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.

War Horse

I am a firm believer of the theatre as a space of unlimited imagination. As the lights go down and the stage is left as the only “living” space in the auditorium, the audience is gradually drawn into a constructed reality that drives their emotion as the characters unfold their stories before their eyes. This is the beauty of the theatre. Everything is live and alive. There is no touch up or second takes as it is with life.

I have heard great things about War Horse since its debut overseas. After a long period of waiting, it finally comes to Sydney. As such I would not pass on this great opportunity to see what the hype is about. And the end result? Not only it did not disappoint, I was reminded once again why I love live theatre so much.

The story of the play, based on the same novel by Michael Morpurgo, was not overly complicated. A boy got a horse, they bond, the horse went to war, the boy followed the horse to the war, and both the boy and the horse experienced the cruelty of war first hand in their own way. The selling point of War Horse was the realistic puppetry that recreated the animals in the play. You got a first taste of the fantastic puppetry skills with the opening scene when the pony was being auctioned. And then you saw the goose (I love that goose), the swallow, the vultures, and subsequently other warhorses that were involved in the war. The fascinating part of the production was the fact that you know they are puppets, but the amount of work that was put into the puppets that they actually made you believe that they are real animals with real personalities. Because of this, the interactions between the animals and the human characters became very convincing. This is true not only for the horses, which were manned by three actors on stage, but also the smaller animals, such as the goose (with one actor only) that completely stole the first few scenes. This is a make believe executed at its highest level.

Apart from puppetry, the set also installed a huge hanging white space in the shape of a torn out sketchbook. During the progress of the play pencil sketched animations were projected onto this space to inform the audience the change of time and space in the story. I personally believe the choice of pencil-sketched animation was incidental as the torn sketchbook was referred to in the story time and time again. Not only this tied in neatly with the story, it also offered a great amount of flexibility for scene changes without involving a huge number of set props.  Also the sketches were so nicely drawn that they became pieces of artworks themselves.

The play also came with a brilliant soundtrack that reflects the time and events of the story perfectly.  An actor who acts as the storyteller sang narration connecting individual scenes to the audience to inform them of additional information. As for individual scenes, there are lots of other songs that identify the time, space and characters relations in the story. There were no real individual arias as such as they are mostly choruses. Nonetheless, these choruses added a lot of weight and musical colour to the warring and unresting tone of the story.

War Horse is a piece of theatrical work perfectly weaved together. It is a powerful exhibition of great skills working together to completely immerse the audience into the world of the story. There were many occasions during the show that I could hear people around me blowing their noses, wowing, and sighing. It is a show that deploys a huge amount of puppetry while successfully convinced you that they are not puppets on stage but real characters, just like all the other actors on the stage. If you are looking for a perfect or near perfect piece of theatre to spend 2.5 hours with, War Horses could probably be one of your best options. 

*War Horse currently running at the Sydney Lyric Theatre until 30th June 2013

Asian Australian Actors? Myth or Reality?

Recently read an article by a prominent British theatre critic Lyn Gardner on the lack of British East Asian actors in UK, which consequently could be a factor that led to a recent Royal Shakespeare Company of “The Orphan of Zhao” with only 3 East Asian actors in the cast.  The article investigates the reason behind the lack of East Asian actors in the British acting scene, and encourages agencies to put forward more East Asian actors for casting so they could be seen and known. Reading the article got me thinking about the situation in Australia. Are we sharing the same issue?

I don’t know about other cultures, but for Chinese families, Chinese parents do not usually encourage their kids to take up performing arts, or basically any arty profession as a career. I experienced this the first hand and is still at times being discouraged by my parents to think about taking up acting as a career. This could be part of the reason why we do not have a lot of Asian actors in Australia initially.

However, looking at the past 10 years or so, I do think that there are lots of changes in the Asian acting scene. My first gig was in an all Asian cast musical “Flower Drum Song” and that was the first time I thought, “hey there are lots of us around, so why I didn’t see them on stage or on screen before?” So I started looking into this whole “lack of Asian actors” claim in the industry.

Even now, at different occasions, when I questioned why there aren’t more Asian actors on the Australian screen and stage, I was informed that there aren’t enough Asian actors around to do the jobs, which at times I found it absurd. Just judging from the casting sessions I went to when they were looking for stereotypical Asian characters, I always run into a bunch of Asian actors.  Then there is a question of whether there are enough trained Asian actors in the industry. For this I thought about the NIDA graduates I knew and could easily find a bunch of Asian background graduates. Lily Ji (2012), Jenny Wu (2010), Harry Tseng (2010), Pearl Tan (2005), Gareth Yuen (2005), Jason Chan (2001), and Monica Sayers (2004). And these are just some of them. There are also other acting graduates from other acting schools such as Jonathan Chan, Stephanie Son and Ivy Mak. I myself am a graduate from the Theatre School of UNSW. So the claim of no professionally trained Asian actors seems to be a bit thin in my opinion.

So what went wrong? Sometimes I do think because there are not many writers who can write materials for Asian actors. Debra Mailman in one of her interviews last year did acknowledge that even for Indigenous actors, roles tend to be more segregated when it comes to general productions. She cited her role in Offspring as an example in the interview. So maybe Asian actors and writers should work harder to put out materials to tell our stories on stage and on screen. But then I also thought, we might have different traditions and cultural background, should this really play such an important part in productions when we are just talking about generic characters? I have Asian Australian friends who were born in Australia and they are more Australian than Asian. Their parents maybe Asian but my friends speak and act like Australian nonetheless. They are as Aussie as you could expect. So is it that important that Asians have to tell Asian stories, as compared to the Australian stories? Would this approach be actually further segregating the industry into smaller and less rewarding sectors? These are some of the questions I do have.

For me, I do think we should continue to write and put our work out there. However, this should be the bridging process of putting our talents and abilities out there, instead of letting it becoming the only venue for us to showcase ourselves. Writing our own materials should be a gateway to open up the market to us and not to be limited by it. I do look forward to one day I would be called for a “character” in a major production as compared to an “Asian / Chinese character” in a stereotypical context. But until then I would continue to write my materials and hopefully get them produced and put myself out there.

Performance4a - where you find Asian Australian actors 

In Time

Recently got a chance to catch up with a few high school friends. One of them was on sabbatical and decided to come to Sydney to live for a year. I totally envy him as I would lo—ve to have a year off like that. But that is not the point. When old mates come together the usual “time flies” topic would inevitably come out. Some of them are still very actively in touch with the high school and they talked about all the things happening there. The competitions we used to participate in and how some people still take days off for the finals etc. etc. As the conversation continued, I wondered how did all these used to be part of my life activities became part of my history? Really where did time go? And when someone mentioned that another person whom I haven’t seen for years remembered me as a sprinter for the school, I nearly did not know how to respond. I have gone from a teenager who tried to outrun wind to a guy who ponders what vitamin tablets would be good for my health…

It is a strange feeling catching up with old mates. During the years apart we had all gone different directions. Quite a number of us were even scattered across the world and living in different time zones. Getting back together and then trying to fill in all the empty pages within the span of a dinner is by no means an easy task but somehow we always managed to do it. However, the notion of time has gone beyond our notice was far from infrequent. I remember when I was a kid I dreaded the time between holidays and wondered why time passes so slowly (probably also because I did not like school as a kid, or maybe any structured life in general). However as I grew up time seems to have accelerated with it too.

Meeting my high school friends forced me to take a real look at my life. I wonder what have I accomplished and also how much more time do I have to accomplish what I want to achieve? Recent events at home put a very different perspective on how I see things and especially life itself. However, as my own clock is ticking, I do wonder whether I have lost part of my life in time without even knowing it. I always wanted to be in the entertainment business. Somehow I knew it consciously or unconsciously. I just feel alive performing. However, looking back at my work history, performing is not a very large part of my working life. I am not complaining about anything because I did have a lot of opportunities in my non-performing line of work, and I earned pretty decent income. But then have I traded passion for comfort to a certain degree?

It is hard to judge one’s own life, as you can never be completely objective. Without trivialising my own work, I did feel that I did the right thing in the past doing a few leaps of faith, including moving country and becoming an Australian citizen. But then as I worked through my life, which seems to be accelerating to the final stop, every move seems to be a lot scarier as I do not know whether I would have sufficient time to make things right. The recent decision to move on from my current job without anything lining up scares me still but I convinced myself this is the right decision. The question here is what’s next? Do I have the time and the opportunity to eventually accomplish what I set out for? Or would I be just falling back in to a similar but different pattern? I certainly have grand schemes and plans for this change but then at the end of the day, nothing is under your control and you just need to have that faith in God that something would happen, while at the same time dealing with all those “what if not” thoughts that pound your head like thunder storms.

In the movie “In Time” people tried to buy more time after 25, in some sense I feel like the same. We certainly cannot buy more time but then we become more and more cautious about our actions and decisions so we wont’ waste time. Some people may say we can live a pretty long life nowadays, but what I am thinking is it is not just about living a long life. For me living a life that I am happy with and proud of is more important. And by that I would need to make every of my decision count. But then it is a chicken and egg situation – how do you know whether a decision is correct without making it? For this I mean you can think and think and then make the decision, but what happens after the decision is made is still a whole cloud of uncertainty.

I think I might have got a bit too sentimental of late because of all the things happening around me, but then I do sometimes think after working so hard for so many years, is it worth it? Or am I getting anywhere near where I want to be? Or even am I just one of the many lives in this world that would just pass on with time without a single memorable note? These are questions I yet to find any answers for.

                                                                     陀飛輪 - 關淑怡