stage either). But it never took you away from where you were. The cast constantly delivered clusters of facial and muscle twisting performances that strangely fit into this world perfectly. Violence and fights were highly choreographed and usually accompanied with rock tunes. So you feel the violence in action but you don’t see it right in your face. A lot of things that I usually hated to see in a standard theatrical production I didn't mind here at all. In fact I was appreciating the production went to the distance to create this stylishly violent imaginative world.

The show was delivered by an all male cast, which means that a few small female parts were “covered” by some male cast members. Usually it would feel weird when guys covering female roles but then at this point I did not mind it anymore. The good thing is that they did not try to put on a high pitch voice for those roles, which for me would be extremely tacky and lack of depth. In fact in certain scenes, I did think that the use of an all male cast had blurred the line of sexuality creatively, which added another interesting layer to the production as the sexuality of the characters was not an issue no matter how the world thinks about them.

Similar to the book or maybe to an extent the film, this stage adaptation of "A Clockwork Orange" would not be everybody's cup of tea. If you go in expecting a standard stage show you could be disappointed (and there were some people around me yawning and shaking their hands during the show). However if you could appreciate what this stage adaptation is trying to achieve you would appreciate the immense effort put together by everyone in this production. As I said earlier, "A Clockwork Orange" has all the elements that I normally would not like in the theatre. However in this production everything they did physically, vocally and stylistically made sense. I think that is why I was able to appreciate it as it is. However do avoid trying comparing this stage adaptation with Kubrick's film because this would be totally unfair to both productions. Also it could create obstacles for you to appreciate this stage version as it is.

"A Clockwork Orange" will be going Perth, Canberra and Brisbane after they completed their Sydney run on 5 May. So if you are in for a night of challenging but brilliant theatre grab a ticket while you can.

The Killing Fields

When the Chinese invented gunpowder in the 7^th century and used it for firework little would they know that their little invention for entertainment would become one of the biggest killers in the modern world.

Today, another bomb went off in Boston with more innocent lives claimed because of certain people’s selfish agenda. At the time of writing it is still unknown who the culprit was and what were the motivations behind the attack. Meanwhile during the same period, more bombs went off in other parts of the world, people got shot and there were continued warfare and disputes across the globe.

The human race pride itself as the most intelligent species that walks the earth but then at the same time it exhibits the most deadly and stupid behaviours across its entire history. The two world wars, the territorial disputes, the religious disputes, the family disputes etc. etc. claimed lives after lives and it just seems that this self-proclaimed most intelligent species had learnt nothing out of any of these tragedies.

For most species, they kill for food for survival. For the human race, sometimes they killed because they don’t like someone or disagree with some other people’s view. Without resolving to generalisation, and this is most certainly what I did not intend to was that, sometimes it amazed me that some people could avoid killing certain animals because of their beliefs but then at the same time find it ok to kill other fellow human beings also because of the same beliefs. Time and time again, we were horrified by these actions but then time and time again these horrible events made headlines in our newspapers and news programs.

Most of us have studied history. In the past I talked about that the purpose of studying history is a way to understand the past and hopefully learn from it to avoid repeating the same mistakes. As intelligent as the human race is, it seems that this purpose of studying history is just some thin air ideology that has a reflective value but with no reflective purpose.

Maybe I should blame the Chinese for inventing gunpowder (and this is not racist because I am Chinese) in the 7^th century but then gunpowder at that time was invented for purely entertainment purpose. It was for something that we use for celebrations of events. Sometimes I found it very ironic that something that is invented for celebration is at the same time being used for mass murdering. And to be more ironic, sometimes celebrations came after mass murdering. And for the Chinese, they paid their price when they fell victim to their own invention when their enemies used it against them later in hisotry. At this point I am quite confused about why do we invent new things such as gunpowder – to improve our lives or to wipe ourselves off from the surface of the planet?

If God did create mankind, did he intend to have mankind to extinct itself without any Godly intervention? Sometimes I think if everyone needs to be “reviewed” before they could go to heaven, the entrance to the Pearly Gate would be like a custom area during the busy holidays whenever a bomb goes off. Only that you might never predict when these periods are (or maybe God can, he is God after all).

I never stopped being disappointed by events like the recent Boston bombing. Why would someone want to put a view forward by killing other people? It just doesn’t make sense to me. The thing is, you kill off opposite views, then opposite views want to kill off their own opposite views and this goes on and on. When Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, this was one of the themes – when does retaliation stop? When would mankind learn? Or to be more precise, would mankind ever learn?

With the intelligence we were bestowed over other species in the world, mankind has not been kind to itself or the environment around it. Different sectors always find an excuse to exercise their rights to purge those who are “impure” or “different” in their eyes. But the basic question is – why would these people think that it is their right to kill when the gift of life itself is not a power bestowed to them to begin with? This is a question I think I would never find an answer to as long as people continue to think for themselves and nobody else. I am sad today and I think rightly so. I might be pessimistic about this, but I do have a feeling that eventually it would not be climate change that extinct the human race but the human race eradicate itself because of senseless killing that were justified by senseless motivations. 

An Iron Heart for an Iron Lady?

Margaret Thatcher, the ex-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom passed away last week. This formally marked an end to the colourful international political scene in the 1980s. Without a doubt her political career is filled with controversies. As the only female Prime Minister in UK's history, she made quite a number of marks in the history of this country - cracking down the power of the unions, the Falkland Wars and the return of Hong Kong to China when the 150 years lease was due.

Being a politician is not an easy job in a country like UK. Being a female leader in an all man's land is even harder. What Margaret Thatcher accomplished is something that I think her opponents would never understand in their lives. UK politics is brutal. It is more than just yelling at each other about trivial matters and procrastinating important things as we saw in Australia. When I was in high school studying history, I remembered that if you want to learn true politics and statesmanship, the British are the ones to learn from.

I always have respect for Margaret Thatcher. I know this statement might push a lot of people's button. But being brought up in a unique Hong Kong culture that would probably not be seen again, I do have a different view about the Thatcher era. I still could not forget that she led the government that gave Hong Kong back to China. But then I do not think, and still believe so, that there was a choice. I still resent the fact that I was suddenly classified as a second class British national with my passport changed from British to British Nationals (Overseas), which officially stripped me of the right to live in UK. I felt I was left on my own device to look for an identity.

However that said, I am a person who was brought up in a unique Hong Kong culture that if you want a future, you would have to fight for it. I was taught never to take things for granted because no government or entity has ultimate responsibility for you (which was proved to be correct with how the returning of Hong Kong to China was handled). Hong Kong is never a welfare state. In the Hong Kong I grew up with, if you stop working, you stop eating. Now some people might think this is cruel, but this is just the world we live in no matter what social system we are painting our society with. For me while I could understand that the workers should be taken care of, demands have to be within a reasonable framework. I have a lot of respect for the unions, especially those representing artists and performers, but that does not mean I agree to all actions for each and every single union. In Margaret Thatcher's case I believe she must have her own reason to act the way she did. Whether it is appropriate to the minds of all people, all I can say is you can never please everyone. So you just need to act what you think is the best for your position.

I am sure Margaret Thatcher had made quite a number of enemies along the way and during her career. However even the greatest man on earth would have enemies - just remember how Abraham Lincoln and Ghandi died. For me no matter how much you dislike Margaret Thatcher celebrating her death is extremely bad taste. As a person who recently lost a family member and had the first hand experience of how much it hurts when people comment on this matter in a completely unempathetic manner, I personally do not agree with these so-called "Ding Dong!" Celebrators. I think they are mean, unkind and disrespectful. In the Chinese culture, we have a saying about "If you don't want to be on the receiving end of something, don't be on the giving end yourself". So I would like these people who popped their champagnes and rally for BBC Radio to broadcast the "Ding Dong!" song to think about whether they want the same to happen to them when their loved ones died. You can always justify your actions as that is an innate ability of the human species, but this is a conscience question - something reaching far deeper than even ethics.

Margaret Thatcher's life will continue to be scrutinized in history classes. However I do think at this point no matter one loves her or hates her because of her policies, she deserved to be respected as a fellow human being.

The Multicultural Logies

Another year of Logies is done and dusted. For readers outside Australia, this is the Australian TV award held by a local TV magazine. The Logies is long being known as a popularity award instead of a professional award. However, among all the awards, there were a few peers nominated and voted professional awards. I personally did not pay much attention to the Logies in a way that because it is about popularity and as we all know, sometimes popularity does not equate to professional standards.

Having said that, I still pay attention to the professional awards (named as Outstanding Silver Logies) every year.  A few years ago an SBS production called “East West 101” was recognised in this category. For me this was a huge step forward as it was a show that reflects multiculturalism in Australia with the lead being a Muslim cop and other members of the team being Asian and Italian. The show displayed a huge array of cultural lives in modern Sydney although there were still parts that were quite culturally stereotypical, e.g. what Asian migrants do for work in one of the episode. The episode I was in I was again a Chinese restaurant owner. However, at least non-Anglo characters are no longer in the background and get to show what they could do, which is a good progress.

Moving forward a few years, this year the Logies was a great night for Indigenous Australia, as the outstanding ABC drama “Redfern Now” was voted the Most Outstanding Drama Series, Debra Mail won the Most Outstanding Actress Award for her portrayal of the Aboriginal activist Bonita Mabo, and Shari Sebbens won the Most Outstanding New Talent (the Graham Kennedy Award) for her work in Redfern Now. These were all great news as this shows that the hard work of these people were being properly recognised. A phenomenal night for Indigenous Australia, as Shari Sebbens rightly put it.

Now the whole Logies fanfare is over, what’s next?  This is the question I have in my head. Both “East West 101” and “Redfern Now” showcased the talents of ethnic actors to not just the Australian audience but also to the Australian entertainment industry stakeholders. But how much of this were being taken in by them, that is something yet to be seen. I don’t want to adopt an accusational approach when it comes to diversity casting, but I do think that it is really time to move forward in terms of casting for productions in commercial network. It is all great to recognise “East West 101” and “Redfern Now” at the Logies, but multicultural productions, as we saw in the past few years, were still confined within the parameters of SBS and ABC. This includes productions such as “The Slap” and “The Straits”. For commercial channels, a similar approach is yet to be seen. And when it happens, ethnic characters are quite separated from the rest of the cast in terms of story line as if it is hard to mix them with the rest of the world. Debra Mailman once made a similar comment in her interview with the Monthly magazine about her role in Offspring. The interesting part is that for reality TV, multiculturalism is displayed and although sometimes quite unjustly (see my article on My (Ethnic) Kitchen Rules), it reflects that non-Anglo competitors are just your normal daily Australians. So I sometimes do wonder, how come when it comes to scripted drama, the same cannot be applied? Some people claimed that it is because there is a lack of ethnic writers who can write ethnic stories but then if ethnic characters are just your normal daily Australians as shown on reality TV, how different is it to write them as just normal characters? That is another question I have. I remember, when Debra Mailman was cast in “The Secret Life of Us” she was not cast for her ethnicity but as a character. There was no presumption about what ethnicity that character was. The role was not written as “Indigenous Australian in her twenties” in the character brief. This was similar when Sandra Oh was cast in “Grey’s Anatomy” – the character did not have a last name but was just written as Christina. The last name Yang was added after Sandra was cast for the character. I think this is what I would like to see in the future when it comes to casting for scripted dramas in Australia. We need to get out of the framework of “I am writing this character, and this character’s ethnicity is blah” but instead “I am writing this character”, period.

That said I am still pretty excited about “Redfern Now”, Debra Mailman and Shari Sebben’s wins in this year’s Logies. I look forward to seeing that in the future Logies, we see more of these outstanding non-Anglo actors spreading across productions in the Australian media and that they are no longer being segregated as “ethnic characters” but “characters”.

Racism, Australia and the Media

I always feel blessed that I was brought up in Hong Kong. I was lucky to have received an education that emphasised on open mindedness from a great school. I still judge like other people for judging is a hobby of the human race. But then I was taught to think critically before we judge. I was bestowed with the ability to appreciate differences, which I think was quite unusual for someone who grew up in a more or less mono-cultural society.

I have always been fascinated by things from different cultures – I grew up watching Japanese anime, American shows and movies (not so much British shows though, which is weird considering Hong Kong was a British colony), understanding European cinemas because of my French studies, celebrating two new years every year and the list goes on. Looking back it was a blessed nurturing I received.

Fast forward to the present, I am now living in one of the greatest cities on the planet – Sydney. Sydney is great as beaches are so much more accessible (and so much less polluted as compared to Hong Kong), great weather but minus most of the natural disasters, huge variety of cuisines on offer and a seemingly multicultural society. I am very proud to be a modern Australian and a modern Sydneysider at the same time.

However, recent events on the news about racial abuse on public transport did alarm me quite a bit. There is no denying that racial issues exist in Australia and in Sydney. I personally had been yelled at before at a bus stop. But then does that mean racism is serious in Sydney? Personally I think racism is caused by the lack of understanding of other cultures. We do not understand them and thus we judge them and put them on trial without jury. For me Australia is not particularly racist, as I believe that all races are racist and every one of us, to a certain extent is racist. I still remember how shocked I was when a Hong Kong Indian friend told me how Hong Kong Chinese treated her when she was living in Hong Kong. I never knew that racism exists in Hong Kong but voila there it is – a live victim standing right before my eyes.

The unfortunate thing about racism in Australia is that it had some really bad press in the past. Also, as with most things, the racist minorities are usually the most vocal. So when these people rose up from hell and breathe fire over the issue, the media immediately picked that up and have a full-blown coverage about it.  I am not saying the media should not be covering such issues as I do think that it is the media’s responsibility to expose anti-social behaviours and racism is one of them; but what I am questioning is how the media, not just the Australian media, but the media industry as a whole handled racial issues in Australia. For me I am lucky to be able to read in a few different languages so I got to read reports on racial issues in Australia from different countries’ perspectives when things happened. What I feel sometimes is that the media crave for racism stories in Australia and when they did happen they became cold drinks on a hot and dry summer day for them. However, if they are responsible media, did they actually further investigate what happened? Did they attempt to find out what were the underlying causes? Have they discussed or raised questions about what could be done to avoid or reduce that in the future? Those are my questions. Reporting for the sake of rating and readership does not help the society to improve as a whole. Further I would like to challenge the international media that condemned Australia as a racist country to look carefully at them, are they not from a racist country themselves? If not, are they qualified to cast the first stone?

Of course I personally think that the Australian Government and Australian media should play a huge part to improve the situation. I still could not get over the fact that John Howard, the ex-Prime Minister, who came from a well off and socially advantaged Anglo-Saxon family once said that there is no racism in Australia.  This outright denial would not help anyone. I have been promoting diversity casting on Australian screen and stage for a while and one of the main reasons is not just to provide more job opportunities for non-Anglo actors, but also to show the general audience that the modern Australian society is indeed a multi-cultural society. Through a correct portrayal of ethnicity on stage and on screen, we can gradually improve people’s understanding of the society they are living in. And by this of course, I am not talking about Chinese actors continue to be kitchen hands, Japanese actors continue to be Bondi Beach tourists, Indian actors continue to be convenient store keepers, Lebanese actors continue to be terrorists, and so forth so on. As for the governing bodies in Australia, tackling racial issues has no space for lip services. Certainly a Chinese New Year parade might let people know it is Chinese New Year, but then at the same time, what do people learn further about Chinese New Year or the Chinese culture as a whole? A shallow scraping of cultural planktons does not help us understand the cultural ocean itself. Further, overly zealous positive discrimination against your own cultural traditions to accommodate other cultures’ “feelings” and “views” about your culture is anything but helpful.

Things are improving in Australia everyday that is something I am sure of. This is particularly true with the new generation who grew up in a multicultural environment. However, I do not believe that racism is something that could be completely eradicated. It stems from a lack of understanding and this factor will always be in play. Nonetheless, I do believe we could improve the situation by continuously informing people the objective truth of our society through our media instead of just treading the shallow waters and feel like we know all about the ocean.