Asian City Crossings: Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore 2020050892, 2020050893, 9780367488413, 9781003043157, 9780367515591

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Asian City Crossings

Asian City Crossings is the frst volume to examine the relationship between the city and performance from an Asian perspective. This collection introduces “city as method” as a new conceptual framework for the investigation of practices of city-based performing arts collaboration and city-to-city performance networks across East- and Southeast Asia and beyond. The shared and yet divergent histories of the global cities of Hong Kong and Singapore as postcolonial, multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual sites, are taken as points of departure to demonstrate how “city as method” facilitates a comparative analytical space that foregrounds in-betweenness and fuid positionalities. It situates inter-Asian relationality and inter-city referencing as centrally signifcant dynamics in the exploration of the material and ideological conditions of contemporary performance and performance exchange in Asia. This study captures creative dialogue that travels city-based pathways along the Hong Kong-Singapore route, as well as between Hong Kong and Singapore and other cities, through scholarly analyses and practitioner refections drawn from the felds of theatre, performance, and music. This book combines essays by scholars of Asian studies, theatre studies, ethnomusicology, and human geography with refective accounts by Hong Kong and Singapore-based performing arts practitioners to highlight the diversity, vibrancy, and complexity of creative projects that destabilise notions of identity, belonging, and nationhood through strategies of collaborative conviviality and transnational mobility across multi-sited networks of cities in Asia. In doing so, this volume flls a considerable gap in global scholarly discourse on performance and the city and on the production and circulation of the performing arts in Asia. Rossella Ferrari is Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. Ashley Thorpe is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Director of the Centre for Asian Theatre & Dance at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

Copyright © 2021. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

Asian City Crossings Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore

Copyright © 2021. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

Edited by Rossella Ferrari and Ashley Thorpe

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Rossella Ferrari and Ashley Thorpe; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Rossella Ferrari and Ashley Thorpe to be identifed as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ferrari, Rossella, editor. | Thorpe, Ashley, editor. Title: Asian city crossings : pathways of performance through Hong Kong and Singapore / edited by Rossella Ferrari and Ashley Thorpe. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifers: LCCN 2020050892 (print) | LCCN 2020050893 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367488413 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003043157 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Arts and society—Asia. | Art and cities—Asia. | Performing arts—Asia—International cooperation. | Hong Kong (China)—Relations—Singapore. | Singapore—Relations—China— Hong Kong. Classifcation: LCC NX180.S6 A79 2021 (print) | LCC NX180.S6 (ebook) | DDC 790.2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050892 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050893 ISBN: 978-0-367-48841-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-51559-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-04315-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

Copyright © 2021. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

Dedicated to all who believe in freedom of expression through collaborative exchange.

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

Copyright © 2021. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

Contents

List of images List of contributors Acknowledgements Note on Asian names and romanisation 1 Introduction: mapping the terrain: Hong Kong, Singapore, and the city as method

ix xii xvii xviii

1

ROSSELLA FERRARI AND ASHLEY THORPE

2 Culture of exchange and cultural exchange

31

DANNY YUNG TRANSLATED BY ROSSELLA FERRARI

3 From 1989 to 1997 and beyond: Zuni Icosahedron’s transnational explorations

50

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WAH GUAN LIM

4 Dialectics as creative process and decentring China: Zuni Icosahedron and Drama Box’s One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution

69

HOW WEE NG

5 Thoughts on cross-cultural collaboration by Mok Chiu-yu, a Hong Konger: what we did and why there was little interaction with Singapore

92

MOK CHIU-YU

6 Augustine Mok Chiu-yu’s intercultural Asian People’s Theatre: imagining ‘the third way’ for Hong Kong JESSICA YEUNG

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113

viii

Contents

7 Solitude to solidarity: imagined transnational alliance of humanity against bestial hegemony

131

DAPHNE P. LEI

8 Crossing-over as strategy

151

LIU XIAOYI

9 The city and the artist: Alice Theatre Laboratory’s Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka in Shanghai

164

MIRJAM TRÖSTER

10 Unequal cosmopolitanisms: staging Singaporean nanyin in and beyond Asia

189

SHZR EE TAN

11 Minor translocalism: messy and marginal networks in and beyond Singapore. An interview with Tan Suet Lee

212

AMANDA ROGERS

12 Facilitating exchange

225

KOK HENG LEUN

13 Postscript: Asian city crossings as a strategy for freedom?

233

ROSSELLA FERRARI AND ASHLEY THORPE

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Glossary of names, terms, and titles Index

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

241 248

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Images

2.1 The Video Circle installation curated by Danny Yung for the Festival of Vision—Hong Kong/Berlin (2000) 2.2 The Video Circle performance series curated by Danny Yung for the Festival of Vision—Hong Kong/Berlin (2000) 2.3 Hong Kong harmonicist Gordon Lee and kunqu master Ke Jun (Nanjing) performing in the “Hong Kong Belt-Road 2017—One Table Two Chairs” programme at the Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2017, curated by Danny Yung 2.4 One Table Two Chairs, created by dance artist Jitti Chompee (Bangkok) for the “Hong Kong Belt-Road 2017—One Table Two Chairs” programme at the Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2017, curated by Danny Yung 2.5 The Interrupted Dream: Chinois Dream at Château de Versailles, created by Danny Yung. Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2018 2.6 Cambodian dance artist Nget Rady (Phnom Penh) and jingju performer Chang Yu-chau (Taipei) in Heavenly Palace of Monkey Business, created by Danny Yung. Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2018 2.7 The Interrupted Dream: Chinois Dream at Château de Versailles, created by Danny Yung. Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2019 2.8 The Interrupted Dream: Chinois Dream at Château de Versailles. Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2019 3.1 Thai dance artist Patravadi Mejudhon in Book of Ghosts (2009), directed by Danny Yung 3.2 Indonesian dance artist Sardono Waluyo Kusumo in Book of Ghosts (2009), directed by Danny Yung

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

41 42

44

45 46

47 48 48 57 57

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x Images 3.3 Dancers Nget Rady (Phnom Penh) and Dearden Junior (Bangkok) in Deep Structure of Chinese Culture, directed by Danny Yung, at the 2017 Southernmost Festival in Singapore 3.4 Javanese dance artist Didik Nini Thowok in Journey to the South, directed by Liu Xiaoyi at the 2017 Southernmost Festival in Singapore 4.1 One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution (Zuni Icosahedron and Drama Box, 2011/12), directed by Danny Yung 4.2 One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution (Zuni Icosahedron and Drama Box, 2011/12), directed by Danny Yung 5.1 Mok Chiu-yu performing in The Life and Times of Ng Chung Yin: A Hong Kong Story, 1997 5.2 Cover of the programme of the First Asian People’s Theatre Festival, held in Hong Kong and Taiwan in 1992 5.3 Poster for the Third Asian People’s Theatre Festival, 1994/95 5.4 Mok Chiu-yu on the stage of Big Wind, 2005 5.5 Rehearsals of Big Wind in Taiwan, 2005 6.1 Performers of Big Wind during the 2004/2005 tour 6.2 Cover of the programme of Yours Most Obediently, 1997 7.1 yueju (Cantonese opera) performer Kelvin Ng Kwok-wa as Wu Song in I, Wu Song (Hong Kong, 2017) 7.2 Singaporean artist Seelan Palay stands in front of Parliament House holding a mirror as part of his performance of 32 Years: The Interrogation of a Mirror (Singapore, 2017/18) 8.1 Liu Xiaoyi and Danny Yung during a directors’ talk at the 2017 Southernmost Festival in Singapore 8.2 kunqu master Wang Bin, from Nanjing, in Journey to the South, directed by Liu Xiaoyi, at the 2017 Southernmost Festival in Singapore 8.3 Javanese dance artist Didik Nini Thowok during a masterclass at the 2017 Southernmost Festival in Singapore 8.4 Deep Structure of Chinese Culture, directed by Danny Yung, at the Southernmost Festival in Singapore, 2017 8.5 Journey to Nowhere, directed by Liu Xiaoyi, at the 2018 Southernmost Festival in Singapore 8.6 Javanese dance artist Didik Nini Thowok in Journey to a Dream, by Emergency Stairs and Zuni Icosahedron, co-directed by Liu Xiaoyi and Danny Yung, at the 2019 Southernmost Festival in Singapore

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

61 62 78 85 98 100 101 102 102 119 123 134

136 153 154 154 155 156

157

Images

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8.7 Javanese dance artist Didik Nini Thowok during a master showcase at the 2019 Southernmost Festival in Singapore 8.8 kunqu performer Shen Yili during a master showcase at the 2019 Southernmost Festival in Singapore 8.9 Liu Xiaoyi and kunqu performer Wang Bin during an open rehearsal at the 2017 Southernmost Festival in Singapore 9.1 Alice Theatre Laboratory, Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka, Prologue. Shanghai, 2010 9.2 Alice Theatre Laboratory, Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka, Box Seven. Shanghai, 2010 9.3 Alice Theatre Laboratory, Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka. Shanghai, 2010 10.1 Soul Journey projection, Siong Leng Musical Association, New York, 2017 10.2 Soul Journey projection, Siong Leng Musical Association, New York, 2017 11.1 A staged reading of Tan Suet Lee’s The Swing by Saga Seed Theatre, Singapore

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

xi 158 161 162 170 173 175 197 198 217

Contributors

Editors1

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Rossella FERRARI is University Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. She has previously taught at SOAS University of London, UK. She specialises in the performance cultures of the Chinesespeaking region, with a particular interest in avant-garde and intercultural theatres; practices of collaboration, intermediality, and adaptation; and interactions between Sinophone and other Asian performance communities. She has written extensively on Chinese and Hong Kong theatre, and her publications have appeared in TDR: The Drama Review, New Theatre Quarterly, Postcolonial Studies, positions: asia critique, and elsewhere. She is the author of three monographs including Pop Goes the Avant-Garde: Experimental Theatre in Contemporary China (Seagull Books/University of Chicago Press, 2012) and Transnational Chinese Theatres: Intercultural Performance Networks in East Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). She is the regional managing editor (China) of The Theatre Times. Ashley THORPE is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Drama, Theatre & Dance at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. His research explores practices of theatrical exchange between East Asia and other locales, both historically and into the contemporary. His second monograph Performing China on the London Stage: Chinese Opera and Global Power, 1759–2008 was published by Palgrave in 2016. He has worked on two major practice-as-research performances, the frst as a director on a re-staging of S. I. Hsiung’s 1935 play Lady Precious Stream (documented in TDR), the second as a writer, producer, director, and actor for an English-language nō titled Emily, exploring the legacy of the English sufragette Emily Wilding Davison. The latter was publicly performed with Japanese nō professionals in Tokyo and London (2019) and has subsequently been translated into Chinese (Liaoning University Press, 2021) as well as Japanese. He is currently editing a volume of texts and critical essays on English-language nō.

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

Contributors

xiii

Contributors (in alphabetical order)

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KOK Heng Leun is Artistic Director of Drama Box, a theatre company based in Singapore. He has directed over 80 plays, including Kuo Pao Kun’s The Spirits Play, the Forum Theatre Trick or Threat!, HERstory (Singapore Arts Festival 2011), Drift (Singapore Season 2008), and It Won’t Be Too Long (Singapore International Arts Festival, 2015). He strongly believes in engaging the community in his works to promote critical dialogue about the world we live in. He is one of the most important theatre practitioners in Singapore advocating applied and engaged arts. Known as one of the most respected Forum Theatre practitioners in Asia, he has also ventured into multidisciplinary applied and engaged arts projects such as Project Mending Sky, which deals with environmental issues; PRISM, which looks at issues of governance in Singapore; and Both Sides, Now, a long-term socially engaged art project (which reached its seventh year in 2020) using theatre and arts installation and involving the healthcare sector and the community to explore what it means to live and die well. In recent years, Kok Heng Leun has been actively advocating cultural exchanges and dialogue among artists and cultural workers in the Asian region as well as internationally. He has also taken up teaching, curatorial, and dramaturgical roles in many projects. Daphne P. LEI is Professor of Drama at the University of California, Irvine, USA. She is internationally known for her scholarship on Chinese opera; Asian American theatre; and intercultural, transnational, and transpacifc performance. She is the author of three monographs and an edited volume: Operatic China: Staging Chinese Identity across the Pacifc (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), Alternative Chinese Opera in the Age of Globalization: Performing Zero (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Uncrossing the Borders: Performing Chinese in Gendered (Trans)Nationalism (University of Michigan Press, 2019), and The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2020), co-edited with Charlotte McIvor. She is the former president of the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR, 2015–18). Wah Guan LIM is Lecturer in Chinese at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He has previously taught at Bard College, New York, USA. He is a scholar of transnational Chinese literature and performance and is currently completing his book manuscript Denationalizing Identities: The Politics of Performance in the Chinese Diaspora. By focusing on the relationship between performance and ideology in the global Sinosphere, this book examines the impact of theatre and performance on identity formation across China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore as a result of Cold War geopolitics. LIU Xiaoyi is Artistic Director of Emergency Stairs, a theatre company based in Singapore. He is considered a promising fgure at the forefront

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

xiv Contributors of the experimental theatre scene in Asia. In 2016, he was the recipient of the National Arts Council of Singapore Young Artist Award. Since 2011, he has been particularly involved in intercultural dialogue. Since 2017, he has curated the annual Southernmost Project, a frst-of-its-kind arts festival in Singapore. It seeks to bring prominent and established, traditional and contemporary artists from the region together in Singapore to develop intercultural exchange.

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MOK Chiu-yu is the Chief Executive of the Centre for Community Cultural Development, Hong Kong. He was born in Hong Kong and studied economics in Australia and counselling in England. In the early 1970s, he was a political activist and publisher of an alternative youth magazine. From the mid-1970s to the end of the 1980s, he worked as a high school teacher of economics and political science and as a counsellor, after which he became a full-time cultural activist working in theatre, performance art, disability art, educational theatre, flm, and community cultural development. In 2004, he became the founder and chief executive of the Centre for Community Cultural Development. In 2007, he was co-director of the Congress of the International Drama/Theatre & Education Association. He has organised numerous cross-cultural theatre productions, festivals, and conferences including the Asian People’s Theatre Festival; the Hong Kong International Deaf Film Festival; and the Educational Theatre, Community Cultural Development, and Arts Therapy Conferences. He is also a writer, a critic, and the subject of two books. In the past decade, he has worked as a part-time teacher at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. How Wee NG is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Westminster, UK. He has lectured at SOAS, University of London, and at the University of Hull. His research interests include censorship in Sinophone cinema and television, and the exclusionary politics of representation related to ethnicity, gender, and class in media and theatre. Selected publications include “Taipei Golden Horse Film Awards and Singapore Cinema: Prestige, Privilege and Disarticulation” (2020), “The Liminality of Decolonization, De-Cold War and Deimperialization: Boal’s Newspaper Theater and East Asian Popular Culture as Method in Drama Box’s Community Commedia Dell’Arte News Busters!” (2019), “Rethinking Censorship in China: The Case of Snail House (Woju)” (2015), and forthcoming articles on Chinese masculinities and theatre. Amanda ROGERS is Associate Professor of Human Geography and the Geohumanities at Swansea University, UK. She researches the geographies of performance and the performing arts, particularly theatre and dance. Her current work focuses on post-confict performance cultures in South East Asia and their relationship to the re-production of nationality.

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Contributors

xv

She is particularly interested in contemporary Cambodian performance and how it expresses, and is embedded in, history, culture, and identity. Amanda’s previous research focused on the transnational connections between Asian American, British East Asian, and South East Asian theatres, examining how the politics of identity and migration afect creative practice. This work was published as a monograph titled Performing Asian Transnationalisms: Theatre, Identity and the Geographies of Performance (Routledge, 2015). Shzr Ee TAN is Senior Lecturer and Ethnomusicologist (with a specialisation in Sinophone and Southeast Asian worlds) at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. She is interested in issues of music and decolonisation, aspirational cosmopolitanism, and race discourses around the world, with a view towards understanding marginality through the lenses of intersectionality. Her recent research projects, “Cultural Imperialism and the ‘New Yellow Peril’ in Western Art Music” and “Orchestrating Isolation: Musical Interventions and Inequality in the COVID-19 Fallout”, have gained traction among East Asian and wider, diverse music communities around the world and turned her towards more activistinformed scholarship and teaching. She has published with Routledge, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Palgrave Macmillan, among others.

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Mirjam TRÖSTER is a Research Fellow and Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. Her main feld of research is Chinese-language performing arts with a particular focus on translocal mobility. Her PhD thesis analyses theatrical touring productions from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, staged in China. She is the co-editor of Gesellschaft, Theater & Kritik: Aktuelle Themen auf den Bühnen Japans, Chinas und Taiwans (Social Comment in the Theatres of Japan, China, and Taiwan) (Iudicium Verlag, 2014). Jessica YEUNG is Associate Professor in the Department of Translation, Interpreting, and Intercultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. She has published widely on Chinese and Hong Kong dramatists including Gao Xingjian, Danny Yung, and Augustine Mok Chiu-yu. In addition to Hong Kong theatre, she researches the cinemas of Xinjiang and Tibet and Sinophone literatures. She is the author of Ink Dances in Limbo: Gao Xingjian’s Writing as Cultural Translation (Hong Kong University Press, 2008) and Xianggang de disan tiao daolu: Mo Zhaoru de annaqi minzhong xiju (The Third Way for Hong Kong: Augustine Mok Chiuyu’s Anarchist People’s Theatre) (Typesetter Publishing, 2019). Danny YUNG is a founding member and Co-Artistic Director of Zuni Icosahedron, a performing arts ensemble based in Hong Kong. A pioneer of experimental arts in Asia, Yung has worked across several media, including theatre, cartoon, flm, video, and visual and installation art. He is the

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Contributors

recipient of numerous awards, including the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards 2015 for Artist of the Year (Drama), the Fukuoka Prize— Arts and Culture Prize (2014), and the Music Theatre NOW Award of the UNESCO International Theatre Institute (2008). In 2009, Yung was bestowed the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of his contributions to cultural exchange between Germany and Hong Kong. In 2014, Yung was commissioned by the 48th Smithsonian Folklife Festival to design Gateway—Tian Tian Xiang Shang, a large-scale bamboo installation based on the traditional fower plaque craft of the Lingnan region, which was erected on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Since 1997, Yung has initiated several culture and arts networks, including Asia Arts Net, the Asia Performing Arts Network, the World Culture Forum, and the City-to-City Cultural Forum. In 2000, he curated the Festival of Vision—Hong Kong/Berlin, involving over a thousand participants from 35 cities in Asia and Europe. In 2001, he coordinated the establishment of the tri-annual World Culture Forum Alliance with the support of the Ford Foundation (New York). Since 2017, he has curated the Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference.

Note

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1 We have capitalized all surnames to avoid confusion with the Asian contributors’ names, where in some cases the surname comes before the given name and in other cases it comes after.

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

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Acknowledgements

The editors would like to express their gratitude to the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (project XP002—U—16) whose generous support to the international symposium “Hong Kong in Transition: Asian City-to-City Collaboration and Performing Arts Exchange 1997–2017” (SOAS University of London, September  9–10, 2017) facilitated intensive and fruitful discussion of some key ideas presented in this volume. We are also indebted to the following organisations for additional fnancial and logistical support: The Sino-British Fellowship Trust; the SOAS China Institute; the SOAS Faculty of Languages and Cultures; the Jiangsu Performing Arts Group Kun Opera Theatre (particularly, Ke Jun); the Jiangsu Arts Fund 2017 Annual Exchange and Promotion Project “Tradition and Avant-Garde” Kunqu Cultural Exchange; the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Ofce, London; and Zuni Icosahedron. We are grateful to Wong Yue-wai of Zuni Icosahedron for assistance with editing the translation of Danny Yung’s chapter and sourcing several of the images that illustrate this volume. For providing images and permissions, we also thank Alice Theatre Laboratory, Emergency Stairs, Mok Chiu-yu, Seelan Palay, Siong Leng Musical Association, Tan Suet Lee, and The Gong Strikes One. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and our editors at Routledge, Laura Hussey and Swati Hindwan, for supporting this project and shepherding it to publication with empathy and enthusiasm. Above all, we thank our contributors: this book would not exist without the numerous intellectual and creative exchanges—across cultures and, indeed, cities—that have brought all of us together in this collaboration.

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

Note on Asian names and romanisation

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East Asian names (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) are given in this volume in accordance with the native convention of placing family names frst (e.g. LIU Xiaoyi, SATŌ Makoto, CHANG Soik), unless a person habitually chooses to adhere to the Western convention of using their given name frst. For Chinese-language terms, this volume adheres to the Hanyu Pinyin romanisation system used in mainland China, which is standard in international library catalogues, but also respects the diferent conventions in use in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. Personal names are thus given in accordance to the preferred or most frequently used transcription, with Pinyin or alternate transcriptions provided in parentheses wherever required to avoid ambiguity—for example, Augustine Mok (Mok Chiu-yu, Mo Zhaoru); Kuo Pao Kun (Guo Baokun); Wu Hsing-kuo (Wu Xingguo). In the footnotes and bibliography, names of authors of Chinese-language sources are generally given in Pinyin, but if an author has published under diferent transcriptions of their names, these are also cross-referenced in brackets— for example, Chew Book Leong [Zhou Wenlong].

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

1

Introduction Mapping the terrain: Hong Kong, Singapore, and the city as method

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Rossella Ferrari and Ashley Thorpe In 1960, the Japanese sinologist Takeuchi Yoshimi proposed a methodology that no longer engaged with Asia as a simple object of (Western-centric) analysis. Rather, in a move to overcome the automatic impulse to compare Asia with Europe or the US, he sought to encourage comparisons between countries that were in closer proximity (specifcally, China and Japan, but also India), to recognise the impact of dynamic fows of power, economy, and culture on trajectories of modernisation within and across Asia as the basis for analysis. ‘Asia as method’, wherein ‘method’ is defned “as the process of the subject’s self-formation”,1 was thus conceived to reengage Asia as an autonomous epistemological site and “a more complex framework than that of simple binary oppositions”,2 redefning the actual terms through which the object of analysis was viewed. Since Takeuchi’s pioneering proposal, the ‘method’ approach has been applied widely in relational studies of Asian cultural connections. These include Chen Kuan-hsing’s infuential reiteration of Takeuchi’s paradigm-shifting concept for the purposes of “decolonization, deimperialization, and de-cold war[ing]” of knowledge production in and about Asia,3 notions of “inter-Asia referencing”4 and “trans-(East) Asia as method”,5 and more specifc formulations of “Asian theatre as method”6 and “Hong Kong as method”, among others.7 In this volume, we propose the notion of ‘city as method’, with Hong Kong and Singapore as key referents in establishing a conceptual framework for city-to-city contacts in Asian theatre and performance research. Hong Kong and Singapore have been chosen as the focal points for this inquiry because of their status as prominent cultural hubs in Asia and their potential for relational comparison, as prime examples of dynamic urban societies and transnational sites of multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multilingual cultural production. Hong Kong and Singapore are of similar size and geographic conformation as islands and port cities; have comparable—if divergent—histories of multiple colonisation (British and Japanese imperialism); and experiences of migration, rapid modernisation, industrialisation, and technological innovation. Both are global fnancial centres; hubs of Asian commerce; and are typifed as cities of corporations, cosmopolitanism, and consumption (the ‘mall city’). But they are also homelands to

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

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2 Rossella Ferrari and Ashley Thorpe political authoritarianism, ethnic prejudice, social exclusion, violent neoliberal economies, and unequal access to public space and resources.8 Hong Kong and Singapore have been described as both intrinsically global and distinctively Asian and presented as models for one another and for other cities. Sociologist Saskia Sassen, the frst to theorise the concept of the global city, has named them as two of the most important global cities,9 though the Singapore administration had already categorised the Southeast Asian island-nation as such in 1972, long before the term gained universal currency.10 The place branding records of both cities reveal strenuous eforts to promote world-class metropolitan images: a government policy paper named Singapore as “Asia’s Global City (for the Arts)” in 1992,11 and former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa described Hong Kong as “Asia’s World City” in 1999.12 Hong Kong and Singapore have often been framed as rivals with competing interests in various sectors—a scenario that may be revived in light of their present standing as important maritime nodes for China’s Belt and Road Initiative.13 Nonetheless, their parallel colonial histories since the 19th century have given way to divergent political systems and markedly “contrasting fates” in the post-war era, with Singapore celebrating 50 years of national independence in 2015 just two years before the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from the United Kingdom to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).14 Comparisons between Hong Kong and Singapore have been undertaken in numerous felds, ranging from studies of the two cities’ economic and governance structures to analyses of their literary production and flm industries.15 The regional and transnational circulation of Chinese-language media and popular culture—traditional xiqu operas and folk arts, pop music, television dramas, video games, social platforms—through production and distribution networks encompassing these two epicentres is also widely documented.16 Yet the long-standing relationship between the two cities in the realm of the contemporary performing arts has not yet been sufciently explored. At the symposium from which this volume originated, “Hong Kong in Transition: Asian City-To-City Collaboration and Performing Arts Exchange 1997–2017”, held in London in September  2017, the main focus of the discussions was on the status of the performing arts in Hong Kong 20 years since the handover. But Singapore was often cited for the purposes of comparison and became the echo chamber for certain experiences occurring in Hong Kong, with many participants—several of whom are contributors to this volume—emphasising signifcant points of contact between the two cities. Particularly since the 1980s, as economic and cultural ties among Sinophone societies intensifed amid momentous political changes, Hong Kong and Singapore have played a seminal role in shaping performing arts connections within the Sinosphere and across the Asian region. Through the eforts of pioneers such as Danny Yung Ning-tsun, Augustine Mok Chiu-yu, Kuo Pao Kun, and others, Hong Kong and Singapore—as cities in perpetual

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

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Introduction

3

transition and transformation—have established themselves as fundamental spaces of relations: cultural, artistic, and political relations and relations between Sinophone and Anglophone cultures (partly arising from their histories of British colonialism), and thus, by extension, between Asia, Europe, and the US. Their shared standing yet diferentiated contexts as postcolonial, multicultural, and multilingual sites ofer unique vantage points from which to consider questions of identity, belonging, nationalism, statehood, collaborative conviviality, and the material conditions of performance and performance exchange across and beyond Asia. Unlike major existing studies of theatre, performance, and the city,17 this volume marks a shift in focus towards studying performance and the city from an Asian perspective. It postulates that the centres of urban performance production are no longer exclusively located in Western cultural capitals such as New York and London, but in the global cities of Asia. Thus, our approach echoes Aihwa Ong’s observation that “[t]oday, Asian cities are fertile sites, not for following an established pathway or master blueprint, but for a plethora of situated experiments that reinvent what urban norms can count as ‘global’ ”.18 It is for this reason that the focus of investigation here is not what happens in the cities of Europe and North America, as in most current scholarship, but what happens in between (namely, ‘inter-’) multi-sited networks of cities in Asia. This is not to deny the legacy of Western (European) colonialism but to assert a postcolonial perspective that moves beyond the West as reference point. The shift in focus towards the ‘inter-’—from the international and intercultural to the inter-Asian inter-city—sheds light on hitherto neglected connections ‘in between’ these (g)local spaces. It disrupts simplistic national essentialisms and places interAsian referencing as a centrally signifcant dynamic. In mapping the terrain of ‘Asian city crossings’, this volume conceptualises Asia as a polysemic body signifying not only a heterogeneous geographic entity or a site of identity politics but also, and primarily, a methodology and “open episteme”,19 which performs diferent meanings for diferent individuals and communities across the region. An equally dynamic framework should apply to defnitions of Chineseness and ‘Sinophone’ articulations, which we draw attention to in the context of our inquiry since several contributors to this volume invoke these notions to interrogate performance works that either are initiated by or involve practitioners of predominantly Chinese cultures, languages, and ethnicities. Shu-mei Shih’s paradigm of the Sinophone as denotative of “Sinitic-language cultures on the margins of geopolitical nation-states and their hegemonic productions”20 (see How Wee Ng’s discussion in Chapter 4 and Shzr Ee Tan’s in Chapter 10) is particularly signifcant for our purposes, for this interpretation encapsulates the dialectical relationship of Hong Kong and Singapore to both British colonial rule and mainland Chinese politics—including the politics of “fctive kinship” (biological, ideological) that is often associated with the notion of Chineseness.21

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4 Rossella Ferrari and Ashley Thorpe At the same time, it is worth noting one of the great ironies of intercultural collaboration, from which the Asia-focused work scrutinised in this volume is not entirely immune: namely, the enduring hegemony of English as the prevalent operational language—and sometimes also performance language—of intercultural performance. Imperial linguistic inheritances still largely shape professional interactions in the rehearsal rooms and performance spaces of Asia’s global cities. In Chapter  5, Mok Chiu-yu ofers a practitioner’s perspective on this subject, as does the analysis of Mok’s ‘third way’ approach to Hong Kong’s identity double bind that Jessica Yeung presents in Chapter 6. The opening sentence of Liu Xiaoyi’s chapter (“I wrote this essay in Chinese and translated it into English”) is also revealing in this respect, as it implicitly extends the colonial assumptions of the language of interculturality from the realm of creative practice to that of scholarship and criticism—indeed also implicating our own linguistic choices, as editors of this volume. Nevertheless, to take the Asian city as a reference point dilutes the dominance of the nation, of culture—and of Western culture, in particular—as the primary frame of reference in Anglophone studies of performance. At the same time, it is also vital to avoid methodological parochialism and replacing one type of geocultural essentialism with another. For this reason, we seek to expand the empirical and epistemological possibilities of considering the relationship between city, theatre, and performance. This volume seeks to capture creative dialogue along the Hong KongSingapore route as well as through crossings between Hong Kong and Singapore and other cities to highlight the vibrancy, complexity, and diversity of practices that travel pathways of city-based performance and city-to-city performance networks. Hong Kong and Singapore are taken as points of departure and key sites of interchange in an interconnected structure from which pathways to other cities depart, through which they transit, and to which they arrive. In this processual urban cartography, cities cast themselves as assemblages of moving bodies and embodied actions that can be brought into relation when “seen through the lens of a specifc problematic or set of problematics”, which can be compared and inter-referenced.22 It examines the kind of performance work that is generated through the city as a method, investigating curatorial frameworks, creative processes, production formats, aesthetic strategies, and modes of circulation as methods of afect. Anglophone scholarship in theatre studies has engaged with some contemporary practitioners from the two cities who are renowned internationally for their intercultural collaborations involving entirely or predominantly Asian casts and creative teams—especially the Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen23 and, more recently, Hong Kong director Edward Lam.24 Within the Sinophone region, the Taiwanese Stan Lai (Lai Sheng-chuan), Lee Kuohsiu, and Wu Hsing-kuo have also been examined from inter-Chinese and intercultural collaborative perspectives.25 This volume focuses on practitioners whose contributions have been equally infuential yet have received

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less scholarly attention. These include Hong Kong-based director Danny Yung and his company, Zuni Icosahedron; social activist and performance veteran Mok Chiu-yu, also from Hong Kong; and the Singapore-based theatre makers Kok Heng Leun, artistic director of Drama Box, and Liu Xiaoyi, founder of Emergency Stairs. This collection also takes an expansive defnition to performance collaboration, including the analysis of music (see Tan’s chapter), the politics of touring (see Tröster’s chapter), and performances of solidarity and dissent (see chapters by Lei, Mok, and Yeung) as signifcant routes for city-to-city collaboration.

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Situating authenti-city Foregrounding the structural functions of the city in facilitating networks and pathways of performance implies an understanding of the city as an infra-structure; that is, the “underlying foundation or basic framework”26 and material reality that enables the city, as an entity or system, to function. This volume takes ‘inter-city geographies’, which Sassen has described “as an infrastructure for multiple forms of globalization”,27 as the underlying foundation and basic framework for surveying the material realities of collaboration and the dynamics of circulation of theatre and performance as practitioners and projects move across cities in Asia. As further expounded later, we consider the city as a method and structure of cross-border performance production, enabling pathways of performance. In other words, we propose that placing the city at the centre of the analysis not only as its object but as its method and as the actual enabler of the object of analysis itself—that is, performance-making—facilitates the comparison of cities with geo-historical and economic relationships and the production and circulation of performance between these cities. ‘City as method’ invites a cultural materialist reading of city-to-city collaboration as an ecology “with specifc internal relations, at once interlocking and in tension”.28 In Theatre & the City, Jen Harvie proposes that a cultural materialist analysis frequently leads to a bleakly Marxist tendency to conceive of theatre in the city as nothing more than an instrument of neoliberal capitalism. In comparison, she suggests that a more performative analysis can open up overly optimistic spaces wherein urban performances are conceived of as liberating, with the capacity to create opportunities for social and political agency (e.g. acts of protest). To resolve this opposition, she proposes a hybrid approach that combines the two, arguing for a need to resist wholly utopian or pessimistic constructions of either point of view.29 D. J. Hopkins and Kim Solga make similar points when they describe “the barriers, limitations, frustrations, and opportunities raised by the global city’s hallmarks of neoliberal governance and aggressive corporatism” and daily acts of resistance and submission “to the meaning and power of urban space as a zone of political demarcation and economic delineation”.30

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6 Rossella Ferrari and Ashley Thorpe The role of the city in these processes of ambivalent delineation— geographic, economic, social, cultural, nationalistic, and as identity signifer—needs to be understood within the totalising impulse of globalisation and imperialism. How can participation in global cultural fows activate an ‘in between’ agency that might enhance, or elide, constructions of locality? To place emphasis on the city as the generative structure for this activation seems especially vexed given the postmodern critique of the city as fundamentally dystopic, disembodied, and simulated. In Simulacra and Simulations, Jean Baudrillard posits the city as nothing more than a conduit for the circulation of the unreal:

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Imaginary stations . . . feed reality, the energy of the real to a city whose mystery is precisely that of no longer being anything but a network of incessant, unreal circulation—a city of incredible proportions but without space, without dimension. As much as electrical and atomic power stations, as much as cinema studios, this city, which is no longer anything but an immense scenario and a perpetual pan shot, needs this old imaginary like a sympathetic nervous system made up of childhood signals and faked phantasms.31 Thus, he argues, the modern city has collapsed into a state of deterritorialisation; the modernist certainties of space, place, and homogeneity have long since dissolved. In the new hyperreal city, the hypermarket functions as a ‘montage factory’ where its “serial, circular, spectacular arrangement” signifes “the future model of social relations”.32 In the simulation of the postmodern city, the consumption of signs, and their participation in symbolic exchange (which can be expressed in cultural terms as acquiring and trading cultural capital), has subsumed the real into an endless cycle of deferred hyperrealism. The resulting destabilisation characterises the city as being post-social, as a fragmentary and fuid collective,33 unmappable and uncanny,34 an urban landscape of persistent strangeness,35 and populated by fgures such as the fâneur.36 In such a dystopic environment, it seems inevitable that feelings of isolation, dislocation, and disorientation can only be exacerbated by globalised capitalism—the mechanism that stocks the shelves of the cultural hypermarket.37 Doreen Massey speaks of globalisation producing “time-space compression”, conceptualised as a marked sense of “geographical fragmentation” and “spatial disruption”.38 Arjun Appadurai describes globalised cultural participation as the “global cultural economy”: transnational imaginary landscapes that are fundamentally social but that capture the ambivalence of cultural homogenisation and multiplicity through globalisation.39 As Appadurai argues: Global cultural processes today are the products of the infnitely varied mutual contest of sameness and diference on a stage characterized

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Copyright © 2021. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

by radical disjunctures between diferent sorts of global fows and the uncertain landscapes created in and through these disjunctures.40 Such disjuncture, as a socio-political and economic tool, is a means of becoming ‘in between’ for many of the collaborations explored in this volume. It draws attention to the subversive strategies that practitioners might take as part of an anti-hegemonic stance. It also explains how and why certain kinds of city-to-city collaboration are unattainable—fnancially, politically, or practically. The conception of the postmodern city as ‘hyperreal’ and ‘disjunct’ is a compelling reading of the city, but performance, characterised in this volume as a metropolitan cultural practice, sits ambivalently within it. There can be no doubt that performance participates in the hyperreality of the modern city: digital media, virtual and augmented reality, robots, and webbased technologies are key to a growing number of productions,41 and most performances are reliant on some kind of technological mediation.42 As a practice that depends on the fow of capital, performance is also a product for consumption and is thus implicated in the postmodern condition.43 Yet, at its most primal, the sharing of the same temporality and spatiality by live performers and audiences remains a remarkably resilient facet of much performance practice. The persistence of this interpersonal contact raises questions for the simulated culture of the postmodern city. How does performance participate in the global cultural economy, but resist hyperrealism? How might live performance demarcate a city spatially and geographically in the wider globalised cultural network? How does the specifcity of place afect city-to-city collaboration? What is the agency of the individual body in this process? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to fnd a means of capturing the ambivalence—the ‘in betweenness’—of the city through a recognition of parallel and interpenetrated connections between the liveness of performance and the postmodern simulation. Ong has noted that all-encompassing theories—of both globalisation and post colonialism— maintain the hegemonic dominance of Western discourse.44 A  problem for the deployment of postmodernism in the context of Asian cities is that Baudrillard’s critique is derived from the analysis of the US urban landscape. Globalising from the perspective of US dominance is, of course, a well-worn imperialist trope. Yet, specifcity must be eschewed, for in its imperative to deconstruct grand narratives, postmodernism must become globalised and totalising. As Baudrillard has argued: “The post-modern is the frst truly universal conceptual conduit.”45 Clearly, such universality risks substituting one modern grand narrative for another. Yet, this need to destroy grand narratives—that is, to refect upon specifcity—with and within the globalised fow of the simulation, ofers productive tensions within which to situate this volume and to further address the ambivalent city described by Harvie, and Hopkins and Solga. It ofers the possibility to comprehend,

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8 Rossella Ferrari and Ashley Thorpe frst, how city-to-city collaboration might provide a sense of place (the specifc) in the context of globalisation and intercultural performance. Second, it invites reconciliation between live performance and the wider (g)local culture of the simulated city (the totality). Globalisation may have shrunk perceptions of space between cultures, but it has also fostered a discourse of relativism that has cultivated a greater critical interrogation of cultural homogeneity.46 For relativism to function as a tool of cultural criticism, it must recognise what diferentiates a specifc place and how such diferentiation enables participation in globalisation from a distinct geographical perspective. Ong, for instance, has noted how “the volatility of global markets, emerging nations and planetary threats variously exert infuences on the roles, rankings, and achievements of particular metropolises”.47 The city is, therefore, an interstice between the globally networked economy and the specifcities of geography. Yet, relationships to economy and the specifcs of geography are not, in themselves, sufcient to articulate what elements come to constitute the city as ‘place’. Massey has argued against reliance on the degree of participation in the economy as the defning element in a city’s participation in globalisation and the limitations of geography as constituting place. Rather, she suggests:

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There is the specifcity of place which derives from the fact that each place is the focus of a distinct mixture of wider and more local social relations. There is the fact that this very mixture together in one place may produce efects which would not have happened otherwise. And fnally, all these relations interact with and take a further element of specifcity from the accumulated history of a place, with that history itself imagined as the product of layer upon layer of diferent sets of linkages, both local and global and to the wider world.48 Place is constituted by the specifc relationships it has to globalisation; it is only by recognising the history, geography, internal socio-political and economic unevenness (created, for instance, by race, gender, and sexuality), confict, economy, and the particularity of connections to the globalised world that the specifcities of ‘place’ can be evaluated.49 Thus, to understand how one place connects to another is to understand something about the uniqueness of the place itself. City-to-city collaboration therefore exposes something of the distinctiveness of each place because and through the connections they share, enabling place to be discerned in the specifcity of its ‘in betweenness’ with other locales. As this volume demonstrates, the body of the performer is the material that becomes ‘in between’. It is thus through the body that place is identifed as the departure point for experience of global fows. It is in and through bodies that Hong Kong and Singapore are expressed as ex-colonies, signifcant trading hubs in Asia, and cultural geographies with parallel but ultimately diferentiated regional political concerns.

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Recognising unevenness and specifcity is important because it challenges contemporary thinking on intercultural performance practice that implicitly privileges Western subjectivities. Ric Knowles has argued that intercultural theatre practice should be viewed as an ecology that is always in motion. A  change at one point in the ecology has the potential to afect all others.50 Given the interconnectedness that has arisen from globalisation and the intercultural theatre networking that is enmeshed within it, conceiving intercultural theatre as an ecology remains useful. However, unevenness and ambivalence, so central to the making of place, are not accounted for. Rather, ecology is typifed as

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a new kind of rhizomatic (multiple, non-hierarchical, horizontal) intercultural performance-from-below that is emerging globally, that no longer retains a west and the rest binary, that is no longer dominated by charismatic white men or performed before audiences assumed to be monochromatic, that no longer involves the urban centre (in the west or elsewhere) raiding traditional forms seen to be preserved in more primitive or ‘authentic’ rural setting, and that no longer focuses on the individual performances or projects of a single artist or group.51 The notion of ecology as a global interconnectedness that is fundamentally multiple and horizontal paradoxically centres Western perspectives as the subjective theoretical departure point. Characterising intercultural relations as ‘horizontal’ ofers a theoretical resolution to the dominance of Western (specifcally European and North American) powers in the methodology. Yet, in doing so, it reifes it. If unevenness is a centrally important characteristic of place-making, on what basis is access to the intercultural ecology assumed to be horizontal and non-hierarchical at the most basic and fundamental level? As Laura Noszlopy and Matthew Cohen highlight, transnational collaborations “are unruly and unpredictable, with much circular as opposed to linear movement”.52 Knowles’ proposition risks erasing the specifcity that produces locale, even a kind of neo-imperial theoretical utopia that glosses over the pitfalls of cultural decontextualisation. Within the ecological model, there remains regional disparity, but Western theatrical hegemony is of less immediate concern to the practitioners discussed in this volume.53 Rather, it is the relationship to other practitioners based in Asia, against the backdrop of the prevailing regional and national sociopolitical and economic discourses, that comes to the fore. The essays in this volume attest to the multiplicity of practice, and of layers of interconnectedness, but also of uneven access to the intercultural ecology as a product of socio-political context, access to funding, race, gender, class, and the nature of the collaborative project. As the practitioner contributions in this volume evidence, inequalities become most visible in the ‘in betweenness’ of the city-to-city collaboration. To suggest that interculturalism is, or even seeks to be, a uniformly horizontal, convivial form of cosmopolitanism, obscures

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Rossella Ferrari and Ashley Thorpe

the reality of practice. Indeed, as Ng’s chapter in this volume highlights, a disjunctive dynamic within an ensemble is a plausible outcome of any collaborative project. Intercultural work can also, as Yeung observes in her chapter, bring to the fore the political-economic otherness of Asian peoples produced by globalisation. We propose that mapping the unevenness, by focusing upon the individual performance or group, reveals insights into the nature of Asian city-to-city collaboration and also the specifcs of Hong Kong and Singapore as city locations. Characterising intercultural ecologies as disjunctive, rather than as horizontal and convivial, enables performance to make place meaningful within the frame of globalisation and the postmodern city. Through its commitment to shared experience, performance might still hope to realise community, whether it is convivial or not, and despite the isolating simulations of commodifed metropolitan culture. As Albert Borgmann has suggested: “Postmodern ecology, economy, and community need to be grounded and centered in reality if they are to resist hypermodern disorientation and desiccation.”54 He proposes the concept of focal reality as a methodology for such resistance and pinpoints how sport, the arts, and religion might set in motion changes in the behaviour of citizens. Focal reality, he suggests, “accepts the lessons of the postmodernist critique and resolves the ambiguities of the postmodern condition in an attitude of patient vigor for a common order centered on communal celebrations”.55 Performance, frequently conceived of as communal activity founded upon human interaction, has the capacity to facilitate such focal realism. The festivals, city celebrations, acts of protest, and intercultural politics that frame the performances discussed in this volume demonstrate how focal reality can determine the specifcity of a real sense of place, produced through a methodology of ‘in betweenness’. A pathway is a passageway that connects two points, an exploratory route, a trail of discovery. To paraphrase Henri Lefebvre’s description of the street in The Urban Revolution, a pathway “is more than just a place for movement and circulation. . . . It serves as a meeting place.” A pathway “is where movement takes place, the interaction without which urban life would not exist, leaving only separation, a forced and fxed segregation”.56 City-to-city collaboration is thus a real act of place-making, forged through globalised networks in the context of the simulated city.

Articulating specif-city The framework for this project was developed from the writings of Danny Yung, a prominent theatre maker and visual artist and co-artistic director of Hong Kong’s transmedia group, Zuni Icosahedron (who is also a contributor in this volume). In 1997, the year of Hong Kong’s handover, Yung launched the annual City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference, a non-governmental forum based on the principle of mutual learning through comparison and involving arts practitioners, administrators, policymakers,

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and academics from Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Taipei. Yung proposed that the city, rather than the nation, should be taken as the basic “mediator” and “unit” of cultural exchange.57 He believed that national borders and state politics often hinder genuine communication. Rather, it was, and is, primarily through city-to-city exchanges, and not country-level diplomacy, that key sites of creativity and new transborder coalitions are realised. It is signifcant, in this respect, that the network has never included Beijing, China’s capital city and national seat of government. In the same year, Yung also established Asia Arts Net, comprising city-based Asian arts organisations including The Substation, an independent arts centre in Singapore, which Kuo Pao Kun founded in 1990. In addition to networks spanning across the Sinosphere and the Asia Pacifc region, in 2017, Yung and Zuni’s co-artistic director, Mathias Woo, launched the Hong Kong BeltRoad City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference to connect cities in Asia and Europe. Singaporean participants, including Kok Heng Leun and Liu Xiaoyi (both contributors to this volume), have regularly taken part in the annual gatherings in Hong Kong. Paraphrasing the title of Prasenjit Duara’s infuential monograph, Rescuing History from the Nation,58 it is possible to consider Yung’s commitment to building non-governmental alliances between Hong Kong and other Asian cities as well as Asia and Europe (see the Festival of Vision—Hong Kong/ Berlin, which Zuni co-hosted in 2000 and involved 17 Asia Pacifc cities) and long-standing practice of city-to-city cooperation in the areas of arts education and cultural policy as a means of ‘rescuing the city from the nation’— from both the former British colonisers and the incumbent powers in Beijing. In this sense, post-handover Hong Kong has come to represent a key junction and meeting point—“a place of transit and interchange”59—for urban creative communities invested in processes of cultural production that transcend the parameters and perimeters (the limitations) of the national polity. Likewise, since the 1980s, Singapore has been a critical meeting point for practitioner-led exchanges aimed at mutual learning and comparison, largely owing to Kuo Pao Kun’s determination to reach out to fellow Chineselanguage theatre makers in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. The series of Chinese Drama Camps (Huayu xiju ying) that Kuo spearheaded in 1983 illustrates such an efort at bridging across cities and communities throughout the Sinosphere. The 1983 camp can be seen as a paradigm of city-based method that bypasses the communicative constraints of the nation, for it was the earliest gathering of practitioners from Beijing and Taipei since 1949, when China’s Nationalist Party-led government retreated from the mainland to Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party founded the PRC. This was when Deng Xiaoping’s China had just recently launched the reform and opening up (gaige kaifang) policy and Taiwan was still under martial law (it was lifted in 1987). ‘Rescuing the city from the nation’ refects the conceptual agenda of this volume in advocating a shift in emphasis from national- to city-based

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frameworks for the analysis of performance production across borders and in seeking to unsettle the perception of city culture—especially of capital cities and city-states—as a microcosm and voice for the imagined national whole. The city—in its networked formulation as ‘city-to-city’—is taken here as a method to account for its role as a distinctive collaborative (infra-) structure for the production of performance that not only portrays and takes place in cities but that is conceived and created through connection and circulation of people, works, and ideas across cities. Our view of cityto-city performance “as a nexus for new politico-cultural alignments”,60 as Sassen has described the global city, resonates with social theories that afrm the signifcance of subnational spaces as key units of analysis in consequence of the “strengthening of cross border city-to-city transactions and networks”61and the rise of the city “as a new frontier zone”.62 Cities are not only dynamic sites of connectivity, however; they are also spaces of segregation and breeding grounds for economic discrimination and social injustice. Cities can be contested spaces; they can be zones of dialectical engagement with the politics, policies, and practices of the wider nation. They can be critical or conficted; they can censor and reprimand. Yet, it is precisely because of the need to move around such hegemony that the city as infra-structure (the city-to-city framework) facilitates alternatives to nation-to-nation or state-to-state, cultural diplomacy, and a kind of horizontal transnationalism (or even ‘trans-cendental-nationalism’) that intersects across, but is not synonymous with, nation-based modes of sponsorship, promotion, showcasing, power, and even oppression. The tensional dialectic between city, state, and nation resonates with the historical conditions of the postcolonial city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore. In Hong Kong and Singapore, city and nation constantly negotiate with one another in defning place identity, political allegiance, and afective belonging. As Paul Rae writes of the latter: “It is impossible to understand the urban performances of the Southeast Asian republic of Singapore without appreciating that it is at once a city and a nation state.”63 The (infra-) national identity of Hong Kong is equally contested through its multiple negotiations with its former status as a British colonial outpost, its global (self-)positioning as ‘Asia’s world city’, its ofcial denomination as a Special Economic Zone of the PRC, and the recent rise of localist voices that speak against Beijing’s mounting encroachment on Hong Kong’s civil liberties and on the very essence of the city’s autonomous identity under the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ governance principle. Increasingly, this identity appears to be constructed in opposition to China’s national identity and to the identity conferred to the city and citizens of Hong Kong by the Chinese nationstate. The 2014 Umbrella Movement and the 2019/20 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) protests provide compelling evidence to the city’s mounting struggle against forced identifcation with the powers in Beijing. But as Chinese nationalism grows stronger, so do Hong Kong’s

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urban distinctiveness and the desire for political self-determination among some sectors of the population, especially the younger generations. The link between city practitioner and national representation captures an additional area of tension. Nicolas Whybrow touches on this point in noting that “Singapore efectively performs itself twice: once as a city, and again as a nation state”.64 If one extends this consideration to the contrasting (infra-)national performances of Hong Kong’s localist grassroots and its pro-Beijing elites, then the question may arise as to what is being performed and represented when Singapore and Hong Kong practitioners partake in a collaboration or attend an international festival, the city or the nation-state? What is being showcased, promoted, challenged, or contested? Furthermore, how do practitioners and performances navigate possible frictions between national identifcation, city-based allegiances, and ethnic afliations? On this matter, the two cities present distinct ethno-linguistic scenarios. Singapore is a multi-racial and multilingual society. Racial classifcation follows the disputed CMIO (Chinese-Malay-Indian-Others) model and the ofcial languages are English, Chinese (Mandarin, although many varieties of Chinese are spoken in the city-state), Tamil, and Malay. In contrast, Hong Kong’s ethnic composition is predominantly Chinese. While English and Chinese are formally designated as the ofcial languages, Cantonese, rather than Mandarin, is the most widely spoken in the territory. Its political value as an identity marker is all the more signifcant in the context of many Hong Kongers’ ferce resistance against Beijing’s ideological encroachment. Nonetheless, a potential for performativity distinguishes both cities as strategic crossings for enacting the multiple (national, ethnic, linguistic) identities that collaborative practice often stimulates. The pathways of performance that connect Hong Kong and Singapore, along with those departing from these key intersections towards other destinations, also open up productive spaces for negotiating national versus transnational politics, such as addressing sensitive domestic issues in non-domestic settings. In this regard, the city is a subject, space, stage, scenery, and structure of performance (what Harvie might describe as the cultural materialism of a city), but it is also a strategy, and a method with afective potential; in other words, it is also, itself, performative. A notion of the city as a method and (infra-)structure invites investigation into the relational dimensions of the city-to-city model, as fostering both ‘inter-(city)’ and ‘cross-(city)’ collaborations, and its conceptual associations with notions of interculturalism, transnationalism, and mobility.

Inter-city: comparisons and connections For the purposes of this volume, inter-city collaboration is understood in three principal ways. First, ‘inter-’ conveys the sense of “between”, “among”, “in the midst of” but also “together, mutually, or reciprocally”.65 It suggests not only linkages and interconnections but also

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conviviality and community. If we conceive of city-to-city collaboration as being inter-city, there is “an indicator of connection” (e.g. inter-city trains, rail services, infrastructural links between cities), a series of intercultural dialogues. Yet, this volume is less concerned with critical reception and more with process. This does not necessarily mean production or rehearsal process, more the processes of connection—what facilitates collaboration, teasing out strategies of community building and communication, and analysing the pathways where movement takes place. Second, ‘inter-’ can mean a dialectical and dialogical space (e.g. interpersonal, the internet). In exploring the communicative potential of the city, we refer to Richard Sennett’s distinction between dialectic and dialogic conversations. Where the former seek consensus and commonalities, the latter serve the purpose of furthering discussion towards new directions: “Though no shared agreements may be reached, through the process of exchange people may become more aware of their own views and expand their understanding of one another.”66 Finally, ‘inter-’ can refer to a mode of relational comparison and connection—an interrelationship, or inter-city referencing. Results on search engines and academic databases for ‘city-to-city’ highlight cases of collaboration between local authorities and cities learning from other cities on matters of sustainability, infrastructural development, and urban design; cooperation networks between cities in the Global South; socio-economic initiatives involving urban communities and NGOs; and city partnerships working on climate change. Chua Beng Huat has highlighted cases of interAsian referencing in the areas of export-oriented industrialisation, urban planning and management, media and popular culture, governance, and socio-economic policy. Singapore, Hong Kong, and other cities have been looking at one another as reference points for their own residential and infrastructural development, with Singapore serving as a model for Dalian in China, Bangalore in India, and Surabaya in Indonesia, among others, while, at the same time, looking at Hong Kong to develop its public transport system.67 Ong has noted that “inter-city comparison, referencing, or modeling” are pervasive in the worlding practices of 21st-century Asian metropolises.68 Here, emphasis is placed upon collaboration and connection, on knowledge transfer between cities and notions of “city mentorship”, “city-to-city learning”,69 and on cities as models and methods for one another. Yet, it is also clear that inter-city collaboration rests upon understanding and recognising intra-city collaboration. Practitioners included in this volume reiterate the need to understand what their own city can provide, traverse diferent cultural districts, and uncover its limits and borders, before commencing travel across someone else’s city. Indeed, the practitioners discussed here have staged domestic interventions in their home city in advance of establishing collaborations with like-minded individuals and groups elsewhere. Such projects provide domestic compass points from which to compare practices and develop new inter-city collaborations.

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In Hong Kong, Danny Yung and Mok Chiu-yu created highly infuential works that responded to the anxiety surrounding the Hong Kong handover before embarking on large-scale inter-city collaborations. The 1984 productions of Opium War: Four Letters to Deng Xiaoping (Yapian zhanzheng: Zhi Deng Xiaoping de sifeng xin), which Yung directed with Zuni, and 1984/1997, which Mok conceived with an ensemble called the People’s Theatre, sparked a trend known as the “’97 plays” (jiuqi ju) in Hong Kong (see Lim in this volume). Both have continued exploring themes related to Hong Kong urban life and city-state politics in transnational collaborations with practitioners from the Chinese-speaking world and South Asia, respectively. Representative of this trend are Zuni’s series, Journey to the East (Zhongguo lücheng), inaugurated in 1997 to address the transregional implications of ‘One Country, Two Systems’, and Yours Most Obediently (1997), which Mok’s Asian People’s Theatre Festival Society produced to explore the history of Indian migration to Hong Kong.70 In Singapore, likewise, the work of Kok Heng Leun with Drama Box, of Liu Xiaoyi with Emergency Stairs, and of Tan Suet Lee with local and international collaborators attest to multiple pathways of creative intervention within the sociocultural fabric of the practitioners’ home city as well as across its borders (see Ng, Lim, and Rogers in this volume). Furthermore, Emergency Stairs’ Southernmost Festival in Singapore illustrates notions of inter-city earning, modelling, and referencing, for it builds on the city-based model of intercultural collaboration pioneered by Yung in Hong Kong. In advocating for ‘city as method’, this volume envisions an alternate intercultural paradigm. Taking cities, rather than nations and cultures, as units of exchange posits city-to-city collaboration as a corrective to models of interculturalism that align cultures with totalities of language, ethnicity, or nationality. The postcolonial cities of Hong Kong and Singapore are inherently multilingual, multicultural, and transnational spaces suggesting a need to capture multiplicity, rather than totality, in describing their intercultural performances. Indeed, as Danny Yung has noted: “A city is already a conglomerate of cultural infuences.”71 The multivectored performance pathways opened up through the city-based paradigm interconnect local (multicultural, multi-ethnic, multilingual) multiplicities that eschew both the normative totality of the nation and the reductionism of elusive and often-essentialised notions of culture. In addition, one should consider “the accretions of past empires”72 that typify Hong Kong and Singapore’s shared legacy of inter-imperiality. The two cities’ histories of multiple colonisation and inter-imperial inheritance regulate the linguistic currency used in the production and circulation of their performances. Language interactions can translate into “an insidious form of epistemic violence”73 when experienced against the background of British/Anglophone domination and ethnic Chinese supremacy (also considering the growing reach of Mandarin Chinese in contemporary Hong Kong). This sociolinguistic regime afects not only interactions between

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Hong Kong and Singapore—often conducted either in English, the language of the former coloniser, or in Mandarin Chinese—but also those between these cities and cities elsewhere within the Sinosphere and in South and Southeast Asia (e.g. India). By considering “how artists, movements, and texts have been shaped within a horizon of empires and across languages, long-historical memories, and imperially linked economies” one can better account for aesthetic “mediations of power under multivectored conditions”.74 This volume thus proposes that ‘city as method’ serves as a new and specifc intercultural paradigm for the inter-imperial contexts of Hong Kong and Singapore.

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Cross-city: mobility and borders In contrast to inter-city, the notion of cross-city ofers a diferent nuance to collaboration. “A  cultural exchange between two cities”, Yung observes, “allows us to explore the immediate challenges that we are facing right now, whereas the exchange between two countries often ends up to be about boundaries.”75 Cross-city foregrounds boundaries and borders—traversing, transcending, and transgressing borders and seeing borders not only as obstacles but also as opportunities. As Brian Massumi has argued: “The individual is defned more by the boundaries it crosses than the limits it observes.”76 Thus, to cross is to enter into questions of denationalisation and of challenging hegemonic cultural agendas and fnding new routes to expression. As Liu Xiaoyi notes in Chapter 8, crossing-over can be a strategy, a method, a form, and a political choice. Like inter-city, cross-city suggests three diferent kinds of interactions. Cross-city implies “action from one individual, group, etc., to another” (as in cross-cultural, cross-fertilise, cross-refer).77 This resonates with the notion of city-to-city performance pathways as proceeding across cultures, possibly sowing seeds for new practices emerging from mutually shared discoveries. Second, cross-city evokes “a cross-like fgure or intersection”78 that mirrors the rail and road crossings of cities and their pathways and infrastructures. Last, cross-city invokes movement across something, “implying interference, opposition or contrary action” (as in cross-current, cross-talk, or cross-purpose).79 This fnal defnition is an important reminder that to cross is also to upset, to thwart, to frustrate, and to obstruct. Edward Soja has pointed out that the earliest sign for ‘city’ in the pictorial writing system of ancient Egypt was a cross surrounded by circle.80 This simple image provides a useful reminder that the city can be “the site of two contradictory urges, the conjunction, the intersection and the mixing of directions implied in the cross, and the countering wall, the protection against diference and the outside” embodied in the circle, which sidetracks and blocks of.81 Far from romanticising city crossings as invariably progressive spaces of positive encounters and transformative actions, the contributors to this volume recognise that there are also frictions, failures, frustrations, and

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misunderstandings. In other words, it is not our intention to see collaboration through rose-tinted lenses and to frame it as invariably egalitarian, liberating, and socially or politically meaningful. In an essay detailing his numerous projects with Asian People’s Theatre activists, Mok Chiu-yu has commented on the capacity for change, mutual learning, and empowerment of this kind of translocal production: “To realize this full potential requires sufcient resources; good translation and interpretation as well as efective communication; democratic decision-making processes; and participants who are mature, selfess, tolerant, excellent artists and highly politically aware. Some projects have failed or functioned merely as artistic experiments because some of these conditions were not met.”82 Power relations and economic disparities among contributors, funders, governing bodies, and intended benefciaries impinge on the practicability of the collaborative route. This volume not only highlights the benefts and opportunities of the city-to-city model—the pathways and the fows—but also accounts for the drawbacks, blockages, and obstacles. As we investigate the aesthetics arising at the crossroads of cities, the ethics and politics that underpin the creative process should also be scrutinised, in order to ascertain the feasibility of ‘city as method’ as a workable framework. As mentioned earlier with reference to Harvie’s critique of (overly cynical) cultural materialist versus (overly idealistic) performative analysis approaches, theatre in the city—and, indeed, across cities—can be an exploitative, elitist, and commodifed agent of neoliberalism, or it can open up dialogic spaces for creative interventions that disrupt the rituals of productive labour and popular consumption that typify contemporary urban capitalism. Accordingly, ‘city as method’ is as invested in the material conditions of performance as in its afective, performative, and phenomenological dimensions; it is equally concerned with its potential for both compliance and resistance to hegemonic economic and political infrastructures and with the city “as both crucible of confict and container of dissent”.83 ‘City as method’, from the perspective of boundaries and borders, presents a productive tool for exploring the nexus of transnationalism, mobility, and collaborative practice and its capacity for dislocating (mobilising) or, conversely, reinforcing national geopolitics. City crossings are invested in the cultural politics of “minor transnationalism”,84 which occurs below and beyond the remit of nation-states and forges multivectored afliations across multiple locals. ‘City as method’ enables practitioners to sometimes beneft strategically from national investments and infrastructures or to circumvent the constraints foisted upon them by national ideologies and institutions through transnational mobility. But mobility can also make them more acutely cognisant of the rigidity of their surroundings. Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen notes, in this regard, that “[m]obility agitates any system— this agitation could be good, it could be harnessed to create better systems”. Yet mobility “is a double-edged sword . . . a fexible concept that turns out to be less than fexible due to local laws and local constraints”.85 A foremost

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advocate of Asian interculturalism and initiator, with his company TheatreWorks (recently rebranded as T:>Works), of the Flying Circus Project, Arts Network Asia, Continuum Asia Project, the Dance Archive Box Project, and other intercultural and inter-Asian schemes, Ong notes that practitioners

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have to harness the advantages of being inside and outside of our cultures, our reference points. This is what mobility provides. We become very aware of the diference in how our home city operates and how our host city operates. . . . But we can also crystallize the problematics of our local methods, our local strategies. Mobility demands that we engage with diference.86 Paul Rae and Alvin Lim categorise “Singapore as a transnation state” that combines “mobility” (of capital and human resources) and “fxity” (of state institutions).87 Writing on Hong Kong literature, Tung King Lee similarly notes that, while embracing mobility, one also needs to account for “the situatedness and place-based nature of writing”—in our case, of city-based performance that responds to specifc issues and needs arising from specifc urban communities and domestic realities. But rather than exclude each other, these dimensions “complement each other within a creative dynamic that enables the local and the global”—in our case, multiple globalised urban locals—“to reciprocally articulate each other in diverse semiotic constellations”, in our case, constellations of cities.88 From this perspective, ‘city as method’ can capture the distinctive dynamics of performance practices that cannot simply be viewed through the bounded analytical lens of exchanges between nations or cultures but that rely on links and transfers between cities and on the capacity of mobilising aesthetic relations through negotiating national and cultural borders. The academic analyses and practitioners’ refections included in this volume investigate how the city—as a physical urban environment as well as an imagined community and afective space—performs and is performed thorough (infra-)structures of city-to-city collaboration. Contributors examine where these performances occur; what they communicate; and their aesthetics, politics, and economics. Yet, rather than individual case studies of cities or the city as an independent conceptual entity, this volume seeks to foreground a method to understand connections and crossings of cities as models for networked practices of performance-making and performance-movement. Conceiving of the city as a method and an (infra-)structure means to draw attention to its function as a conduit of performance circulation that facilitates collaborative connections and forges creative assemblages across borders.

City-to-city collaboration: pathways to performance This volume is structured around the notion of travelling between points, of departing from one location and arriving at another. As an overall discursive

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journey, chapters depart from Hong Kong and arrive in Singapore. Hong Kong is our chosen departure point because Danny Yung’s early intuition of the value of the city as an enabler of cultural exchange has been central to the impetus behind this project. But the writings of Singapore’s Kuo Pao Kun, as a forerunner of performing arts connections in Asia, have also inspired us. In Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral (Zheng He de houdai, 1995), one of Kuo’s most celebrated plays, the peripatetic mariner Zheng He declares: “Departing is my arriving; wandering is my residence.”89 Equally, if a reader were so disposed, this volume could be read from back to front, beginning in Singapore and ending in Hong Kong. For this reason, despite a general direction of travel, we resist a very strict linearity in our ordering of the chapters. We do this to illustrate the multiple trails that ‘city as method’ can map and to refect the complexity of negotiating multiple reference points in the process of city-to-city collaboration. Thus, while readers may fnd a sense of geographical coherence at either end of the volume, we propose an overall structure that captures something of the disorientation of seeking out new pathways and the uncertainty of working amid global fows of culture. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 focus on the work of Danny Yung and Zuni Icosahedron. In Chapter 2, “Culture of exchange and cultural exchange”, Yung contributes a refection on strategies and proposals for city-to-city collaboration based on his long-standing experience of facilitating interactions between non-governmental organisations in Hong Kong and cities in China, Taiwan, and the Asia Pacifc region, as well as connections between Asia and Europe. His assertion that “the notion of ‘nation’ is concerned with boundaries, and nation-to-nation relations are conservative” while suggesting that “city-to-city collaboration is comparatively more open and diverse” ofers a discursive departure point for the chapters that follow. Indeed, in Chapter 3, “From 1989 to 1997 and beyond: Zuni Icosahedron’s transnational explorations”, Wah Guan Lim examines Zuni’s role in the Hong Kong arts scene in the years preceding the handover, amid intensifying claims to the city’s unique identity and a heightened sense of crisis in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Lim notes a shift in focus from exploring local identity to positioning Hong Kong within global networks in the pre- and post-1989 period, respectively, arguing that Zuni’s transnational collaborations situate Hong Kong in a marginal yet strategic position that enables the city to serve as a key facilitator in these networks while maintaining a critical function independently from the political centre. In Chapter 4, “Dialectics as creative process and decentring China: Zuni Icosahedron and Drama Box’s One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution”, How Wee Ng surveys a 2011/12 co-production by Zuni and the Singaporean ensemble, Drama Box, addressing ideas of revolution in and beyond China and events in the socio-political contexts of Hong Kong and Singapore. Ng unpacks the notion of dialectics as central to Zuni’s practice before examining the Singaporean cast’s varied responses to Yung’s dialectical approach

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to theatremaking and difering understandings of power relations between director and actors in intercultural collaboration. Chapters 5 and 6 explore questions of city-to-city collaboration from the perspective of a diferent practitioner, the theatre maker and activist Mok Chiu-yu. In Chapter 5, “Thoughts on cross-cultural collaboration by Mok Chiu-yu, a Hong Konger: what we did and why there was little interaction with Singapore”, Mok refects upon his encounters, and yet few collaborations, with Singaporean artists over a span of 30 years, including Ong Keng Sen, Alvin Tan, Kuo Pao Kun, Kok Heng Leun, Lee Wen, Chng Seok Tin, and others. He describes the network of Asian People’s Theatre groups that he has helped to build as well as the various collaborations that took place in the absence of Singaporean participants. The aim of these collaborations was to search for an ‘Asian theatre’ and the construction of solidarity in the pursuit of peace, justice, and structural change in Asian societies. In Chapter 6, “Augustine Mok Chiu-yu’s intercultural Asian People’s Theatre: imagining ‘the third way’ for Hong Kong”, Jessica Yeung explores Mok’s 1990s’ collaborations with dramatists from other Asian regions, suggesting that they constitute a unique body of work that has brought wider Asian perspectives on history and society to the Hong Kong stage. She suggests that these productions move beyond the ‘East-West’ comparison and Hong Kong-versus-China binarism. Instead, they are distinguished by a unique approach that draws upon the shared history of pre-20th-century colonialism and neo-imperialism in the age of global capital. In Chapter  7, “Solitude to solidarity: imagined transnational alliance of humanity against bestial hegemony”, Daphne P. Lei examines two solo performances and proposes an imagined transnational alliance of diferent voices of justice and humanity against oppressive powers. Focusing on Kelvin Ng Kwok-wa’s silent yueju (Cantonese opera) I, Wu Song (Hong Kong, 2017) and Seelan Palay’s act of standing silently outside of Parliament House with a mirror (Singapore, 2017), Lei argues that these seemingly powerless soloists staged their performances against distinctive power centres. While the performances did not facilitate obvious social change in their respective localities, she moves beyond their individual ‘failures’ to imagine a transnational solidarity in spirit, across national and cultural divides. Lei concludes with the contention that alternative strategies of silent solitude confrm subaltern subjectivity and infect/afect the transnational political climate. Chapters  8, 9, and 10 explore the implications of diferent kinds of curated city-to-city exchange. In Chapter  8, “Crossing-over as strategy”, the Singapore-based theatre practitioner Liu Xiaoyi elaborates the theoretical basis of his approach to intercultural practice. Liu explores the aims and objectives of the Southernmost Project, which he curates, focusing on the signifcance of physical masterclasses, intercultural performances, and open forums. He argues that ‘crossing-over’ develops long-term intercultural platforms and international networks that have the potential to

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reimagine the future of Asian performing arts. In Chapter 9, “The city and the artist: Alice Theatre Laboratory’s Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka in Shanghai”, Mirjam Tröster investigates the 2010 Shanghai performances of a Hong Kong production that draws on Franz Kafka’s life and writings to examine the role of the artist in the contemporary city. Its presentation at the Beijing–Hong Kong–Shanghai Young Directors’ Showcase @ Modern Drama Valley Expo Season elicited a comparison of the three cities while revealing the intricacies of city-to-city exchange between Hong Kong and mainland China. Tröster’s analysis reveals the tensions and opportunities that a showcase can provide, especially when the exhibition of work is tied to city branding. She argues that recognition of ambivalence and ambiguity is key to understanding the dynamic politics of intercultural exchange. In Chapter 10, “Unequal cosmopolitanisms: staging Singaporean nanyin in and beyond Asia”, Shzr Ee Tan explores how nanyin is a genre with a contested history in Singapore, where revisions and the shortening of classic texts in the 1970s to refect a ‘Singaporean’ perspective created controversy. International tours of ‘Singaporean’ nanyin to Paris and New York were given as exhibitions of nationalist soft power. In this respect, Tan notes that ‘East vs West’ cultural politics seems readily applicable to the curation of Singaporean nanyin in Europe and the US. However, she argues that these shows intersect across variously scaled playing felds, where notions of audience ‘knowingness’, class, imagined Chinese authenticity, Singaporean trans/nationalism and presumed ‘universal’ standards of artistic professionalism play out with unequal impact. Chapters 11 and 12 ofer testimonies by two Singapore-based practitioners. In Chapter 11, “Minor translocalism: messy and marginal networks in and beyond Singapore. An interview with Tan Suet Lee”, Amanda Rogers focuses on the work of the playwright and poet Tan Suet Lee, who was born in the UK but now predominantly lives in Singapore. Drawing upon the notion of ‘minor translocalism’, Rogers explores Tan’s connections to Singaporean and British East Asian theatre worlds and the varying degrees of success she has had in connecting these translocally. Tan describes the different collaborative opportunities opened up by her work as a poet as well as a playwright and the difculty of establishing and maintaining networks in and across diferent spheres. The interview articulates the halting, stopstart networks of collaboration and individual practice, too often characterised as fast-paced and frictionless. In Chapter 12, “Facilitating exchange”, Kok Heng Leun explores how collaboration produces a desire for better understanding. Although such desires might be predicated upon a better understanding of the ‘other’, Kok suggests that, in fact, critical questioning facilitates a better understanding of the self. Exchange is thus predicated upon refexive interrogations into power, control, capital, and social and artistic structure. Such questioning produces what Kok describes as “deep listening”—a process that leads to ‘mondiality’, the assertion and privileging of diference.

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The book concludes with Chapter 13, “Postscript: Asian city crossings as a strategy for freedom?” Here, the editors seek to capture the transformative potential of city-to-city collaboration, revisiting principal concerns from the introduction in light of the issues raised by the chapters. It conceptualises city-to-city collaboration as respondent to ever-evolving contexts, ofering a refection upon the efcacy of climates of transnational solidarity and questioning how acts of protest might emerge as freedoms are eroded.

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Notes 1 Takeuchi Yoshimi, “Asia as Method,” in What Is Modernity? Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi, ed. and trans. Richard F. Calichman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 165. 2 Ibid., 157. 3 Chen Kuan-hsing, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), xii. 4 Chua Beng Huat, “Inter-Asia Referencing and Shifting Frames of Comparison,” in The Social Sciences in the Asian Century, ed. Carol Johnson, Vera Mackie, and Tessa Morris-Suzuki (Canberra: The Australian National University, 2015), 67–81; Koichi Iwabuchi, “De-Westernisation, Inter-Asian Referencing and Beyond,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 17, no. 1 (2013): 44–57. 5 Koichi Iwabuchi, “Trans-East Asia as Method,” in Routledge Handbook of East Asian Popular Culture, ed. Koichi Iwabuchi, Eva Tsai, and Chris Berry (London: Routledge, 2017), 276–84; Gladys Pak Lei Chong, Chow Yiu Fai, and Jeroen de Kloet, eds., Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and Practices (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefeld, 2019). 6 Rossella Ferrari, “Asian Theatre as Method: The Toki Experimental Project and Sino-Japanese Transnationalism in Performance,” TDR: The Drama Review 61, no. 3 (2017): 141–64. 7 Yiu-Wai Chu, ed., Hong Kong Culture and Society in the New Millennium: Hong Kong as Method (Singapore: Springer, 2017). 8 For a compelling discussion of social inequality in Singapore, see You Yenn Teo’s best-selling This Is What Inequality Looks Like (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2018). 9 See Saskia Sassen, “Rise of the Niche Global City,” The Straits Times, September 7, 2015, www.straitstimes.com/opinion/rise-of-the-niche-global-city; Saskia Sassen, “The Merits of an Unfnished City,” The Straits Times, February  19, 2013, A18. 10 Chua Beng Huat, “Singapore as Model: Planning Innovations, Knowledge Experts,” in Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global, ed. Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 31. 11 Can-Seng Ooi, “Reimagining Singapore as a Creative Nation: The Politics of Place Branding,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 4, no. 4 (2008): 287–302. 12 Stephen Yiu-wai Chu, “Brand Hong Kong: Asia’s World City as Method?” Visual Anthropology 24, no. 1–2 (2010): 46–58. 13 Institute of Advanced Studies of Nanyang Technological University, ed., Singapore and Hong Kong: Comparative Perspectives on the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the Handover (Singapore: World Scientifc, 2019). 14 Wang Gungwu, “Singapore and Hong Kong: Historical Images,” China and the World: Ancient and Modern Silk Road 1, no. 1 (2018): 1–16. 15 See Stephan Ortmann, Politics and Change in Singapore and Hong Kong: Containing Contention (London: Routledge, 2009); Jun Jie Woo, The Evolution

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of the Asian Developmental State: Hong Kong and Singapore (London: Routledge, 2018); Kwok-kan Tam, The Englishized Subject: Postcolonial Writings in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia (Singapore: Springer, 2019); Mak Yan Yan, Xianggang dianying yu Xinjiapo: Lengzhan shidai Xing Gang wenhua lianji, 1950–1965 [Hong Kong Cinema and Singapore: A Cultural Ring between Two Cities 1950–1965] (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2018). See Chua, “Inter-Asia Referencing,” for a discussion of “pop culture regionalism.” See Tong Soon Lee, Chinese Street Opera in Singapore (ChampaignUrbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009); Kuan Wah Pitt, Wayang: A History of Chinese Opera in Singapore (Singapore: National Archives, 1988) for an outline of how elements of Cantonese opera were absorbed into Singapore Chinese opera performance practices. See Jen Harvie, Theatre & the City (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Kim Solga, D. J. Hopkins, and Shelley Orr, eds., Performance and the City (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Nicolas Whybrow, ed., Performance and the Contemporary City: An Interdisciplinary Reader (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); D. J. Hopkins and Kim Solga, eds., Performance and the Global City (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Aihwa Ong, “Introduction: Worlding Cities, or the Art of Being Global,” in Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global, ed. Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 2. Margaret Hillenbrand, “Communitarianism, or, How to Build East Asian Theory,” Postcolonial Studies 13, no. 4 (2010): 329. Shu-mei Shih, “The Concept of the Sinophone,” PMLA: Journal of the Modern Language Association of America 126, no. 3 (2011): 710. Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West (London: Routledge, 2001), 84. Shu-mei Shih, “World Studies and Relational Comparison,” PMLA: Journal of the Modern Language Association of America 130, no. 2 (2015): 434. See, for example, James Rhys Edwards, “Impossible Properties: Language and Legitimacy in Ong Keng Sen’s Lear,” International Journal of Asia Pacifc Studies 10, no. 2 (2014): 13–34; Ong Keng Sen, “Thoughts on Translation in Intercultural Performance,” in Between Tongues: Translation and/of/in Asian Performance, ed. Jennifer Lindsay (Singapore: NUS Press, 2006), 190–96; Marcus Tan, “Spectres of Shakespeare: Ong Keng Sen’s Search: Hamlet and the Intercultural Myth,” Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies 90, no. 1 (2016): 129–40; Joanne Tompkins, “The Politics of Location in Othello, Djanet Sears’s Harlem Duet, and Ong Keng Sen’s Desdemona,” Contemporary Theatre Review 19, no. 3 (2009): 269–78; Yong Li Lan, “Ong Keng Sen’s Desdemona, Ugliness, and the Intercultural Performative,” Theatre Journal 56, no. 2 (2004): 251–73. For analysis of a recent Sinophone collaboration directed by Edward Lam, see Lia Wen-Ching Liang, “Revitalising the Liang-Zhu Legend: Edward Lam Dance Theatre’s Postdramatic Art School Musical  (2014),” Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance 13, no. 2 (2020): 135–48. Discussions of Stan Lai’s inter-Chinese and intercultural collaborations include William Huizhu Sun, “A  Marathon Cycle Linking Taipei, Shanghai, and the West: A Dream Like a Dream by Stan Lai and His Performance Workshop,” TDR: The Drama Review 50, no. 2 (2006): 159–63; Yomi Braester, “In Search of History Point Zero: Stan Lai’s Drama and Taiwan’s Doubled Identities,” Journal of Contemporary China 17, no. 57 (2008): 689–98. On Lee Kuo-hsiu (Li Guoxiu), see John B. Weinstein, “Taiwan’s Little Theatre Grows Up: Reviving Peking Opera: The Revelation into a Classic,” in Staging China: New Theatres

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Rossella Ferrari and Ashley Thorpe in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Li Ruru (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 185–201. On Wu Hsing-kuo, see chapter  7 (“Disowning Shakespeare and China”) of Alexa Huang, Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), and chapter 8 (“Wu Hsing-kuo—Subversion or Innovation?”) of Li Ruru, The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in the Changing World (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010). Merriam Webster, s. v., “Infrastructure,” accessed July 1, 2019, www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/infrastructure. Saskia Sassen, “Cities in Today’s Global Age,” SAIS Review 29, no. 1 (2009): 6. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 132. Harvie, Theatre & the City. D. J. Hopkins and Kim Solga, “Introduction: Borders, Performance, and the Global Urban Condition,” in Performance and the Global City, ed. D. J. Hopkins and Kim Solga (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 3. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994), 13. Ibid., 77. See Stacy Warren, “Postmodern City,” in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, ed. Audrey Kobayashi, 315–22 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2009). See Maria Beville, “Zones of Uncanny Spectrality: The City in Postmodern Literature,” English Studies 94, no. 5 (2013): 603–17. See David Clarke, The Cinematic City (London: Routledge, 1997). See Giampaolo Nuvolati, “Between puer and fâneur,” Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica—Journal of Theories and Research in Education 12, no. 1 (2017): 149–63. Malcolm Waters, Globalization (London: Routledge, 2001), 184. Doreen Massey, “A Global Sense of Place,” Marxism Today, June 1991, 24. Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Diference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Public Culture 2, no. 2 (1990): 4. Ibid., 17. See Gabriella Giannachi, Virtual Theatres: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2004). See Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (London: Routledge, 2008). Albert Borgmann, Crossing the Postmodern Divide (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 115. Ong, “Introduction,” 2–3. Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories II, trans. Chris Turner (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 70. Waters, Globalization, 186. Ong, “Introduction,” 3. Massey, “A Global Sense of Place,” 29. Ibid., 27–29. Ric Knowles, Theatre  & Interculturalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 59. Ibid. Laura Noszlopy and Matthew Cohen, “Introduction: The Transnational Dynamic in Southeast Asian Performance,” in Contemporary Southeast Asian Performance: Transnational Perspectives, ed. Laura Noszlopy and Matthew Cohen (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 15. Stephanie Burridge has also documented the formation of ‘Asian contemporary’ dance predicated on inter-Asian exploration rather than forms derived from the

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60 61 62 63 64 65 66

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70 71 72 73 74 75

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West. See Stephanie Burridge, “Regional Networks and Cultural Exchange,” in Evolving Synergies: Celebrating Dance in Singapore, ed. Stephanie Burridge and Caren Cariño (London: Routledge, 2017), 124–39. Borgmann, Crossing the Postmodern Divide, 128. Ibid., 116. Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003 [1970]), 18. Zuni Icosahedron, Annual Report 2000–2001 (Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2001). Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Danny Yung, “Qiaoliang, zhongxin, wangluodian—Xianggang wenhua de weilai” [Bridge, Centre of Gravity, Network Point: The Future of Hong Kong Culture], in Chuangyi yijian [Ideas: About Culture and Cultural Policy] (Beijing: Yishu yu sheju chubanshe, 2009), 61. Saskia Sassen, “The Global City: Introducing a Concept,” Brown Journal of World Afairs 11, no. 2 (2005): 38. Ibid., 29. Saskia Sassen, “When the Center No Longer Holds: Cities as Frontier Zones,” Cities 34 (2013): 67. Paul Rae, “Performing Singapore: City/State,” in Performing Cities, ed. Nicolas Whybrow (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 179. Nicolas Whybrow, “Writing Performing Cities: An Introduction,” in Performing Cities, ed. Nicolas Whybrow (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 14. Dictionary.com, s. v., “Inter-,” accessed July  1, 2019, www.dictionary.com/ browse/inter-. Richard Sennett, Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 19. Chua, “Inter-Asia Referencing.” See also Chua, “Singapore as Model.” Ong, “Introduction,” 4. See Sogen Moodley, “Defning City-to-City Learning in Southern Africa: Exploring Practitioner Sensitivities in the Knowledge Transfer Process,” Habitat International, no. 85 (2019): 34–40; Silvana Ilgen, Frans Sengers, and Arjan Wardekker, “City-to-City Learning for Urban Resilience: The Case of Water Squares in Rotterdam and Mexico City,” Water, no. 5 (2019): 98; Lee Taedong and Ha Yoon Jung, “Mapping City-to-City Networks for Climate Change Action: Geographic Bases, Link Modalities, Functions, and Activity,” Journal of Cleaner Production, no. 182 (2018): 96–104; Xian Shi, Roger C. K. Chan, and Zhixin Qi, “Booming Provincial-Led North-South City-to-City Cooperation in China: A Case Study of Suzhou-Suqian Industrial Park of Jiangsu Province,” Cities, no. 46 (2015): 44–54. On the Journey series, see Rossella Ferrari, Transnational Chinese Theatres: Intercultural Performance Networks in East Asia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). On Yours Most Obediently, see Yeung in this volume. Arts Republic, “One Table Two Chairs: Interview with Danny Yung (Part 2),” trans. Sam Kee, Arts Republic, January  5, 2018, https://artsrepublic.sg/ backstage/one-table-two-chairs-interview-with-danny-yung-part-2/. Laura Doyle, “Inter-Imperiality: Dialectics in a Postcolonial World History,” Interventions 16, no. 2 (2013): 191. Jacqueline Lo and Helen Gilbert, “Toward a Topography of Cross-Cultural Theatre Praxis,” TDR: The Drama Review 46, no. 3 (2002): 46. Laura Doyle, “Inter-Imperiality: An Introduction,” Modern Fiction Studies 64, no. 3 (2018): 396. Arts Republic, “One Table Two Chairs.”

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76 Brian Massumi, “Everywhere You Want to Be: Introduction to Fear,” in The Politics of Everyday Fear, ed. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 27. 77 Collins, s. v., “Cross-,” accessed July  1, 2019, www.collinsdictionary.com/ dictionary/english/cross_2. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 80 Edward W. Soja, Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 62. 81 Ana Ma Manzanas, “Circles and Crosses: Reconsidering Lines of Demarcation,” in Border Transits: Literature and Culture Across the Line, ed. Ana Ma Manzanas (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 10. 82 Mok Chiu Yu, “Theatre, Migrant Workers and Globalization: The Hong Kong Experience,” in Community, Culture and Globalization, ed. Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard (New York: The Rockefeller Foundation, 2002), 357. 83 Michael Keith and Steve Pile, “Introduction Part 2: The Place of Politics,” in Place and the Politics of Identity, ed. Michael Keith and Steve Pile (London: Routledge, 1993), 25. 84 Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, eds., Minor Transnationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). 85 Ong Keng Sen, “Desiring Mobility,” Performance Research 12, no. 2 (2007): 145. 86 Ibid. 87 Paul Rae and Alvin Lim, “Nameless, Sexless, Rootless, Homeless: Performance in a Transnation State,” in Contemporary Southeast Asian Performance: Transnational Perspectives, ed. Laura Noszlopy and Matthew Isaac Cohen (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 164–65. 88 Tong King Lee, “Mobility as Method: Distributed Literatures and Semiotic Repertoires,” MCLC Resource Center, March  2019, http://u.osu.edu/mclc/ online-series/tong-king-lee/. 89 Kuo Pao Kun, “Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral,” in The Complete Works of Kuo Pao Kun Volume 4: Plays in English, ed. C. J. W. L. Wee (Singapore: World Scientifc, 2012), 253.

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Braester, Yomi. “In Search of History Point Zero: Stan Lai’s Drama and Taiwan’s Doubled Identities.” Journal of Contemporary China 17, no. 57 (2008): 689–98. Burridge, Stephanie. “Regional Networks and Cultural Exchange.” In Evolving Synergies: Celebrating Dance in Singapore, edited by Stephanie Burridge and Caren Cariño, 124–39. London: Routledge, 2017. Chen Kuan-hsing. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Chong, Gladys Pak Lei, Chow Yiu Fai, and Jeroen de Kloet, eds. Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and Practices. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefeld, 2019. Chu, Stephen Yiu-Wai, ed. “Brand Hong Kong: Asia’s World City as Method?” Visual Anthropology 24, no. 1–2 (2010): 46–58. ———. Hong Kong Culture and Society in the New Millennium: Hong Kong as Method. Singapore: Springer, 2017. Chua Beng Huat. “Singapore as Model: Planning Innovations, Knowledge Experts.” In Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global, edited by Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong, 27–54. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. ———. “Inter-Asia Referencing and Shifting Frames of Comparison.” In The Social Sciences in the Asian Century, edited by Carol Johnson, Vera Mackie, and Tessa Morris-Suzuki, 67–81. Canberra: The Australian National University, 2015. Clarke, David. The Cinematic City. London: Routledge, 1997. Collins. s. v. “Cross-.” Accessed July 1, 2019. www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/ english/cross_2. Dictionary.com. s. v. “Inter-.” Accessed July 1, 2019. www.dictionary.com/browse/inter-. Doyle, Laura. “Inter-Imperiality: Dialectics in a Postcolonial World History.” Interventions 16, no. 2 (2013): 159–96. ———. “Inter-Imperiality: An Introduction.” Modern Fiction Studies 64, no. 3 (2018): 395–402. Duara, Prasenjit. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Edwards, James Rhys. “Impossible Properties: Language and Legitimacy in Ong Keng Sen’s Lear.” International Journal of Asia Pacifc Studies 10, no. 2 (2014): 13–34. Ferrari, Rossella. “Asian Theatre as Method: The Toki Experimental Project and Sino-Japanese Transnationalism in Performance,” TDR: The Drama Review 61, no. 3 (2017): 141–64. ———. Transnational Chinese Theatres: Intercultural Performance Networks in East Asia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Giannachi, Gabriella. Virtual Theatres: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2004. Harvie, Jen. Theatre & the City. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Hillenbrand, Margaret. “Communitarianism, or, How to Build East Asian Theory.” Postcolonial Studies 13, no. 4 (2010): 317–34. Hopkins, D. J., and Kim Solga, eds. Performance and the Global City. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Huang, Alexa. Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Ilgen, Silvana, Frans Sengers, and Arjan Wardekker. “City-to-City Learning for Urban Resilience: The Case of Water Squares in Rotterdam and Mexico City,” Water, no. 5 (2019): 98. Institute of Advanced Studies of Nanyang Technological University, ed. Singapore and Hong Kong: Comparative Perspectives on the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the Handover. Singapore: World Scientifc, 2019.

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Iwabuchi, Koichi. “De-Westernisation, Inter-Asian Referencing and Beyond.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 17, no. 1 (2013): 44–57. ———. “Trans-East Asia as Method.” In Routledge Handbook of East Asian Popular Culture, edited by Koichi Iwabuchi, Eva Tsai, and Chris Berry, 276–84. London: Routledge, 2017. Keith, Michael, and Steve Pile. “Introduction Part 2: The Place of Politics.” In Place and the Politics of Identity, edited by Michael Keith and Steve Pile, 22–40. London: Routledge, 1993. Knowles, Ric. Theatre & Interculturalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Kuo, Pao Kun. “Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral.” In The Complete Works of Kuo Pao Kun Volume 4: Plays in English, edited by C. J. W. L. Wee, 235–54. Singapore: World Scientifc, 2012. Lee Taedong, and Ha Yoon Jung. “Mapping City-to-City Networks for Climate Change Action: Geographic Bases, Link Modalities, Functions, and Activity.” Journal of Cleaner Production, no. 182 (2018): 96–104. Lee, Tong Soon. Chinese Street Opera in Singapore. Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Lefebvre, Henri. The Urban Revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003 [1970]. Liang, Lia Wen-Ching. “Revitalising the  Liang-Zhu  Legend: Edward Lam Dance Theatre’s Postdramatic  Art School Musical  (2014).” Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance 13, no. 2 (2020): 135–48. Lionnet, Françoise, and Shu-mei Shih, eds. Minor Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Li Ruru. The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in the Changing World. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. Lo, Jacqueline, and Helen Gilbert. “Toward a Topography of Cross-Cultural Theatre Praxis.” TDR: The Drama Review 46, no. 3 (2002): 31–53. Mak, Yan Yan. Xianggang dianying yu Xinjiapo: Lengzhan shidai Xing Gang wenhua lianji, 1950–1965 [Hong Kong Cinema and Singapore: A Cultural Ring Between Two Cities 1950–1965]. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2018. Manzanas, Ana Ma. “Circles and Crosses: Reconsidering Lines of Demarcation.” In Border Transits: Literature and Culture Across the Line, edited by Ana Ma Manzanas, 9–32. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. Massey, Doreen. “A Global Sense of Place.” Marxism Today, June 1991, 24–29. Massumi, Brian. “Everywhere You Want to Be: Introduction to Fear.” In The Politics of Everyday Fear, edited by Brian Massumi, 3–38. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Merriam Webster. s. v. “Infrastructure.” Accessed July  1, 2019. www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/infrastructure. Mok, Chiu Yu. “Theatre, Migrant Workers and Globalization: The Hong Kong Experience.” In Community, Culture and Globalization, edited by Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard, 354–67. New York: The Rockefeller Foundation, 2002. Moodley, Sogen. “Defning City-to-City Learning in Southern Africa: Exploring Practitioner Sensitivities in the Knowledge Transfer Process.” Habitat International, no. 85 (2019): 34–40. Noszlopy, Laura, and Matthew Cohen. “Introduction: The Transnational Dynamic in Southeast Asian Performance.” In Contemporary Southeast Asian Performance:

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Transnational Perspectives, edited by Laura Noszlopy and Matthew Cohen, 1–24. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 2010. Nuvolati, Giampaolo. “Between puer and fâneur.” Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica— Journal of Theories and Research in Education 12, no. 1 (2017): 149–63. Ong, Aihwa. “Introduction: Worlding Cities, or the Art of Being Global.” In Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global, edited by Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong, 1–26. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Ong Keng Sen. “Thoughts on Translation in Intercultural Performance.” In Between Tongues: Translation and/of/in Asian Performance, edited by Jennifer Lindsay, 190–96. Singapore: NUS Press, 2006. ———. “Desiring Mobility.” Performance Research 12, no. 2 (2007): 145–48. Ooi, Can-Seng. “Reimagining Singapore as a Creative Nation: The Politics of Place Branding.” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 4, no. 4 (2008): 287–302. Ortmann, Stephan. Politics and Change in Singapore and Hong Kong: Containing Contention. London: Routledge, 2009. Pitt, Kuan Wah. Wayang: A  History of Chinese Opera in Singapore. Singapore: National Archives, 1988. Rae, Paul. “Performing Singapore: City/State.” In Performing Cities, edited by Nicolas Whybrow, 179–98. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Rae, Paul, and Alvin Lim. “Nameless, Sexless, Rootless, Homeless: Performance in a Transnation State.” In Contemporary Southeast Asian Performance: Transnational Perspectives, edited by Laura Noszlopy and Matthew Isaac Cohen, 164–65. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. Sassen, Saskia. “The Global City: Introducing a Concept.” Brown Journal of World Afairs 11, no. 2 (2005): 27–43. ———. “Cities in Today’s Global Age.” SAIS Review 29, no. 1 (2009): 3–34. ———. “The Merits of an Unfnished City.” The Straits Times, February  19, 2013, A18. ———. “When the Center No Longer Holds: Cities as Frontier Zones.” Cities 34 (2013): 67–70. ———. “Rise of the Niche Global City.” The Straits Times, September  7, 2015. www.straitstimes.com/opinion/rise-of-the-niche-global-city. Sennett, Richard. Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Shi, Xian, Roger C. K. Chan, and Zhixin Qi. “Booming Provincial-Led North-South City-to-City Cooperation in China: A  Case Study of Suzhou-Suqian Industrial Park of Jiangsu Province.” Cities, no. 46 (2015): 44–54. Shih, Shu-mei. “The Concept of the Sinophone.” PMLA: Journal of the Modern Language Association of America 126, no. 3 (2011): 709–18. ———. “World Studies and Relational Comparison.” PMLA: Journal of the Modern Language Association of America 130, no. 2 (2015): 430–38. Soja, Edward W. Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Solga, Kim, and D. J. Hopkins. “Introduction: Borders, Performance, and the Global Urban Condition.” In Performance and the Global City, edited by D. J. Hopkins and Kim Solga, 1–15. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Solga, Kim, D. J. Hopkins, and Shelley Orr, eds. Performance and the City. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

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Sun, William Huizhu. “A Marathon Cycle Linking Taipei, Shanghai, and the West: A Dream Like a Dream by Stan Lai and His Performance Workshop.” TDR: The Drama Review 50, no. 2 (2006): 159–63. Takeuchi, Yoshimi. “Asia as Method.” In What Is Modernity? Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi, edited and translated by Richard F. Calichman, 149–65. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Tam, Kwok-kan. The Englishized Subject: Postcolonial Writings in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore: Springer, 2019. Tan, Marcus. “Spectres of Shakespeare: Ong Keng Sen’s Search: Hamlet and the Intercultural Myth.” Cahiers Élisabéthains: A  Journal of English Renaissance Studies 90, no. 1 (2016): 129–40. Teo, You Yenn. This Is What Inequality Looks Like. Singapore: Ethos Books, 2018. Tompkins, Joanne. “The Politics of Location in Othello, Djanet Sears’s Harlem Duet, and Ong Keng Sen’s Desdemona.” Contemporary Theatre Review 19, no. 3 (2009): 269–78. Tong, King Lee. “Mobility as Method: Distributed Literatures and Semiotic Repertoires.” MCLC Resource Center, March 2019. http://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/ tong-king-lee/. Wang, Gungwu. “Singapore and Hong Kong: Historical Images.” China and the World: Ancient and Modern Silk Road 1, no. 1 (2018): 1–16. Warren, Stacy. “Postmodern City.” In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, edited by Audrey Kobayashi, 315–22. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2009. Waters, Malcolm. Globalization. London: Routledge, 2001. Weinstein, John B. “Taiwan’s Little Theatre Grows Up: Reviving Peking Opera: The Revelation into a Classic.” In Staging China: New Theatres in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Li Ruru, 185–201. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Whybrow, Nicolas, ed. Performance and the Contemporary City: An Interdisciplinary Reader. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. ———. “Writing Performing Cities: An Introduction.” In Performing Cities, edited by Nicolas Whybrow, 1–18. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Woo, Jun Jie. The Evolution of the Asian Developmental State: Hong Kong and Singapore. London: Routledge, 2018. Yong, Li Lan. “Ong Keng Sen’s Desdemona, Ugliness, and the Intercultural Performative.” Theatre Journal 56, no. 2 (2004): 251–73. Yung, Danny [Rong Nianzeng]. “Qiaoliang, zhongxin, wangluodian—Xianggang wenhua de weilai” [Bridge, Centre of Gravity, Network Point: The Future of Hong Kong Culture]. In Chuangyi yijian [Ideas: About Culture and Cultural Policy], 60–65. Beijing: Yishu yu sheju chubanshe, 2009. Zuni Icosahedron. Annual Report 2000–2001. Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2001.

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Culture of exchange and cultural exchange Danny Yung Translated by Rossella Ferrari

Trends in global cultural exchange strategy

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At a cultural roundtable held in Munich in 1997, I proposed the following draft strategy for global cultural exchange, which resonated widely with the German cultural community. The launch of the Festival of Vision—Hong Kong/Berlin, the frst ever city-to-city festival of contemporary culture, followed in 2000, along with a series of Asia-Europe cultural forums aimed at exploring current issues in global cultural exchange (such as the AsiaEurope Meetings in Copenhagen in 1999 and 2000 and the Europe-Asia Civil Society Dialogue Summit in Lisbon in 2000, among others). The draft strategy in Munich included the following points: (1) Promote trilateral or multilateral cultural exchanges on a city-to-city basis. At present, nation-based cultural exchanges often come with a baggage of political issues that reduce cultural exchanges to political activities. The notion of ‘nation’ is concerned with boundaries, and nation-to-nation relations are conservative; exchange becomes infexible if it is too constrained. The ‘city’ is not concerned with boundaries, only with problems. City-to-city collaboration is comparatively more open and diverse. The principle of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ has opened up further fexibility for Hong Kong. As a city, Hong Kong has more room to build multilateral and creative relationships. Promoting trilateral or multilateral cultural exchanges that take cities as units of exchange will defnitely have a positive efect on global cultural development; (2) Promote exchanges based on contemporary culture. The contemporary and the traditional are not antithetical. Exchanges based on contemporary culture address the ‘nowness’ of present-day creativity. Such culture of nowness does not exclude the traditional cultural industries, and contemporary creations cannot be without traditional components, although there may be elements of criticism and analysis in these components. Those who understand creativity know that ‘creation’ is itself criticism and analysis;

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(3) Promote cross-sectoral, cross-disciplinary, and cross-media cultural exchanges. Cross-sectoral exchange is the basis of tripartite collaboration among culture, politics, and the economy, whereas crossdisciplinarity is the direction of academic development and the source of cultural creation. Culture should take the initiative in establishing interactivity that bridges technology and the economic system; (4) Promote cross-regional, cross-ethnic, cross-cultural, and cross-religious exchanges. Focus on current global conficts; enhance communication, coordination, and mediation; (5) Emphasise research to develop long-term open communication models and systems. Pay special attention to questions of research methodology and rational dialectics; (6) Promote equal partnerships. This is an area that the so-called frst and third worlds must pay special attention to. These points put forward in Munich have become widely accepted trends in global cultural exchange today. In addition, everyone agreed to carry out four specifc research and dissemination tasks in the following order: (1) Macro cultural exchange planning and research: to be promoted by the cross-regional academia in collaboration with the cultural and political sectors; (2) Specifc strategy and organisation (network) planning and research: to be promoted by cross-regional cultural organisations working together with governments, the private sector, and academia; (3) Infrastructural planning and construction (hardware and software): to be promoted by a cross-regional cultural network in collaboration with governments, the cultural sector, and academia; (4) Collaborative development planning and co-organisation of exchange projects: to be led by cross-regional enterprises and foundations and jointly promoted by the business sector and academia, with government assistance.

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Cultural exchange reduced to political decoration These four tasks should be fulflled in order from the frst to the fourth— namely, from research, policy, and infrastructural development to collaborative development planning and jointly presented exchange projects. The frst task can easily be reduced to an ivory tower—an academic or PR type of research that is removed from reality may not survive the progression to the second and third tasks. The second and third tasks have become subordinate to the political system and lost the required fexibility and drive, since cross-regional cultural organisations and networks such as UNESCO and the Asia-Europe Foundation are inherently weak. Hence, the second and third tasks can only rely on the initiative and support coming from regions with a vision. However, those few cities and regions that pay close attention to cultural exchange—particularly, those in the developing world—are often eager to

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skip the second and third tasks and move straight to the fourth. Hence, in many of these regions, the fourth task remains largely at the stage of cultural consumption or of showcase-style public events that reduce cultural exchange to a political decoration. This kind of cultural exchange projects has hardly brought forth any impact on global cultural development, as the support of higher-level theory and vision are missing. A better understanding of the specifc problems encountered in global cultural exchange strategy work is certainly benefcial to the development of Hong Kong’s cultural exchange policies and strategies. The balanced development and reciprocal coordination of the four tasks are the necessary prerequisites for planning a cultural blueprint. They are also the key points that Hong Kong must pay attention to if taking part in global cultural development afairs is on the agenda.

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Cultural policy and cultural strategy Before discussing cultural exchange, we should discuss two other matters: frst, the distinction and interaction of cultural policy and cultural strategy, and second, the role of governments and the private sector in cultural exchange. Policy refers to guidelines and programmes formulated by governments with respect to legal and administrative measures, while strategy can be initiated by the private sector alone or in partnership with governmental institutions. Strategy can promote the formulation of policy, and policy can guide the development of strategy. Cultural development in Hong Kong before and after 1997 has evidently, and fortunately, been more of the former. Ideal development should be the balanced growth and interaction of policy and strategy deriving from the mutual respect and encouragement of the governmental realm and civil society. However, due to the immature political party culture in Hong Kong; the lack of professionalism in policy research and development; the lack of independence, sense of mission, and infrastructural support in the Hong Kong academia; and the lack of experience in applied research, policy formulation can be said to be the biggest problem the Hong Kong government faces. Since the discussion here concerns private-led cross-regional cultural exchanges, we will only talk about strategy and leave policy aside.

Hong Kong’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and crises Before exploring how to formulate a cultural exchange strategy for Hong Kong, we must understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and crises within the government, the business community, and the private sector in developing a strategy for international exchange. We must also understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and crises inherent to Hong Kong’s cultural exchange policy, infrastructure, and activities. Even more, we must know the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and crises

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of Hong Kong’s local culture. Before discussing an exchange strategy, we need to study the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and crises that afect the development of cultural exchange in the Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region, the South of China, the Asia-Pacifc region, and the European Community. Without a strong cultural research infrastructure and sufcient planning resources, our work is comparable to a building without foundations. It is not possible to analyse this matter in depth here; we can only briefy sketch the impact of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and crises of Hong Kong’s overall situation on the city’s cultural exchanges. Strengths The greatest strengths for developing cultural exchange in Hong Kong are the spirit and room for experimentation that the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle has generated. Due to a long history of immigrant culture, Hong Kong has always embraced a culture of dynamism and fexibility. Hong Kong’s harbour location ofers a window onto the world, a strategic cultural gateway, and an optimal bridge between China and elsewhere in the world. Hong Kong society is based on the rule of law; it enjoys the second-best economic conditions and the highest levels of freedom of information in Asia. Hong Kong’s investment on culture is close to three billion Hong Kong dollars per year, and senior government ofcials are determined to develop Hong Kong into a global cultural metropolis.

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Weaknesses Talent and mechanisms are weak spots for the development of cultural exchange in Hong Kong. At government level, policies are unclear, and systems are incomplete. The governmental sector experienced a brain drain in the pre-1997 period, and the reform of cultural mechanisms in the post1997 period has been slow. Cultural resources are unduly concentrated in the hands of the government, and misallocated resources lead to a lack of strategy and vision. The government does not place much emphasis on quality, as opposed to quantity, in building cultural infrastructure, nor does it have a foreign cultural strategy. In the private sector, the crisis of confdence caused by the 1997 handover and the speculative mentality that Hong Kong’s real-estate culture has spread through society have induced cynicism, passivity, and short-sightedness within the cultural industry; intermediary cultural organisations are weak, and the third sector is over-reliant on the government, lacking an independent spirit. Opportunities There are more opportunities for cultural exchange development coming from outside than from within Hong Kong. Hong Kong enjoys the

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best conditions to attract global cultural resources because of historical, regional, political, and economic factors. The global cultural world has watched Hong Kong closely after 1997 and has looked forward to the city’s development into a world-class cultural laboratory. Making good use of this opportunity will naturally make Hong Kong an international cultural metropolis. Financial instability, structural shifts in the economy, a jaded colonial education system, and the reform of the civil service have sparked a process of self-refection in Hong Kong society in recent years. This is an important dialectical opportunity for Hong Kong. Dialectics stimulates analysis and thinking. The overall efect is conducive to a very important opportunity for the development of cultural exchange in Hong Kong. Crises

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The crises in the development of cultural exchange come from within Hong Kong, not from elsewhere (such as Shanghai). Both the government and the private sector let conservatism and populism gain ground in Hong Kong society during the transition period. The government’s policy formulation went from being conformist to confused to blindly insular. Administrative operations became increasingly conservative, inward-looking, and overly focused on public relations; mass culture was cynical, populistic, and obtuse. The direction of Hong Kong’s cultural policy before 1997 was always inward looking and service oriented. Currently, Hong Kong does not have an external strategy, let alone a global vision or an ideal cultural strategy. Government think tanks are often subject to the narrow thinking of the political system—and unknowingly so—and do not trust the private sector. The crisis of Hong Kong’s cultural exchange development is the disunity of governmental and civil society forces. But because this crisis comes from within, resolving it is not difcult. It depends on whether the wisdom and vision of the two sectors can formulate a joint efort in setting it straight.

Hong Kong’s global cultural strategy Hong Kong aspires to become a global cultural metropolis. This requires a set of international cultural exchange strategies with a global vision. However, we frst need to understand: what is a global vision? What is global culture? What is a global cultural metropolis? What is the driving force behind the realisation of a true global cultural metropolis? What is the driving force of global culture? Once we have understood the driving force behind the making of global culture, we then need to understand our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and crises. These tasks require cooperation between the government and the private sector. A  blueprint for a set of cultural exchange strategies can only take shape with the endorsement of smart, bold, and visionary leaders supported by active and rational research and development methods.

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Non-governmental cultural exchange strategy

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As the formulation of policies is related to the government’s position—for example, Hong Kong has no right to formulate cultural policies in the Pearl River Delta—it seems that the responsibility for developing a set of cultural exchange strategies lies with the private sector. With the assistance of the government, the private sector can indeed be more active and enjoy greater freedom to develop strategies that supplement local government policies. How should the private sector develop strategies for cultural exchange in Hong Kong? In addition to referring to the aforementioned four-stage programme of global cultural tasks—(1) macro cultural exchange planning and research; (2) strategy and organisation planning and research; (3) infrastructural network planning and construction; (4) collaborative development planning and co-organisation of exchange projects—the following basic tasks should not be overlooked: (1) Establish cultural networks at all levels. Promote and support sustainable cross-sectoral (political, economic, academic) and cross-media dialogues (conferences, group meetings, study meetings, retreat meetings) and collaborative programmes (research, experiment, creation) through cultural networks of various sorts and sizes, seeking for international partners to co-organise regional or global cultural think tanks and launch cross-regional and cross-cultural projects and case studies; (2) Establish cultural strategy and research centres. Commit to supporting the systematic collection of information about city culture on a global scale, including cultural mechanisms, cultural policy, cultural investment, cultural exchange policy, mechanisms for and investments in cultural exchange activities, cultural exchange talent training, information about cultural and economic interaction, the creative industries, and so on. The scope of this work can extend from neighbouring regions and the Asia-Pacifc area to important cities in Europe, America, and the developing world; (3) Establish mechanisms for global cultural exchange activities. Having acquired cultural strategy and research and various levels of cultural networks and incorporated regional and global cultural elite think tanks, Hong Kong is beginning to have sufcient foundations for planning a blueprint for cultural exchange and establishing truly world-class structures, mechanisms, software, and hardware for cultural exchange activities; (4) Establish institutions for international cultural exchange training and education. With the above three tasks as a foundation, Hong Kong now has sufcient resources to develop frst-class international cultural exchange training, education, and research institutions; to provide the hardware and software required for future cultural exchanges; to attract regional and global cultural planning and education talent; and

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to maintain its position on the front line of global cultural development. The immediate work is to collaborate with UNESCO in promoting the organisation of on-the-job training and degree programmes for Asian cross-cultural administrative personnel and gradually expand into a global programme. To promote the above work, each task requires indepth formulation of the scope of the work, but overall, we should prioritise the development of a Hong Kong cultural exchange strategic planning research group to coordinate the specifc work of lobbying and planning. Internally, basic consensus with the government and all sectors of society should be actively sought to resolve problems of resource allocation and application. Externally, diferent types of cooperation partners should be sought, especially to strengthen the cultural networks that Hong Kong has already joined as well as the non-governmental cultural exchange research and plans that are in preparation. Hong Kong’s non-governmental participation in cultural networks

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In the 1990s, Hong Kong non-governmental organisations initiated and participated in several cultural networks. The more successful and active of these are listed later. Asia Arts Net (AAN): Founded in Hong Kong in 1997, the original membership comprised the artistic directors of ten-year-old cultural organisations from 14 cities in East and Southeast Asia, with the intention of expanding into South Asia. Headquartered in Hong Kong, activities include annual conferences and seminars, research on the cultural ecology of the 14 member cities, and an exchange programme for young artists. Funding for these activities comes from art groups and, partly, from foundations. City-to-City Cultural Forum (CTCCF): Founded in Hong Kong in 1997, the members are front-line cultural practitioners from ten nongovernmental organisations based in each of the four participating cities—Shanghai, Shenzhen, Taipei, and Hong Kong—working across the areas of art, media, criticism, education, administration, and research. Headquartered in Hong Kong, activities include annual conferences and seminars on themes concerning the creative industries, which each of the four cities hosts on rotation. Symposia for cultural leaders in the four cities have also been held. Funding comes from art groups and, partly, from regional foundations. Conference of Asian Foundations and Organizations (CAFO): Founded in Tokyo in 1997, the membership comprises third-sector practitioners across the areas of culture, environmental protection, and civil society from 11 East and Southeast Asian countries and regions. The 1998 annual meeting took place in Manila. The frst seven-member board

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Danny Yung of directors was elected at the 1999 meeting in Hong Kong, ofciated by Anson Chan (the then chief secretary for administration of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region), and included two members from Hong Kong. Headquartered in Manila, activities include annual conferences and seminars and research projects sponsored by foundations from diferent Asian regions. Asia Pacifc Performing Arts Network (APPAN): Founded in Seoul in 2000 under the patronage of UNESCO with an elected vice president from Hong Kong. Members are arts practitioners from 20 regions and nations from East, South, and Southeast Asia. Headquarters were set up in New Delhi in 2001. Activities include yearly conferences, workshops, and exchange programmes for artists. Part of the funding comes from the Ford Foundation. Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM): Founded in Bangkok in 1996, members come from the political, business, and cultural sectors of 25 countries in East and Southeast Asia and Europe. Meetings were held in London in 1998, Seoul in 2000, and Copenhagen in 2002. In 1997, ASEM established the Asia-Europe Foundation with the fnancial support of 25 countries. Headquartered in Singapore, the Foundation assists in coordinating the activities of ASEM. Asia-Europe Cultural Network (AECN): Founded in 1998 in London by the artistic directors of six cultural organisations from Berlin, London, Copenhagen, Seoul, Singapore, and Hong Kong under the agreement of holding yearly informal meetings to discuss cultural issues of common concern. Funding comes from art groups. It is an extended network of ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) with conveners from Berlin and Hong Kong. Middle East Arts Net (MAN): Founded in Europe in 2002 by the artistic directors of urban cultural and artistic organisations based in the European Common Market countries, with planning headquarters in Berlin and Hong Kong appointed as a supervisory consultant. It was modelled after the Asia Art Net (AAN), and activities included annual conferences and seminars sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation.

In 2002 or 2003, the Ford Foundation contacted me. They said they planned to establish a World Culture Forum and invited me to join their ‘think tank’ meeting. We had a brainstorming session in New York, and I  did not feel particularly strongly about it because talking about ‘global this’ and ‘global that’ seemed out of reach, like a game for politicians. How was that related to us? There were 60 people from all over the world at that meeting, and I was the only Asian participant. I thought I should tell them how we connect and share with each other in Asia. I talked about the importance of sustainable development and the importance of empowerment. As a result, the focus of the World Culture Forum seemed to gradually shift towards my suggestions. I  wrote eight agenda items on how to

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empower artists. Artists need to know more. We are isolated, yet we must know how to establish relationships with the media, the education system, and so on. We must criticise economic development and political systems, yet we lack the cultural and creative models to comment on these systems. Afterwards, the frst World Culture Forum took place in Brazil. It was a very large event, with about 5,000 participants. I very much loathe big events, as they do not achieve anything in the end. The forum turned into an angry and shouty anti-American rally. Consequently, when we put forward our agenda about how to empower ourselves, nobody heard our voice. The second World Culture Forum was held in Jordan and did not attract much attention because there were bomb threats in Jordan at that time; hence, not many people attended. I continued to advance what I believe is an important agenda: empowering the art world. We must understand more about what is happening around us so that we can understand how our work is related to the development of local societies and cultures.

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Traditional cultures and modernisation The International Network for Cultural Diversity (INCD) is a global nongovernmental and non-proft organisation composed of artists and cultural organisations from all over the world. It confronts the cultural efects of globalisation and is committed to counter the negative impact of globalisation on culture and the arts. It has more than 300 members from 71 countries, including several international organisations. I am the co-chair of the network. In October 2004, I organised the INCD Annual Meeting in Shanghai with the theme of “Traditional Cultures and Modernization”. I also spoke on behalf of the INCD at the International Network on Cultural Policy (INCP) meeting that the Chinese Ministry of Culture held in Shanghai during the same period. In my speech, I pointed out that our cooperation with representatives of civil society associations in China would continue because we were all working to promote cultural diversity and support endangered languages and cultures, including the language and culture of the local residents. We understand modernisation as mainly about development and technology, yet these processes often threaten the survival of traditional cultures. We do not believe this is an inevitable outcome. Traditional cultures and knowledge have contributed greatly to the process of modernisation, and we must work together to ensure that this continues to occur by empowering these cultures, building the necessary systems to legally protect traditional forms of knowledge, and other measures. Technology can also be a means to encourage the development of traditional cultures and promote cultural diversity. Both the INCD and our colleagues from China understood that the government and the private sector evaluate development and modernisation from a strictly economic perspective and that the most basic measure is to

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clearly understand the impact on people and society. We must ensure that development plans respect local cultures and that creativity and the development of the cultural industries become necessary for sustainable development. We recognised that the “Convention on the Promotion of Diversity in Cultural Content and Artistic Expression” can also provide a new model for development cooperation, and our response to entering special markets was one such form. In conclusion to our joint meeting, both Chinese and international representatives agreed that the Chinese government has played a key role in the development of the convention, and we looked forward to collaboration. China has a strong developing economy, a vibrant culture, and policies based on principles that are conducive to the sustainable development of other countries.

Hong Kong’s practice of city-based cultural exchange

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Entering the 21st year of the City-to-City Cultural Forum (CTCCF) From 1984 to 1997, Hong Kong incessantly discussed the concept of ‘One Country, Two Systems’. These discussions stimulated a deeper understanding of the Hong Kong cultural scene and constituted a frst-hand experience of the relationship between culture and the political system. The fnal draft of the Basic Law of Hong Kong clearly stipulated that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has the autonomy to develop and communicate with the third sectors of culture and economics. The concept of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ and the explicit provisions of the Basic Law also inspired us to discuss the defnition of ‘nation-state’ from a cultural perspective, the defnition of ‘institution’, and on a deeper level, to creatively appraise the development and reform of the political system from a cultural perspective. Since the early 1990s, developments in the handover of Hong Kong to China have attracted global attention. After numerous discussions with the Goethe-Institut, we fnally agreed to cooperate on the organisation of a Munich-Hong Kong Joint Cultural Conference before 1997. The meeting was held at the Goethe-Institut headquarters in Munich, and each side agreed to send ten representatives to conduct cross-city and cross-sectoral discussions on cultural and institutional relationships. The two delegations comprised cultural policymakers, cultural commentators, cultural researchers, cultural educators and managers, and front-line cultural practitioners such as artists and representatives of foundations. The Hong Kong participants included Vicki Ooi, Lynn Yau, Ada Wong, Freeman Lau, Mathias Woo, Tseng Sun-man, and Ma Fung-kwok. I gave a keynote speech on cultural exchange in the 21st century in which I emphasised that, in order to handle the problem of political interference in cultural matters, we should consider taking the ‘city’ as the unit for exploring cultural exchange practices and theories across sectors and felds. Cultural exchange activities

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should pay more attention to research and development (R&D) support; they should aim to establish continuous long-term cooperation; they should appraise forms of exchange from the perspective of culture and—even more importantly—they should help establish dialectical and forward-looking platforms for cultural exchange. Around 1997, as there was no independent intermediary cultural organisation in Hong Kong comparable to the Goethe-Institut and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) in Berlin, we were inspired to urgently think, study, and establish such a cultural exchange organisation. The Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture (HKICC) was founded under such circumstances. We decided to take this initiative on by learning through practice and chose to establish it without any public funding support. The Hong Kong government essentially adopted a wait-and-see attitude; they had to be cautiously conservative, partly because of a lack of familiarity with matters of cultural exchange and partly because of the political situation around Hong Kong’s handover to China. My fundamental argument at the two-city conference in Munich (which I  have detailed at the beginning of this essay) initiated several follow-up developments. The largest was the Festival of Vision—Hong Kong/Berlin in 2000. The festival was held in both Hong Kong and Berlin, spanning across two cities in two continents, and its various programmes involved over a

Figure 2.1 The Video Circle installation curated by Danny Yung for the Festival of Vision—Hong Kong/Berlin (2000). Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

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Figure 2.2 The Video Circle performance series curated by Danny Yung for the Festival of Vision—Hong Kong/Berlin (2000).

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Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

thousand art and cultural practitioners from both regions. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and the Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture were responsible for establishing a European and an Asian cultural network, respectively, in order to set the foundations for cultural exchanges between Europe and Asia. At this event, moreover, we started exploring the topics of ‘comparative’ city-based cultural exchange systems, interactions between cultural organisations and cultural policy, creative industries, and creative education. The Munich conference also inspired me to set up Asia Arts Net in 1997 to bring the artistic directors of front-line art organisations from important Asian cities to the same front, in order to examine how art policies in each place afect artistic development and the operations of art organisations as well as to share views on the future based on each other’s fve-year plans. In addition to Hong Kong and Shenzhen, Asia Arts Net included Beijing, Taipei, Tokyo, Fukuoka, Seoul, Bangkok, Singapore, New Delhi, Macau, Manila, and Jakarta, with each city hosting on rotation. The network was discontinued when it was Macau’s turn, but later on, Tokyo proposed to renew it. On that same note, in 1997, I advocated the organisation of the City-toCity Cultural Forum, a four-city network with cities as units that would

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bring together the cultural communities of four cities with diferent political systems—Taipei, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai—and front-line practitioners concerned with cultural exchange to set up a yearly three-day creative and interactive gathering of more than 40 people, with each city taking turns at hosting the forum. This gathering is organised and presented by nongovernmental cultural circles; it attempts to design cross-border and crosscity dialogues in the form of creative meetings that break the conventions of the ofcial exchanges and academic conferences of the past in the hope of transcending such forms and becoming a genuine cultural exchange platform. The City-to-City Cultural Forum has now entered its 21st year.1 We cultivate the mutual trust of cross-city cultural workers with fexibility and honesty; on the basis of this trust, we keep observing and learning from each other; from observation and learning, we realise dialectics, and by growing dialectically, we give back to the cultural development of each city. At the same time, we jointly advance the position of ‘cultural exchange’. This is an important laboratory for cultural exchange between Chinese cities. We carry out this experimental work boldly, yet carefully and diligently, for only real experiments can inspire us in dealing with the directions and challenges of future cultural development. I have always believed in the importance of independent cultural think tanks for social development. An active cultural think tank should be not only a centre of cumulative learning and pedagogical dissemination but also a stronghold for building interactive networks and long-term ‘comparative’ research and development. What is more important for a cultural think tank is that it needs to maintain its organic nature and knowledge base and safeguard the general direction of cultural public space. The defnition of ‘culture’ in our society often remains at the level of lifestyle and cultural consumption, yet how cultural development activities can extend and expand independent thinking methods; bring diversity, creativity, inclusivity, and debate to society; and promote public space and civil society are the greatest challenges in the current capitalist economy. I hope that the City-to-City Cultural Forum can become the engine that promotes and builds a ‘crosscity’ cultural think tank among the four participating cities and a leading forward-looking network. At the same time, I  hope that we can connect with more front-line cultural practitioners in other cities and enable all cities on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait to move towards a more dialectical and more creative type of development through the concept of think tank. Hong Kong Belt-Road: a new model of East-West multicultural interaction After two decades of trials with the City-to-City Cultural Forum, in 2017, we launched the Hong Kong Belt-Road Cultural Forum—horizontally, to undertake the concept of the World Culture Forum and, vertically, to move onto the next step in the challenge of setting up an organic, deeper-level,

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Figure 2.3 Hong Kong harmonicist Gordon Lee and kunqu master Ke Jun (Nanjing) performing in the “Hong Kong Belt-Road 2017—One Table Two Chairs” programme at the Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2017, curated by Danny Yung.

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Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

non-governmental network of think tanks. In the same year, Mathias Woo and I, under the aegis of Zuni Icosahedron, established the Hong Kong BeltRoad City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference, a networking meeting based on the ‘Belt and Road’ cities. The purpose is to promote cultural and artistic exchanges and collaborations between these cities and to develop a new model of East-West multicultural interaction in the future ‘Belt and Road’ region. Cross-cultural, cross-feld, and cross-regional cultural exchanges can defnitely bring new space for cultural development. In fact, any exchange needs a new dialectical space to remind ourselves of the importance of getting together, the importance of communication, and—even more importantly— the importance of creating a culture of mutual critique. At every forum, I  remind myself: why do we need meetings? Our meetings last for entire days. What do meetings have to do with our culture? What is the relationship between the culture of meetings, cultural forums, and cultural think tanks? What is the diference between before and after these meetings? Are there any new developments in the discussions from one year to the next? All these questions are worthy of refection.

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Figure 2.4 One Table Two Chairs, created by dance artist Jitti Chompee (Bangkok) for the “Hong Kong Belt-Road 2017—One Table Two Chairs” programme at the Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2017, curated by Danny Yung.

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Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

When we held the Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, we were actually also asking: what is Hong Kong? What is culture? What is a centre? Of course, we could also ask: what is the centre of culture? Does the Hong Kong Cultural Centre live up to its name? We need to understand existing cultural institutions like the Hong Kong Cultural Centre and their institutional culture, including the relationship between their work and their vision, decision-making processes, organisation, operations, governance, and talent development. We need to understand how these institutions afect cultural exchange, their vision of and responsibility towards cross-cultural exchange and cooperation, and how they can help us plan a ‘think tank’ for cultural exchange and cooperation. There are roughly fve types of cultural institutions that can have an impact on cultural development. They all have the potential to help us develop a “Belt-Road Cultural Think Tank”. These are (1) government cultural departments, (2) cultural foundations, (3) universities and think tanks, (4) cultural and art centres and art festivals and institutions like the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, and (5) front-line arts organisations.

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Figure 2.5 The Interrupted Dream: Chinois Dream at Château de Versailles, created by Danny Yung. Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2018.

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Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

“Cultural Exchange and City Branding” was the main theme of the Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2017. The conference focused on evaluating the challenges and prospects of enhancing the role of cultural exchange and urban quality and received a warm response from 30 European and Asian cities from the Belt and Road region. From the inaugural conference we learned how to promote a better conference. Therefore, in the 2018 conference, we set up two experimental workshops for talent development to give our young administrators the opportunity to visit each other in their respective cities. I  arranged for 15 senior cultural practitioners from Asian cities to study the institutional culture of fve cultural institutions and their impact on cultural exchange. At the same time, they also analysed the interactions and interdependences between these fve organisations, the resource ratio between them, the transparency of their operations, their conception of talent development, and their decision-making process. These 15 senior cultural practitioners arrived in Hong Kong a week early; they carried out meticulous observations and held all-day meetings. I asked them to split into four working groups to explore the feasibility of establishing various kinds of cultural exchange think tanks.

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Figure 2.6 Cambodian dance artist Nget Rady (Phnom Penh) and jingju performer Chang Yu-chau (Taipei) in Heavenly Palace of Monkey Business, created by Danny Yung. Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2018.

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Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

The four think tanks are: (1) The Shanghai and Hong Kong Foreign Cultural Exchange Think Tank, in cooperation with the Shanghai Theatre Academy; (2) The Belt and Road Cultural Think Tank, in cooperation with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences; (3) The Southernmost Action ASEAN Cultural Think Tank; (4) The Greater Bay Area Cultural and Artistic Think Tank, based on the understanding that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area is developing fast—politically and economically. The plans for these four think tanks were discussed in four forums. This event was supported by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, the Shanghai Theatre Academy, Taiwan’s National Sun Yat-sen University, the C. F. Koo Foundation, and the National University of Tainan. I believe that this is to establish a network and promote the cultivation of talent as well, but I hope that, after starting in Hong Kong, we can also do it in Shanghai, Singapore, Bangkok, or Hanoi. I often feel that a cross-cultural group should not include too many people. This kind of activity should have been done by universities, yet we did not mind making a start in the hope that others may build on our preliminary work and then gradually nurture more forward-looking talent in cultural exchange management.

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Figure 2.7 The Interrupted Dream: Chinois Dream at Château de Versailles, created by Danny Yung. Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2019.

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Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

Figure 2.8 The Interrupted Dream: Chinois Dream at Château de Versailles. Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2019. Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

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Today, the World Culture Forum has vanished from history, and we have learned a lot from its failures. A  real forum is more than an event. A real forum is built on a long-term sustainable cultural infrastructure. This kind of cultural infrastructure must have a sustainable cultural think tank. I  believe that think tanks should comprise three important elements running in parallel: excellent applied strategy research, excellent applied service programmes for cultural organisations, and excellent applied networks that maintain partner institutions. Our cultural Belt and Road needs cultural think tanks; hence, we gather here, in Hong Kong, to connect, research, and practise. I believe that Hong Kong—together with front-line partners across the world—is capable of building a Belt and Road Cultural Think Tank.

Note

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1 In 2018, at the time of writing [translator’s note].

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From 1989 to 1997 and beyond Zuni Icosahedron’s transnational explorations

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Wah Guan Lim1 Zuni Icosahedron has been at the forefront of the Hong Kong arts scene from its inception. Since its founding in 1982, at a critical time when the city-state’s political fate was uncertain, Zuni’s artistic productions and arts activism have been primarily concerned with exploring Hong Kong’s future amid the rise of a collective local identity. In the post-handover period after 1997, Zuni continues to remain the region’s best-known arts collective by far, owing, in no small part, to the reputation it has garnered as the most critically acclaimed theatre group beyond the shores of the territory. The 1989 Tiananmen Square incident signifcantly impacted China’s internal politics and altered how it is imagined and perceived on the international stage, simultaneously heightening Hong Kong citizens’ sense of unease towards the impending handover. By surveying Zuni’s transnational collaborations in the pre- and post-1989 period, this chapter illustrates the group’s shift in focus from exploring the territory’s emerging local identity in the former phase to positioning Hong Kong within a discursive network of global theatre aesthetics in the latter. In this discourse, I argue that Zuni foregrounds Hong Kong’s positionality in two principal ways. First, Zuni’s proactive role in building transnational artistic collaborations with individual artists and institutions within and beyond the territory not only allows Hong Kong to act as the primary site within a ‘trans-Asian’ network that facilitates cultural interactions and exchanges but also—and more importantly—the ‘Hong Kong element’ is consequently articulated in various manifestations across these transnational projects. Second, by establishing multiple cultural exchange projects, Zuni has found Hong Kong a niche, yet strategic, position that places it on the margins while simultaneously enabling it, via its global networks, to continue playing an eminent critical role away from the political power centre.

Pioneering “’97 plays” That Zuni Icosahedron is one of the most important arts collectives in Hong Kong and East Asia is of little doubt. Its founding artistic director is Danny Yung Ning-tsun, an experimental artist who is renowned for pushing

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existing boundaries not only via his avant-garde works on the artistic stage but also ofstage. Rozanna Lilley describes Yung as “an experienced tactician” who “consistently confronts government censors and more conservative elements of Hong Kong’s arts establishments”.2 His uncanny negotiating methods have carved out a signifcantly greater space for the territory’s arts industry at large. For instance, Zuni was the frst theatre group to cast a naked actor joining a line of uniformed marchers in an act of protest in The Deep Structure of Chinese (Hong Kong) Culture (Zhongguo [Xianggang] wenhua shenceng jiegou, 1990) that broke the hitherto stage nudity taboo in the territory.3 Another Zuni strategy to challenge government restrictions has been to force these restrictions into the open by printing in performance programmes scenes the group was required to cut out and changes it needed to make so that censorship would be lifted and the performance allowed to take place.4 These eforts, among others, have earned Yung the informal title of ‘Cultural Godfather of Hong Kong’ (Xianggang de wenhua jiaofu), and his later projects and infuence beyond the city-state have also gained him an international reputation as a global leader in the arts. While his early experimental works blurred the distinctions between genres and disciplines on- and ofstage, his explorations in the past two decades have crossed the boundaries of nation-state, language, and culture. Among global leaders in the arts, Yung is immediately distinguished by his eforts to promote greater collaboration between and among arts groups, individual artists and institutions, and arts and non-arts institutions. His roles as an experimental artist and promoter of arts exchange and networks are intermittently linked. Since its inception, Zuni Icosahedron has been at the forefront of the Hong Kong arts scene. In retrospect, the year the theatre troupe was founded seemed signifcant when it coincided with then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s infamous fall on the steps of the Great Hall of the People in September 1982 upon exiting from her talks with China’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, about the post-handover governance of the then British colony. Interpreted by pundits as ominously foretelling the territory’s fate, its uncertain political future at this critical juncture was seemingly sealed when the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration that promised the territory’s ‘return’ to the Chinese ‘motherland’ on July  1, 1997, was signed. What followed was a heightened sense of awareness and urgency to claim one’s identity that became widespread in unprecedented speed and scale. From the early 1980s to 1997, therefore, the topic of the 1997 handover loomed large in the imaginary of everyday Hong Kongers and was expressed in all kinds of literature and arts. On the dramatic stage, the most critical debates and salient expressions of self-identity were to be found in works discussing this theme, which were thus coined as the “’97 plays” (jiuqi ju). Works such as Ebb (Shihai, 1984), Hong Kong Dream (Xianggang meng, 1989), and American House (Dawu, 1990)—among others—explored the themes of ‘local consciousness’ (bentu yishi) and, in particular, the “’97 complex” (jiuqi qingjie), making the 1980s an acutely prolifc decade for locally written

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works.5 Although I Am Hong Kong (Wo xi Xianggangren/Ngo hai Heunggongyan, 1985) by Raymond To Kwok-wai and Hardy Tsoi Sik-cheung is usually the best remembered iconic work that discusses local identity and identifcation,6 Zuni’s Opium War: Four Letters to Deng Xiaoping (Yapian zhanzheng: Zhi Deng Xiaoping de sifeng xin, 1984) was one of two important works that spearheaded the’97 plays.7 It was the success of this play that etched the group in the collective memory of the Hong Kong theatre community.8 From the outset, Zuni has established a reputation for itself as a serious arts collective in pursuit of a “Hong Kong theatre”9—with its arts activism and artistic productions primarily concerned with exploring Hong Kong’s future amid the rise of a collective local identity. In her groundbreaking study, Identity and Theatre Translation in Hong Kong, Shelby Chan Kar-yan points out that ‘translated plays’ (fanyi ju) began to fourish in the 1960s and competed with ‘original plays’ (yuanchuang ju) to dominate the Hong Kong stage.10 As the term suggests, ‘translated plays’ are dramatic works translated from foreign—that is, Western—sources, borrowing the narratives of others to tell the story of Hong Kong.11 Chan’s meticulous analysis concludes that translated plays have a more optimistic inclination. In contrast, original plays are more inward-looking and generally express a pessimistic view of the future. These works tend to portray Hong Kong as a powerless victim against the tide of history, sandwiched between two external great powers, Britain and China, while reminiscing nostalgically on a glorious past that the city is inevitably about to lose.12 Danny Yung, however, displays little interest in nostalgia. Instead, in his original plays, such as Opium War, he likes to raise questions continuously to push audiences to probe the problems under discussion even deeper and to approach the issues from more angles in search of greater possibilities. These questions challenge not only implicit stereotypes and commonly held assumptions but also veiled power structures. For instance, the 1840 Opium War was a major event responsible for Hong Kong’s cession from China to Britain, which might lead one to assume that a play performed in 1984 whose title evokes this historic incident may discuss it in relation to contemporary Hong Kong politics. In Opium War, the anti-opium war hero Lin Zexu, Her Majesty the Queen, and even Deng Xiaoping are mentioned, but none of them makes an actual physical appearance as characters in the play. Instead, they are alluded to as a means to discuss an issue of greater signifcance with vehement sarcasm: namely, that the true protagonists of the Sino-British Joint Declaration—the denizens of Hong Kong to whom the discussion concerning the city’s fate mattered the most—were excluded from this discussion.13

Transnational collaboration: from Hong Kong to global China(s) As Zuni advanced its eforts to advocate for a ‘Hong Kong theatre’ in the 1980s, the Tiananmen Square incident changed the group’s direction in a major way. Many Chinese ethnics outside of mainland China, including

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Hong Kongers, sympathised with the student protesters who demanded a more liberal and democratic China. Shelby Chan suggests that many Hong Kongers advocated for a stronger Chinese nation and not the Chinese state, expressing a “desire for an alternative, better Chinese nation than that proffered by the Chinese state”.14 The world watched in horror as tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square on the morning of June  4, 1989, squelching the demonstration and shooting the unarmed student protesters to re-establish control. As the brutal suppression of the nonviolent student-led demonstration left many in the local and international communities utterly dismayed, this dystopian outcome made Yung realise that Hong Kong did not quite understand China yet, and for this reason, he felt that Zuni needed to change its strategy in engaging China (as stated on September 9, 2017, at the “Hong Kong in Transition” symposium at SOAS University of London). This signifcant shift led to a two-pronged approach: to branch out internationally to engage with artistic communities, advocacy groups, nongovernmental organisations, and funding agencies beyond Hong Kong and, at the same time, to go into the hinterlands of China and work directly with Chinese artists. Moving towards and then beyond 1997, Zuni’s strategy in highlighting Hong Kong’s subjectivity is increasingly contextualised through transnational collaborations expressing a deep concern with the notion of ‘Chineseness’. The group not only proactively participates in artistic collaborations with individual artists and institutions within and beyond the territory of Hong Kong; more importantly, it also acts as a key transnational facilitator within a pan-Asian network of cultural interactions and collaborations wherein the ‘Hong Kong element’ is variously manifested. Since 1997, Yung has initiated many cross-cultural exchanges and contributed to establishing artistic networks in Asia and beyond, including Asia Arts Net, the City-toCity Cultural Forum, the Asia Pacifc Performing Arts Network,15 and more recently, the Noh and Kun Cultural Exchange Program and the Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference. Some of the biggest names in the felds of theatre, flm, dance, multimedia, installation, and the traditional performing arts have collaborated with Yung to explore, create, and experiment with diferent art forms and genres. Important Chinese ethnic artists who have participated in these experimentations, such as Journey to the East’97 (Zhongguo lücheng yijiu jiuqi), include New Wave flmmakers Edward Yang (Taipei) and Stanley Kwan (Hong Kong) and avant-garde theatre directors Lin Zhaohua (Beijing), Li Liuyi (Beijing), Hugh Lee Kuo-hsiu (Taipei), and Edward Lam (Hong Kong). In the following year, Journey to the East’98 (Zhongguo lücheng jiuba) went even further to invite collaborators beyond East Asia to involve ethnic Chinese auteurs from North America and Southeast Asia, including multimedia artist Paul Wong (Vancouver); visual artist Wong Shun Kit (Hong Kong); and theatre directors Ping Chong (New York), Stan Lai (Taipei), Wei Ying-chuan (Taipei), Zhang Xian (Shanghai), and Ong Keng Sen (Singapore) as well as flmmakers Tsai Ming-liang (Taipei/Malaysia) and

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Eric Khoo (Singapore). The Journey to the East series was established “to be a platform for cultural exchange of the regions” involving “artists from diferent cities and diferent disciplines” that experimented with the “One Table, Two Chairs” (yizhuo eryi) basic stage setting of traditional xiqu (Chinese opera) to create new works.16 In these cultural exchanges, local and overseas auteurs and directors were invited to experiment and collaborate, according to the boundaries and requirements of experimentation set in the city-state. Few cities are actually equipped with the infrastructure, resources, and openness to be a site for incubation and experimentation; cities that are less tolerant of criticism and dissenting views, however, rich they might be materially, are unsuitable for such progressive work. Hong Kong’s importance as a site of incubation—facilitating collaborations and allowing open access for the possibilities of these exchanges and critical conversations to take place—must, therefore, not be taken lightly. On top of the One Table Two Chairs series, Yung’s profound interest in the traditional arts culminated in the Danny Yung Experimental Theatre and Reinvent Traditions production series, also dedicated to critically reevaluating the classics. In his bid to understand China, Yung has also gone deep into its hinterlands and expanded his circle of collaborators beyond theatre directors and flmmakers to also include performers. As he could not fnd many traditional Chinese theatre master artists in Hong Kong who were willing to experiment, and from whom he could learn, going into China was a natural step. Contrary to popular belief, being an avant-gardist does not mean being anti-tradition. In fact, Yung’s experimentations are motivated by his deep love and appreciation for the classics and are very real attempts at preventing the often-inevitable fate of traditional art forms from merely being archived as stagnant museum displays. The frst of such experimentations coalesced in Solos: Experimenting Traditional Chinese Operas (Dujiao xi: Shiyan Zhongguo chuantong xiqu). In 2002, Yung invited six master artists of classical Chinese theatrical forms to Hong Kong to each create a contemporary experimental piece in the operatic genre they were steeped in. The only non-mainland Chinese performer was Wu Hsing-kuo, a seasoned jingju (Beijing opera) actor from Taiwan who, too, has been searching for a way of revitalising the waning classical genre. For years, Wu and fellow jingju actress Kuo Shiao-chuang have been the two most prominent traditional performing master artists in Taiwan who have attempted to breathe contemporary life into this classical art form. Since the inception of their respective experimental groups, Contemporary Legend Theatre (Dangdai chuanqi juchang, est. 1986) and Elegant Voice Ensemble (Yayin xiaoji, est. 1979), their formidable eforts in experimenting with jingju have trailblazed the hybridisation of the traditional art form in novel ways. Even though their specifc intent might be diferent— Wu is a performer attempting to innovate what he regards as an antiquated form, whereas Yung is an avant-garde director trying to understand, deconstruct, and recreate tradition—both have seemingly been asking the same

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broad questions of how to rejuvenate and imbue the traditional performing arts with contemporary relevance and seeking greater potentialities in these genres than their current form. Two years later, Solos developed into a larger-scale project by incorporating master artists from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and several Chinese cities in the production of Solo: Experimenting Traditional Chinese Operas (Dudang yimian: Shiyan Zhongguo chuantong juchang jiaoliu jihua, 2004).17 By 2004, the project’s emphasis seemed to have shifted more towards cultural exchange between cities in the Chinese-speaking world, which is something Zuni has continued to focus on in its productions ever since. Hosted by Contemporary Legend Theatre, the 2004 performance was held in Taipei, this time comprising seven master performers, each at the zenith of their practice in their individual operatic genre: Wu Hsing-kuo (Beijing; jingju), Ke Jun (Kun; kunqu/kunju), Tian Mansha (Sichuan; chuanju), Li Xiaofeng (Qinqiang), Hong Hong (Cantonese Yue; yueju), Zhao Zhigang (Shanghainese Yue; yueju), and Huang Hsiang-lian (Taiwanese gezaixi). Creative instructions for each master artist extended from the 2002 Hong Kong prequel: in addition to being tasked to create a 15-minute experimental performance, each artist also had to perform a traditional solo piece in their own operatic genre. These contemporary experimental works included versions of King Lear, Hamlet, and Dr Faustus; all contemplated the relationship between traditional and contemporary, East and West.18 Again following the preceding set in 2002, the master artists also participated in closed-door seminars and public dialogues with scholars from Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, and the US, as well as general audiences and university students. Views were exchanged on the desirability and efcacy of these hybrid innovations and the future of the traditional performing arts. Yung continued working with master performers of traditional Chinese arts in later projects to experiment with classical forms in such productions as Sigmund Freud in Search of Chinese Matter and Mind (Foluoyide xunzhao Zhongguo qing yu shi, 2003), Flee by Night (Ye ben, 2004), and Tears of Barren Hill (Xiyou huangshan lei, 2008), just to name a few. Through these artistic exchanges, Yung intends to give traditional artists a critical voice, moving beyond being a mere ‘vessel’—the embodiment of tradition—to become instead interlocutors and (re)creators of tradition to articulate their agencies. Traditional xiqu training usually requires the performer to follow convention instead of critically re-think the form and relies on master-to-disciple transmission—imitating every pitch, gesture, and stylised movement of the master-teacher. Yung seeks to embed the value and importance of critical thinking in these performers so that they can actively refect on, critique, and therefore, create the traditional forms anew. What Yung’s contemporary approach has given these practitioners are the tools to become critical master-performers and, hence, the ability to reinvent time-honoured art forms. As a dramaturg, Yung has discovered that his main role is to facilitate and coordinate, asking these master-performers

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the right questions and allowing them sufcient space and time to be themselves. In the Solos workshops, Yung posed a series of questions that got the master-performers to critique and refect on their training from the very basics: how did particular eye movements, hand gestures, footwork, or singing techniques consolidate? Why this particular manner and not another? Are there other (and better) ways of doing it? Can an actor learn more than one role type? As these questions continued to be generated during the workshopping process, the master-performers realised that they did not fully comprehend their own trade.19 These workshops questioned the entire canonisation process of the classical performance genres and pushed the master-performers to re-think how to reinvent tradition. Some Brechtian distancing is probably evident here—to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar in a bid to see the familiar anew.20 Through these workshops, Yung discovered the intense yet personal connections between the individual performers and their art forms and the struggles each of them faces with their age-old tradition. Signifcantly, the solo pieces these master-performers chose for the project refected these deeper intricacies. For instance, Wu Hsing-kuo picked Beating the Drums and Castigating Cao Cao (Ji gu ma Cao), from the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi), about musician and writer Mi Heng berating his lord Cao Cao, which demonstrates Wu’s frustration with the contemporary government in Taiwan; Ke Jun’s Lin Chong’s Night Escape (Lin Chong ye ben), from the classical novel The Water Margin (Shuihuzhuan), depicts former military commander Lin Chong’s fight under the cover of night to become a bandit after being framed by corrupt ofcials, and it is as much about Lin’s inner struggles as it is about Ke’s own rebellion against the artistic system (kunqu) in which he was trained. While Hong Hong’s classical piece, The Prankish Princess (Diaoman gongzhu), is about defying parental authority, both of Huang Hsiang-lian’s classical The Butterfy Lovers (Liang Shanbo yu Zhu Yingtai) and experimental Romeo and Juliet (Luomi’ou yu Zhuliye) are about fghting for free love. The pieces they selected to perform refected their own values and inner struggles, what they were dealing with and revolting against at the time.21 Yung himself has learnt signifcantly from this process and is as much a benefciary of this exchange as he is a contributor. It is exciting to track how these traditional elements have impacted Yung’s later artistic practice. Equally exciting is to observe how such critical experimentations have altered these master artists’ practice of their traditional art forms and how they have since taught their disciples.

Cultural exchange: beyond Chineseness Yung’s artistic exchanges have moved beyond the Chinese-speaking world, also involving non-Chinese ethnic artists from other Asian regions in Zuni’s transnational collaborations. In 2009, Yung facilitated Book of Ghosts

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Figure 3.1 Thai dance artist Patravadi Mejudhon in Book of Ghosts (2009), directed by Danny Yung.

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Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

Figure 3.2 Indonesian dance artist Sardono Waluyo Kusumo in Book of Ghosts (2009), directed by Danny Yung. Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

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(Lu gui bu) and invited four Asian traditional performing arts masters— Patravadi Mejudhon, a Thai classical dancer from Bangkok; Sardono W. Kusumo, a Javanese dancer from Jakarta; Ke Jun, a kunqu performer from Nanjing; and Li Baochun, a jingju performer from Taipei—to experiment with their individual forms and devise solo performances on “the theme of ‘Ghosts’ to reconnect the past with present”.22 Local and foreign scholars were invited to join the collaboration process and conduct workshops together with the performers for the performer-participants to learn from one another. As with the Solos participants, these masters ran into the limitations of their own art forms during these devised sessions. The process of deconstructing their own art forms to teach and interact with other artists alerted them to other possibilities that they could fnd in their own practices as well as by learning from the performance genres of other cultures. More recently, Yung collaborated with Satō Makoto of the Za-Koenji Public Theatre in Tokyo, co-directing a performance in the Japan Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010 titled The Tale of the Crested Ibis (Zhuhuan de gushi). When Yung was approached to co-direct the project, he agreed on the condition that the city of Nanjing would be involved. This came somewhat as a surprise, as most countries choose to “conduct their own discourse as distinctively as possible to help promote their own cultures”,23 whereas Yung decided on an artistic collaboration with partners from beyond his own immediate cultural tradition. Obviously, Yung was invoking the painful trauma of Japan’s wartime atrocities in Nanjing (specifcally, the Nanjing Massacre of 1937) during the Second World War and the intense yet unresolved prejudices between China and Japan in a bid “to tackle the afective barriers that still divide the two societies”24 and “help establish a meaningful and strategic communication platform to face the scars left behind by history”.25 In Yung’s own words: I believe that Expo is supposed to be a platform for cross-cultural learning and collaboration. I would also like to make use of this platform to promote the interaction and connection of contemporary culture with traditional cultures of both China and Japan.26 Therefore, the Jiangsu Performing Arts Group Kun Opera Theatre was invited to collaborate with Zuni and Za-Koenji. The collaboration culminated in the creative interaction of two of the oldest artistic genres in East Asia: nō (Noh) and kunqu, which spawned a city-to-city collaboration between Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Nanjing called the Toki Project.27 To facilitate such cross-cultural learning and dialogue, Yung “requested the Japanese side to arrange a nō master to give classes to the kunqu performers”, after which he “observed how the performers picked and drew nourishment from these classes to enrich their own performing language”. This was followed by Yung’s role as dramaturg to analyse with the performers why such selections were made.28 Clearly, this city-based model of working with and

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learning from across diferent cultures is a continuation of Zuni’s earlier projects. Signifcantly, this underscores Hong Kong’s dual importance as both a facilitator of transnational and transcultural dialogues and an incubator of experimentation with an eye on contemplating the future of world cultures by bringing diferent cultures into conversation to dialogue, experiment, and synthesise. The Hong Kong-Tokyo-Nanjing kunqu-nō artistic collaboration expanded into the “Memory, Place, Dialogue 2011–2013 Noh and Kun Cultural Exchange Program”, which led Satō and Yung to co-direct a version of the late Singaporean director-playwright Kuo Pao Kun’s (1939–2002) The Spirits Play (Lingxi) in 2012. Originally written in 1998, the play is about fve dead spirits discussing the savagery of war. The spirits of a soldier, a wife, a nurse, a poet, and a general rise from their grave sites and talk about their participation in the war. Unbeknown to them was the general’s orders that directly or indirectly resulted in their suferings and consequent deaths. Even though the word ‘Japan’ is never mentioned in the play, when Satō and his then theatre company, the Black Tent Theatre, attempted to present the play in Tokyo in 2000, in the context of a festival to celebrate Kuo’s achievements, they could not fnd support. The play’s message must have hit too close to home.29 This 2012 rendition of the play, however, not only made it to Tokyo, but it was also directed and performed collaboratively by artists from Tokyo and Nanjing, squarely confronting the scars of war, memory, and history. Why would Yung and his collaborators do this? One of the reasons for this production’s inception was intended as Yung and Satō’s dialogue with Kuo, by paying homage to the late Singaporean dramatist on the tenth anniversary of his passing.30 I also feel that, for Yung, cross-cultural collaboration is a process of seeking to better understand one’s own culture through confrontation with the other(s): other cultures act as mirrors for oneself; through looking at them, one sees commonalities and diferences and refects upon how one’s culture has come into being. The ‘other’ acts as an external eye with which to introspect oneself and, through the process of viewing the other, each gains greater clarity of the self. Often mired by one’s tunnel vision, it is by confrontation with the other that the self gains diferent points of view, upon which to refect. In the 2012 Spirits Play postshow dialogue, which I witnessed, one audience member marvelled at how the kunqu and nō theatres seem to have seamlessly weaved into each other aesthetically. I  do not know whether this was intentional on the part of the directors. As with Yung’s experimentation with traditional Chinese art forms, however, I think that in seeking contemporary relevance in classical art—and especially in art forms as old as kunqu and nō—one has to fnd a commonality in order for the art forms to dialogue and engage. These are processes of introspection and re-examination of how one tradition and its manifested art forms have come into being and, by extension, of probing the question of how one’s culture and oneself have come into being, which allows for self-confdence and self-empowerment.

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Cross-city modelling—Zuni’s Singaporean partners Yung’s collaboration with local and international partners have undoubtedly impacted their practice. For example, Ke Jun went on to co-direct the experimental A Shakespearean Handan Dream in London in 2016 with British theatre director Leon Rubin, which interspersed Tang Xianzu’s play Handan Dream (Handan meng) with Shakespearean elements and featured a mixed Chinese and British cast speaking in their mother tongues, while Singapore-based China-born artist Liu Xiaoyi was inspired to found his own theatre company and festival focusing on intercultural experimentation. On December 12–24, 2017, the newly established local theatre company Emergency Stairs held a two-week theatre festival in Singapore—Southernmost: One Table Two Chairs Project 2017—which explored inter-Asian cultural interactions. One Table Two Chairs is a Zuni performance series that has been ongoing since Yung frst began to take an active interest in traditional Chinese theatre. It takes its name from the basic scenography of the traditional Chinese theatrical stage, stripped down to its bare essentials. Depending on the onstage confguration of the table and chairs, they can represent anything, from the indoor setting of a private bedroom chamber, or a court in session, to the crossing of mountainous terrains; the theatrical stage is transformed into whatever scenario the performers make it out to be, and their codifed gestures enable the audience to comprehend its meaning, which form the basis to activate the audience’s imagination, thus completing the performance. This simplifed stage setting is representative of the xieyi (essentialist) aesthetics, or ‘essential spirit’, that defnes traditional Chinese theatre. This is in contrast to the xieshi (realistic) representation of ‘spoken drama’ (huaju) that has dominated the Chinese-language theatre stage since the early 20th century, developing from Ibsenite-Stanislavskian infuences. The One Table Two Chairs basic stage convention has been adopted as the predefned set for Zuni’s many collaborations with artists, flmmakers, and directors to create experimental works such as the Journey to the East series mentioned earlier. Contained within the boundaries of this stage framing are the limitless imaginative creations that have permutated the mise en scène, each as a result of the unique table-chairs composition and artistic imprint of Zuni’s collaborators. The model of Southernmost: One Table Two Chairs Project 2017 follows the six-month-long Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2017 (both have had subsequent editions since). This transnational project took place across London, Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Zurich, with participating artists from Nanjing, Bangkok, Yogyakarta, Phnom Penh, Mumbai, Bogota/Berlin, Damascus/Berlin, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, and Osaka/New York. It involved discussion between arts administrators, cultural practitioners, policymakers, and academics from Hyderabad, Islamabad, Lahore, London, Berlin, Zurich, Istanbul, Hanoi, Bangkok,

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Figure 3.3 Dancers Nget Rady (Phnom Penh) and Dearden Junior (Bangkok) in Deep Structure of Chinese Culture, directed by Danny Yung, at the 2017 Southernmost Festival in Singapore.

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Credits: Emergency Stairs.

Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore. Southernmost can, therefore, be seen as the Singapore chapter, continuing this cultural exchange. The two-week event showcased masterclasses, workshops, demonstrations, public dialogues, open rehearsals, and an open forum, which culminated in a triple bill of experimental performances directed by Yung, Satō, and Liu Xiaoyi, respectively. Despite Emergency Stairs being a newly founded theatre company and Southernmost its inaugural attempt at organising a festival, the event pulled together an impressive team of artists like Satō; Javanese classical cross-gender dancer Didik Nini Thowok; kunqu master performer Wang Bin; Dearden Junior from Hua Hin in Thailand, who specialises in classical dance drama and contemporary dance; and Nget Rady, a specialist in the Cambodian male masked dance form, Lakhaon Kaol. Inviting this array of master artists could not have been possible without the eforts and reputation of Yung, who acts as an artistic advisor to Emergency Stairs.31 Compared to other local theatre festivals, such as The Necessary Stage’s M1 Fringe Festival, W!ld Rice’s Singapore Theatre Festival, and The Theatre Practice’s M1 Patch! A Theatre Festival of Artful Play,32 Southernmost distinguished itself by its degree of openness. While most theatre companies

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Figure 3.4 Javanese dance artist Didik Nini Thowok in Journey to the South, directed by Liu Xiaoyi at the 2017 Southernmost Festival in Singapore.

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Credits: Emergency Stairs.

would only showcase well-polished production results, Southernmost exhibited rehearsal processes and works-in-progress to the audience to ask for their observation, participation, and critique. This process of demystifcation of the production not only was unusual and highly educational but also challenged those audiences who claim that experimental works are often too obscure and difcult to comprehend. At the same time, it highlighted another major theme of the festival: equal dialogue (pingdeng duihua). For instance, the masterclasses that were provided to local theatre practitioners and students invited two master artists from diferent traditions to ofer instruction to the same class; the open forum requested two panellists to frst dialogue with each other based on each other’s presentation before commencing the question-and-answer session with the audience; even the post-show dialogue required the host from Emergency Stairs and a designated observer to dialogue with each other frst before opening up the conversation to the foor. Each segment of the festival was specifcally designed for diferent kinds of dialogues to take place, which were premised on challenging, learning from, and infuencing each other. That each masterclass received instruction from two master artists of diferent traditions instead of one is signifcant, so that they too could challenge, deconstruct, and learn from each other’s art form. Although Zuni was not the main organiser of

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this festival, its mark could not be missed. Southernmost illustrates Zuni’s continued infuence on its transnational collaborators, spawning projects across cities beyond the borders of Hong Kong. For over 30 years, Yung has been ardently promoting transcultural dialogue, displaying an extraordinarily farsighted cultural vision and leadership, which allows Hong Kong—with the shadow of mainland China looming over it—to still be able to perform the role of a critic. According to Yung, among the many issues the Chinese government’s ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative presents is the plan to build 50 ‘Chinese Cultural Centres’ across diferent cities around the world. Yet, thus far there have been no attempts to either communicate or understand the needs of local arts groups in these cities. Yung is justly concerned that this extremely myopic view will eventually become a regrettable loss, should collaborations with local artists be neglected and support for global cultural development ignored (as stated at the open forum held at The Arts House, Singapore, on December 20 during Southernmost 2017). Furthermore, this lack will certainly be construed as cultural hegemony, which Southernmost and Zuni’s cross-cultural dialogues are precisely critiquing. At the same time, this criticism is also aimed at mainland China’s current disregard for nurturing human resources on planning and managing cultural exchange as well as a cultural policy driven by a marketing-product mentality. The two chairs in One Table Two Chairs signify equality: the two artists who are collectively delivering the masterclass have already attained distinction in their individual practice, yet they are still willing to explore, dialogue, and learn from the other in order to ascend even greater heights. In contrast, what are the attitudes towards dialogue and exchange of National Arts Councils and governing boards in charge of cultural policies? Internally, do they have the confdence and willingness to engage in conversations with local artists on an equal footing? Externally, do they have the artistic vision and will to re-evaluate their market-driven, product-oriented cultural policies? Should the various arts and culture governing boards not take the lead from Southernmost’s example to adopt an open, exploratory approach aimed at constructive discourse, to refect on their roles and responsibilities in nurturing and developing artistic talents, strengthen avant-garde artistic partnerships, and complement each other’s vision of artistic exchange as equal co-creative partners in this cultural ecosystem?

Conclusion In the 1980s, when the arts scene in the various Chinese communities in East- and Southeast Asia refected an urge to seek and afrm local identities amid a changing geopolitical reality, Hong Kong’s identity surge was very much defned by the 1997 handover. Zuni’s productions in that decade seriously engaged in refecting the 1997 consciousness, and the group propelled itself thus as the territory’s leading avant-garde arts collective. However,

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from 1989 onwards, moving towards and beyond 1997, Zuni has continued to seek Hong Kong’s position amid a greater pan-Chinese consciousness and the global artistic sphere through Danny Yung’s ever-expansive cultural networks. In his bid to understand China, Yung went into its hinterlands and embarked on multiple cultural exchanges with master artists of traditional art forms, seeking the contemporary relevance of tradition and defning new relationships between the traditional and the contemporary. UNESCO’s 2011 recognition of kunqu and nō as masterpieces of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity probed Yung to contemplate ways to ensure that the art forms can escape the inevitable fate of preservation in their current forms only to be displayed and admired in museums. Intrigued by his love of the classical arts, Yung began working with master performers of traditional Chinese theatre to establish meaningful resonance in their contemporary practice. In revisiting the process of crystallisation, Yung is raising questions of how a traditional performance genre has come into being, which also helps artists to break down and deconstruct the form they are so familiar with and re-think possibilities from the very beginning. Is everything inevitable? Are so-called accidents of history avoidable? Even if we cannot turn back the wheel of history, what lessons can we draw from the past to propel us forwards? These questions went well beyond his work on Chinese operatic traditions and were certainly important motivations that drove the Toki Project as well as the kunqu-nō rendition of The Spirits Play discussed earlier. Yung is also probing the unknown, challenging both himself and his collaborators to push their boundaries, step out of their comfort zones, and learn from sources they do not know. To be able to jump out of one’s boundaries and re-examine oneself is the beginning of a new discourse.33 The questioning of these traditions can also be a critical reading that is emblematic of the relationship between China and Hong Kong. If the master artists of these classical Chinese art forms represent China and Yung represents Hong Kong—and Yung is the mastermind-mentor-dramaturg of these collaborations, workshopping with the performers to critically re-evaluate their own artistic traditions—then isn’t Hong Kong giving China the critical input it needs to rejuvenate and reinvent itself? This is in line with “Cultural Perspective Hong Kong 1997”, a policy study that Zuni drafted to propose that, as 1997 approaches, mainland Chinese cities should make an efort to study the example of Hong Kong because it is by far the most progressive city, economically and culturally.34 To put it another way, Hong Kong should be leading China to go forwards by helping the mammoth hinterland to advance itself and not be hindered by its weighty past and, therefore, the baggage of its long history. In the current post-’97 geopolitical climate Yung actively demonstrates the critical role Hong Kong can continue to play by being on the margins of the power structure. Rozanna Lilley’s observation of Yung as “an experienced tactician” who is skilled at negotiating with the authorities and turning

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things that had erstwhile seemed unfavourable to their own advantage again fnds relevance here.35 The ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative is considered by many as China’s strategic plan to undercut competitors via its rise to assert global infuence economically and politically. Yung’s response was the Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2017, demonstrating how Hong Kong and its alliance network can simultaneously lead both the cultural road map and critique of ‘One Belt One Road’. Another apt example of Hong Kong setting a model for other regions and cities is the Toki Project. After Yung invited the kunqu practitioners from Nanjing to be part of the Japan Pavilion’s performance, leaders of other mainland Chinese provinces who were present at the Shanghai Expo also instructed traditional operas be brought into their own pavilions. In Yung’s view: In this regard, cultural workers from Hong Kong are able to motivate leaders of the Mainland to pay respects to our own culture. I think with regard to cultural aspects under “One Country, Two Systems”, Hong Kong is indeed able to play a positive role.36 Perhaps by being too close to the centre, one’s position becomes more restrictive, and playing certain roles becomes more dangerous. Being on the periphery afords the distance one needs to play a critical role—a role that Yung has uniquely poised Hong Kong to play through its transnational networks. Certainly, Yung perceives this as Hong Kong leading the way in its international collaborations and outlook, displaying the territory’s cultural fagship ahead of other Chinese cities and role it can contribute to a global culture of the future.

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Notes 1 The writing of this chapter is completed under the sponsorship of the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Afairs Taiwan Fellowship, which is gratefully acknowledged. 2 Rozanna Lilley, Staging Hong Kong: Gender and Performance in Transition (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1998), 114. 3 Jim Hiley, “In the Shadow of the Future—Zuni Icosahedron,” The Times, May 15, 1990. 4 Lilley, Staging Hong Kong, 115. 5 Hardy Sik-cheong Tsoi, “ ‘Keneng de’ yu ‘yinggai de’ Xianggang huaju weilai shunian de fazhan”, in Xianggang huaju lunwenji, ed. Gilbert Fong Chee-fun and Hardy Sik-cheong Tsoi (Xianggang: Zhongtian zhizuo youxian gongsi, 1992), 78; Lin Kehuan, Xiju Xianggang, Xianggang xiju (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2007), 39. 6 Caroline Hoi-lam Lee, “Xianggang dushi wenhua ji wenxue ganlan,” in Xianggang dushi wenhua yu dushi wenxue, ed. Leung Ping-kwan, Amanda Hsu Yuk-kwan Hsu, and Caroline Hoi-lam Lee (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Story Association, 2009), 23. 7 Tian Benxiang and Gilbert Chee Fun Fong, eds., Xianggang huaju shigao (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 2009), 449. The other is 1984/1997, staged by Augustine Mok Chiu-yu and Yuen Che-hung’s People’s Theatre, also in 1984.

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8 Ru Xiu, “Jinnian ershi mianti: Lienü zhuan,” Dianying shuangzhoukan, November 24, 1983. 9 Wong Hing-cheung, “The Quest for a Hong Kong Theatre,” Tamkang Review 12, no. 3 (1982): 263. 10 Shelby Kar-yan Chan, Identity and Theatre Translation in Hong Kong (Berlin: Springer, 2015), 83. 11 Ibid., 214. 12 Ibid., 206. 13 Wah Guan Lim, “Performing ‘Chinese-ness’: Articulating Identities-of-Becoming in the Works of Four Sinophone Theatre Director-Playwrights in the 1980s” (PhD diss., Cornell University, Ithaca, 2015), 169–70. 14 Ibid., 49 (emphasis added). 15 Amitha Amranand, “Looking Back and Beyond,” Bangkok Post, March  26, 2008. 16 Zuni Icosahedron, “Journey to the East 97 (Performing Arts Programme),” accessed March  13, 2020, www.zuni.org.hk/new/zuni/web/default. php?cmd=performance_detail&id=163&locale=en_US. 17 Although the project’s English title is almost the same as that of the 2002 prequel, its Chinese subheading translates literally as “experimenting traditional Chinese theatre exchange programme.” 18 For the results of my preliminary research on this topic, see Wah Guan Lim, “Rong Nianzeng yu shiyan Zhongguo juchang” [Danny Yung and Experimental Chinese Theatre] (bilingual), in Jinnian ershimianti 2011 zhi 2012 niandu baogao [Zuni Icosahedron Annual Report 2011/12], 32–35 (Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2012). 19 Danny Yung, interview with Wah Guan Lim, Singapore, December 25, 2010. 20 Meg Mumford, Bertolt Brecht (London: Routledge, 2009), 63. 21 Yung, interview. 22 Zuni Icosahedron, “Danny Yung Experimental Theatre—Book of Ghosts,” accessed March  13, 2020, www.zuni.org.hk/new/zuni/web/default.php?cmd= performance_detail&id=56&locale=en_US. 23 Danny Yung, “Rong Nianzeng: Chuangzuo yinggai baiwujinji” [Danny Yung: Creativity Should Be Free from Taboos] (bilingual), in Jinnian ershimianti 2010 zhi 2011 niandu baogao [Zuni Icosahedron Annual Report 2010/11] (Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2011), 22. 24 Rossella Ferrari, “Asian Theatre as Method: The Toki Experimental Project and Sino-Japanese Transnationalism in Performance,” TDR: The Drama Review 61, no. 3 (2017): 147. 25 Yung, “Rong Nianzeng,” 24. 26 Ibid., 23. 27 On the Toki Project, see Ferrari, “Asian Theatre as Method.” 28 Yung, “Rong Nianzeng,” 24. 29 Originally, Satō had planned to mount three versions of The Sprits Play to be directed, respectively, by Satō, Kuo himself, and a female director, possibly from Australia or India, to examine the issue of war from three diferent cultural and ethno-national backgrounds. The plan, however, was not supported by the Agency for Cultural Afairs of the Education Ministry of Japan because of sensitivities in the country and therefore was reorganised to honour Kuo with a festival of three of his plays to be staged in Tokyo as well as a symposium on Kuo’s dramatic practice and a forum contemplating the character of modern Asian theatre and its future. India’s Anuradha Kapur directed Lao Jiu: The Ninth Born (Lao Jiu, 1990), Indonesia’s Putu Wijaya directed The Cofn Is Too Big for the Hole (Guancai taida dong taixiao, 1984), and Satō directed The Silly Little Girl

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33 34 35 36

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and the Funny Old Tree (Shaguniang yu guailaoshu, 1987). Held in its 20th year, these works were the focus of the biennial Asian Art Festival titled “When Petals Fall Like Snow—The World of Kuo Pao Kun, Playwright,” which was held at Tokyo’s New National Theatre from October 25 to November 5, 2000. See Hau Boon Lai, “A Yen for Pao Kun,” The Straits Times, November 8, 2000; and Woo Mun Ngan, “Heizhangpeng Huajiang ruxue Guo Baokun zuopin yishuji shiyue zai Riben juxing,” Lianhe zaobao, March 22, 2000. Kuo Jian Hong, “Yishu zongjian de hua” [Artistic Director’s Message] (bilingual), in The Spirits Play House Programme (Singapore: The Theatre Practice, 2012). See Emergency Stairs, “Southernmost: One Table Two Chairs Project 2017,” accessed March 13, 2020, http://emergencystairs.org/southernmost-2017/. Inaugurated in 2011, The Theatre Practice’s annual Chinese Theatre Festival changed its name to M1 Chinese Theatre Festival in 2014, and subsequently to M1 Patch! A Theatre Festival of Artful Play in 2018. This festival invites participating artists and troupes from other Chinese-speaking regions and also focuses on developing experimental new work. Yung, interview. Zuni Icosahedron, Xianggang jiuqi wenhua shiye wenjian ji (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Cultural Sector Joint Conference, International Association of Theatre Critics [HK], and Zuni Icosahedron, 1997). Lilley, Staging Hong Kong, 114. Yung, “Rong Nianzeng,” 23.

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Bibliography Amranand, Amitha. “Looking Back and Beyond.” Bangkok Post, March 26, 2008. Chan, Shelby Kar-yan. Identity and Theatre Translation in Hong Kong. Berlin: Springer, 2015. Emergency Stairs. “Southernmost: One Table Two Chairs Project 2017.” http:// emergencystairs.org/southernmost-2017/. Accessed March 13, 2020. Ferrari, Rossella. “Asian Theatre as Method: The Toki Experimental Project and Sino-Japanese Transnationalism in Performance.” TDR: The Drama Review 61, no. 3 (2017): 141–64. Hau Boon Lai. “A Yen for Pao Kun.” The Straits Times, November 8, 2000. Hiley, Jim. “In the Shadow of the Future—Zuni Icosahedron.” The Times, May 15, 1990. Kuo Jian Hong [Guo Jianhong]. “Yishu zongjian de hua” [Artistic Director’s Message] (bilingual). In The Spirits Play House Programme. Singapore: The Theatre Practice, 2012. Lee, Caroline Hoi-lam [Li Kailin]. “Xianggang dushi wenhua ji wenxue ganlan” [A Genealogy of Hong Kong Urban Culture and Literature]. In Xianggang dushi wenhua yu dushi wenxue [Hong Kong Urban Culture and Urban Literature], edited by Leung Ping-kwan [Liang Bingjun], Amanda Hsu Yuk-kwan [Xu Xujun] and Caroline Lee Hoi-lam [Li Kailin], 18–31. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Story Association, 2009. Lilley, Rozanna. Staging Hong Kong: Gender and Performance in Transition. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1998. Lim Wah Guan [Lin Huayuan]. “Rong Nianzeng yu shiyan Zhongguo juchang” [Danny Yung and Experimental Chinese Theatre] (bilingual). In Jinnian ershimianti

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2011 zhi 2012 niandu baogao [Zuni Icosahedron Annual Report 2011/12], 32–35. Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2012. ———. “Performing ‘Chinese-ness’: Articulating Identities-of-Becoming in the Works of Four Sinophone Theatre Director-Playwrights in the 1980s.” PhD diss., Cornell University, Ithaca, 2015. Lin Kehuan. Xiju Xianggang, Xianggang xiju [Dramatizing Hong Kong, Drama in Hong Kong]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2007. Mumford, Meg. Bertolt Brecht. London: Routledge, 2009. Ru Xiu. “Jinnian ershi mianti: Lienü zhuan” [Zuni Icosahedron: Chronicle of Women]. Dianying shuangzhoukan [Film Biweekly], November 24, 1983. Tian, Benxiang, and Gilbert Fong Chee-fun [Fang Zixun], eds. Xianggang huaju shigao [History of Hong Kong Spoken Drama]. Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 2009. Tsoi, Hardy Sik-cheong [Cai Xichang]. “ ‘Keneng de’ yu ‘yinggai de’ Xianggang huaju weilai shunian de fazhan” (‘Could Be’ and ‘Should Be’: Hong Kong Drama’s Development in the Next Few Years). In Xianggang huaju lunwenji [Studies on Hong Kong Drama], edited by Gilbert Chee-fun Fong [Fan Zixun] and Hardy Tsoi Sik-cheong [Cai Xichang], 77–82. Xianggang: Zhongtian zhizuo youxian gongsi, 1992. Wong, Hing-cheung. “The Quest for a Hong Kong Theatre.” Tamkang Review 12, no. 3 (1982): 259–65. Woo, Mun Ngan [Hu Wenyan]. “Heizhangpeng ‘Huajiang ruxue’ Guo Baokun zuopin yishuji shiyue zai Riben juxing” [Black Tent Theatre’s ‘When Petals Fall Like Snow’: The Works of Kuo Pao Kun Arts Festival to Be Held in Japan in October]. Lianhe Zaobao, March 22, 2000. Yung, Danny [Rong Nianzeng]. “Rong Nianzeng: Chuangzuo yinggai baiwujinji” [Danny Yung: Creativity Should Be Free from Taboos] (bilingual). In Jinnian ershimianti 2010 zhi 2011 niandu baogao [Zuni Icosahedron Annual Report 2010/11], 22–25. Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2011. Zuni Icosahedron. Xianggang jiuqi wenhua shiye wenjian ji [Cultural Perspective Hong Kong 1997]. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Cultural Sector Joint Conference, International Association of Theatre Critics (HK), and Zuni Icosahedron, 1997. ———. “Danny Yung Experimental Theatre—  Book of Ghosts.” Accessed March 13, 2020. www.zuni.org.hk/new/zuni/web/default.php?cmd=performance_ detail&id=56&locale=en_US. ———. “Journey to the East 97 [Performing Arts Programme].” Accessed March 13, 2020. www.zuni.org.hk/new/zuni/web/default.php?cmd=performance_detail& id=163&locale=en_US.

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Dialectics as creative process and decentring China Zuni Icosahedron and Drama Box’s One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution How Wee Ng

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People ask, are you really a political artist or an artist concerned with politics, or sort of an activist artist or not at all an artist because you seem to be more like an activist? They cannot place me. When you are a ghost, you cannot be placed. Danny Yung1

Since Zuni Icosahedron’s founding in 1982, One Hundred Years of Solitude has been core to the repertoire of the Hong Kong performance group for more than 30 years. The concept of dialectics, often evoked by co-artistic director Danny Yung, informs its cultural practice, which includes theatre productions, city-to-city exchanges, education outreach initiatives, and audience engagement. Using One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution (Bainian zhi guji 10.0—Wenhua da geming, 2011/12; OHYS 10.0 henceforth) as a case study, this chapter examines the collaboration between Zuni and the Singapore theatre company Drama Box, building on growing research on Zuni’s theatre, and sheds new light on the understanding of its dialectics as a creative process. While this chapter agrees that Zuni’s dialectics ofers actors opportunities to challenge their own conventions through ground-breaking experimentation, I plan to turn to the analysis of challenges, negotiations, and disagreements involved in the process. OHYS 10.0 is pitched as a “politically-charged and zeitgeist series” that examines history and current global events, drawing inspiration from the centenary of China’s 1911 Revolution and the various forms of ‘revolution’ that occurred contemporaneously in China, Singapore, North Africa, and the Middle East.2 The production premiered at the Grand Theatre in the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on September 16–17, 2011, and was later staged during the Huayi—Chinese Festival of Arts at the Esplanade Theatre in Singapore on February 1, 2012. Though, in 1984, Zuni collaborated with Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre on a previous instalment of OHYS and

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the series has also toured other cities such as Tokyo and Taipei, the tenth edition marked the frst time artists from Singapore were involved. I begin with unpacking the term ‘dialectics’ as represented in Yung’s articulations. Positioning my analysis at the intersecting ideas of minor transnationalism, inter-Asia exchanges, and Sinophone intercultural theatre, I  consider how the multiple contexts constitutive of the production and the focus on cultural exchange between the two Sinophone societies and theatre experimentation in OHYS 10.0 serve to decentre China as the source and author of narratives on revolutions. Drawing from refections of the Singapore cast, I consider how they variously respond to Zuni’s dialectical approach to theatremaking in this collaboration, noting the challenges encountered and insights gained during the creative process. Such an approach not only builds on the growing research in Zuni’s dialectics but also responds to the pressing need to approach theatre as “dynamic, processual” rather than “static, product centred”.3 I observe that Zuni’s dialectics in OHYS 10.0 is an artistic device that decentres China and encourages improvisation and open-mindedness on part of the actors, but this paradoxically depends on their submission to a rigorous set of rules and willingness to subvert their own training backgrounds and belief systems. This is where the ‘cultural revolution’ actually lies, which underscores the signifcance of the collaboration.

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Zuni Icosahedron’s dialectics: core ethos and impetus for collaboration Danny Yung has repeatedly reiterated the term ‘dialectics’ not only in programme synopses and personal interviews4 but also in Zuni’s annual reports.5 In a long essay for the programme of Meeting of the Gods: Experimenting Traditions Festival (2005), Yung refers to dialectics as crucial for developing cultural organisations with an “all-encompassing cultural view and strong sense of mission”, “transcending boundaries” between “established conventions” of diferent xiqu (Chinese opera) genres and benefcial for exchanges between mainland China and Hong Kong under the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ policy.6 Other than contributing to ground-breaking theatre, Yung suggests that dialectics are integral to all developments across “technology, education, research or service”.7 He also notes that dialectics can change rigid education systems and enable the fourishing of creativity, which he sees as constituted by “alternative ways of thinking, critical thinking”.8 Rozanna Lilley suggests that there is a “dialectic between the global and local” in how the company is “committed to various notions of ‘Chineseness’ ” while actively introducing foreign performing arts to audiences, even as it is rooted in the living context of Hong Kong.9 In her analysis of Zuni’s Architecture Is Art Festival (2009), Rossella Ferrari argues that the performances grapple with the tensions between local cultural traditions and modernist expressions, demolition and conservation, cultural introspection, and

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futuristic innovation, all of which are “dialectical polarities” in dialogue.10 Her comprehensive study of the Toki Experimental Project: Preservation and Development of the Traditional Performing Arts (2010) examines how Zuni’s practice resonates with Chen Kuan-hsing’s ‘Asia as method’, in the way it dialogically and dialectically establishes a framework for connecting Chinese, Hong Kong, and Japanese artists for refecting on issues of the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), thereby disrupting East-West binary frameworks and Western-centric knowledge structures.11 Building on these understandings of Zuni’s dialectics, I  consider how dialectics ofers an opportunity in OHYS 10.0 to critically refect on the interconnections between diferent sectors in society and across diferent societies. Such an approach considers how Hegelian dialectics and Marx and Engels’ dialectical materialism feature in Zuni’s practice. Both philosophical methods are dependent on making sense of the contradictory process between contrasting entities. Whereas the former is concerned with the links between ideas, the latter focuses on the examination of the interdependence of material conditions of society.12 Hegel’s dialectical method involves three stages of reasoning: frst, the moment of understanding, which is also the moment of fxity; followed by the second, a dialectical moment or a stage of instability in which the moment of understanding sublates itself, negating and preserving itself, as it transitions to its opposite;13 and, fnally, to the third moment, which grasps the unity of the opposition between the frst two determinations.14 Also relevant in our discussion is the condition of dialectics as a feld of tension in which two contradicting but mutually dependent entities co-exist.15 When applied to Zuni’s practice, dialectics works on three levels. In its theatre aesthetics, Hegelian dialectics can be observed in tensions between the physical action and multimedia projections of text, which I will return to shortly. When considering the links of Zuni’s transnational intercultural initiatives such as the Performing Arts Network and city-to-city collaborations of which OHYS 10.0 is part to the wider context of Hong Kong arts policy and globalisation, therein lies a dialectical materialism. Inasmuch as the production represents the authoritarianism of states that have led to revolutions in OHYS 10.0, its intercultural collaboration with Drama Box is implicated in the fows of people, ideas, and goods made possible by state-sponsored transnational capitalism and globalisation.16 Such a dialectical relationship fnds mirroring in the intellectual endeavours of Marx against capitalism, which were fnancially supported by his industrialist-friend Engels. Finally, the creative process can be understood as following Hegelian dialectics. Hegel’s three-tier philosophical process can be further summarised as ‘Being-Nothing-Becoming’, which suggests that an idea must negate its opposite and preserve itself in order to achieve a state of unity. Put in another way, “being-for-itself embraces the somethingothers in its content”, leading to forms that are “increasingly comprehensive and universal”.17 When theatre artists of contrasting backgrounds and persuasions collaborate, they may struggle, reconcile with diferences, and

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even take on the ideas of their counterparts, leading to more layered narratives in the production. I argue that the working through of contradictory ideas, grappling with diferent approaches to theatre performance between the Singapore cast and Yung in OHYS 10.0 lends itself to dialectics as a creative process. It is through this context that Drama Box’s collaboration with Zuni should be positioned. Founded in 1990, Drama Box is well known for critiquing social issues, representing the voices of marginalised groups,18 and for bringing Forum Theatre to Singapore’s Chinese-speaking residential heartlands.19 The strong focus on social engagement and public education owes much to the vision and ideals of the company’s artistic director, Kok Heng Leun. While Drama Box does not ascribe its practice to dialecticism, its concerns overlap with Zuni, in that the former shares an interest in education outreach,20 interAsia Sinophone theatre collaboration, and political and civil engagement.21 It is also worth noting how intellectualism informs its artistic practice and the training of its personnel, which I will elaborate in the next section. The company describes itself as dedicated to “shining a spotlight on marginalised narratives and making space for the communal contemplation of complex issues”; it “seeks to tell stories that provoke a deeper understanding of Singapore’s culture, history and identity”.22 Additionally, Zuni and Drama Box share a dialectical relationship with the state insofar as both are highly dependent on government funding but are critical of hegemonic politics and social inequalities.23 On the other hand, their eforts in a social-engagement for both actors and audiences suggest dialectical awareness of the implications of wider socio-political forces on their individual practice. Like previous iterations, the fnal production of OHYS 10.0 lasted 100 minutes and comprised a tapestry of diferent movements structured around eight chapters, with actors improvising on a range of motifs from Márquez’s novel, such as weddings, carnivals, strikes, and funerals. Mandarin subtitles devoid of punctuation were projected onto the back of the stage, sometimes as a continuous sentence trailing horizontally or vertically in a loop and sometimes flling up the entire backdrop as static wallpaper. Statements including “Such leadership gives rise to such masses such masses give rise to such leadership”, “Such revolutions give rise to such masses give rise to such an art”, “Such a nation gives rise to such an art gives rise to such a nation”, “Such a system gives rise to such a leader gives rise to such a system”, and “Can audiences change a theatre performance” would be interspersed throughout the production as performers played their own segments, often with measured and slow movements. The absence of punctuation nullifes any possibility of identifying the order of causality for all these entities and creates ambiguity as to whether the texts are afrmative statements or questions. Audiences are challenged to consider dialectical questions such as: are the system and its people responsible for creating a kind of leader, or is it a nation’s leader who creates a particular system? They are also prompted to consider the relationship between their own subjectivities as citizens of a

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society and the roles they play in the making of their government, art, and society. In their confrontation with these questions, audiences are exposed to the dialectics of Zuni’s theatre. However, in no way do I suggest that audience responses fall so neatly within the above analysis. Halfway through the Singapore production, a member of the audience impatiently shouted, “The emperor is not wearing clothes”, alleging that “Yung’s play is the new clothes of an emperor and the audiences are subjects who refuse to acknowledge their own foolishness”.24 Yet there are also positive responses, such as a review suggesting that the play’s experimentation can be compared to the revolutionary achievements of John Cage’s 4′33″ and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot,25 and an audience member who expressed fondness for the play regardless of whether or not they comprehended it.26 Arguably, the range of sentiments and thoughts, sometimes conficting, that arise from watching Zuni could be considered as exemplifying its dialectical approach to theatre. If the above can be understood as diferent audience responses to Zuni’s dialectics as presented on stage, how does Hegelian dialectics play out behind the curtains for actors during the creative process? Second, if it can be argued that Zuni’s theatre is “Brechtian and Beckettian” in that it “courts failure” by staking a “wager” on both audiences and actors,27 we then have to ask, how do actors variously respond to Yung’s dialectical vision and approach in OHYS 10.0? At the heart of these questions is the notion of theatre as multimedial in the sense that it “operates in at least two and up to four contextual frames simultaneously, each of which has its own sign systems and its own cultural and ideological referents”.28 The creative process of OHYS 10.0 makes an excellent case study, which illustrates the multimedial and dialectical nature of the collaboration. There are multiple contexts at stake: the global context of contemporary revolutions and past historical events, the diferent sociocultural backgrounds of Hong Kong and Singapore actors, the context of discussions and improvisations during the rehearsals, and so on. The interrelationships and interplay of these diferent contexts arguably constitute dialectics, which shape the creative process, even if to cover the entire breadth is beyond the remit of this chapter. Instead, I focus upon actor refections and the collaboration as a contested process shaped by negotiations, disagreements, and compromises. For this purpose, Bakhtin’s emphasis on the study of context in which texts are created ofers productive recourse: A context is potentially unfnalized; a code must be fnalized. A  code is only a technical means of transmitting information; it does not have cognitive, creative signifcance. A  code is a deliberately established, killed context.29 The notion of ‘unfnalisability’ focuses on the creative process during which theatre is made and highlights the open-endedness and difering views of

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participants in its making. For a production like OHYS 10.0 that deals with challenging issues ranging from the Cultural Revolution in China (1966–76) to revolutions around the world and interrelationships between the individual, government, and culture, multiple contexts are called into question. These include the frames of reference of my informants refecting on their participation in the creative process. All the personal interviews with the Singapore cast and the dramaturg took place over electronic correspondence and mostly in 2017—at a time and space far removed from the original context of the rehearsals. Other than Kok, I was able to reach out to ten of the 12 Singapore actors.30 Except for Judy Ngo and Ong Kian Sin, all of them have previously worked with Drama Box,31 but none of them are resident artists with the company. Their views should not be taken as representative of the company’s artistic practice. More accurately, Drama Box served as a platform for facilitating the collaboration between Zuni and Singapore artists of diferent backgrounds in OHYS 10.0. As the past is inescapably written from the present, it is important to acknowledge that informants are recalling and remembering from ‘now’. There may be slippage or amplifcation of certain information or a combination of both. It is also possible that some may have altered their perceptions of the process as much would have transpired between then and the time of the interviews. As John O’Toole suggests, “[T]he contexts in which drama presents itself are invariably complex and never exactly reproducible.”32 By no means does this study aim to be exhaustive, but it considers the possibilities, signifcance, and challenges a dialectical creative process poses for an intercultural Sinophone collaboration. By examining refections of Singapore actors collaborating with their Hong Kong counterparts in a project that draws inspiration partly from Chinese revolutions, this study highlights the signifcance of decentring both China and the diferences in the understanding of collaboration between the director and actors in a theatre production.

Decentring China in Sinophone intercultural collaboration: Hong Kong and Singapore As former British colonies, Hong Kong and Singapore share many similarities. Alongside Taiwan and South Korea, they are popularly known as the ‘Four Asian Tigers’ whose free trade economies underwent spectacular industrial growth made possible by investment from and commerce links with Western capitalist countries and Japan. Insofar as Hong Kong and Singapore were historically groomed as Western allies during the Cold War era, from the 1950s to the 1990s, for stemming the growth of communism in Asia,33 their relationships with mainland China is arguably dialectical. As capitalist societies with predominantly Chinese populations and Westernised education and political systems, their identities are often understood in close relation and opposition to communist China.34 They are also postcolonial societies in that they were split of from their respective mainland

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because of the actions of Western powers. Hong Kong was a British colony from 1842 until its handover to China in 1997, while Singapore gained independence following separation from Malaysia in 1965 after the latter became free from British colonial rule. With overlapping political-historical contexts, except for Singapore’s diferentiating status as a sovereign nationstate, both are Sinophone communities; namely, they belong to “a network of places of cultural production outside China and on the margins of China and Chineseness”.35 The collaborative production of OHYS 10.0 can be understood not only as ftting Shih Shu-mei’s description of the Sinophone as “Sinitic-language cultures on the margins of geopolitical nation-states and their hegemonic productions”36—especially when we consider the challenges posed to local democracies, geopolitics, and economies arising from China’s nascent status as a superpower—but also as an inter-Asia cultural exchange between two postcolonial societies, following Chen Kuan-hsing’s ‘Asia as method’, which enables the working through of issues related to “decolonization, deimperialization, and de-cold war”.37 Following Rossella Ferrari’s research on Zuni’s Toki Project, which approaches the collaboration between artists from China, Hong Kong, and Japan as practicing minor transnationalism,38 the partnership between two non-governmental arts organisations (i.e. Zuni and Drama Box), outside the power-centre of China, can be thought of as ‘minor transnationalism’, as it draws attention to minority interactions with both majority cultures and other minorities and to how cultures can be performed sans mediation by the centre. Positioned at the intersection of these ideas, this analysis enables an appreciation of the signifcance of OHYS 10.0 as a work that decentres China as the historical and political arbiter of narratives on revolutions that have shaped Sinophone communities around the world. Such a decentring in OHYS 10.0 goes beyond representing the Cultural Revolution in China and takes ‘culture’ and ‘revolution’ as the starting points for theatre creation.39 Drawing from themes and motifs of the Cultural Revolution, including oppression; regime change; and interrelations between culture, people, power, and the state, the focus moves away from China itself to the larger context of revolutions around the world. This attempt at decentring China involves two key strategies. First, an intensive intellectual engagement with actors—an artistic approach common to the theatre practice of Zuni and Drama Box, both known for putting up devised productions that place much emphasis on conceptualisation, improvisation, and workshop processes. Lengthy hours were focused on discussions of socio-political issues among the creative cast. Second, it places actor experimentation at the heart of the creation within very strict rules set by the director. A shared feature of Drama Box and Zuni is their investment in theatrical and intellectual training for artists. Just as Yung takes a strong interest in helping the artist to understand her or his relationship between experimentation and legal, social, and political institutions,40 Drama Box

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has been organising many workshops for artists since its founding, including lectures for participants of its youth wing, ARTivate, by well-known dramatists such as Barbara Santos and Lai Shu-ya.41 In fact, the impetus for collaboration between Drama Box and Zuni on OHYS 10.0 can be traced back to 2010, when Drama Box invited Yung to conduct a workshop titled “In Search: Identity & Journey” for Singapore Chinese theatre actors and directors as part of its Blanc Space Masterclass series.42 The conceptualisation of OHYS 10.0 was sparked of when Yung discussed the Jasmine Revolution in North Africa, the Middle East, and China during the workshop. According to one participant, Liu Xiaoyi (who is artistic director of the experimental theatre group Emergency Stairs), the process “gradually evolved from a dialogue between participants and naturally transitioned into a production”.43 As a professed fan of the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Kok proposed the collaboration to Yung and became the dramaturg of the production.44 In a way similar to the bottom-up civil society alliance found in the Toki Project,45 it was only after the two companies formalised their collaboration plans that proposals for sponsorship were submitted to Singapore’s arts funding body, the National Arts Council, and the Singapore International Foundation.

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Dialectics as creative process: the cultural revolution for Singapore actors? Relevant to my analysis of how dialectics informs the creative process of OHYS 10.0 is Jessica Yeung’s argument on the role of dialectics in Zuni’s experimental xiqu, Sigmund Freud in Search of Chinese Matter and Mind (Foluoyide xunzhao Zhongguo qing yu shi, 2002), in which xiqu artists are challenged to cross all kinds of boundaries related to their own performing traditions and gender roles.46 Indeed, in my interviews with the Singapore cast and the dramaturg, I  have found that dialectics was the modus operandi underscoring Yung’s directorial method. Whereas Yeung and Ferrari are more optimistic about the impact of Zuni’s dialectics for actors,47 I would argue that it is also a source of contention that leads to uncertainty and discomfort, disagreements and compromises among the cast. Following Hegelian dialectics, the process also ofers opportunities for them to explore and gain insights into new ways of perceiving, creating, and performing. The 12 Singapore artists in OHYS 10.0 are all professional actors, many of whom have directed and written plays. Rehearsals were conducted in both cities leading up to actual performances. These performers acted alongside Suzhou-based kunqu artist Xiao Xiangping and 20 secondary students from the Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity (LSKSC) and the School of the Arts, Singapore (SOTA). Singapore flmmaker Royston Tan created the videos used in the production, while Hong Kong musician Pun Tak Shu composed the soundtrack.

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Another dialectical aspect of the creative process was the pairing of Singapore adult performers with Hong Kong teenagers. It was assumed that the age polarities between them would create the ‘creative tension’ needed for enriching the narrative. The grappling and exchange of contrasting ideas arising from age and sociocultural diferences follows a Hegelian dialectic in that one has to contest, negotiate, embrace, and include the views and experiences of others for enriching the self and working towards a more comprehensive narrative in the fnal production. Singapore actor-director Zelda Ng commented that it was “fun to understand young people’s perspectives” and the interaction ofered an opportunity to share “experiences in Singapore with Hong Kong kids, and vice-versa for them”.48 For actordirector Peter Sau, the best experience was leading SOTA students to work with students from LSKSC. He felt that he was “like an agent opening up a Pandora Box of youth education”.49 The creative process led by Yung required the performers to learn about literature and global history. This included reading Márquez’s novel and William Hinton’s Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village for discussions on its relevance to the Cultural Revolution and the implications of government policies on the lives and struggles of ordinary people.50 This corresponds to Kok’s directorial approach, which sometimes requires actors to read and participate in lengthy and intensive discussions on textual materials for improvisation.51 During the creative process of OHYS 10.0, themes of revolutions and motifs from Márquez’s novel constituted a metanarrative that underlies the dialectics of OHYS for the Singapore actors to engage in self-refection of their own society, personal lived experiences, and training backgrounds. Recent political events in both cities provided further relevant context in the run-up to the staging of the production. Singapore had just gone through a ‘revolution’. During the 2011 General Election, the People’s Action Party (PAP)— the ruling party, which came to power in 1959—had lost the greatest number of parliamentary seats in history.52 Hong Kong was also at political crossroads, struggling for universal sufrage in the midst of increasing pressure from authoritarian Beijing. Additionally, a march for universal sufrage had just taken place in May 2010. According to the Singapore cast, these were some of the events, including their implications, that were discussed during the improvisation. My Singaporean informants spoke about how they were inspired by the outspokenness and courage of their Hong Kong co-actors in the way they expressed their opinions on social movements and their desire for political reform. During rehearsals, the actors also had discussions on topics related to oppression and power corruption during the Cultural Revolution, the interrelationships between society, government, arts, culture, and what theatre practice means for them as individuals. The discourse generated during the creative process emerged as a metanarrative overarching the social concerns respective to the cast members from Hong Kong and Singapore in the context of a rising China and a contemplation of relations between these

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Figure 4.1 One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution (Zuni Icosahedron and Drama Box, 2011/12), directed by Danny Yung.

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Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

two societies and between each society’s historical past and contemporary conditions. Notably, Koh Wan Ching,53 Zelda Ng, and Tan Beng Tian54 recall that the Singapore cast were more reserved and politically passive in comparison. According to Peter Sau, while rehearsals were largely taken up by discussions rather than actual action, he felt his “paradigms shifting” during in-depth discussions about “the value of culture” and “the phenomenon of mass consumerism in theatre” as well as “the motivation for doing theatre”.55 Whereas for Sau “the dialogues were more engaging than making the work itself”, Koh felt that when the cast worked in large groups to structure the play, they “spiralled into lengthy discussions and were not able to balance the group thinking with the doing and trying on the foor”.56 While Yung drove the improvisational process forwards, asking actors to devise their individual pieces, Kok would serve as the ‘intermediary’ between them, helping actors to make ‘dramatic sense’ of the videos, books, and their individual improvisations.57 During rehearsals, Kok identifed the relationship between art and society in the past century as the central question and facilitated discussions around it. “Standing up, running, pointing, kneeling, and walking” constituted the basic movement vocabulary from which actors would improvise. Yung asked the Singapore actors to each devise a fve-minute presentation based on their refections during the rehearsals.

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Contributions from actors were then mixed, combined, rehearsed, and fnalised for the actual production in which actors would move from stage left to right, pointing in certain directions along the way. When recalling the creative process, several actors spoke about the constraints of working with a very tight timeline. Given that there were various parties from diferent places joining the rehearsals, “it was difcult to get everybody in the same room at the same time”.58 Another challenge was how the selection and combination of diferent improvised pieces were perceivably “taken out of individual contexts”. Zelda Ng felt it was ‘frustrating’ when the director “would never ask about our motivation for creating a specifc movement or text”. That Yung did not explicate the “signifcance of integrating the [individual] pieces” made it even more challenging for her to internalise the role, as this was not something she was used to in her personal experience as an actor.59 In her analysis of Zuni’s xiqu experimentation, Yeung argues that Yung creates a refective, dialectical space where the performers take on creative tasks that defamiliarise the conventions they have been trained in.60 Attendant to the implication of ‘making strange’ the performing methods that actors have been accustomed to is the Brechtian Verfremdungsefekt (alienation or estrangement efect) in epic theatre. This is supposed to reshape the relationship between the actor and audience as dialectic.61 Such a directorial approach can be found in OHYS 10.0, as Ng suggests:

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[T]hey didn’t want any emotion to be expressed—I don’t want you to depict sadness or anger, and it has to be just pure action. I don’t want you to perform with any anger—all emotions have been removed from actions and are open to the audience for interpretation. The desired impact of the alienation efect is to ensure that the audience does not willingly suspend disbelief, preventing any easy identifcation with the actors, thereby provoking the audience to think critically about the issues represented on stage.62 During the creative process, this directorial approach required the actors to work with the absence of a script. The tensions arising from such a dialectical creative process and means of overcoming them varied for diferent actors. Whereas freelancer Doreen Toh feels that she had to exercise more self-initiative in a process flled with uncertainty, Oliver Chong understood the production as “a genesis—working from a workshop with no objective towards a production with one”. However, he also found the process “confusing” and “discomforting” at times.63 Similarly, Tan Beng Tian felt she was unsure about what she was doing as “there was no script nor any frmed-up structure as a guide”: I felt like a headless chicken running everywhere. Many times, I have to push myself to continue this ‘run’ and not to give up. Many times, I have to convince myself to have faith and that there will be something at the end of the road.64

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Likewise, Koh Wan Ching was not sure “whether she was researching on the Cultural Revolution, A Hundred Years of Solitude, kunqu, or poststructuralism”. She recalls that she did not have a very clear idea of how to work in a collaborative devising process; “generating material was not a problem but structuring a coherent segment and eventually the entire piece sometimes felt paralyzing”.65 To manage the open-endedness of the creative process, Yung imposed ground rules and asked the actors to adhere to “the theme of the work, which is about indefatigable characters and the energy and commitment they bring to their endeavours”.66 While the tension between following rules and having open-endedness to explore during improvisation, without any script, presents a dialectical opportunity for actors to work through the challenges, Judy Ngo refects: “Half the time I was trying to fgure him out because he would give ‘rules’ for improvisation and then proceed to break his own rules. I was confused.”67 On the other hand, Peter Sau recalls how he found the rules structured while strict, requiring actors to follow “a score of actions, sounds, beats to follow and to enter, pause, move, stop at very specifc times in relation to the movements of other performers”.68 The rigour of the mathematical precision that actors had to work with, however, placed enormous challenges on coordination between them and the stage manager, requiring them to revolutionise the way cues are timed to which actors had to respond with impeccable synchronicity. Without a script, the actions on stage were cued and organised according to specifc times, rather than lines from a (non-existent) play text. Zelda Ng spoke of overcoming the difculty of developing awareness to timings, compounded by the constraints placed on the stage manager who was not supposed to announce times by the minute verbally on stage. Eventually, actors had to perfect their pace and timings through repeated practice: So the cues eventually came not from the SM [Stage Manager], but from everyone in the cast. For example, the moment I  reached the centre stage, Peter would walk out, and a student would scream. So we had a sense of timing from getting used to another’s actions. I had to be very accurate and consistent in my timing, because others depended on me for the ‘cue’ and the same applies to the next person. It was cooperation on a grand scale, because if one single person strayed from the agreed cue, then it would afect everyone. So we were all interdependent. It was very intriguing to collaborate on such an enormous scale. Other than the cues from other actors, sound efects and lighting were also crucial for us to gauge our own accuracy in timing. I have never encountered a production in which I had to be so alert and vested with so much responsibility. So if you made a mistake, the others who are dependent on you will also be afected. There was no room for error. This was the most difcult part about the production.

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In other words, developing heightened mindfulness among actors in relation to one another and their own actions that came about with an unscripted production during the creative process creates a dialectical space. In this space, actors are challenged not only to subvert learned methods and beliefs but also to discard the spoken text as the ‘truth’—the fundamental vocabulary underlying theatre performance—and refashion their bodies as instruments. To this end, Yung asserts that actors should be aware that they are not performing for audiences, but rather, You’re performing for yourself; you’re telling them of your own experience. It’s just that you don’t mind sharing it with them and letting them observe you.69 While the alienation efect demands actors to emotionally detach themselves to cope with the stringency of immaculate action timings, this created the dialectical space for actors such as Sau to reconsider the mental state of openness and artistic autonomy even when one is physically constrained in the rehearsal room and on stage: I was very much like a human puppet being manipulated on a tight string; yet, strangely, I was allowed to feel anything since there were no words or thoughts that bound me. I felt it was a constant dilemma to feel invested in the process which was so open and yet to cherish it as a playground of possibilities.

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Sau also adds that Yung “doesn’t want acting in the most conventional sense but, instead, wishes us to embody ourselves as icons and symbols on stage representing the past, present and perhaps even the future”. However, Li Xie—also a frequent Drama Box collaborator and the co-director of the Singapore staging of OHYS 10.0—commented that actors “didn’t get to fathom the whole picture (the overall intention or artistic direction of the production)”: It’s important to understand actors can be a tool on stage to support a style or form, but actors equally need logic and psychological justifcation to invest in their existence on stage. That’s the tricky part when postmodern or experimental devised work comes in; while they need the actors to carry the form, they don’t know how to communicate with the actors, to secure the actors in a psychological approach, to inspire and tap on actors’ emotional advantage to enrich the form. It uses the actors physically yet alienates them emotionally. That’s where the gap or crack happens. Would this imply that, for the desired alienation efect to be successful, the director would have to paradoxically establish emotional connections with

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actors? Or is it a matter of successful communication via both spoken and/ or theatre language between Hong Kong and Singapore artists? Yet for Cantonese-conversant Zelda Ng, this ‘crack’ is palpable when she tries to establish the meaning of her participation in the production: As an actor, I need to own my space, I need to understand the role I’m playing and purpose I have in the play. Am I a key role, or am I supporting someone else? It doesn’t matter who I’m playing. There needs to be a purpose. Other than struggles for meaning and purpose during the dialectical creative process, gaps in the understanding of artistic agency and of the roles that collaborators should play also surfaced. Li Xie suggested that: the tensions came from the unusual practice that some of us, the actors, who are also strong directors or creators, were not fully informed of the methodology in the process. To put it plainly, in that process, which I do understand why it was constructed this way—actors are more akin to a tool, an image on stage to fulfl a visual grandeur, a directorial vision. They are not there to characterise, emote, and connect with audiences. They only serve to illustrate as powerful metaphors, sums of the whole. This approach caused some confusion and tension.

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Given that the play was without a script and depended largely on improvisational contributions from actors, Li still feels it “wasn’t really a production devised from scratch” but one that already existed before actors participated as “part of the series”—“a continuation of explorations by Yung spanning across decades under the same title”:70 We devised mostly as actors, less involved in the whole conceptual process as artists. It was more of a given structure, instructions and roles (sometimes abstract, unspecifed, or undefned), then we worked on it. Oliver Chong sees the production as a challenging process towards fnding “a common language between collaborators and especially so when many of us were collaborating for the frst time”.71 While he feels that there were no language barriers with Yung and the Hong Kong artists, nor were cultural diferences apparent, the ‘ambiguity in rules’ caused uneasiness for him. Among all actors interviewed, Liu Xiaoyi appears to have responded most favourably to Yung’s dialectical method. While acknowledging the diffculty of being open to experimentation yet being critical at the same time, he recalls how the session conducted by kunqu artist Shi Xiaomei during the Blanc Space Masterclass Series was particularly helpful to him for overcoming psychological barriers during the creative process of OHYS 10.0:

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Danny managed to persuade Master Shi to learn water sleeve movements of the huadan (a female role of Chinese opera). Initially Master Shi mentioned, “I have played as man for my entire lifetime that I no longer know how to perform a woman.” Nevertheless, she was deeply moved by Master Yung and dedicated herself to learning water sleeve movements for a few months. Master Shi was 65 years old at that time, and this deeply touched me. She has already mastered immense skill in her life but is still brave enough to subvert [her own thinking] and transcend [boundaries]. So why are we so bound by our own frameworks? When have we forgotten to keep up with our curiosity about the world? One Hundred Years was a very new experience for me, and the entire process deconstructed and rebuilt my own understanding of theatre creation. During the process, I had to keep reminding myself to learn with an open mind and refect dialectically. Within the process, dialogue [italics informant’s] became an important factor, because everyone is so diferent. This also means having a self-dialogue, being self-critical. Having a dialogue with others and being open to them at the same time. Being open also means being critical to oneself. Being critical also means being open to others.72

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For Liu, Yung’s dialectics meant staying receptive to diferent ideas while being refexive at the same time. On this note, Koh Wan Ching recalls how Yung framed a large part of the devising process as workshops such that actors were learning from one another: On diferent occasions, he would ask diferent collaborators to lead the rest of the company in workshops. I think this became quite important for me. In fact, in between the two versions of OHYS 10.0, I took a month on my own to go to Beijing to take classes from Xiao Xiang Ping, the kunqu artist working with us at the time. In the workshop process, the quality of the collaboration was heightened in that it was not just diferent collaborators presenting what they could do but we often had to teach another person or learn from another person. This means that we metaphorically had to take on another person’s training and get into another person’s body.73 Liu and Koh’s refections, alongside Sau’s, and to some extent, Ng’s, suggest that participation in OHYS 10.0 has opened up new possibilities for them to re-think about theatre improvisation and performance. In other words, the dialectics has enabled them to embrace the experiences and views of others for enriching their own. Additionally, the play has also provided an impetus for further collaboration. However, among the 12 Singapore theatre artists, Liu was the only one who followed up with consecutive collaborations with Zuni. He not only performed in Salute to Pao Kun (2013), comprising four experimental theatre pieces by Yung, Li Liuyi (China), Lawrence

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Lei (Macau), and Li Bao-chun (Taiwan), but also directed Fifteen (2013), performed by three kunqu actors from the Jiangsu Performing Arts Group Kun Opera Theatre as part of the Toki Project: One Table, Two Chairs series.74 In 2014, Liu also performed in Zuni’s Memorandum, comprising four experimental pieces about memory, each recalling characters who have passed on—namely, Singapore dramatist Kuo Pao Kun, kunqu writer Li Kaixian, jingju actor Cheng Yanqiu, and Chairman Mao Zedong. While the other Singapore artists did not go on to collaborate with Zuni, many of them, including Liu Xiaoyi, went on to create two productions together. One was XII in Search of 13 for the Singapore Arts Festival in 2012,75 and the other was Body X for the Singapore Writer’s Festival in 2014.76 Thinking about a collaborative production as part of a continuous journey for artists, in that it may lead to new collaborations in the future, suggests that relationships between diferent collaborations involving the same group of actors are dialectical. They may draw upon experience of past collaborations for negating what they did not agree with or build upon those they saw as helpful for the present production, redolent of a Hegelian dialectic. In other words, a collaborative theatre creation is not a fnished work but could be thought of as an ongoing, unfnalisable process in which the production ofers opportunities for networking among actors and resources to draw from for the creation of the next.

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Conclusion In this chapter, OHYS 10.0 was used to illustrate the case for understanding theatre collaboration and creation as a multimedial, dialectical process. While the intercultural Sinophone production represents monumental historical and political events not limited to China, it is informed and shaped by the cultural backgrounds and diferent experiences and trainings of participants against the larger socio-historical milieu. Such a Bakhtinian approach enables us to consider tensions, negotiations, disagreements, and compromises in the creative process. My interviews reveal the Singapore actors’ frustrations and confusion over the ambiguity of the ground rules set by the director; gaps in the understanding of what an ideal intercultural collaboration should entail; and of the role, purpose, and agency of actors in an iterative production that is part of Zuni’s ongoing series. The tensions arising during the creative process and working through them demonstrates a dialectic that aims to enrich the discourse of the production. However, it has been apparent that the process was not seamless or straightforward for some actors, as they had to grapple with Yung’s approach to theatre direction. On this note, Judy Ngo has quipped: “Danny is not everyone’s cup of tea.”77 On the other hand, it is important to recognise how OHYS 10.0 has empowered some actors to engage in experimentation that involves new approaches to theatre creation and performance and even opportunities for future collaborations. By drawing from themes and ideas about revolutions

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One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution (Zuni Icosahedron and Drama Box, 2011/12), directed by Danny Yung.

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Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

related to China, including the Cultural Revolution and events in the more immediate socio-political contexts of Hong Kong and Singapore and wider global and historical contexts, OHYS 10.0 practices minor transnationalism in that its dialectics decentres China and subverts audience expectations with a play that is actually not just about the Cultural Revolution. In sum, this ‘cultural revolution’ is not concerned with representing the historical Cultural Revolution, nor is it to do with Zuni’s cultural revolution, given its established status as a company steeped in its tradition of theatre experimentation. It is about the creative process that the Singapore actors underwent, a dialectic that requires them to rebel against their own learned beliefs and training backgrounds, and to perhaps consider the potential of freedom, agency, and innovation while conforming to strict rules, despite uncertainty and ambiguity. If we accept that theatre experimentation is a dialectical process, which involves challenging perspectives and conventions for actors, why should we shy away from acknowledging the existence of contrary positions and conficting viewpoints among collaborating participants in the creation of theatre? At the heart of Zuni’s dialectical method is the creative process of working through tensions—this is the very signifcance of its transnational intercultural practice.

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Notes 1 Suzanne Carbonneau, “If the System Isn’t Right, Why Can’t We Change It?—An Interview with Danny Yung, Introduced by Bill Bissell,” The Pew Centre for Arts & Heritage, September 18, 2010, www.pewcenterarts.org/sites/default/fles/ danny_yung_0.pdf. 2 Drama Box, “One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution,” Press Release, August 2, 2011, www.dramabox.org/eng/productions-100years.html. 3 John O’Toole, The Process of Drama: Negotiating Art and Meaning (London: Routledge 1992), 10. 4 Yung discusses the importance of dialectics to developing critical thinking in education and how it works alongside cultural exchange. See Human Rights in China, “Danny Yung on Critical Thinking, Creativity, and Advocacy,” YouTube, July 10, 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqDJa4jo2Vc; Sarah Karacs, “Zuni Icosahedron Proves Hong Kong Can Be a Fertile Ground for Experimentation,” Zolima CityMag, November 23, 2017, https://zolimacitymag.com/zuni-icosahedronproves-hong-kong-can-be-a-fertile-ground-for-experimentation/. 5 See Zuni Icosahedron, Zuni Icosahedron Annual Report 2007/2008 (Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2008), 55; Zuni Icosahedron, Zuni Icosahedron Annual Report 2013/2014 (Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2014), 6, 47, 48; Zuni Icosahedron, Zuni Icosahedron Annual Report 2014/2015 (Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2015), I, II; Zuni Icosahedron, Zuni Icosahedron Annual Report 2015/2016 (Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2016). 6 Danny Yung, “Experimenting China—Realizing Traditions,” 2005, accessed August  20, 2020, http://zuni.org.hk/education/resource/延伸閱讀-1-實驗中國 ──實現傳統/?lang=en-US. 7 Danny Yung, “Fully and Accurately Understanding and Implementing the Policy of ‘Creative City,’ ” in The Practice of the “Experimental Art” Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2014), 47. www.zuni.org.hk/new/zuni/web/upload/annualreport/zuni_1314_ annualreport_eng.pdf. 8 Human Rights in China, “Danny Yung on Critical Thinking.” 9 Rozanna Lilley, Staging Hong Kong: Gender and Performance in Transition (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), 113. 10 See Rossella Ferrari, “The Stage as a Drawing Board: Zuni Icosahedron’s Architecture Is Art Festival,” TDR: The Drama Review 55, no. 1 (2011): 137–48. 11 See Rossella Ferrari, “Asian Theatre as Method: The Toki Experimental Project and Sino-Japanese Transnationalism in Performance,” TDR: The Drama Review 61, no. 3 (2017): 141–64. 12 See “Dialectical Materialism,” Marxists Internet Archive, accessed August 24, 2020, www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm. 13 Julie E. Maybee, “Hegel’s Dialectics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2019 ed., https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2019/entries/hegel-dialectics/. 14 See Georg Hegel, The Encyclopedia Logic: Part 1 of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences [Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften I], trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), 79–82. 15 V. J. McGill and W. T. Parry, “The Unity of Opposites: A Dialectical Principle,” Science & Society 12, no. 4 (1948): 418–44. 16 Since the 1990s, the governments of Singapore and Hong Kong have implemented policies to develop their respective cities into ‘vibrant’ and ‘dynamic’ metropolises, attendant to globalisation strategies of attracting tourists and talents globally. See Ministry of Information and the Arts, The Renaissance

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19 20

21

22 23 24 25

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27 28 29 30 31

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City Report (Singapore: Ministry of Information and the Arts, 2000); “About HKADC,” Hong Kong Arts Development Council, accessed August 24, 2020, www.hkadc.org.hk/?p=81&lang=en. Maybee, “Hegel’s Dialectics.” See How Wee Ng, Xijuhe yu Xinjiapo de shehui juchang: Wenhua ganyu yu yishu zizhuxing [Drama Box and the Social Theatre of Singapore: Cultural Intervention and Artistic Autonomy] (Singapore: Nanyang Technological University Centre for Chinese Language and Culture, 2011). See Ng, Xijuhe, 187–239; Kenneth Paul Tan, “Forum Theatre in Singapore: Resistance, Containment, and Commodifcation in an Advanced Industrial Society,” positions: asia critique 21, no. 1 (2013): 189–221. Zuni created the Black Box Exercise in 1995, an installation art project aimed at enabling young people to “acquire tools and concepts for learning and for creative expression and communication,” with a focus on cultivating skills such as decision-making, problem-solving and independent critical thinking. See Wong Yuewai, “The Black Box Exercise: An Arts Education Model from Hong Kong,” in Educating in the Arts—the Asian Experience: Twenty-Four Essays, ed. Lindy Joubert (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), 314. Drama Box has been actively engaged in theatre-in-education projects; in 2007, it also established ARTivate with the aim of nurturing theatre. The company won the Advocate Organization of the Year Award at the 2016 Singapore Advocacy Awards, which celebrates the contributions of individuals and organisations dedicated to the development of a vibrant civil society in Singapore. Drama Box, “About Drama Box,” Drama Box, accessed August  24, 2020, www.dramabox.org/eng/about_db.html. See Carbonneau, “If the System isn’t Right”; Ng, Xijuhe. Chew Book Leong, “Rong Nianzeng de geming” [The Revolution of Danny Yung], Lianhe zaobao, February 5, 2012. Foo Tee Tuan, “Wenhua de guanxing yu geming” [The Inertia and Revolution of Culture], Lianhe zaobao, February 12, 2012. During the post-show dialogue of the Singapore performance in 2012, an audience member directly voiced his inability to understand what the play was about, what the actors meant by walking up and down the stage, and what all these actions had to do with the Cultural Revolution in China. However, this was immediately rebutted by another audience member who quipped that whether or not one can understand the play is irrelevant; she still loved it even though she may be as clueless as many audiences. See Chew, “Rong Nianzeng.” Chan Kwok-bun and Chan Nin, “Introduction: Hybridity and the Politics of Desertion,” in Hybrid Hong Kong, ed. Chan Kwok-bun (London: Routledge, 2012), 22. O’Toole, The Process of Drama, 8. While O’Toole is primarily referring to theatre-in-education, the idea of how theatre creation is shaped by multiple contexts is still highly relevant to professional theatre. Mikhail Bakhtin, Speech Genres and other Essays, ed. M. Holquist and C. Emerson, trans. V. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 147. The adult Singapore cast consisted of Doreen Toh, Judy Ngo, Koh Wan Ching, Li Xie, Liu Xiaoyi, Oliver Chong, Ong Kian Sin, Patricia Toh, Peter Sau, Tan Beng Tian, Tay Kong Hui, and Zelda Tatiana Ng. Judy Ngo has acted and directed for both English and Chinese theatre companies in Singapore. She has also been teaching theatre in schools. Ong Kian Sin co-founded the multilingual theatre group The Finger Players, which specialises in puppetry theatre, in 1999. He not only designs puppets but also acts and directs.

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32 O’Toole, The Process of Drama, 8. 33 Amy M. Y. Lin, “Towards Transformation of Knowledge and Subjectivity in Curriculum Inquiry: Insights from Chen Kuan-Hsing’s ‘Asia as Method,’ ” Curriculum Inquiry 42, no. 1 (2012): 155. 34 For an analysis of how Singapore Chinese identity is mediated in the larger context of postcolonialism, globalisation, and the emergence of China, see Sy Ren Quah, “Performing Chineseness in Multicultural Singapore: A  Discussion on Selected Literary and Cultural Texts,” Asian Ethnicity 10, no. 3 (2009): 225–38. 35 Shu-mei Shih, Visuality and Identity Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacifc (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 8. 36 Shu-mei Shih, “The Concept of the Sinophone,” PMLA: Journal of the Modern Language Association of America 126, no. 3 (2011): 710. 37 Chen Kuan-hsing, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). 38 See Ferrari, “Asian Theatre as Method”; Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, “Introduction: Thinking Through the Minor, Transnationally,” in Minor Transnationalism, ed. Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 1–23. 39 Drama Box, One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0. 40 Carbonneau, “If the System Isn’t Right,” 2010. 41 See Drama Box, “About ARTivate,” Drama Box, accessed August  24, 2020, www.dramabox.org/eng/about_artivate.html. A  protégé of Augusto Boal, Bárbara Santos is co-founder of the Berlin group KURINGA and is acclaimed for practicing socially engaged theatre. Lai Shu-ya is known for her work in community theatre in Taiwan and has been credited for introducing forum theatre there in 2011. 42 The series featured dramatists from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, including Shi Xiaomei, Tang Shu-wing, Lang Zhu Yun, and Olivia Yan. 43 Liu Xiaoyi, interview with How Wee Ng, August 3, 2017. 44 Kok Heng Leun, interview with How Wee Ng, June 8, 2017. 45 See Ferrari, “Asian Theatre as Method.” 46 Jessica Yeung, “Danny Yung in Search of Hybrid Matter and Mind: His Experimental Xiqu for Zuni Icosahedron,” Visual Anthropology 24, no. 1–2 (2010): 135–36. 47 Ferrari, “Asian Theatre as Method,” 160, discusses how Toki has “empowered them to exercise their creativity beyond the orthodoxy of their received form, and to feed their lived experience into their stage practice.” 48 Zelda Ng, interview with How Wee Ng, August 9, 2017. 49 Peter Sau, interview with How Wee Ng, July  28, 2017. Sau performs in both Singapore English and Chinese theatre and has collaborated with Drama Box. He also conducts theatre workshops for school students. 50 Based on local records, feldwork, and interviews, Fanshen was published in 1966. It examines the Chinese Communist Party land-reform campaign in a Shanxi village during the civil war of 1945–48. 51 On the creative process of Newstheatre (Xinwen juchang, 2000) see Ng, Xijuhe. 52 The 2011 General Election saw the highest number of seats won by opposition parties in parliament. The PAP secured a majority of 60.14%, its lowest ever recorded in Singapore history. 53 Koh Wan Ching, interview with How Wee Ng, July 23, 2017. Koh has worked with many theatre companies, including Drama Box and The Necessary Stage. 54 Tan Beng Tian, interview with How Wee Ng, April 25, 2019. A co-founder of the Singapore puppetry theatre group, The Finger Players, Tan has been involved in design, performance, and directing in theatre. Also a member of Access Arts Hub, she is dedicated to making arts more accessible for persons with disabilities in Singapore.

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Sau, interview. Koh, interview. Kok, interview. Doreen Toh, interview with How Wee Ng, July 19, 2017. Koh, Toh, and Tan expressed concerns about having to work within a very pressed schedule. Ng, interview. Yeung, “Danny Yung,” 135–36. Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. John Willet (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964). Nathaniel Davis, “ ‘Not a Soul in Sight!’: Beckett’s Fourth Wall,” Journal of Modern Literature 38, no. 2 (2015): 87. Oliver Chong, interview with How Wee Ng, September  8, 2017. Chong is a playwright, director, actor, and designer. He is well known for his previous work as resident director of The Finger Players (2008–12). He is currently artistic director of ODDDCROP Theatrical Productions in Singapore. Tan, interview. Koh, interview. Karacs, “Zuni Icosahedron.” Ngo, interview. Sau, interview. Edmund Lee, “One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0,” Timeout Magazine Hong Kong, September 14, 2011, http://timeout-test.candrholdings.com/stage/features/ 45447/one-hundred-years-of-solitude-100.html. Li Xie, interview with How Wee Ng, August 4, 2017. Chong, interview. Liu, interview. Koh, interview. See Ferrari, “Asian Theatre as Method.” Li Xie, Oliver Chong, Koh Wan Ching, Liu Xiaoyi, Zelda Ng, Judy Ngo, Doreen Toh, Peter Sau, and Tay Khong Hui. Li Xie, Zelda Ng, Judy Ngo, Doreen Toh, Liu Xiaoyi, Oliver Chong, and Tay Khong Hui came together to work on an immersive production that required audiences to participate in the investigation of a murder. Ngo, interview.

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Bibliography “About HKADC.” Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Accessed August  24, 2020. www.hkadc.org.hk/?p=81&lang=en. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Speech Genres and other Essays. Edited by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson. Translated by Vern W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986. Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Edited and translated by John Willet. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964. Carbonneau, Suzanne. “If the System Isn’t Right, Why Can’t We Change It?—An Interview with Danny Yung, Introduced by Bill Bissell.” The Pew Centre for Arts & Heritage, September 18, 2010. www.pewcenterarts.org/sites/default/fles/ danny_yung_0.pdf Chan, Kwok-bun, and Chan Nin. “Introduction: Hybridity and the Politics of Desertion.” In Hybrid Hong Kong, edited by Chan Kwok-bun, 1–26. London: Routledge, 2012.

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Chen Kuan-hsing. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Chew Book Leong [Zhou Wenlong]. “Rong Nianzeng de geming” [The Revolution of Danny Yung]. Lianhe zaobao, February 5, 2012. Davis, Nathaniel. “ ‘Not a Soul in Sight!’: Beckett’s Fourth Wall.” Journal of Modern Literature 38, no. 2 (2015): 86–102. “Dialectical Materialism.” Marxists Internet Archive. Accessed August  24, 2020. www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm. Drama Box. “One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution.” Press Release, August 2, 2011, www.dramabox.org/eng/productions-100years.html. ———. “About ARTivate.” Drama Box. Accessed August 24, 2020, www.dramabox. org/eng/about_artivate.html. ———. “About Drama Box.” Drama Box. Accessed August 24, 2020. www.dramabox. org/eng/about_db.html. Ferrari, Rossella. “The Stage as a Drawing Board: Zuni Icosahedron’s Architecture Is Art Festival.” TDR: The Drama Review 55, no. 1 (2011): 137–48. ———. “Asian Theatre as Method: The Toki Experimental Project and SinoJapanese Transnationalism in Performance.” TDR: The Drama Review 61, no. 3 (2017): 141–64. Foo Tee Tuan [Fu Shijuan]. “Wenhua de guanxing yu geming” [The Inertia and Revolution of Culture]. Lianhe zaobao, February 12, 2012. Hegel, Georg. The Encyclopedia Logic: Part 1 of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences [Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften I]. Translated by T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991. Hinton, William. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966. Human Rights in China. “Danny Yung on Critical Thinking, Creativity, and Advocacy.” YouTube. July 10, 2012. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqDJa4jo2Vc. Karacs, Sarah. “Zuni Icosahedron Proves Hong Kong Can Be a Fertile Ground for Experimentation.” Zolima CityMag, November  23, 2017. https://zolimacitymag.com/ zuni-icosahedron-proves-hong-kong-can-be-a-fertile-ground-for-experimentation/. Lee, Edmund. “One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0.” Timeout Magazine Hong Kong, September 14, 2011. http://timeout-test.candrholdings.com/stage/features/ 45447/one-hundred-years-of-solitude-100.html. Lilley, Rozanna. Staging Hong Kong: Gender and Performance in Transition. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998. Lin, Amy M. Y. “Towards Transformation of Knowledge and Subjectivity in Curriculum Inquiry: Insights from Chen Kuan-Hsing’s ‘Asia as Method’.” Curriculum Inquiry 42, no. 1 (2012): 153–78. Lionnet, Françoise, and Shu-mei Shih. “Introduction: Thinking Through the Minor, Transnationally.” In Minor Transnationalism, edited by Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, 1–23. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Maybee, Julie E. “Hegel’s Dialectics.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2019 ed. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2019/entries/hegel-dialectics/. McGill, V. J., and W. T. Parry. “The Unity of Opposites: A Dialectical Principle.” Science & Society 12, no. 4 (1948): 418–44. Ministry of Information and the Arts. The Renaissance City Report. Singapore: Ministry of Information and the Arts, 2000.

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Ng How Wee [Huang Haowei]. Xijuhe yu Xinjiapo de shehui juchang: Wenhua ganyu yu yishu zizhuxing [Drama Box and the Social Theatre of Singapore: Cultural Intervention and Artistic Autonomy]. Singapore: Nanyang Technological University Centre for Chinese Language and Culture, 2011. O’Toole, John. The Process of Drama: Negotiating Art and Meaning. London: Routledge, 1992. Quah, Sy Ren. “Performing Chineseness in Multicultural Singapore: A Discussion on Selected Literary and Cultural Texts.” Asian Ethnicity 10, no. 3 (2009): 225–38. Shih, Shu-mei. Visuality and Identity Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacifc. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. ———. “The Concept of the Sinophone.” PMLA: Journal of the Modern Language Association of America 126, no. 3 (2011): 709–18. Tan, Kenneth Paul. “Forum Theatre in Singapore: Resistance, Containment, and Commodifcation in an Advanced Industrial Society.” positions: asia critique 21, no. 1 (2013): 189–221. Wong, Yuewai. “The Black Box Exercise: An Arts Education Model from Hong Kong.” In Educating in the Arts—the Asian Experience: Twenty-Four Essays, edited by Lindy Joubert, 313–29. Dordrecht: Springer, 2008. Yeung, Jessica. “Danny Yung in Search of Hybrid Matter and Mind: His Experimental Xiqu for Zuni Icosahedron.” Visual Anthropology 24, no. 1–2 (2010): 124–38. Yung, Danny. “Experimenting China—Realizing Traditions.” 2005. Accessed August  20, 2020. http://zuni.org.hk/education/resource/延伸閱讀-1-實驗中國-實 現傳統/?lang=en-US. ———. “Fully and Accurately Understanding and Implementing the Policy of ‘Creative City’.” In The Practice of the “Experimental Art” Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2014. Zuni Icosahedron. Zuni Icosahedron Annual Report 2007/2008. Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2008. ———. Zuni Icosahedron Annual Report 2013/2014. Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2014. ———. Zuni Icosahedron Annual Report 2014/2015. Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2015. ———. Zuni Icosahedron Annual Report 2015/2016. Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2016.

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Thoughts on cross-cultural collaboration by Mok Chiu-yu, a Hong Konger What we did and why there was little interaction with Singapore Mok Chiu-yu

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My encounters with Singaporean artists It was the 1980s. I met a Singaporean called Wong Souk Yee in Hong Kong just as I  was fnding out about the Philippine Educational Theatre Association (PETA) and having got to know about Al Santos, an ex-member of PETA who set up the Asian Council for People’s Culture (ACPC) and produced Cry of Asia 1, which brought together well-known People’s Theatre artists from all over Asia (i.e. South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, India) to tour Europe. Wong was a member of Third Stage, a theatre company that got into trouble with the Singaporean government, then still headed by Lee Kuan Yew. It turned out that the members of Third Stage were arrested under the infamous Internal Security Act (ISA) because they staged a piece of satirical theatre making fun of the Merlion and some aspects of the authoritarian society of Singapore. They were released after they repented on TV. I subsequently learned that Wong and her colleagues in Third Stage went through a Basic Integrated Theatre Arts Workshop (BITAW) facilitated by Al Santos. BITAW is a very systematic methodology incorporating many techniques and approaches including the improvisational theatre of Viola Spolin, Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, and Rudolf Laban’s dance and movement combined with creative sound and music, creative writing including poetry making, creative visual art and puppetry, the contemporarisation of Filipino myths and heritage, plus the consistent use of group dynamics. The BITAW workshop successfully implements a Paulo Freirean approach to culture and theatre so that everyone in the workshop unleashes his/her creativity as already embedded in a goldmine that is inherently found or learnt through life. The workshop invariably leads to a showcase that reveals the workshop group’s artistic search and competence, organisational possibilities, and social concerns. This was threatening to the authorities in Singapore.

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That the Singaporean artists/people lived under an authoritarian system was something I became more acutely aware of when I got to know more of them. So much so that I gladly agreed to go to the Chinese University of Hong Kong to do a small Giant Puppet show to protest on the day the university awarded an honorary degree to Lee Kuan Yew. And I did not shy away from telling Ong Keng Sen that I thought Singapore was repressive when we were introduced at a gathering of artists staged by the Rockefeller Foundation outft, the Asian Cultural Council (ACC). Ong and I were both ACC grantees who were sent to the US on money raised locally (i.e. in Hong Kong, in my case) to appreciate American culture. Somehow, I learnt afterwards that Ong considered this a personal attack on him and his art. Some years later, he took his multicultural Lear to the Hong Kong Arts Festival and the festival organiser asked me to be an aftershow commentator, which I declined. Actually, I enjoyed the show and the artistry of the Asian masters of various classical dances in Ong’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s King Lear. It turned out that Ong was staging Lear to comment on the ageing authoritarian rulers of various Asian countries we found ourselves in. He was kind of brave. The very courageous Singapore theatre worker who had won the heart and admiration of many in Hong Kong was Kuo Pao Kun. I was an admirer sitting at a distance in a big hall at the Second IDEA Congress in Brisbane in 1995 (IDEA stands for International Drama/Theatre and Education Association, an international association of drama educators) as he was giving a keynote onstage. He was talking about various forms of theatre in Singapore and referring to them as “the theatre that governs”, “the theatre that remembers”, “the theatre that consumes”, “the theatre that subverts”, and so on.1 To me, then, he was presenting those stunning analyses, and I was wondering if, indeed, he could be saying such things in Singapore. Because of his theatre, Kuo had been put into prison too under the ISA. Hong Kong has tremendous respect for Kuo, his works, and his deeds. His most popular work in Hong Kong is The Silly Little Girl and the Funny Old Tree, which has been staged many times. He was invited by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) to serve as an assessor for its drama committee. He went along to see many shows staged by Hong Kong’s theatre groups, especially those that were given one-year grants. He was sent to have a look at the performance of Macau 1,2,3—the 450-year history of Macau seen through the eyes of a Portuguese, a Chinese, and a Macanese, which I organised in the name of the Asian People’s Theatre Festival Society (APTFS) at the Tribal Bar in Macau. This was not a conventional theatre space but just a bar in a poor district of Macau. (The original venue we booked suddenly refused us, and our friends in Macau led us to the bar!) Kuo apparently liked the play, and in his report, he recommended us to apply for a one-year grant from the HKADC. The APTFS did not heed his advice. Meanwhile, I strongly disagreed with his views on arts for persons with disability. At the time, I worked for an organisation called Arts with the Disabled Association

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(ADA) which promoted arts with, by, and for the disabled. As ADA was receiving project grants from the HKADC, Kuo also looked into the activities of ADA and was of the view that arts as such should be just social work and activities that people with disability enjoy as pastimes. Anyway, the deed that earned Kuo the highest respect was his setting up of The Practice School in Singapore. Kuo’s vision of setting up a training school for theatre artists who understood both Western and Asian dramaturgies and became well versed in the gestural vocabularies of various Asian classical performing systems (e.g. jingju, Japanese nō, Balinese dance) through a vigorous and demanding four-year training programme (without awarding a degree qualifcation) was supported and admired in Hong Kong. Kuo envisaged that the school would produce the greatest theatre artists in the world. Unfortunately, Kuo passed away shortly after the school began operation. However, his followers continued to run it, and several Hong Kong graduates from the school returned to Hong Kong and, over the years, have attained various well-recognised achievements as actors and actresses. To acknowledge Kuo and commemorate him, we invited May Wong—originally from Hong Kong’s premier theatre company, Chung Ying, who had joined Kuo Pao Kun in Singapore to be his lieutenant in his performing group—to return to Hong Kong to direct almost 30 young actors and actresses in a cross-cultural production called Crossing for the IDEA Congress held in Hong Kong in 2007. I was co-Congress director, and I don’t remember many Singaporean delegates, but I was pleased to meet some who were going to form the Singapore Drama Education Association (SDEA; subsequently SDEA invited me to give a presentation at one of its early international conferences). I probably met Kok Heng Leun of Drama Box, the Singaporean company that performs Chinese-language theatre, at the 2007 IDEA Congress. Considered to be one of the prime movers of the arts in Singapore, Kok was an Arts Nominated Member of Parliament from 2016 to 2018. Kok is probably the Singaporean theatre worker who has engaged more than any other Singaporean in collaborative works with Hong Kong theatre workers. I was asked to give a talk on my theatre experiences for Drama Box members, and I acted as a reviewer of a book about his works before publication. But I failed to get funding for Hong Kong’s Chosen Power (a self-advocacy group of persons with intellectual diferences) to collaborate with him and his group and the Mind the Gap group in Bradford, UK, for a Forum Theatre festival. However, he got Hong Kong’s Danny Yung and Tang Shu-wing to do workshops in Singapore and teamed up with Danny’s theatre group, Zuni Icosahedron, to stage One Hundred Years of Solitude in Hong Kong and Singapore. Kok was well known for his Forum Theatre activities both in Singapore and overseas. Considered as a master in the form, he has been organising Forum Theatre events attended by large numbers in district communities. He went to Taiwan and Hong Kong to facilitate Forum Theatre workshops and showcases. Interestingly though, in the early days of introducing Forum Theatre to Singapore, as a

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component part of the Theatre of the Oppressed established by the Brazilian Augusto Boal, it had to be called and presented as ‘Playback Theatre’ to avoid the authorities clamping down on it. Three smaller international Drama Education conferences preceded the 2007 IDEA Congress. The frst of these was organised by the APTFS and the On & On Theatre Workshop, also from Hong Kong, in 2000 (the two artistic directors also attended the 1995 IDEA Congress in Brisbane). We were desperately trying to fnd someone from Singapore, and we were introduced to Alvin Tan of The Necessary Stage. Alvin gave us some description of his theatre and goings-on in Singapore. His theatre is primarily in English. I must say that I have not seized the opportunity to develop a closer relationship with Singapore. Sensing that The Necessary Stage was doing something challenging in a difcult situation, I did not realise that the group was really trying something quite radical, courageous, and perhaps dangerous—at a Fringe Festival that The Necessary Stage organised, they invited ex-ISA detainees to speak about their experience! At the same festival, they collaborated with a member of PETA on the theme of migrant workers. I did not fgure out the curatorial direction of the Fringe Festival, but when I tried to get Fallen Leaves—an autobiographical solo performance by blind doctor/musician Po Sun Yee with an empowering narrative and beautiful songs from Guizhou Province—to enter their Fringe Festival the following year, it was rejected. The theme of the festival that year was “Arts and Disability”. When I read the programme, I realised that probably they thought our play was too old hat. There were other occasions when Singaporean artists rejected our overture. In 1994/1995, I  was organising the tour of Big Wind—a multinational/multicultural collaboration with members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe (SFMT) and People’s Theatre workers from Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Thailand, Taiwan, and Australia about the plight of migrant workers and the havoc created by the movement of international capital. We wrote to May Wong to see if her group could arrange a performance in Singapore, but it was unsuccessful. Unsuccessful was also our attempt to invite Singaporean playbackers to come to Hong Kong to share in an international Playback Theatre gathering. More successful were exchanges with Singaporean performance artists and artists with disability. In the 1990s, I was a friend of the great Japanese promoter of performance art Seiji Shimoda who, over the years, has been promoting performance art by visiting diferent countries—reaching out to artists and organising workshops. Singapore developed its own group of performance artists—again, the authoritarian government of Singapore did not make the development and growth of performance art smooth sailing. The government and the press considered some of the performances outrageous and banned performance art altogether, while the National Arts Council refused to support performance art. Under such circumstances, it was a struggle for Lee Wen and his colleagues like Jeremy Hiah, Kai Lam,

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and others to pursue such authentic art and performances. Because of his perseverance, Lee Wen became the only Asian member of the famed international performance art group, Black Market International (BMI). Lee organised the high-powered Future of Imagination–International Performance Art Festival and eventually won the Cultural Medallion from the National Arts Council of Singapore, which acknowledged his achievements. With the support of the HKADC, over the last two decades, I  and other performance artists have organised regular exchanges titled “Arts on the Move” with the participation of performance artists from China, Taiwan, Asia, and Europe. Lee Wen, Jeremy Hiah, and Kai Lam have graced our performance art festivals more than once (Jeremy came only once). Staging themselves, their short or durational pieces were witty and demonstrative of the repression they experienced in their everyday lives. Lee Wen, who passed away in March 2019, said about an international gathering of performance artists: “This is not a circus, this not a show, this not a biennale, this is a meeting of artists and people who looked for the pearls in the rivers of human civilisations and came to share what they found.”2 Warm and long-lasting encounters and collaborations were sustained with artists with disability and their organisation Very Special Arts (VSA) Singapore, particularly with Chng Seok Tin, the almost totally blind printmaker, sculptor, and touch art artist, who passed away in September 2019 at the age of 73. Mostly with Chng and VSA Singapore, there have been joint exhibitions and workshops in Hong Kong and Singapore. Encounters also happened in Australia and China. Looking back at the international collaborations I have undertaken, the involvement of Singaporean artists was not as frequent as it should have been. Why? I think one of the reasons is that the authoritarian situation in Singapore (particularly, the experiences of Kuo Pao Kun and Third Stage) put me of. Perhaps I did not want to get my friends into trouble. In some cases, it was the failure to get funding or what we ofered did not match what the Singaporean presenters wanted for their audience. In the end, I feel that lack of Singaporean participation in our multicultural projects can be considered to be to the detriment of those projects, particularly since Singapore is a multicultural society where some theatre artists such as Kuo Pao Kun truly stressed and explored multicultural theatre.

Multicultural theatre without Singapore Prelude: I  was a political/cultural activist—more political than cultural— in the early 1970s in Hong Kong after graduating from the University of Adelaide in Australia with a degree in economics. But writing political texts, organising demonstrations, rallies, and meetings and agitating for change became somewhat repetitive and boring. I found that the utilisation of theatre and music to articulate what we wanted to say was more satisfying and creative. To be more creative, we started doing “People’s Theatre”.

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In the beginning we performed theatre for the people—theatre that expressed our views. And when we encountered the touring production of Cry of Asia 1 organised by Al Santos, an ex-member of PETA (the same guy who went to Singapore to work with Third Stage and got them into trouble, so that his Cry of Asia team did not include anyone from Singapore), we came to know that People’s Theatre also meant theatre of the people and by the people—theatre that is the voice of the people, theatre as action, and theatre by the people themselves and about themselves. It is not just performing to the people but, through workshops, the ‘people’ can learn to command the means of producing theatre and then proceed to stage their own theatre. Workshops that facilitate participants to create their own theatre are plenty (e.g. the Theatre of the Oppressed workshops of Augusto Boal and PETA’s BITAW method), and there are many methodologies used in the arena of educational and community theatre. People who join workshops become active creators of arts, and this can really help to transform the consumerist capitalist society or subvert it (so to speak). In the course of searching for and actually doing People’s Theatre in Hong Kong, we came to know the radical People’s Theatre ensembles in the US— the SFMT, the Bread and Puppet Theatre, the Living Theatre, and so on. And, of course, there was 7:84 in the UK, Le Théâtre du Soleil in France, and others. But the nearest and most infuential were the groups in Asia: The Black Tent Theatre (Japan), Makhampom Theatre (Thailand), Aranyak Theatre (Bangladesh), Sarwanam Theatre (Nepal), and perhaps the most important of all, PETA, whose methodology, BITAW, infuenced activist theatre artists in Hong Kong and throughout Asia. From BITAW, we moved on to the Theatre of the Oppressed: Image Theatre, Forum Theatre, Rainbow of Desire, and all that. In 1996, a year before the return of the sovereignty of Hong Kong to China, Veronica Needa introduced Playback Theatre to Hong Kong. Playback Theatre promotes the individual’s authentic storytelling; the afrmation of the individual’s stories, the right of telling one’s own stories, and the sharing and re-enactment/performance of stories as exchange of gifts actually led to members of the two groups wanting more. So funding was secured, Veronica facilitated further workshops, and the frst public Playback Theatre performances were held at the McAuley Studio of the Hong Kong Arts Centre during the frst week of July 1997. Aptly, the theme of the frst performance was Victoria Park, a venue for continued protests against British colonial rule, American and Japanese imperialism, and Chinese dictatorial rule. Playback Theatre workshops and performances were to become some of our major activities—going around to perform Playback as a free act of service; working with persons with disabilities; enlisting them after workshopping with them; inviting various Playback trainers to come to Hong Kong; publishing Fluid Sculpture, a book on Playback Theatre in Hong Kong;3 organising an international gathering of playbackers in Hong Kong; and

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Figure 5.1 Mok Chiu-yu performing in The Life and Times of Ng Chung Yin: A Hong Kong Story, 1997. Credits: Mok Chiu-yu. Photo by Cheung Chi-wai.

engaging improvisation masters such as Keith Johnstone, Adrian Jackson, and Ruth Zaporah to come to teach. We organised an international gathering of playbackers in Hong Kong. Eventually the proceedings of the gathering were put together into another book titled Chorus and published by ADA. By that time, a few years after the introduction of Playback Theatre

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to Hong Kong, there were about half a dozen or more Playback performing groups. We were also using Playback to devise scripts for our performances, such as The Life and Times of Ng Chung Yin: A Hong Kong Story (1997). While I called myself a People’s Theatre worker, from 1974 to 1990, I had a full-time job as a secondary school teacher. I taught for such a long time partly because of economic necessity, but I  had constant questions about my role as a teacher. And, as I witnessed how the students in Beijing were fasting and gathering on Tiananmen Square in 1989 in an attempt to bring about change in their society, I resolutely decided that it was time for me to leave the school where I had taught for 15 years. Meanwhile I  got a fellowship from the ACC to observe contemporary American theatre in the US. In 1990, I was able to visit many theatre groups in the US—the SFMT, the Bread and Puppet Theatre Company, the Living Theatre, and others. Their works and practices were inspiring. Prior to the American trip, I spent three weeks at the People’s Theatre Trainers’ Training Camp in South Korea organised by the ACPC run by Al Santos (again, the guy that went to Singapore to work with Third Stage, and it is easy to understand why he had not invited any Singaporeans). There, I met many representatives from People’s Theatre groups in Asia—Ernie Cloma from PETA (Manila, Philippines); Mamunur Rashid of Aranyak Theatre (Dhaka, Bangladesh); Tua Pradit Prasartthong of Mahkampom Theatre (Bangkok, Thailand); Govind Rawat of Sarwanam Theatre (Kathmandu, Nepal); Kim Myung-gon of Arirang Theatre Company (Seoul, South Korea); and Chung Chiao from Taiwan, a poet/journalist who set up his own People’s Theatre group soon after returning to Taiwan.

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The Asian People’s Theatre Festival society cross-cultural theatre begins Soon after my visits to Korea and the US, I was to organise the First, Second, and Third Asian People’s Theatre Festivals with the support of all the friends I had made in South Korea. The frst, in 1992, was held not only in Hong Kong but also in Taiwan. The third, in 1994, was a travelling festival with more than a dozen participants. They performed a big show, The Big Wind, and two smaller ones, A Tale of Two Cities—Beijing 1989/ Dhaka 1990 and Story of the Gurkhas, and facilitated various workshops. It was an international collaboration modelled after Cry of Asia, with performances and workshops. This project began in 1993. The playwrights frst assembled in Hong Kong to talk about themselves and their works, then decided the theme of the play, and then worked out a scene for each playwright to take back home to fnish. Cheung Tat-ming (Hong Kong) and Joan Holden (US) would then meet in San Francisco to go over what everyone had written and then come up with some kind of rehearsal script. The rehearsal took place in Kathmandu, and the play opened in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India. Then it

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Figure 5.2 Cover of the programme of the First Asian People’s Theatre Festival, held in Hong Kong and Taiwan in 1992. Credits: Mok Chiu-yu.

travelled to Kolkata, Dhaka, Kathmandu, Bangkok, two cities in Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The tour lasted for four months, and as a producer of the festival, I was left broke. So I had to go back to a paid job. I ended up working as the executive secretary of ADA, where I served for ten years from 1995 to 2004. ADA is an organisation that promotes arts

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Figure 5.3 Poster for the Third Asian People’s Theatre Festival, 1994/95. Credits: Mok Chiu-yu.

with (also for and by) persons with disability to stimulate inclusion. It seeks to horizontally advocate for opportunities for every person with disability to enjoy the arts and to vertically promote the excellence of artists with disability. ADA is, understandably, a multi-arts organisation as we fully accept diversity and that diferent people have diferent potential and talents. While

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Figure 5.4 Mok Chiu-yu on the stage of Big Wind, 2005.

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Credits: Mok Chiu-yu.

Figure 5.5 Rehearsals of Big Wind in Taiwan, 2005. Credits: Mok Chiu-yu.

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I continued to organise what I called People’s Theatre under the name of the Asian People’s Theatre Festival Society (APTFS, formally registered as an organisation after the third festival in 1994), my full-time job required my attention in running multi-arts projects. Other than those mentioned earlier, we were also involved in many other cross-cultural productions, some also in the name of ADA. After I quit ADA in 2004, I  became the co-director of the IDEA Congress 2007, through which I  helped organise the memorable production of Crossing 2. After the Congress, I helped found the Centre for Community Cultural Development (CCCD), which also went into cross-cultural productions occasionally, independently from the APTFS. The following is a list of cross-cultural productions and projects I have been involved with since 1993 in various roles—such as coordinator, producer, workshop leader, director, dramaturg, artistic consultant—recalled from memory: Ofshore (with the SFMT, 1993); Big Wind (with the SFMT, 1993); Hairy Monkeys at Chung King Mansions (collaboration with Mohammad Afzal of Ajoka Theatre, Lahore, Pakistan, performed in Hong Kong, 1993); Black Sky (touring version of Hairy Monkeys, performed in Taiwan and several cities in Japan, 1993); Yours Most Obediently (collaboration with Indian artists touring India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, and Hong Kong, 1997); Macau 1,2,3 (Hong Kong-Macau collaboration touring Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Kenya, England, and Portugal, 1998); The Death of June (touring Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, 1999); The Bursting of the Asian Economic Bubbles (touring Hong Kong and Macau, 2000); Migrant Cultural Project (with the Asian Migrants’ Theatre Company, 2000/2001); Project Julie (with Filipina migrant workers, 2003); Cry of Asia 1 (1989), Cry of Asia 2 (1995), Cry of Asia 3 (1998) (crosscultural collaborations originating from the Philippines with the participation of Hong Kong artists, touring many diferent cities in Asia); Tenth People’s Theatre Festival (Kurda, Orissa, India, 2004); Untie the Boat from the Ugly Wharf (Australia-Hong Kong Deaf Theatre production, IDEA Congress, Ottawa, 2004); Red Dress (SFMT and Theatre of Silence, a Hong Kong’s Deaf Theatre company, 2005); Asian Madang Theatre Festival (Kwangju, South Korea, 2005); Trainers’ Training for People’s Theatre workers (South Korea, 2006); Crossing (IDEA Congress, Hong Kong, 2007); Che Project 2004–2010 (with participants from South Korea, Philippines, Bangladesh, and Hong Kong);

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The Moth Ball (collaboration with Mind the Gap, Bradford, UK, 2009); Programme of works by Al Santos (Philippines), Chang Soik (South Korea), Chung Chiao (Taiwan), and Mamunur Rashid (Bangladesh) staged by local performance groups in Hong Kong; Who Is in Control (Hong Kong-Philippines-Bangladesh collaboration, 2010); Ashes Blood Rivers (with participants from and touring Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Thailand, Uganda, France, and IDEA Congress, Paris, 2013); On the Way to the Front (Hong Kong—French production performed in France, Hong Kong, and China, 2015); Kowloon Walled City (2015) and A Dark Rising at Sham Shui Po (2017), Butoh performances with Japanese participants. The latter was also performed in Dhaka with the participation of Bangladeshi actors/ dancers in 2018; Solo Performance Festival, Kathmandu, 2018; It Won’t Be Long Now—Life Inside and Outside the Sham Shui Po Prisoners of War Camp 1941–1945 (with Hong Kong and British actors, performed in Hong Kong, China, and England, 2018/19/20); The Spice Road (with participants from Hong Kong, Germany, France, Egypt [Cairo], Uganda [Kampala], India [Kolkata], Nepal [Kathmandu], and Peru [Lima], 2019).

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The mechanics of cross-cultural collaboration 1) The participants. Who are the artists that should be invited to take part in cross-cultural collaboration? People’s Theatre workers? Those who can communicate in English? (To be inclusive of those who do not speak English, is it not possible to have an interpreter for the purpose, just like a sign interpreter is made available to deaf participants in diferent cultural projects)? Those who are well versed in some kind of traditional performance skills? To be sensitive to gender balance is absolutely necessary. I  have worked with people and groups I  came to know from the South Korean workshop, people I met during my visit to the US, migrant workers I got to know through Cha de la Cruz, a Mindanaoan migrant worker organiser in Hong Kong, and people I met at the IDEA Congresses. Some collaborations were actually developed by Eric Ng, who took part in the 2007 IDEA Congress in Hong Kong. Eric became a staf member of CCCD after the 2007 Congress for eight years. 2) The fnances. It is possible to stage theatre without money, in public spaces where the performers can be committed without pay—for example, political agitprop. Sometimes we pay the little expenses incurred from our own pockets. But cross-cultural production requires bringing people from diferent countries together to create and stage the work. Participants need to be fown to a certain place and returned to their country of origin. In some cases, there may be visa fees. If the performance travels, there are more

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transportation costs or more visa fees. The contingent needs to be accommodated; members have to be fed, and they have to be given a per diem or maybe a fee at the end. There are other production fees—props, set, hire of theatre, publicity, ticketing, and so on. Who have the funders been? The frst cross-cultural production I  was involved with was initiated by the SFMT. After my visit to the SFMT in San Francisco in 1990, I came up with the idea of two collaborations, both of which were funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. First, the making and staging of Ofshore in the Bay Area, for which they enlisted Chinese and Japanese actors in the US in addition to the SFMT’s own actors to perform in a play co-written by Chung Chiao (Taipei, Taiwan), Patrick Lee (from Hong Kong, based in San Francisco), and the SFMT resident playwright Joan Holden, with Maribel Lagarda (Manila, Philippines) as the Kuntao movement instructor, and myself as the dramaturg. Second, after the successful staging of Ofshore, I proposed a collaboration, which was to become Big Wind, with the participation of new friends I had made all over Asia. In the end, apart from a few Hong Kong and American theatre workers, those from Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Taiwan, and Australia took part. We rehearsed in Kathmandu, premiered in Bhubaneswar, and then played in Kolkata, Dhaka, Kathmandu, Bangkok, Taipei, Xingang (Taiwan), and Hong Kong. The money from the Rockefeller Foundation was not quite enough. I was able to raise some money from the HKADC and from the Hong Kong Federation of Students, which had money to support pro-democracy activities in China (as part of Big Wind, we had a sideshow called A Tale of Two Cities—Beijing 1989/ Dhaka 1990, which was about the democracy movements in China and Bangladesh). I was also able to get support from the German Heinrich Böll Foundation for the participation of one Bangladeshi and one Nepalese collaborator. And then, of course, our hosts in diferent cities contributed diferently in terms of providing accommodation, food, hospitality, performance venues, and various technical and non-technical backups. In Hong Kong, more than two dozen artists from the Ofshore and the Big Wind troupes were home-staying with our friends—a feat that probably cannot be achieved now. In the end, I had to use my own overdraft facilities to fnance the defcit of the whole project, and it took me months to pay of the debt I’d incurred. I was able to fare better in further activities, but basically, again, we got funding for exchange projects mostly from the HKADC. Subsequently, the Hong Kong Government’s Home Afairs Bureau also provided funding for Hong Kong artists to travel for exchange activities. Sometimes we were able to get support from our venues—for example, the City Contemporary Dance Company (also some cash), the Fringe Club, the Hong Kong Arts Centre, the Black Box of the Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre, and universities. The British Council would sometimes support artists from the UK and Le French May artists from France. All in all, we seldom got commercial sponsors, if

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at all. With limited funding, every project had a shoestring budget, and the producer had to spend frugally; every project was a fnancial risk, and the producer and production manager often got no reward in the end. 3) The script writing or devising process. How was the theme of the performance decided? It may be said that, in all cases, the partners involved (me and my Hong Kong collaborators and the representatives of the partner organisation) would decide. Possible topics might be discussed beforehand; usually the initiator would suggest some ideas and the basis of the agreement was that the theme should be one that concerned all the participating artists. Our common concerns among the Big Wind playwrights were migrant workers and the destruction caused by the international movement of capital. So, a collaboration between Hong Kong and India should be about Indian migration to Hong Kong and the migrants’ experience there. As for Ashes Blood Rivers, a project involving young theatre workers from Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Thailand, Uganda, and France, what’s better than exploring the ecological signifcance of the Pearl River, the Ganges, the Mekong, the Nile, and the Seine and the havoc caused to these rivers by human greed? Collaboration with migrant workers from Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, and Thailand in Hong Kong almost predetermined that we should cover the topics of how they had been pushed to work overseas, their working conditions, and how they might be afected by the Asian economic bubbles. When we worked with the SFMT, whose works are script based, we asked playwrights from diferent countries who work in English to come to Hong Kong for a week to get to know each other and decide what they wanted to talk about in the play. Once we settled on the topic of migrant workers and the international movement of capital, we visited migrant groups and migrant shelters, we interviewed migrants and taped their stories, and then we came up with a rough storyline, and each playwright was given a scene to work on. Then we had the title Big Wind. Then each playwright submitted his/her scene and two playwrights—the SFMT’s Joan Holden and Hong Kong’s Cheung Tat-ming—worked together and amalgamated the scenes in English, which were taken as the frst English script. As we assembled the actors, we began to rehearse. The musicians also composed and wrote the lyrics of songs based on the script. The script was revised as the rehearsal went along, with Joan and Cheung as the so-called chief playwrights. The Bangladeshi dramatist Mannan Hira and Nepalese playwrights were also there to give their inputs. Even on the road, in typical SFMT style, the script was constantly improved. With Yours Most Obediently, the director/playwright Probir Guha and I spent a few days together away in a small town outside Kolkata to work out how we could present Indian migration to Hong Kong. By that time, Guha had already visited Hong Kong for a couple of weeks for an exposure visit. In some other cases, such as Bursting of the Asian Economic Bubbles, a team worked out the basic structure and ideas with four diferent migrant

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groups, each doing a ten- to 15-minute skit to tell stories of themselves and their countries. In The Spice Road, our French initiator/collaborator originally contemplated working on the ‘Belt and Road’, but this title would be too related to China and liable to give the impression that it would be about, and a critique of, China’s foreign policy. Before the participating artists came together in a small village in the North of France, they were informed to prepare something about spices. When they arrived—after a period of getting to know each other facilitated by Maxime Sechaud (the initiator and French director) and senior Indian People’s Theatre worker Subodh Patnaik—the young (around 30 years old) actors and actresses shared their own stories and their ideas about food. These mostly related to the socio-political situation of their own countries—rebellions, feudalist traditions, and so on. They wrote up little skits, rehearsed them, and put them into a diferent order with the assistance of the director and advisor (this approach to devised theatre is used extensively—notably also in Crossing 2, when young people met together in Hong Kong for the IDEA Congress in 2007). 4) The rehearsal. Almost always, there was not enough time for rehearsal, particularly if it was a devising process. How long is long enough? Three weeks is short. So is four weeks. Counting rehearsal time and the time required for the performance tour, the participants had to be away from home for weeks, even months. And the producer had to accommodate the cast and the creative team and feed them as well. For the actors and actresses, it is not just about remembering the lines, the blockings, and so on. They had to devise or create the movements, and even more demanding is that they might need to learn diferent gestural vocabularies from a different culture from their counterparts, such as movements from traditional dances. This is serious learning; a callous imitation without commitment or conviction would be frowned upon. Usually, the schedule is tight, but the director must give enough rest and the producer enough food (good, nutritious, and compatible with all tastes). The director needs to be democratic and open, capable of listening and understanding (better take time to discuss and explain than ramming through things using the so-called authority of the director). It is also time for him/her to work with the designers, musicians, choreographer, or perhaps the whole team, on sets, costumes, lighting and sound, and so on during the devising process. More conficts tend to arise during the rehearsal process, and the organisers should not be surprised that there are dropouts: “I wanted that role and I did not get it”; “I do music, but I don’t do songs”. The former case is where an actor is too egocentric, and the latter might be attributable to a lack of communication in the recruitment period. 5) The tour. In a multinational production, visas can be an important matter, and the application for a visa can be a long process. For example, it was not possible in the past for a Pakistani to gain entry to India (in the case of Big Wind, the Pakistani actor who played the protagonist had to be

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replaced, as he was barred from getting a visa). Sometimes the delay in getting visa means that the group cannot assemble and begin together. Just as anyone taking a tour in some areas of the world, one needs to take good care of one’s health and be careful with the water we drink and with eating raw food, like salad. Preventive drugs are to be taken in accordance with instructions—for instance, some malaria tablets had to be taken even after leaving the afected area. Failure to do so would land one seriously ill in hospital, as someone from our group did when they arrived in Paris for the last leg of the tour. The performance may require quite a lot of adjustments because of the size of the theatre, the technical facilities in the theatre, and so on. We might also want to make modifcations to the languages used in the dialogue—for example, Cantonese replacing English and spoken by the Hong Kong performers when the performance took place in Hong Kong. We should try to maximise the kind of activities we could share with the people in diferent cities/places—not just the performances but also workshops and other exchanges—for example, solo performances by each individual participant in the tour, video screenings, discussions, or even exhibitions. We should try to organise in terms of a mini-festival revolving around the main show—the tour may be referred to as a ‘cultural caravan’. 6) The evaluation. The evaluation should be based on the achievement— or otherwise—of the goals set out below in the last section of this essay. But such criteria have been developed only after all these years of working in cross-cultural collaboration. Looking back, we did not always spend a lot of time together collectively going through a good evaluation. It was left to the individuals, and individual thoughts were not always communicated to others. Sometimes we failed to generate a continual, lasting, and harmonious relationship; we might not want to see some people ever again. Touring and performing over a period of time is always seen and remembered as somewhat romantic and unforgettable; romantic relationships often happen, but they may or may not be long-lasting. But, despite the psychological bruises one may have experienced, anyone who seriously refects on their own participation in a cross-cultural theatrical endeavour should be able to say that, as a result of the tour, they have grown intellectually, cognitively, and artistically, probably with greater international awareness and psychological growth.

The goals of cross-cultural collaboration 1) The search for an aesthetic of cross-cultural theatre. Multinational collaboration between Asians was, in the end, partly an aesthetic search for an Asian Theatre (my conclusion is that every production is a unique piece of Asian Theatre). Where there are non-Asian participants, one can easily amend the idea of producing a unique piece of Asian Theatre to a unique piece of World Theatre. Each piece of cross-cultural theatre can be a unique

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mix of diferent languages. In international collaborations, English is usually the language of communication among the participants (and this opens up the problem of the dominant position of participants who are well versed in English). But there is a choice of whether to use English or the languages of the participants as the language of the performance: the audience will not be able to understand all the languages, in which case one might use subtitles that the audience can understand. The use of multiple languages implies that the audience is asked to appreciate the spoken dialogue of the actors and actresses as ‘sound and music’, that the actors and actresses will stress the use of the body and gesture to communicate, and that the understanding of the story and the script may not require the command of the languages used in the play. Where the audience does not have a full comprehension of the dialogue, visual communication and presentation become more important. The theatrical piece will be more visually attractive if participants from diferent countries are able to incorporate some of their unique gestural vocabularies into their acting. 2) The search for international solidarity and universal values. The participants must be seen as artists who collaborate to express the identities, concerns, and aspirations of those who are oppressed, underprivileged, or poor and the universal values of liberty, fraternity, equality, right to the pursuit of happiness, and so on. Many of the collaborations I got involved with expressed a concern with issues of migration and the plight of migrant workers. Big Wind, Hairy Monkeys at Chung King Mansions, Black Sky, Yours Most Obediently, Macau 1,2,3, On the Way to the Front, The Bursting of the Asian Economic Bubbles, and Project Julie all directly addressed various issues of poverty, exploitation, suppression of human rights, and so on. Other issues dealt with in these works include the forces of globalisation and how the international movement of capital has created havoc in the world. Meanwhile, Who Is in Control raised questions about God and youthful puzzlement about choice and destiny, while Ashes Blood Rivers expressed a concern for the pollution of rivers and the human greed that has brought great damage to the environment. Theatre can never have the same efect of a political treatise in explaining history or providing socio-political analysis. A piece of theatre can be preaching to the converted; it can generate questions and provoke thoughts for the open minded; it might even generate great emotions in the audience (handle with Brecht). Yet its message can be clear, suggestive, or open ended, and the creators of a piece of theatre (including the producers, the director, the dramaturg, the actors and actresses, the playwrights, and others involved such as the musicians, the designers, and the stage manager) should be very clear in their mind about what they want to say on a deeper level. Take the example of The Spice Road, which the Théâtre de l’Ordinaire of France staged in 2019 with the participation of ten young actors and actresses under the direction of Maxime Sechaud. The young actors and actresses (about 30) tried to talk about rebellion all over the world, relating

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uprisings and discontent to food. Yes, food; they want no one to go hungry, living in a globalised world in which one fnds great disparity of wealth. And they talked about issues behind the food stories—the environment, climate change, colonisation and decolonisation, class, gender, race, and so on. In the performance, one of them called out:

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Don’t forget, comrades. Never forget this. We are all Yellow Vests! We are one. We are the people. We are the people who sufer; we are the people who cannot eat as they wish! Times have to change! Times will change! Never forget this. The big fsh is eating the small fsh. But all together, all the little fsh can beat and win over the big fsh! People Power! Our Power! The clarion call for freedom, democracy, human rights, the pursuit of happiness, it is easy to say, but how these are to be attained often warrants deeper thoughts. Here, I am reminded of the Ugandan actor who portrayed a refugee who wants to swim across the British Channel from Calais to the other side; what does he really want? He says that the Whites have taken away their land, their wealth, their dignity, and so on, and he wants to take everything back. But what exactly does he want to reclaim? What are we reclaiming when we rebel? And how would an African refugee reclaim what he lost because of colonisation? If we are reclaiming our humanity, if we say we want to regain our respect and dignity, if we want to emerge from the state of non-man to man, from the state of our culture having been destroyed or depraved to regaining our culture (having been destroyed by the British in the case of Hong Kong, India, and so on; by the Han Chinese in the case of Uighurs; by the Americans in the case of Japan and Korea), then we should be talking about a cultural renaissance, as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has pronounced.4 We need to talk about how, in this globalised world, our humanity and culture are destroyed by commercialisation and capitalism. What we try to reclaim must be clarifed and be clear to ourselves. If we cannot expect such deep and important questions to be answered by the play/performance, at least they need to be raised clearly, for further discussion, by the performing team, by the audience themselves, in post-show gatherings, or in the programme notes. 4) The participant’s search for personal growth. Participation in a crosscultural collaboration should lead to aesthetic growth, international awareness, empowerment, and individual learning and capacity-building for each participant. Through this experience, the participant should be moving towards becoming an ATOR—where A is for artist/art worker, T for teacher, O for organiser, and R for researcher—and someone who should also be concerned with his/her own personal growth . . . always seeking to become a better person, a more loving and lovable person. We should consider the idea that, in all theatre production, the process is valued over the product, unless it is a commercial one. As such, we must stress over a process that

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truly allows participation by everyone, that is democratic, and that is seen as a mutual learning endeavour, a process by which every participant can tell his/her personal stories and experiences. From the beginning, when all the participants meet for the frst time, it is necessary that they undergo a process of sharing themselves and their expectations. The organiser should be a good facilitator of such work by enabling an atmosphere of trust and friendship that is conductive to the mutual appreciation of one another’s culture and the group’s immersion in the joint endeavour of creating and building a cross-cultural production. Such preparation and pre-preparation require time spent on good communication before the actual meeting-up.

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Afterthoughts In 2014, the Umbrella Movement took place in Hong Kong, demanding that China keeps its promise of democracy in Hong Kong with genuine elections for both the chief executive and the legislators in the Hong Kong government. In the end, after an occupation of 79 days of some central areas of Hong Kong, the movement was crushed, and the government did not concede anything that the people wanted. Five years later, in 2019, the protests returned—again making very similar demands. In an international youth theatre conference that the Hong Kong theatre group Ming Ri (Ming Ri means ‘tomorrow’; this group focuses particularly on children’s and youth theatre) organised in 2019, a young presenter ended her presentation with a picture—not of a theatre performance but of the real-life performance of someone who broke into Hong Kong’s Legislative Council—making a speech that condemned the unrepresentative and Beijing-controlled Legislative Council of Hong Kong and the structural violence that the people of Hong Kong have sufered. And I think of Singapore and of the young YouTuber Amos Yee, who was 16 when he was jailed for criticising Lee Kuan Yew (who had just died) and some Christians and is now exiled in the US. If there were to be a collaboration between Hong Kong and Singaporean theatre workers, what might be a theme that they would/dare to talk about?

Postscript At the time of fnalising this chapter, the establishments in Hong Kong and Beijing have taken the opportunity of the National People’s Congress of May 2020 to formulate a Hong Kong National Security Law. The law came into efect on July 1, 2020, without any prior consultation with the people of Hong Kong. It violates the international treaty known as the Sino-British Declaration as well as the Basic Law (mini-constitution) of Hong Kong. It will severely curtail freedom of speech and other civil liberties. With the broad interpretation of the Law, it will be easy for activists—political and cultural—to end up in jail.

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It seems that Hong Kong is becoming more like Singapore. What of Hong Kong’s cross-cultural collaborations in the future? It seems appropriate to learn from Singapore. Indeed, we should look again at Kuo Pao Kun, the Necessary Stage, and Drama Box and learn from them. Equally, shall we look into Václav Havel and even the children’s puppetry that developed in Eastern Europe before 1989?

Notes 1 [Editorial note] See Kuo Pao Kun, “Uprooted and Searching,” in Guo Baokun quanji di qi juan, ed. Sy Ren Quah and Beng Luan Tan (Singapore: World Scientifc, 2012), 172–79. 2 [Editorial note] Lee Wen, “There Was No Beginning  .  .  . Since There Was No End,” Republic of Daydreams, December 23, 2012, http://republicofdaydreams. wordpress.com/2012/12/23/there-was-no-beginning-since-there-was-no-end/. 3 [Editorial note] Zhang Guihuan, ed., Liudong suxiang: “Yiren yigushi juchang” de Xianggang jingyan/Fluid Sculpture: Playback Theatre in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Asian People’s Theatre Festival Society, 2001). 4 [Editorial note] See Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2009).

Bibliography

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Kuo Pao Kun. “Uprooted and Searching.” In Guo Baokun quanji di qi juan, edited by Sy Ren Quah and Beng Luan Tan, 172–79. Singapore: World Scientifc, 2012. Lee Wen. “There Was No Beginning  .  .  . Since There Was No End.”  Republic  of Daydreams, December  23, 2012. http://republicofdaydreams.wordpress. com/2012/12/23/there-was-no-beginning-since-there-was-no-end/. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2009. Zhang Guihuan, ed. Liudong suxiang: “Yiren yigushi juchang” de Xianggang jingyan [Fluid Sculpture: Playback Theatre in Hong Kong] (Bilingual). Hong Kong: Asian People’s Theatre Festival Society, 2001.

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Augustine Mok Chiu-yu’s intercultural Asian People’s Theatre Imagining ‘the third way’ for Hong Kong

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Jessica Yeung The limited number of studies of Hong Kong theatre available in English so far has followed a binary model that conforms to the iconic image of Hong Kong being a space where ‘East meets West’ with a wealth of both traditional Cantonese heritage and Western-style modernity. Among these studies, yueju (Cantonese opera) has received the most academic attention by—most notably—Bell Yung,1 Sau-yan Chan,2 Sai-shing Yung,3 and Siuwah Yu.4 Studies of Hong Kong’s postmodernist theatre have focused on the works of Danny Yung and his company, Zuni Icosahedron, as represented by Clayton Mackenzie and Moira Arthurs,5 Jessica Yeung,6 and Rossella Ferrari.7 While yueju and Zuni Icosahedron’s postmodernist theatre provide an interesting contrast within Hong Kong’s theatrical scene and many of those studies have provided informative and insightful accounts of these two poles of Hong Kong’s theatrical creativity, there are many more trajectories that have infused the space between these two binary positions and await critical attention. Studying these other trajectories could help develop a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of Hong Kong’s theatre as a social force that has played its part in shaping the city’s history and its history of relations with other cities and political entities. One of the most infuential of these trajectories is Augustine Mok Chiuyu’s People’s Theatre and his collaborations with People’s Theatre workers in other Asian countries. Mok’s works have brought an international dimension to the refection of Hong Kong’s history, imagination of the city’s future, and construction of its people’s identity. It is particularly worth noting that city-to-city collaboration assumes a central position in Mok’s creative method and that Mok’s refection of Hong Kong is always international in scope and intercultural in perspective. His Asian People’s Theatre, in particular, shows that a polity’s identity is often the result of both internal and international dynamics, and the most obvious example of the latter is cultural exchange such as intercultural theatre collaborations. The academic neglect of his works to date needs redressing—a regrettable lacuna that has prompted the present chapter.

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Augustine Mok Chiu-yu was born in British colonial Hong Kong in 1947 from a family of Cantonese descent. For his secondary school education he attended Queen’s College, one of the most prestigious, although not exclusive, schools in Hong Kong that is celebrated for its liberal ethos.8 In 1965, he enrolled at the University of Adelaide in Australia to study economics and returned to the British colony upon graduation in 1968, one year after the historic 1967 riots. The riots started out as protests against economic inequality in the city but were allegedly appropriated by the Communist faction of the Hong Kong Left, backed by the mainland Chinese government.9 The initial public support for the riots turned into disgust, as violence escalated with bombs and arson incidents causing fatalities. When Mok returned to Hong Kong from Australia, the atmosphere in the city was tense and politically charged. He participated actively in many social campaigns and spearheaded an anarcho-pacifst anti-colonial movement. He and his fellow activists published a magazine as their main channel of advocacy. The 70s Biweekly (70 niandai shuangzhou kan) had a lifespan of less than three years, but it is still considered to this day the most infuential political-cultural periodical ever published in Hong Kong. The editors, writers, and volunteers of the magazine operated as a syndicate. Apart from publishing the magazine, they also screened flms, ran a bookshop, and supported each other’s artistic and political projects. They functioned as a close-knit community until the group disbanded when some of its members’ political afliation changed from an anarchist tendency to Trotskyism. In contrast, Mok’s anarchist tendency became more committed and pronounced. He turned to the theatre and throughout the 1980s experimented with a good number of agitprop political shows directly commenting on Hong Kong, China, and international afairs. On the one hand, Mok aligned himself with the general left-wing struggles against Western colonialism and neo-colonialism, which he saw as working in tandem with capitalism. On the other hand, he took care to highlight the Chomskyan anarchist critique of the New Mandarin10 and applied it to his analysis of the People’s Republic of China and the Maoist Cultural Revolution, citing evidences of mass persecution collected from ex–Red Guards who escaped to Hong Kong at the time. During this period he was prolifc in writing, translating, and publishing critiques on what he considered Communist bureaucrats in China who had monopolised all production resources and power without genuinely liberating the people.11 He also travelled to Europe extensively and turned the network he built on the way into an efective conduit of information that fed the European anarchists with up-to-date information and close-up observations of China. By doing this, he commenced a unique discourse that simultaneously critiqued Western capitalism and Maoist Communism. This ideological position has continued to develop in his subsequent works and fourished in the city’s Localist movement around the time of the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and the ‘Be Water’ Movement in 2019. In terms of creative theatre, Mok’s works displayed heavy infuence of Western left-wing political theatre throughout

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the 1970s and the 1980s, in particular the Living Theatre and 7:84. These included his agitprop street performances and theatre with music in collaboration with fellow anarchist musician Lenny Kwok and the latter’s band Blackbird. A change in Mok’s creative methods occurred after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing (a.k.a., ‘June Fourth’). This incident took place just fve years after Britain and China decided that Hong Kong’s sovereignty was to be handed over to China in 1997. However, the population of Hong Kong was excluded from this decision-making process. The prospect of the city’s future being placed in the hands of the same Chinese government that had brutally put down a peaceful protest in 1989 led to a serious crisis of confdence in Hong Kong’s future. This turn of events prompted Mok to take time of to travel abroad to research other possibilities ofered by political theatre. He visited the San Francisco Mime Troupe (SFMT) in the US and renewed his connection with Asian People’s Theatre workers by joining workshops in the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan. When he returned to Hong Kong, he inaugurated what I would describe as the Asian turn of his theatrical works.

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The Asian turn Mok had already taken a keen interest in Asian political theatre in the 1980s, in particular in the works of Satō Makoto and his Black Tent Theatre in Japan, as well as in the People’s Theatre of Chung Chiao in Taiwan, although these infuences did not show traces in Mok’s own works until later. This was to change in 1992, when he organised Hong Kong’s First Asian People’s Theatre Festival. That was a particularly important moment in the history of Hong Kong theatre, not only because it introduced the methods of People’s Theatre to the British colonial territory that was soon to change hands and come under Chinese control but also because it turned out to represent an occasion for political initiation for Hong Kong theatre. Six local theatre makers,12 acclaimed for their experimental works refective of life in the city, were invited to each create a short solo piece. Their pieces were staged together with six short pieces brought to the city by veteran People’s Theatre makers from Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Philippines, and Thailand. In both the post-performance discussion held immediately afterwards and in published reviews, the festival organisers and local performers were asked about the apparent discrepancy between the concerns raised in the two performance categories that were presented. There was a general feeling that the local pieces were more immersed in daily-life politics such as commodifcation and gender issues while the Asian pieces were more concerned with struggles with government oppression in the participating artists’ respective countries. The urban postmodernist aesthetic aspirations that the colonial government harboured for Hong Kong experimental theatre were confronted by the anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-hegemonic

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resistance discourses inherent to the Asian People’s Theatre pieces. Most importantly, by juxtaposing the works by the Hong Kong performers with these other Asian pieces, the refection and discussion about Hong Kong was recast in the framework of Asia’s common experience of colonialism in the past and state dictatorship in the present. Equally, there was a vision of shared resistance against these forces, although the difering individual situations of each of these territories were also acknowledged. On the whole, the programme design facilitated an understanding of the people’s sufering within the framework of international capitalism and advocated transnational support for regional labour movements being a possible way forwards for Asia. In 1993, Mok organised the Second Asian People’s Theatre Festival in Hong Kong. Its programme included both solo acts and video works from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. This year, the Asia mapped out in the festival expanded to include even more countries from Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu regions. In the Third Hong Kong Asian People’s Theatre Festival in 1994, the Asian elements beyond East Asia were even more pronounced. Then, in 1997, he presented Ofshore and Big Wind, followed by Yours Most Obediently, in which his vision of a shared Asian experience that transcended the East Asian metropolitan existence familiar to his Hong Kong audience was feshed out. In these three works, the economic, political, cultural, and historical forces and dynamics among Asian countries in the circumstances created by 19th-century colonialism and 20th-century neo-colonialism were explored and became the central focus of concern. In these three works, Asia no longer consisted of separate countries, each striving for its own development or even entering into competitive positions. Rather, the Asian countries represented in these productions are shown as fellow victims that are manipulated and exploited by the hegemonic forces of their respective state authorities, colluding with the same multinational business institutions. To create a corporeal experience of this vision of Asianness, Mok put together creative teams comprising People’s Theatre workers from diferent Asian cultural and linguistic communities, bringing their respective traditional forms of performance to the productions. Mok did not invent this creative method. He had participated in similar workshops titled Cry of Asia and organised by fellow People’s Theatre workers from the Philippines and Taiwan, but by bringing this vision and method to Hong Kong, a new discourse of situating Hong Kong within the pan-Asian anti-colonial and anti-capitalist struggles was created. Ofshore Ofshore was a collaboration between Mok and the SFMT. It was performed in parks in New York in 1993 before it was brought to the stage in Hong Kong in the Shouson Theatre, Hong Kong Arts Centre, in December 1994.

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It was presented as part of the programme of the Third Asian People’s Theatre Festival. Mok was the producer of the show and Joan Holden, the resident playwright of the SFMT, created the script with input from Mok. The 90-minute musical piece explores the exploitation of workers in the global industrial chain, starting in the US. Instead of employing local American workers to manufacture goods for the local consumer market, American companies move their factories to Asia to take advantage of cheap labour. As American factories close down and workers lose their jobs, many industrial towns deteriorate. At this point, the narrative shifts to Tokyo in Japan, and Canton (Guangzhou) in Southern China. A trade war breaks out between the US and Japan. As business shrinks, workers in Tokyo and Canton also lose their jobs. At the end, not a single worker—whether American, Japanese, or Chinese—is better of. None of them can avoid a state of precarity since they are all subject to exploitation by the local agents who work with the same international businesses, whose only consideration is operating at the lowest feasible costs. When exploitation that happens in diferent locations is charted out in this way, a new possibility for understanding the relationship among the working peoples of Asia emerges; they are not competitors in the global market, but fellow victims of colonialism and neocolonialist exploitation in the globalised market. The production was directed by Dan Chumley of the SFMT. He worked with a mixed cast of American actors, Japanese dancers, Filipino People’s Theatre performers, and a multi-racial Jazz band based in San Francisco. Each brought into the production skills from their performance conventions, including Kabuki, Chinese opera, and Mindanao dance. By the 1990s, such intercultural collaborations had become very common on international stages; Peter Brook’s Mahabharata not only had toured around the world but had been fêted by European audiences while savaged by postcolonial Asian critics).13 Ofshore was not a novel creative exercise, neither was it intended to be. One of the things that diferentiated Ofshore from works such as Mahabharata is its subject matter. The other thing is the power relations between the participating artists within the hierarchy of theatrical productions. Instead of indulging in material culled from Asian classics, as Peter Brook did, resulting in locking the imagination of Asia in ancient myth—something Edward Said has repeatedly warned against—Ofshore was concerned with the contemporary plight of Asian people living under conditions shaped by the global market. In this production, traditional performing skills empowered the performers with creative methods that allowed them to conceptualise and express experiences that were culturally, socially, and politically specifc. These creative methods taken from traditional forms of performance freed them from the conceptual and stylistic constraints of the globalised Western means of performance, which did not develop out of the expressive needs of the Asian experiences. Furthermore, by witnessing each other express themselves with skills taken from their own traditions, a sense of sharing and camaraderie

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was nurtured. The presence of the Asian actors embodying their performance traditions was necessary in this production. Their traditional skills were used on stage not only for their representational capacity; they also helped the identity of the performers to be asserted and the specifcity of their experiences acknowledged. In this sense, for the performers to enact their traditional performing skills was performative in the Butlerian sense. Thus, apart from providing indigenous artistic methods to conceptualise and express Asian experiences, these traditional performance elements also accentuated the Asian peoples’ perceived and actual politico-economic otherness. Having made this otherness overt rather than hidden, the condition for its critique became present. The contemporaneity and political immediacy of the story establishes a realistic framework of cognitive reception for the production. Audiences were not enticed to indulge in representations and images of ancient civilisations, but forced to confront the reality of the power and economic differentials embodied by the performers in front of them. The performers did not ‘play’ the roles of the victims of global economic exploitation; they were members of the exploited communities. Unlike Brook’s intercultural spectacle, the corporeality of the cross-cultural cast of Ofshore was not reifed or fetishised for aesthetic purposes; they were there to bear witness to the exploitation inficted on their people. Moreover, while the performers of diferent communities performed alongside each other on stage, they bore witness to and developed empathy for each other’s embodied expression of the respective plights of their communities at close distance; the audience likewise bore witness to this bonding process. Mok was alert to the existence of a fne line that distinguished Brook’s type of cultural appropriation from the intentions of Ofshore. The fact that the show was directed by the American director Dan Chumley complicated the dynamics in the creative process. In a letter dated June 21, 1993, he reminded the production team to ask themselves some very important questions: have the intercultural performance skills adopted in the production enhanced its expressive capacity, or have they harmed it by confusing the audience? Has the artistic treatment of the subject matter succeeded in sublimating the emotions of the characters? Is such sublimation intended in the frst place? Has the production achieved a genuinely intercultural experience, or has it simply appropriated cultural practices to its own advantage? Mok asks these questions in the most candid manner, and this self-refective mechanism would run through his subsequent intercultural Asian People’s Theatre works and become a core methodology for his creative activities. Big Wind Big Wind was also produced by Mok for the Second Asian People’s Theatre Festival in 1993. In many aspects it can be seen as an extension of, but also a response to, Ofshore. Like Ofshore, it involved the collaboration

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Figure 6.1 Performers of Big Wind during the 2004/2005 tour.

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Credits: Mok Chiu-yu.

of a number of Asian People’s Theatre workers; it was also led by the creative team of the SFMT with Dan Chumley acting as director. During the preparation of the production, conficts between some participating artists occurred. Mok encouraged them to discuss their problems, negotiate the situation, and make adjustments along the way. These negotiations and adjustments did not take place so that the show could go on, but were the very essence of the project. The cultural exchange and power negotiation in the workshop sessions were not the means to produce an intercultural performance as a show. Mok worked the other way around. The production was a platform for the cultural exchange and power negotiation within the hierarchy of theatre production. In a similar way to Ofshore, the production explored the shared experience of global exploitation sufered by Asian peoples. But the creative process was much less centred on and led by the SFMT than Ofshore. Hong Kong playwright, theatre critic, and arts administrator Louis Yu and playwright, director, and actor Cheung Tat-ming were heavily involved in writing the script of Big Wind, although it was ultimately the result of a collective writing exercise, with the participation of Joan Holden of the SFMT, who edited and polished the fnal version. According to production notes fled in Mok’s personal archive, this decision was made purely on the basis

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that Holden had the best command of English among the three. The cast of Big Wind were also much more proactive in devising the stage business compared to the cast of Ofshore. This was also a culturally and ethnically mixed cast made up of performers from Hong Kong, Bangladesh, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Thailand, and members of the SFMT. Although for practical reasons, the production team relied heavily on personnel from Hong Kong, taking the lead in design, music, and backstage execution, during the production’s tours to seven cities in India, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Taiwan, this Hong Kong crew worked with the host crew, and in each city adjustments were made in the cast to ensure that the main language used in the performance was understood by the audience. Again, like Ofshore, the cast of Big Wind made use of methods and skills from their respective performance traditions to explore and express the experience of their characters. The story of Big Wind is set in Hong Kong. The protagonists are two migrant workers—a young South Asian man and a female Thai domestic helper, both trying to escape poverty in their respective homelands by getting work abroad. However, they are exploited by their agents in the labour market and their host employers. As a result, they are plunged into a desperate situation of a diferent kind. The young man is so desperate to improve his situation that he plots to trick a girl in Hong Kong into marrying him in order to get a Hong Kong Identity Card. The girl’s employer demands her to work long hours and take up responsibilities beyond the duty of a domestic helper. Her lady employer is a local single mother working for a multinational real estate developer. She is in turn exploited both in the business world and in the patriarchal structure of her own family. To cope with the excessive demands placed upon her, she passes these excessive demands by dumping all the family duties on to her domestic helper, which she cannot fulfl on her own. Big Wind allowed Mok to develop two traits that are now recognised as the signature style of his Asian People’s Theatre. The frst one is thematic. He consistently depicts working people of Asia as individuals who occupy diferent positions in the global business food chain, but are equally exposed to various kinds of exploitation, albeit in diferent manifestations. Instead of positioning the Thai domestic helper and her Hong Kong employers simply as antagonists in their personal circumstances, they are represented in the bigger schema of multinational capital fow as equally victimised. Both of them are used and abused. Mok’s message is loud and clear: individuals are not enemies of each other, but fellow victims of global capitalism. The systemic functioning of global capital fow always predetermines human relations as exploitative. It is not the people themselves, but global capitalism that is the principal culprit in their sufering. In capitalist societies, individuals are merely used as tools of capital; they are positioned to exploit each other for their own survival. The second signature trait Mok has developed in Big Wind is formal. This is not only consistent with, but also essential to, the human relationship the

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production attempts to advocate. The story uncovers the shared sufering of individuals along the food chain of global capitalism, therefore drawing attention to the potential fellowship and alliance among the people. To tell this story, a multi-ethnic Asian cast was assembled and encouraged to devise the performance in a proactive and egalitarian way, rather than passively succumbing to the instructions of the American director in a unidirectional way. Mok not only accepted the personality clashes and constant power redress that are inevitable in this kind of creative process but also gave prominence to both the spirit and realisation of bottom-up democratic participation in his refection on the production, which he wrote months later and included in the published script.14 He made specifc comments on the roles of Holden and Chumley, noting that the assignment of the job of editing and polishing the fnal version of the script to Holden was purely pragmatic. English was the common language used in rehearsals. Therefore, the English version of the script was used as the source text for translation, as the play was staged in diferent cities featuring local performers, speaking the local languages understood by the audiences. As a practical decision, Holden, who had the best command of English, was assigned to the job. Mok has also noted that some actors had expressed discontent with Chumley’s tendency to dominate artistic decision-making, as the director. Obviously, egalitarianism in both creativity and organisation was expected by the cast and crew involved in this production, since this was very much the ethos the artists themselves had worked with in their own projects and in their shared experiences in intra-Asia People’s Theatre events. In this connection, it is worth taking an anachronistic detour to 1980. It is interesting to see, in hindsight, the importance Mok has always placed on equality as a practice in the theatre (as opposed to being purely a theme to be represented) and how he has always questioned the power relations in the process of creativity and, specifcally, when creating a performance. In 1980 he participated in a Hong Kong adaptation of David Hare’s play, Fanshen (1975), directed by his friend Chow Yung-ping. Danny Yung was the production designer. Later that year Yung organised the frst instalment of what would develop into Journey to the East, a long-running series for his theatre company, Zuni Icosahedron. Some individual artists and performing units were invited to present shots of eight, 16, or 24 minutes. Chow Yung-ping was invited to participate with his production of Fanshen. He extracted a 24-minute segment of Fanshen with the original production cast, including Mok, for this event. Now, after 40 years, it is impossible to authenticate what actually happened, but Mok’s response after the event was an important indication of his concerns. In an article written under the penname Li Yu See, Mok criticised the organiser of Journey to the East for being uncommunicative with the performing units about the arrangements.15 He was unhappy about not being informed in advance that the extracts would be used to form a collage that would constitute the performance in its entirety. He was also unhappy

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about the restrictions on improvisation imposed on the performing units but not on the organiser. It is impossible to reconstruct what actually happened now, after four decades. The importance of this episode, however, lies in the way Mok raised his concern for horizontal democracy versus artistic excellence in the theatre and for experiential equality versus ideological expression. In Mok’s critique of the experience, he mentions nothing about the artistic quality of the show. His central concern is the power diferentials created by the management of the production. Obviously, Mok makes the same egalitarian demands on theatre production as he does on society at large. He does not accept power hierarchy even for artistic reasons. For him, the experience of theatremaking is very much part of the aesthetic of a production. The product does not take precedence over the process. Mok’s position is crystal clear: a work about democracy cannot be created via undemocratic means. Whether a work is progressive is not determined by what it says or how it looks, but largely by how it is made. The creative process must be a democratic one. The experience of working together in an egalitarian way nurtures independence, agency, and autonomy in the creative subjects. The performers on stage are not subjugated bodies in the power diferentials of the hierarchy of theatremaking. The realism of Mok’s People’s Theatre is, therefore, not a mode of representation. Instead, the experience of democratic theatre activity forms part of the performers’ life. There is no diference between onstage and ofstage. In the space of Mok’s Asian People’s Theatre, theatre is life.

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Yours Most Obediently The third major Asian People’s Theatre piece in Mok’s repertoire, Yours Most Obediently, was staged in 1997, the year Hong Kong was handed over by Britain to China. This is a rare piece about the Indian community in Hong Kong who were to face another set of problems both in daily life and in redefning their identity after the change of Hong Kong’s sovereignty. The most overarching issue was, of course, the potential clash between their ethnic identity and their citizenship in a Chinese territory. Although China pledged that there would be no changes in Hong Kong until 2046, nothing was said to guarantee the rights of ethnically non-Chinese Hong Kong citizens after that. There were also many day-to-day problems that they were soon to face. One example was schooling for children. In the initial period after the handover, Chinese was promoted as the medium of written instruction, and the importance of English was expected to reduce. South Asian students would be disadvantaged. By drawing attention to this population group in Yours Most Obediently, Mok has constructed an image of Hong Kong that transcends the clichéd restriction of its portrayal as a Cantonese Southern Chinese city and highlights its history as being shaped by political dynamics within Asia and beyond.

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Figure 6.2 Cover of the programme of Yours Most Obediently, 1997. Credits: Mok Chiu-yu.

The creative process of Yours Most Obediently started in March  1996 when Mok travelled to Kolkata to discuss the project with veteran Indian political theatre worker Probir Guha and his group Alternative Living Theatre. In September, Guha went to Hong Kong to research the history and lives

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of the Indian population in the British colony. The script was the result of the long-distance collaboration that followed. Mok led a devising workshop with his Hong Kong performers and reported every session to Guha via fax. The ideas and content of these faxes were then incorporated into the resultant script by Guha. Guha intertwines the story of the Hong Kong activist Foo, who campaigned against Japan’s appropriation of the Senkaku Islands (or Diaoyu Islands in Chinese; their sovereignty is contested by both Japan and China), with the stories of Indian migrant workers in Hong Kong. The play begins with a chorus addressing the audience directly and commenting on the problems Asian migrant workers face today. They also mention the Senkaku Islands and the contestation over their sovereignty. The comparison is obvious: in the battle for interest between nations, humans and lands are treated as nothing more than resources to be exploited. The narrative then turns to Hong Kong. In the commercial Central District of Hong Kong, a bartender called Foo dreams of an egalitarian world. Foo is not a fctional character, but a fellow anarchist activist of Mok’s. His opposition against Japan’s claim to ownership of the islands does not mean supporting Chinese sovereignty. In his opinion the islands belong to nature and should not be appropriated and exploited by any nation. This invites association with Hong Kong’s status as a British colony that is to be handed over to China. Like the Senkaku Islands, Hong Kong is subjugated by the two nations and passed over as nothing but a property to be exploited. However, unlike the unpopulated Senkaku Islands, Hong Kong is populated by seven million people. As the territory is handed over by Britain to China, these seven million people are stripped of their rights of self-determination. The story of colonialism does not stop here in the play, however. The narrative then turns to the Indian characters. In the mid-19th century, Indian soldiers were recruited by the British colonial administration and sent to Hong Kong to suppress local resistance. This history established bad relations between the local Cantonese and Indian populations. Then, the narrative returns to the present, showing the South Asian community who are ghettoised in the notorious Chungking Mansions in the Tsim Sha Tsui area of Hong Kong, and this is juxtaposed with the life of Foo, who continues to refect on his revolutionary ideals in face of Hong Kong’s high level of capitalism. This is followed by some Indian protagonists explaining their reasons for becoming migrant workers and how they are subject to exploitation not only by their Hong Kong employers but also by their fellow Indian employers who have ‘made it’ in the British colony. These Indian protagonists lament that their people have made an important contribution to the city, but after 1997, when Hong Kong is handed over to China, they will lose all security in the city, since they do not share any ties with China. The last scene is set in Foo’s bar, again, with Foo proclaiming the anarchist stance on the Senkaku Islands dispute as has been famously advocated by Mok: “The islands should belong to the fsh and the birds, to the wind and the sea, and to love.”16 It is worth mentioning that, earlier in the play,

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the bloody history of population exchange between India and Pakistan is brought up, reminding the audience of how irresponsible British colonisation has always been. This reminder is a potent call for a critique of what the British were doing to Hong Kong by handing the Hong Kong people over to China. Formally, Yours Most Obediently does not tell a traditional story with a neat plot. Instead, it is conceived in segments. Some sections are written in verse and recited by a chorus. Some are more traditional dramatic scenes with the characters interacting with each other. There are also classic Brechtian scenes in which the actors comment on the situations of their characters. Stylised means of expression are used to facilitate the narrative enabled by a minimalist stage; for example, half-masks. This fexibility is typical of Asian People’s Theatre. After the script was fnished, Mok took his Hong Kong cast to Kolkata in December  1996 for rehearsal. The production premiered in late January  1997 as part of the Sanglap Natyotsav’97 and toured to more than 20 cities around India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Thailand before it returned to Hong Kong in April. Apart from theatre and university performances, it was also staged as a street performance near Temple Street, where for decades street performers have provided entertainment for the local Cantonese working men and women at night. There was also a South Asian community just a ten-minute walk away from Temple Street. This rendered the location a particularly apt venue for the production, since the performance told a story about Indian migrant workers in Hong Kong who were unlikely to go and see a production in the theatre. Taking the show outside the theatre and bringing it close to the community was not only an artistic experiment but an ethical move. It could otherwise have risked becoming another middle-class intellectual exercise that reifed the Indian people in Hong Kong without performing for them and completing the shared experience. It was crucial that they could become members of the audience, witnessing, scrutinising, and participating in the enactment of their story. Produced for performance in Hong Kong three months before Britain ceded Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China, Yours Most Obediently provided a timely reminder of Hong Kong’s neglected South Asian communities. Furthermore, by telling the story of the city’s South Asians, it also reminded people that Hong Kong’s history and social reality was the result of Asian and international dynamics. In particular, three international aspects of Hong Kong’s history are highlighted in the production. First, Hong Kong’s imminent situation is not a singular event, but part and parcel of Britain’s 19th-century project of colonisation in the era of Western imperialism. Hong Kong’s change of situation needs to be understood in the framework of this world history. Second, in the play, the story of the Indian protagonists intertwines with Foo’s story and other historical events of Hong Kong. Indians are not portrayed as people outside Hong Kong or excluded from Hong Kong identity. The Indian elements, and by extension other nonCantonese Chinese elements, are immanent in the defnition of what Hong

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Kong is. They are also shapers of Hong Kong’s history and constituents of Hong Kong’s identity. The third aspect is the situation of the Hong Kong Indians after Hong Kong becomes a Chinese territory. As non-Chinese, their sense of alienation will only become aggravated and their future even more uncertain. These three aspects of Hong Kong were not touched upon in any other artistic productions in that period and attracted negligible attention from society at large.

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Asia in Mok’s intercultural Asian People’s Theatre In these three pieces of intercultural Asian People’s Theatre by Mok, Asian populations are clearly represented as being on the same boat. They are equally on the receiving end of capitalist-colonialist and neo-colonialist exploitation, shaped by, and benefting, the Euro-American world. Yet, Mok’s dichotomy is radically diferent from the Orientalist projects such as Brook’s that reduce and simplify the Orient and work in tandem with colonialist and neo-colonialist domination. Instead, Asian peoples in his three pieces are shown to experience circumstantial commonality rather than being essentially similar. They have shared the common experience of Western colonisation in the past and are still victimised by the remnant of this colonisation, which is manifesting itself in the form of economic domination. Hong Kong’s economic success since the 1980s has disguised—even from its own people—the fundamentally unethical nature of British colonisation, so much so that, when faced with the city’s prospect of being handed over to China, the new master, some become nostalgic for the former one. The likely reason for that nostalgia is derived from the conditions of British rule, which were created for Hong Kong to climb up along the global capitalist food chain. In this kind of thinking, ethics simply does not feature. The common dichotomous imagination of Hong Kong as a British colony (remembered as a city in which wealth somehow trickled down and life was lived out with some kind of freedom, albeit no democracy) versus Hong Kong as a Chinese special administrative region (experienced as a city with a widening wealth gap, no democracy, and shrinking freedom) confnes the imagination of Hong Kong’s future within the liberalist capitalist framework. What Mok has ofered in his intercultural Asian People’s Theatre is an alternative way of thinking: the situation of Hong Kong can be understood and analysed in relation to other Asian countries that have also experienced colonial exploitation and are also facing the newly risen capitalist domination predicated on Chinese money. This is conducive of two alternative imaginations—one of Asia, and one of Hong Kong. First, regarding Asia, instead of conceiving Asian countries as competitors in the global market, they are depicted in these productions as fellow victims of the global market economy. Their precarity is a shared precarity created by the same circumstances shaped by the same superpowers. This opens up the possibility for Asian communities

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to observe one another no longer as competitive threats but as references of one’s own situation. Certainly, this is not an unprecedented vision. During the Cold War, a comparable worldview was promoted in the Soviet Bloc, for reasons and ends—justifed or not—which are beyond the scope of the present discussion. Nevertheless, it is important to note that an alternative structural perspective on the world did exist, but it was dismantled in the post–Cold War era of radical global capitalism. For Mok, to construct this alternative critical worldview based on the shared experience of Asia in the 1990s was not a repetition of the old idea. It had a new and timely function: in all three productions, the spectre of Chinese capital is lurking in the dark corners of the respective stories, waiting to take over as the new hegemonic power in Asia. To remind the Asian peoples of their shared colonial yoke can function as a warning for the possible domination of a new hegemonic power in Asia. Of course, these three productions were staged in the 1990s; 20 years later, the weight of this warning has only become heavier. As China’s Belt and Road Initiative has already caused considerable alarm in some Asian and African countries, the need for Asian peoples to reference each other and forge potential alliances of resistance is even more urgent. Second, these three works highlight the historical fact that Hong Kong is a player in the game of capitalist domination in Asia. This allows the city’s present resistance movement against Chinese domination to eschew what I would call Hong Kong’s regionalism. Since Hong Kong is not a nation, it is impossible to talk about Hong Kong’s nationalism, but this is not to say that a comparable sentiment about Hong Kong identity cannot exist. It is true that the principles of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ and ‘a high degree of autonomy’ have already provided enough justifcation for the city’s resistance movement. However, a sound and clear ethical direction is still needed for the movement’s sustainability. Towards the end of the Umbrella Movement in 2014, radical factions of the ‘Localism’ movement that championed and attempted to safeguard Hong Kong’s high level of autonomy started to show signs of a xenophobic tendency that targeted immigrants and tourists from the Chinese mainland. While this could be explained by the real social problems caused by bad government, policies of immigration, tourism, and provision of social facilities, this xenophobic tendency still risks generating not only parochialism but also hatred and inequality that goes directly against the initial spirit of the campaign for social justice in the city. For this very reason, the image and position of Hong Kong Mok has constructed in his theatre not only enables the Hong Kong resistance movement to be conceptualised as a continuation of the struggles of the rest of Asia against the new dominating power of Chinese capital but also provides Hong Kong’s movement with a solid grounding on political ethics and may also allow it to tap into the resources of anarchist or other left-wing movements around the world. Most importantly, it could nurture a wider and more long-term vision for the Hong Kong movement. This approach would prevent the

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movement from becoming a knee-jerk reaction in favour of possible regionalism and develop into a campaign backed by a clear sense of political ethics that supersedes power and money and is probably a lot more practical at the present stage of Hong Kong’s history. As I have proposed elsewhere, it might be possible to borrow the term ‘the third way’ that describes the model of relations with China conceived and advocated by the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, which coincides with what Ilham Tohti, the Uyghur prisoner of conscience, advocates for Xinjiang, although without adopting such a phrase. Both propose genuine autonomy for their respective homelands without breaking away from Chinese sovereignty as a pragmatic approach to the present situation. Their proposed models allow ethnic and social equality to be realised within the historical, religious, and cultural framework that their respective people can accept, while the issue of nationalism is being brushed aside. Thus, Mok’s vision could perhaps also be described as ‘the third way for Hong Kong’—a way of socialist equality that goes beyond sovereignty or regionalism.17

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Notes 1 Bell Yung, Cantonese Opera: Performance as Creative Process (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 2 Chan Sau-yan, Yishi, xinyang, yanju: shengong yueju zai Xianggang [Ritual, Belief, Performance] (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Department of Music Cantonese Opera Research Project, 2008). 3 Yung Sai-shing, Xunmi yueju shengying: cong hongchuan dao shuiyingdeng [Searching for the Sounds and Shadows of Cantonese Opera: From Entertainment Boats to Stage Lighting], (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2012). 4 Yu Siu-wah, “Performing Arts and Surviving of Some Traditional Genres on Hong Kong Popular Culture,” in Asian Performing Arts: From the Traditional to the Contemporary, ed. Danny Yung, Jessica Yeung, and Wong Yuewai (Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2013), 221–26. 5 Clayton MacKenzie and Moira Arthurs, “ ‘Together Again’: Theater in Postcolonial Hong Kong,” Comparative Drama 37, no. 1 (2003): 75–87. 6 Jessica Yeung, “Danny Yung in Search of Hybrid Matter and Mind: His Experimental Xiqu for Zuni Icosahedron,” Visual Anthropology 24, no. 1–2 (2011): 124–38. 7 Rossella Ferrari, “Asian Theatre as a Method: The Toki Experimental Project and Sino-Japanese Transnationalism in Performance,” TDR: The Drama Review 61, no. 3 (2017): 141–64. 8 The school’s establishment in 1862 was advocated by Sinologist James Legge. The then colonial secretary Frederick Stewart concurrently acted as a school supervisor to carry out the mission of providing British-style modern liberal education to local school children. Before it was renamed Queen’s College in 1894, it was called Government Central School and then Victoria College. By the time Mok was admitted to the college, it had already nurtured generations of social transformers who had shaped not only the course of Hong Kong history, but also of Chinese history. Among its alumni were politicians Sun Yat-sen, Tong Shao-yi, and Liao Chung-kai; cultural innovators Su Man-shu and Lai Man-wai; and early anarchists Yuan Zhenying and Wang Zunsheng. The college is also celebrated for its school drama tradition. It staged one of the frst ever recorded

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11

12

13 14 15 16 17

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drama productions in Hong Kong, as stated in Lin Kehuan, Xianggang xiju— xiju xianggang [Hong Kong Theatre—Theatre Hong Kong] (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2007), 2. Many of Mok’s peers have become the main driving forces in Hong Kong’s theatre. They include Lam Tai-hing, Yuan Lap-fun, Rupert Chan, Tang Shu-wing, Chan Ping-chiu, Koo Ting-long, and Lo Wai-luk. Connie Lo, Vanished Archives (Hong Kong: Studio for Public Humanities Ltd., 2017), documentary flm. Noam Chomsky critiqued technocrats as agents who were anything but politically neutral. In Chomsky’s view their job was to serve the agenda of the government during the Vietnam War. This critique was later adapted by European anarchists to critique the Soviet bureaucrats. See Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: The New Press, 2002). The most representative essays by Mok and his comrades in this period are collected in the publication, Three Essays on the New Mandarins. The three essays are “The New Mandarins: A Brief Introduction,” written under Mok’s pen-name Lee Yu See; “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: The Chief Mandarin Asked for Rebellion,” written by Kan San; and “The New Mandarins and Mass Psychology in China,” by Yu Shute and Wu Man. A digitised copy of the publication is available at the Augustine Mok Chiu-yu archive housed in the Hong Kong Baptist University Library. Eve Yip, Tsui Pang-wai, Andy Ng, Lau Chi-wai, Chan Ping-chiu, and Foo Loping. With the exception of Foo, who had worked with Mok since the 1970s syndicate and was experienced in political People’s Theatre, the other fve were avant-garde dramatists and dancers who had created mostly experimental pieces. See Rustom Bharucha, “Peter Brook’s Mahabharata: A  View from India,” Theater 19, no. 2 (1988): 5–20; David Williams, Peter Brook and the Mahabharata: Critical Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 1991). Mok Chiu-yu, When the Big Wind Blows (Hong Kong: The Asian People’s Theatre Festival Society, 1999), 4–11. Li Yusi, “ ‘Zhongguo lücheng’ yige canyanzhe de fanxing” [Refections of a Participant of Journey to the East], Dianying 48 (1980): 39–40. Mok, When the Big Wind Blows, 102. Jessica Yeung, Xianggang de disan tiao daolu: Mo Zhaoru de annaqi minzhong xiju [The Third Way for Hong Kong: Augustine Mok Chiu-yu’s Anarchist People’s Theatre] Hong Kong: Typesetter Publishing, 2019), 245–51.

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Bibliography Bharucha, Rustom. “Peter Brook’s Mahabharata: A View from India.” Theater 19, no. 2 (1988): 5–20. Chan Sau-yan. Yishi, xinyang, yanju: Shengong yueju zai Xianggang [Ritual, Belief, Performance]. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Department of Music Cantonese Opera Research Project, 2008. Chomsky, Noam. American Power and the New Mandarins. New York: The New Press, 2002. Connie, Lo. Vanished Archives. Hong Kong: Studio for Public Humanities Ltd, 2017, Documentary flm. Ferrari, Rossella. “Asian Theatre as a Method: The Toki Experimental Project and Sino-Japanese Transnationalism in Performance.” TDR: The Drama Review 61, no. 3 (2017): 141–64. Lin Kehuan. Xianggang xiju—xiju xianggang [Hong Kong Theatre—Theatre Hong Kong]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2007.

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Li Yu See [Li Yusi], ed. Three Essays on the New Mandarins. Hong Kong: Minus 6, 1978. ———. “ ‘Zhongguo lücheng’ yige canyanzhe de fanxing” [Refections of a Participant in Journey to the East]. Dianying 48 (1980): 39–40. MacKenzie, Clayton, and Moira Arthurs. “ ‘Together Again’: Theater in Postcolonial Hong Kong.” Comparative Drama 37, no. 1 (2003): 75–87. Williams, David. Peter Brook and the Mahabharata: Critical Perspectives. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Yeung, Jessica [Yang Huiyi]. “Danny Yung in Search of Hybrid Matter and Mind: His Experimental Xiqu for Zuni Icosahedron.” Visual Anthropology 24, no. 1–2 (2011): 124–38. ———. Xianggang de disan tiao daolu: Mo Zhaoru de annaqi minzhong xiju [The Third Way for Hong Kong: Augustine Mok Chiu-yu’s Anarchist People’s Theatre]. Hong Kong: Typesetter Publishing, 2019. Yu, Siu-wah. “Performing Arts and the Surviving of Some Traditional Genres on Hong Kong Popular Culture.” In Asian Performing Arts: From the Traditional to the Contemporary, edited by Danny Yung, Jessica Yeung, and Wong Yuewai, 221–26. Hong Kong: Zuni Icosahedron, 2013. Yung, Bell. Cantonese Opera: Performance as Creative Process. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Yung, Sai-shing. Xunmi yueju shengying: Cong hongchuan dao shuiyingdeng [Searching for the Sounds and Shadows of Cantonese Opera: From Entertainment Boats to Stage Lighting]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2012.

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Solitude to solidarity Imagined transnational alliance of humanity against bestial hegemony Daphne P. Lei

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The tiger . . . gave a roar and it was as though there was a crack of thunder in the near air. And the very mountain trembled. With both his hands he grasped the tiger by the spotted scruf of its neck, and held it in knots, and with all his might he pressed it down. The beast struggled to be free but Wu Sung with all his might held it hard and was not willing to loose his hold by the least. He thrust out both his feet on the great beast’s face and kicked at random into his face and eyes. The beast began to roar and pawed up two heaps of clay underneath its body and made a pit. Wu Sung pressed its muzzle down into the pit and the beast was worn weak with its struggle against him. Thus Wu Sung with his left hand held its scruf and he slipped his right hand out and he made his fst into a very hammer of iron and with all the strength he had he struck and struck again.

Wu Song (Wu Sung) is always depicted as a strong fellow with integrity, who disregards the warning of the innkeeper and ventures alone into the woods at dusk while half drunk. He becomes a hero after he rids the local curse—a mighty tiger that lurks in the forest and attacks villagers frequently—with his bare hands. The story of Wu Song is best known as one of the 108 bandit heroes of the Water Margin (Liangshanbo), popularised by the famous vernacular novel The Water Margin.1 Throughout history, the hot-blooded martial character—a fawed human being but defender of true morality— has been embraced by various literary and performance genres. The scene of Wu Song’s taking down the tiger single-handedly is the best metaphor to describe the power of solitude in a desperate situation when man and nature are at the fnal showdown. When fghting the impossible, this lone hero can only depend on his own wit, strength, determination, and a deep belief that although alone on the battlefeld, his fght is never personal. He fghts for his own immediate survival as well as for the peace and wellbeing of those who cannot rely on the support of the government or nation. The lone hero must take matters into his own hands, but it is the imagination that he is not fghting alone grants him the ultimate strength.

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Taking the lone man against the bestial superpower as a central metaphor, I  would like to study two ‘solo’ and ‘silent’ performances in two cities— a one-man Cantonese yueju opera called I, Wu Song by Kelvin Ng Kwok-wa (Hong Kong, 2017) and a protest performance by Seelan Palay titled 32 Years: The Interrogation of a Mirror (Singapore, 2017/18). On the surface, these two performances appear almost in direct contrast: I, Wu Song was a theatrical performance with conventional form and a traditional story, whereas 32  Years was an event in a public space that was hoping to catch a wider audience; the former was a contained performance, with calculated time, ticketed audience, a confned space, and possibly controlled outcome, whereas the latter anticipated multiple variables in terms of the space, duration, and outcome of the performance; the former presented a refned art form based on years of training and the latter appeared crude, somewhat awkward, and improvisational. They had distinctive purposes and were not related or intentionally talking to each other. The city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore, where the two performances took place, share many characteristics such as their multiculturalism, tourism, geographical and fnancial importance, and history of British colonialism; they even rank similarly in the 2018 EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit) Democracy Index (Singapore ranks the 66th and Hong Kong the 73rd out of 167 countries—both in the category of ‘fawed democracy’).2 The real diference in their political consciousness in terms of democracy is that while many Singaporeans hope for a more democratic government and greater personal freedom, ‘hope’ seems unobtainable for many Hong Kongers as their subjectivity has an expiration date when the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle stipulated in the Hong Kong Basic Law comes to an end in 2047. I propose to view these individual cases—these rather powerless and lonely performances—both as a form of protest against the insurmountable hegemony at the local level and as an act of transnational solidarity-building. Killing a tiger single-handedly is only a myth or fantasy in the modern political reality. A failed attempt, on the other hand, could generate insurmountable power as soloists in diferent regions continue with similar inspiring acts. Contrary to Wu Song’s prowess, these rather quiet performances did not rouse much attention or have much instant impact on society; however, I argue that the tactics engaged in these solo performances—quietness, silence, solitude—have more sustainable power and in turn become more efective and efcacious than loud protests at a grand scale. Centralised movements are easier to shut down, but rhizomatic small actions are harder to contain. These are alternative strategies that confrm subaltern subjectivity and infect/afect the transnational political climate. Instead of garnering global support through ‘clicktivism’ in social media—through ‘likes’ on Facebook or ‘following’ on Instagram—activities one can do comfortably at home, these soloists put their bodies ‘out there’ to inspire an imagined collaboration of more soloists to join in the ongoing gladiatorial fghts against the ferocious monsters.

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I, Wu Song (2017) Performed by Kelvin Ng Kwok-wa (Wu Guohua) and accompanied by the percussion group The Gong Strikes One, I, Wu Song is probably the most minimalist creation in the history of traditional Cantonese opera thus far. A “One-Man Chinese Opera without words”, as described in the bilingual performance programme, I, Wu Song links multiple episodes of the Wu Song character through only movements and music. The 90-minute experimental solo opera only had two performances.3 The Wu Song character in fction and drama is associated with a number of famous characters: his brother Wu Dalang (short and unattractive), his sister-in-law Pan Jinlian (beautiful and traditionally portrayed as wanton), and her lover Ximen Qing (rich, powerful, and lecherous). Pan and Ximen plotted to have Wu Song’s brother poisoned. After the death of Wu Dalang, Ximen Qing was not indicted because his money meant power; therefore, Wu Song was forced to avenge for his brother on his own terms.4 He eventually joined in the outlaws at Water Margin, the alternative world of bandithood where traditional ethics such as loyalty, credibility, righteousness, and brotherhood were highly respected. Like most Chinese classics, the fctional world of The Water Margin was a refection of the real world where justice could not be obtained under the corrupt government. The ‘margin’ is where true humanity is possible. Following the convention of Chinese opera,5 the stage was largely empty, except for the musicians (a small orchestra on stage right) and a few props and costumes on simple scene pieces (one table and two chairs—the conventional stage set of Chinese opera). The play followed the conventional storyline: the tiger-fghting episode (drinking the wine, fghting the tiger, celebrating his victory in a parade), the revenge for his brother (rejecting the seduction from Pan Jinlian, mourning for his brother, killing Pan Jinlian and Ximen Qing), Wu Song’s arrest and escape and his fnal declaration to become an outlaw. The performance presented a comprehensive wellknown story without singing, speaking, recitation, and without the presence of any other character. Perhaps ‘anti-Chinese opera’ might be a more precise way of describing the experimentation. The production programme claims that in this work, Wu is no longer the protagonist, nor does Chinese opera take up the task to tell his story. Instead, Wu’s story is transformed into a medium for Chinese opera to explore itself as a theatrical form of body movements and musical gestures. All utterances have been removed and Wu now becomes no more than an anonymous man on stage, called ‘I’. Lee King-Chi (Li Jingchi), a founding member of The Gong Strikes One and producer of I, Wu Song, further explains the experimental spirit: “We think music can take centre stage.”6 Although the orchestra of seven musicians

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Figure 7.1 yueju (Cantonese opera) performer Kelvin Ng Kwok-wa as Wu Song in I, Wu Song (Hong Kong, 2017).

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Credits: The Gong Strikes One. Photo by Jesse Clockwork.

did not occupy the centre stage visually, it dominated the stage sonorously while accentuating the loneliness and silence of Wu Song. Silence and loudness vied for attention but also complemented each other. It is also an anti-Chinese opera practice because the performance disrupts the hierarchy of the essential stage elements in Chinese opera: singing, speaking, acting, fghting (chang nian zuo da), in descending order. Eliminating the top two elements is to challenge the fundamental aesthetics and value for both audience and performer. The Gong Strikes One was formed in 2012 by young musicians. The Chinese name of the ensemble contains the terms yichui (one strike) and luogu (gong and drum, which symbolises the entire percussion ensemble in Chinese opera orchestra). ‘One strike’ is the luogudian (gong-drum point) that indicates the percussion beats punctuating the entire performance. Such rhythmic points are like the pulse of the performance, but they are often not included in the script because experienced musicians know the right moments to strike. Traditionally, musicians are seated onstage, along with performers, but modern staging often places the musicians out of sight, following the Western tradition. Foregrounding the musicians by silencing the actor makes a distinctive artistic statement.

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Traditionally, a percussion point could never vie for the spotlight with the elegant poetry on page. Now the anonymous hero has a bigger voice than the tiger-slaying hero!

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32 Years: The Interrogation of a Mirror (2017/18) The Singapore-based activist artist Seelan Palay turned 32 in 2017. He performed 32 Years shortly before his own 32nd birthday as a way to refect on the meaning of 32 years—his entire lifespan and the duration of the period when Chia Thye Poh was deprived of his freedom. Without a trial, the political activist Chia Thye Poh (1941–) was detained for alleged pro-communist activities for 32 years (1966–98)—the world’s longest political detention— under the Lee Kuan Yew administration.7 Palay’s performance began with a simple sketch of initial plans but also involved a lengthy improvisation. He started in Hong Lim Park, and planned to walk to Parliament House and the National Gallery—all a very short walking distance. He displayed a banner on the lawn of the park, which read: “Passion Made Probable”.8 He made a short speech, in which he asked: “Can the liberated human mind be constrained by a state sanctioned space, and in that regard, can a liberated work of art be contained within a state sanctioned space? Do you know the answers to both of these questions?” The performance commenced at the only place in Singapore designated for protest and demonstration, the ‘Speakers’ Corner’ on the edge of the beautiful Hong Lim Park. Unlike the fctional Water Margin in the Chinese tradition, which was organically formed by the bandit heroes, this ‘margin’ was created by the Singaporean government to confne dissent. Palay was fully aware that he would have broken the law if he ventured into other areas; in other words, any part of the performance outside of the safe space could be cut short because of police intervention. The answer to these questions above formed the performance after the park: his walking to the Parliament House and standing there for 30 minutes holding a mirror before being arrested by police,9 a lengthy trial in which he acted as his own legal representation, his choice of two-week prison time over paying the fne for his violation because he did not agree with the charges. He announced his performance was over after he was released from jail by looking down at the book Art as Experience by John Dewey on the ground.10 The entire ‘performance’ lasted more than a year, with multiple locations and diferent audiences. After briefy describing the two performances, in the next section, I will discuss the similar tactics these performers employed to claim their individual subaltern subjectivity. I argue that the true efcacy of these seemingly harmless performances functions at a transnational level—an imagined transnational coalition and solidarity among city-states or between minoritarian states. In the context of ‘minor transnationalism’, Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih ask us to “look sideways to lateral networks” to form a

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Figure 7.2 Singaporean artist Seelan Palay stands in front of Parliament House holding a mirror as part of his performance of 32 Years: The Interrogation of a Mirror (Singapore, 2017/18).

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Credits: Seelan Palay. Photo by Foo Chaun Wei.

discourse with other minority groups instead of forming the minority identity based upon a vertical relationship with the dominant discourse.11 These solo performances have done both: locally and vertically they have made attempts to utter their individual subaltern voices, but there is also an imagined lateral moral support in other minority regions. I believe these low-key solo works, which might look futile at the local level, are indeed more sustainable because of their infnite ripple efects across space and time.

Minimalist tactics: soloness and silence Soloness One general tactic that both performers employ is the minimalist approach: Kelvin Ng Kwok-wa enacts all the episodes without other essential characters or other fundamental opera elements in his “A  One-Man Chinese Opera without words”. Seelan Palay acted alone, from his performance outdoors to his solitary confnement. However, these ‘solo’ shows have a great number of co-players: Kelvin Ng needed The Gong Strikes One to punctuate his movements in order to follow the aesthetic logic of Chinese opera;

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Seelan Palay had a number of essential co-performers/facilitators—the police, prison wardens, the judge—to help carry out his act. The aloneness can only be a symbolic gesture because their performances do not happen in a vacuum—they performed with co-players with improvised contemporaneity and conjured historicity. Chia Thye Poh and the ferocious tiger haunted the modern performances as their invisible co-players. While the silent solo performance of I, Wu Song might be the result of a shoestring budget, artistic experiment, or marketing gimmick, I argue that the marketing itself is a political act of resistance against hegemony. ‘Dance’ or ‘movement piece with music’ is probably a more accurate artistic genre for Ng’s performance; however, all the publicity refers to it as ‘Cantonese opera’ or ‘Chinese opera’. In general, traditional Chinese opera all over the world has been in steady decline since the mid-20th century and is no longer commercially viable because of the dwindling, aging connoisseur audience and the failure of cultivating the next-generation audience. The current ‘Chinese opera’ exists in a rather unstable state in Chinese nations: it is most likely to be a government-funded performance to refect nationalist fervour or as an educational tool; the privately funded tends to be a small experimental work at alternative venues. Chinese opera no longer enjoys the commercial viability or organic sustainability of the last century. With the rise of its GDP, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has increasingly attempted to strengthen its soft power. One of the most recent noticeable strategies is the concept of ‘Brand China’, which is an update of the old cheap image of ‘Made in China’. ‘Brand China’ is a combination of traditional Oriental aesthetics and 21st-century techno wonder. The opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was a good example. The ‘Brand China’ type of Chinese opera is bigger, brighter, louder—everything is amplifed with what Suzuki Tadashi would call the “non-animal energy”.12 It could be done with traditional singing, such as the high-profled The Red Clif (Chibi, 2008), which had a grand cast of renowned traditional jingju (Beijing opera) performers.13 Although the operatic elements remain rather traditional, the staging has a flmic quality that includes grand-scale special efects and pageantry. Subsequently repackaged for foreign consumption, it was displayed in Times Square in New York City on giant screens and toured Europe in 2012. State-sponsored Chinese opera performances like The Red Clif are multiple and multiplying. The world market of Chinese opera is a neoliberal Wild West without any regulations and the state-sponsored, bigger-and-louder performances are the ultimate winners. In alternative Chinese nations, such as the city-state of Hong Kong, most artists work independently and are responsible for their own fnance and marketing; they cannot compete with productions in such grand scale. Solo performances are a survival tactic but also a gesture of defance and resistance in the “Chinese peripheries”.14 Lear Is Here (Li’er zaici, 2001) by Contemporary Legend Theatre in Taiwan is a perfect example. The company was founded in 1986, a true pioneer

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company devoted to modernising jingju. Kingdom of Desire (Yuwang chengguo, 1986, based on Macbeth) was one of the most praised early masterpieces of such type of intercultural productions. However, Taiwan in the 1990s did not ofer a friendly political environment for traditional Chinese opera such as jingju; the founder and director Wu Hsing-kuo (Wu Xingguo) closed down the company and went into ‘exile’ like King Lear. After a three-year break, the company reopened with Lear Is Here, a solo performance adapted from King Lear, with Wu playing ten roles. It was a defant gesture: “I vowed to rebuild my company. I swore that even if there was only one person left in my company I would still perform on the street.”15 Lear’s minimalism showcases the actor’s versatility and virtuosity and the artistic capacity of jingju as an artistic genre. Less shows more. Lear Is Here successfully rescued Contemporary Legend Theatre from the machinery of neoliberalism and nationalism. Meng Xiaodong (2010), by the renowned jingju actress Wei Hai-min (Wei Haimin), was another example of a jingju solo performance in innovative intercultural staging. Meng Xiaodong was a jingju actress whose life was entangled with many famous actors such as Mei Lanfang. Like Wu Hsingkuo, Wei also played many roles, crossing the borders of gender, role type, age group, and school of training, truly displaying her virtuosity as an actor and the artistry of jingju. Meng Xiaodong had good fnancial support and was produced by the National Theatre in Taiwan. However, like Lear, the soloness of Meng Xiaodong also revealed another crisis—the lack of welltrained actors in traditional opera and the gradual decline of the genre in Taiwan. The play itself presented a brief history of jingju as Wei travelled through time, ‘quoting’ famous arias from the most popular plays, yet it was also like an elegy bidding farewell to a lost era and a lost art. All solo performances, regardless of their scale, always carry an aura of autonomy and pride—I can do it all! The ‘minimalist’ works of Wu Hsingkuo and Wei Hai-min, two of the most legendary Chinese opera actors of our time, had grand prestige and demonstrated the supreme mastery of the art. I, Wu Song, probably the most minimalist minimalism of Chinese opera, has a diferent stature. Kelvin Ng Kwok-wa and the members of The Gong Strikes One are much less established young artists who represent the new generation of Hong Kong—millennial natives who grew up under the ofcial rhetoric of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ without much memory of colonial Hong Kong16 or the ancestral connection with pre-communist China. In other words, their aspiration for an autonomous Hong Kong often has a global sensibility and transnational solidarity.17 Kelvin Ng’s work can be seen as an alternative Chinese opera piece in alliance with other works on the periphery against the neoliberal centre or as a local silent protest against the Chinese neo-colonial overreach over Hong Kong. For Seelan Palay, the real soloness in his performance is his homage to the long-term solitary confnement of Chia Thye Poh and his unfortunate ‘voluntary’ copycat action, both refecting the inhumanity under autocracy.

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His questioning of the constraint and containment of the liberated mind and art in a state-sanctioned space and his clear violation of such spatial limitation speak of his desire to be connected with those who have trespassed out of such state-sanctioned space. Chia Thye Poh served in the Parliament of Malaysia as a member representing Singapore (before Singapore’s independence in 1965) and was detained by the newly formed city-state of Singapore in 1966, under the Internal Security Act (ISA), because he was a suspected communist sympathiser. Immediately after his release in 1998, Chia condemned the ISA. In 2011, he was awarded the Lim Lian Geok (LLG) Spirit Award by the LLG Cultural Development Centre in Malaysia. Lim Lian Geok (1901–85) was a civil rights leader in the Chinese communities in Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s, and his citizenship was revoked in 1961 because of his defence of the Chinese-language curriculum in Chinese secondary schools.18 The apparent aloneness is deeply linked with historical uncontained and unconstrained fgures and movements, from Seelan Palay to Chia Thye Poh to Lim Lian Geok.

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Silence Similar to aloneness, ‘silence’ is symbolically defned in these contexts. Silence is widely theorised in the feld of music. Jerrold Levinson argues that silence— the space between sounds—ought to be a structural principle of music. Music, therefore, should be considered as both sound and silence.19 Jennifer Judkins describes measured silence (such as a noted rest) and unmeasured silence (such as a grand pause or the time between the last note of a piece and the audience’s applause).20 While some have considered John Cage’s 4′33″ as a performance of silence or simply noise, the composer clarifes: “There’s no such thing as silence. What they [the original audience] thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds.”21 The ‘accidental sounds’ are sounds we tend to ignore in our surroundings. Cage further explains that silence is impossible even in a controlled environment: “Get thee to an anechoic chamber and hear there thy nervous system in operation and hear there thy blood in circulation.”22 There is no sound that is deliberately produced or circulated, but there is sound in the nerves and blood. There is always sound in life; life cannot be silenced. However, silence can be heard if one knows how to listen. Roy Sorensen, citing Aristotle’s account on the demarcation of senses, writes that the object of sight is colour, hearing is sound, and taste is favour, and argues that the only way for “silence” to be received is “heard”—“Silence cannot be seen, tasted, smelled, or felt. Only heard.” He further discusses the location of the silence. “Since silence is an absence of sound, it has a location where the sound should have been.”23 I  have written about feminine listening, which is a kind of attentive and creative listening to what the female voice should have been in history. To listen to the silenced female voice in the context “where the sound should have been” is to imagine a gender-balanced

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history and storytelling. Without such creative listening, which includes listening to silence, centuries of female voice are erased because of the misogynistic theatre practice in China.24 For a female audience/reader, to listen/read the silence is to diachronically imagine a solidarity, which has generated insurmountable female power and creativity since the late 20th century and further propelled the movement of innovative Chinese opera today. It is less important to decide which silence is more ‘pronounced’ than to study how silence can be listened to, even though it is not heard. It is not possible to have absolute silence in live performances; to hear silence becomes a strategic practice. There are numerous non-singing and non-speaking traditional Chinese opera pieces (or scenes), such as At the Crossroads (Sanchakou), a short movement piece containing two people fghting in the dark. However, the non-speaking characters’ silence is never considered extraordinary because the essence of the martial genre relies on movements instead of singing. On the other hand, the characters’ quiet action (such as miming) is often ‘amplifed’ by loud music. A special type of heightened silence—liangxiang—a moment of silent and frozen action to enhance theatricality, is usually punctuated by intense percussion. Nevertheless, if singing and speaking are not expected, silence cannot be heard. Kelvin Ng is dressed in the traditional costume of a martial character and follows the traditional martial movement, yet his silence is called to our attention and becomes a marketing strategy. His silence is more prominent because of the length of the performance and complexity of the plot—not only Wu Song, all the minor characters from the tiger to Pan Jinlian are all devoid of a voice. His silence is also accentuated by the loudness of The Gong Strikes One. I would argue that, in plays such as I, Wu Song and At the Crossroads, silence is defnitely seen, if it cannot be heard. All the interactions, dialogues, and emotions are conveyed only kinaesthetically and create a convincing mime-like performance. Seeing silence cognitively connects to our recognition of hearing silence for the untrained ears. It is easier to see silence if one does not know how to hear it. However, to market a specifc kind of silence for a specifc kind of audience is a strategically transnational approach. The Chinese portion of the programme specifes “solo xiqu performance without singing or speaking” (xiqu dujiaoxi, wuchangqu nianbai).25 Lee King-Chi further explains the experimental spirit in writing a script without text: Usually a script will list characters, song titles, and lyrics but leaving out detailed movements and percussions. For this piece we clearly wrote down all the percussion points and all the movements such as clockwise or counterclockwise. The script writing was very challenging, diferent from the conventional practice of ‘leaving blank’.26 In other words, conceptually and dramaturgically, I Wu Song was a complete reversal of traditional Chinese opera. What is traditionally left blank

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(liubai) in the script is now flled in with non-operatic details. ‘Leaving blank’ is essential to traditional Chinese painting: the relationship between the space occupied and unoccupied on paper is unique in Chinese aesthetics and philosophy. The blank is appreciated as an integral part of the painting, which responds to the occupied area and also provides space for meditated imagination. A  traditional Chinese opera ‘script’ looks like a collection of arias; detailed stage directions or specifc singing styles are usually left blank, and professionals understand how to read the blank and bring out the full performance on stage. One can say that the script of I, Wu Song is a script of reversed liubai—while the spoken words are not present, the description of movements and music notations fll the page. A traditional script might speak of the logocentric approach to drama but also reveals the ultimate tradition based on oral transmission. The literati’s beautiful poetry on page might hold a higher position for the elite literary class; the live performance, however, relies on the transformation by the well-trained actors and their seamless collaboration with the orchestra. The detailed notation of music and choreography of I, Wu Song illustrates the experiment of the youngsters but also indicates that oral transmission can no longer be taken for granted in this generation. The familiar has indeed become strange.27 However, the English portion of the production programme calls the performance “A  One-Man Chinese Opera without words”. It does not distinguish singing from stylised speaking as in the Chinese portion of the programme. For contemporary Western theatregoers, especially in the context of intercultural experimental work, Chinese opera is often conceptualised as a mimed dance. In many contemporary performances, while adopting ‘Chinese opera’ elements for intercultural staging, singing is rarely included both because of its difculty for actors and its acquired taste for audiences. Symbolic gestures or movements with percussion music become the Chinese opera in East-West encounters.28 The bilingual marketing speaks of the hybridised nature of Hong Kong theatre and the need to attract the attention of Western audiences in order to battle Chinese opera neoliberalism. For Seelan Palay, silence was forced upon him. Part of the performance was truly solo—his solitary confnement for two weeks, which was a result from his refusal to take a blood test (a rejection to injection from the state). He described the surreal experience: When you’re stuck in a small room and can’t speak to anyone, you talk to yourself, and very often you fnd yourself walking around in circles. I could hear other prisoners talking to each other and singing—because the walls were thin—and I couldn’t participate in it.29 A conversation he could not ‘participate in’ speaks of the sense of alienation and isolation that silence brings. If other prisoners had known about his arrest and solitary confnement, they would have been able to hear his

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silence from “where the sound should have been”.30 His silence would have gone through the thin prison walls and sent out a clear message of resistance. The lack of understanding presents a diferent kind of silence; it is not the silence of resistance but the silence of futility. At court, Palay was able to cross-examine the police ofcer who arrested him. The ofcer could not explain the meaning of the objects used in the performance—the mirror, a book, and the banner—nor could he accuse Palay of committing any immoral or dangerous act. The police only said that Palay’s performance caused inconvenience to the guards. The judge announced that Palay conducted a procession without permit for three purposes: to commemorate Dr Chia, to demonstrate opposition to the government, and to oppose the institution of the Speakers’ Corner. Palay denied all the charges as the purpose for his performance and insisted on the importance of the timing (the meaning of 32) as well as that art should be open for interpretation. The arrest, trial, and confnement—the duration that was much longer than his original procession—consisted of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and isolation. It was a silence of futility because no one even attempted to hear it.

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Subaltern subjectivity The Chinese title of I, Wu Song contains two parts, An (I) and Wu Song. “I, Wu Song” is the way Wu Song introduces himself in both the novel and the drama. Using the word ‘An’ instead of ‘Ngo’ (Wo, I) in the title is intriguing. Although it is following the theatrical and literary tradition, the conventional theatrical language is also the language of the North, distinctive from local Cantonese, which would use the term ‘Ngo’ (Wo, I). An is perhaps a better choice than Ngo for global marketing because it uncannily resembles the sound of “I” in English. Ngo, on the other hand, has a distinctive localness that seems too exotic to pronounce for non-Cantonese speakers. The character’s name is spelled as Wu Song (Mandarin pronunciation) instead of Mou Cung (local Cantonese pronunciation) in the English title. I/An/Wu Song is the subjectivity of Hong Kong: linguistically, it is fanked by the colonial English and neo-colonial Mandarin but cannot be pronounced by the local Cantonese; historically, the end of British colonialism was called ‘handover’ (according to the English-language media) or ‘return’ (huigui, according to the Chinese media) instead of real decolonisation and autonomy (the preference of Hong Kongers); politically, the only thing the Basic Law guarantees is the delayed erasure of Hong Kong subjectivity. Joshua Wong says: “Hong Kong is stuck in a rut on its never-ending path to democracy.”31 The mother tongue of Hong Kong becomes the subaltern voice that cannot be uttered and heard. “Don’t they say if you want to kill a city, you kill its language frst?” Claudia Mo, Member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, has said.32 Both the immigration from China and the ofcial language policy of Hong Kong

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have presented a threat to the mother tongue, Cantonese. The language of instruction in over 70% of Hong Kong primary schools is Mandarin instead of Cantonese.33 Recently, Hong Kongers began to see the Chinese national anthem before some TV evening news, which is broadcast in Mandarin with subtitles in simplifed Chinese.34 On the other hand, the voluntary embrace of English and Mandarin education by many parents is also seen as a wise move concerning the future of Hong Kong children. The choice of a hybridised language to claim the (lack of) Hong Kong subjectivity in I, Wu Song refects the dilemma of the postcolonial Hong Kongers. Clarifying her controversial claim “The subaltern cannot speak”, Spivak says:

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When you say cannot speak, it means that if speaking involves speaking and listening, this possibility of response, responsibility, does not exist in the subaltern’s sphere. . . . The only way that that speech is produced is by inserting the subaltern into the circuit of hegemony.35 As a matter of fact, Hong Kong has been speaking loud and clear, but no one has listened. There has been a strong pro-democracy and pro-autonomy voice in Hong Kong and a June Fourth commemoration march is held annually since the bloodshed on Tiananmen Square in 1989. Today, almost halfway through the protected years of the Basic Law (1997–2047), Hong Kongers see their local identity gradually slipping away. A  recent ‘failed’ subaltern speech act is the Umbrella Movement of 2014 when young students occupied the central business districts demanding universal sufrage and freedom to nominate their own candidates for the leadership of Hong Kong. With sympathy, the world watched the youngsters passionately and peacefully advocate for liberty and subjectivity for Hong Kong; in awe, the world witnessed the most orderly, clean, and eco-friendly Occupy Movement—from a safe distance, via social media. The movement did not bring any concrete political change, as the student representatives were not even allowed to board a plane to go to Beijing to present their ideas. The yellow umbrella, a daily commodity against the scorching Hong Kong sun and incessant rain, became a practical tool against the police pepper spray and a political symbol. Did the umbrella that blocked the police brutality also block the Hong Kong voice going forwards? No one in the ‘circuit of hegemony’ actually heard them; it was as if the subaltern did not speak. Viewing I, Wu Song from such a subaltern point of view, I argue that the silenced solo performance does more than protest against the nationalist extravaganza type of Chinese opera; it also commemorated the awkward failure of the Umbrella Movement, which was short lived and left almost no trace. At the end of the play, after a sequence of frenzied fghting movements—at frst, Wu Song got rid of his handcufs and was fghting the air with his stick; then he symbolically destroyed everything (which was represented by a few pieces of furniture); he eventually calmed down, slowly restored the table and chairs, wine bowl and urn, and put on his clothes, returning everything to the

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beginning setting. Wu Song’s drama of disruption—fghting the tiger, avenging his brother, killing his sister-in-law, escaping from his arrest, and joining in other bandit heroes of Water Margin—has left no trace, as he has restored everything back to ‘normal’ at the end of the play. This silent resistance, or perhaps an act of civil disobedience, no matter how wild it goes, is like a dream, or just a play, because it is contained and because it ends, and because everything will be restored to ‘normal’. Seelan Palay’s subaltern subjectivity resides both in his artist/activist identity under a government that desires to ‘contain’ freedom of expression as well as in his Indian ethnicity in a multicultural society. As early as in 2008, he had staged a solo hunger strike for fve days in Singapore to protest against Malaysia’s arrest of fve leaders from the Hindu Rights Action Force who led a massive rally for racial equality for ethnic Indians in Malaysia. A placard that reads “HINDRAF 5. GIVE THEM FREE TRIAL” was hung over his neck as he protested outside of the Malaysian High Commission in Singapore. “Each day is in dedication to each of the detainees.”36 Despite the multicultural society in Singapore, in Palay’s view, Singapore is a country that practices “enforced racial silos” as it makes its citizens list their ethnicities on national ID cards. Racial hierarchy is a daily reality. When describing the overheard conversations through the thin prison walls in his solitary confnement, he says: “It’s funny: on the outside, Malays and Indians are the minority, but inside, we’re the majority.”37 The racial subalternity ironically makes very loud noises in a confned subaltern space.

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Conclusion By examining the tactics of I, Wu Song and 32  Years, I  propose seeing performance of quiet soloness as an alternative form of resistance, which inspires transnational solidarity and galvanises more dissent against hegemony in the future. The seemingly non-confrontational performances happen and end without causing much trouble and leaving much impact; the non-threatening minimalism allows such work to take its course without violent interruption. However, such seemingly insignifcant acts are powerful because they can be emulated, repeated, or reinvented in diferent contexts. One can view the 2019/20 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) protest in Hong Kong as a million soloist happenings close in time and space. The Anti-ELAB protest started as a centralised, Occupy Movement–like large gathering in June 2019. When the suppression force began toughening, the protest adopted the so-called Be Water strategy. As the police force closed in, protesters would go around and behind the police, disperse and reassemble somewhere else. The protesters dressed in black also used surgical masks, goggles, and umbrellas to protect both their anonymity and safety from tear gas and rubber bullets. Unlike traditional protests with charismatic leaders, logos, slogans, and clear plans, this leaderless, amorphous, guerrilla-style protest formation seems very efective.38

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The clichéd inspirational speech of Bruce Lee, the cultural icon of Hong Kong, reincarnated as the spirit for the protest: Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless like water. If you put water in the cup it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can fow or creep or drip or crash. Be water, my friend.39 Individualism is important in this protest. Each person as a drop of water can form a river; the river can be diverted but can never be stopped. Each droplet retains its solo integrity, but the alliance formation is fexible and infnite. Another saying that is often cited during the protest is: “Brothers climb a mountain together; each needs to make eforts on his own (xiongdipashan, gezinuli).” This popular Zen saying can be traced back to the Song dynasty; it indicates that the Zen enlightenment can only be achieved through individual cultivation, not dependence on others.40 The individualistic leaderless approach is strategic. Chaohua Wang, one of the former student leaders of the Tiananmen democracy movement writes:

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Lessons have been learned from previous protests. The authorities always try to destroy a movement by identifying its leaders. The current protests have no leadership and are highly decentralised. Social media is the main vehicle of mass mobilisation. . . . One action may be followed straightaway by another, or by a few days’ rest.41 However, as brothers climbing mountains, one can always extend a helping hand. In order for protesters to get away quickly without revealing their identities, people leave change on the subway ticket machines so police cannot trace the record from their rechargeable subway cards; people also pass out masks or leave clean non-black clothes around for protesters to quickly disguise themselves.42 Although many arrests of the protesters and closure of public transit system are daily reality now,43 and the shutdown of social media is mentioned as a threat, the Hong Kong spirit has infectiously inspired the world. A few months after the Anti-ELAB protest started in Hong Kong, many street protests broke out from cities around the world: Barcelona, Santiago, Baghdad, Beirut, and many more. Although every protest was sparked by distinctive local issues, the demonstrations in general refect the desire to have their voices heard by the government at the ground level.44 It is also signifcant to see the Hong Kong protest tactics—fexible, decentralised, shapeless, fast dissembling and reassembling—widely adopted around the world. The Catalonia protests intentionally studied and used the ‘Be Water’ strategies; some even called it “Doing a Hong Kong”.45 While the Tiananmen Incident did not result in a democratic Chinese regime, its non-stoppable efect signifcantly altered the world politics, both in the fundamental

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change in Eastern Europe and the infuence of post-1989 Chinese defectors in diaspora. All waters are connected and ultimately afects/infects the entire planet. As the local droplets silently fow into the ocean, the solitary silence inspires vociferous solidarity and brings an irreversible ‘climate change’ to the global ecosystem.

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Notes 1 This episode is from chapter 22 of The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan), usually attributed to Shi Nai’an (1296–1372) and Luo Guanzhong (1320–1400). The translation cited here is based on Pearl S. Buck, All Men Are Brothers (New York: Heritage Press, 1933), 203–11. According to Viberke Børdahl, the mantiger story is seen earliest in the title in a non-extant zaju drama (variety play) by Hongzi Li Er (f. 1295) but does not appear in the earliest extant version of the novel (prior to 1540). The tiger-fghting scene is found in a later edition of 1589. See Viberke Børdahl, “The Man-Hunting Tiger: From ‘Wu Song Fights the Tiger’ in Chinese Traditions,” Asian Folklore Studies 66, no. 1–2 (2007): 141–63. 2 See the ‘global tables’ of the “Democracy Index 2018: Me Too? Political Participation, Protest and Democracy: A Report by The Economist Intelligence Unit,” EIU, 36–40, accessed August 24, 2020, www.eiu.com/public/topical_report.aspx? campaignid=democracy2018. 3 I, Wu Song was performed in the Studio Theatre of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on June 10–11, 2017. 4 In another classic novel, The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei), by an unknown author writing under the pseudonym Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng, Pan Jinlian and Ximen Qing are prominent characters. For an English translation, see David Tod Roy, The Plum in the Golden Vase, or Chin Ping Mei (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). The story of Pan Jinlian, whose sexual desire is traditionally portrayed as wantonness, has been deconstructed from a feminist point of view in many modern works. 5 In this chapter, I use ‘Chinese opera’, the term familiar to the West to include all genres of xiqu (song-drama), the traditional music-based Chinese theatre. I have written about how the naming of Chinese opera refects Western cultural hegemony and logocentrism. See Daphne P. Lei, Operatic China: Performing Chinese Identity Across the Pacifc (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 8–11. 6 Elle Kwan, “I, Wu Song: A  One-Man Cantonese Opera—Without Songs or Words,” The Theatre Times, June  13, 2017, https://thetheatretimes.com/i-wusong-one-man-cantonese-opera-without-song-words/. 7 Chia Thye Poh was jailed for 23 years (1966–89) and then lived under extreme restrictions for another nine years (such as confned on Sentosa Island). A signifcant portion of his prison time was solitary confnement. See Rahimah Rashith, “Chia Thye Poh, Singapore’s Longest-Held Political Prisoner, Is Now Nobel Peace Prize Nominee,” MS News, October 5, 2015, https://mustsharenews.com/ chia-thye-poh-nobel-prize/. 8 “Passion Made Probable” was a play with a tourist slogan by the government’s “passions made possible.” He explained that “most passion is not possible” in Singapore, but he knew that being stopped during the performance was a probability. See his interview with Krithika Varagur, “Art and Dissent in Singapore: An Interview with Seelan Palay,” Los Angeles Review of Books, January  4, 2019, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/art-and-dissent-insingapore-an-interview-with-seelan-palay/. 9 A partial video recording of his performance from the speech at the park to his arrest in front of the Parliament House is available on Facebook. See The Online Citizen

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15 16

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18 19 20

21 22 23 24

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Asia, Facebook, October 1, 2017, accessed August 24, 2020, www.facebook.com/ theonlinecitizen/videos/activistartist-seelan-palay-presented-a-performanceon-sunday-afternoon-at-hong-/10155815921176383/. See Varagur, “Art and Dissent.” See Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, eds., Minor Transnationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 1–2. Suzuki Tadashi, “Culture Is the Body,” in Interculturalism and Performance, ed. Bonnie Marranca and Gautam Dasgupta (New York: PAJ Publications, 1991), 241–48. Such as Yu Kuizhi, Li Hongtu, and Li Shengsu, all prominent star performers. I have used ‘zero’ to theorise beyond the conventional notion of ‘centre vs periphery’ in discussing alternative Chinese opera. Places such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and California, though geographically located in the periphery of continental China, produce fascinating alternative Chinese opera works that defne their own subjectivities and simultaneously build transnational alliance among the peripheral nations by deeming the centre ‘zero.’ In these performances, China is a “zero institution” that “awaits inscribed meanings to form its national identity and its right to exist.” See the introduction to Daphne P. Lei, Alternative Chinese Opera in the Age of Globalization: Performing Zero (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 1–22. In the programme of Lear Is Here (October 27, 2006, Metropolitan Hall, Taipei), Wu Hsing-kuo also credits Ariane Mnouchkine for encouraging him to return to the stage. This is similar to the account of Joshua Wong, who was born the year before the handover. Wong was a major student leader of the Umbrella Movement in 2014. See Joshua Wong, “My Journey as a Student Activist,” in Hong Kong 20/20: Refections on a Borrowed Place, ed. PEN Hong Kong Anthology Editorial Committee, trans. Jason Y. Ng (Hong Kong: Blacksmith Books, 2017), 143–50. For instance, in the most recent large-scale protest—with the focus on antiChinese extradition and autonomous jurisdiction in Hong Kong—a ‘human chain’ was formed on the day of the 30-year anniversary of the anti-Soviet ‘Baltic Way’ across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1989. This type of transnational inspiration and solidarity are common in the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, such as the annual commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June  4. See Erin Hale and Emma GrahamHarrison, “Hong Kong Protesters Join Hands in 30-mile Human Chain,” The Guardian, August  23, 2019, www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/23/ hong-kong-protesters-join-hands-in-30-mile-human-chain. S. Adam, “The Ballad of Chia Thye Poh,” Malaysia Today, December 18, 2011. Jerrold Levinson, “The Concept of Music,” in Music, Art, and Metaphysics, ed. Jerrold Levinson (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 267–78. Jennifer Judkins, “The Aesthetics of Musical Performance,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 31 (1997): 39–53. For other works on silence and music, see also Andrew Kania, “Silent Music,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68, no. 4 (2010): 343–53. Cited in Richard Kostelanetz, ed., Conversing with Cage (New York: Limelight Editions, 1988), 65. John Cage, Silence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966), 51. Roy Sorensen, “Hearing Silence: The Perception and Introspection of Absences,” in Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays, ed. Matthew Nudds and Casey O’Callaghan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 126–45. Daphne P. Lei, Uncrossing the Borders: Performing Chinese in Gendered (Trans) Nationalism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019). The discussion of attentive and creative feminine listening is throughout the book.

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25 Note that nianbai, though translated as speaking, is stylised and has some music quality. 26 Lingzi, “Wu Song Solo Opera, Percussion Experiment,” Mingpao, May 19, 2017. 27 When common practice (often done in oral transmission) has become unfamiliar, special notes have to be included to explain the unspoken ‘norm.’ I have written about specifc notes on costume and musical instrument in jingju scripts in Taiwan because the imported genre was unfamiliar to the populace in mid-20thcentury Taiwan. “Leaving blank” would not be a good practice in such situations. See Lei, Uncrossing the Borders, 212–13. 28 For the long tradition of ‘miming’ Chinese opera on the international stage, see Daphne P. Lei, “Dance Your Opera, Mime Your Words: (Mis)translate the Chinese Body on the International Stage,” in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater, ed. Nadine George-Graves (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 669–90. 29 Varagur, “Art and Dissent.” 30 Sorensen, “Hearing Silence.” 31 Wong, “My Journey,” 143. 32 See Vox, “China Is Erasing Its Border with Hong Kong,” YouTube, July  25, 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQyxG4vTyZ8. 33 Kevin T. Bielicki, “Hong Kong Identity and the Rise of Mandarin,” The Diplomat, February 14, 2019. 34 See Vox, “China Is Erasing Its Border.” 35 Leon de Kock, “Interview With Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 23, no. 3 (1992): 29–47. 36 Administrator, “Singapore: Artist Goes on a Hunger Strike to Protest Ethnic Indian Detentions in Malaysia,” Malaysia Today, January 1, 2008. 37 See Varagur, “Art and Dissent in Singapore.” 38 Erin Hale, “ ‘Be Water’: Hong Kong Protesters Adopt Bruce Lee Tactic to Evade Police Crackdown,” The Independent, August  7, 2019, www.independent. co.uk/news/world/asia/hong-kong-protest-latest-bruce-lee-riot-police-watera9045311.html. 39 This famous quote is from the ABC TV series Longstreet (1971). 40 It is credited to Mingjue Master (980–1052). See the chapter on the teaching of Mingjue Master vol. 1 (0669c21), in CBETA Chinese Tripitaka (Hanwen Dazangjing), http://tripitaka.cbeta.org/T47n1996_001. The original text is about people climbing mountains; there are also other variations such as father and son instead of brother climbing mountains together. 41 Chaohua Wang, “Hong Kong v. Beijing,” London Review of Books 41, no. 15 (2019): 11–12. 42 Protesters in Hong Kong are clad in black and wearing masks. See a short video about the protest published on YouTube on August  31, 2019, www.youtube. com/watch?v=LdsbMDb2cvw. See also Huang Yaqi, “Anti-Chinese Extradition/ Fear for Leaving Evidence for Police Arrest  .  .  . Hong Kong Citizens Donate Money for “Purchasing Anonymous Subway Tickets,” SETN News, July  24, 2019, www.setn.com/News.aspx?NewsID=575264. 43 Many well-known prodemocratic activists such as Joshua Wong have been arrested; however, since he was not a leader of this protest, the arrest did not disintegrate the protest. 44 Many journalists have analysed the similar circumstances, strategies, and goals in these protests. See, for instance, “Hong Kong, Chile, Iraq, Lebanon: Protests Erupt around the World,” South China Morning Post, October 26, 2019, www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3034669/hong-kongchile-lebanon-protests-erupt-around-world; “Do Today’s Global Protests Have Anything in Common?” BBC News, October  22, 2019, www.bbc.com/news/ world-50123743.

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45 Margherita Stancati, “ ‘Be Water’: Catalonia Separatists Ride Hong Kong Protesters’ Wave,” The Wall Street Journal, October 21, 2019, www.wsj.com/articles/ be-water-catalonia-separatists-ride-hong-kong-protesters-wave-11571685796; Mary Hui, “Hong Kong Is Exporting Its Protest Techniques Around the World,” Quartz, October  15, 2019, https://qz.com/1728078/be-water-cataloniaprotesters-learn-from-hong-kong/.

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Bibliography Adam, S. “The Ballad of Chia Thye Poh.” Malaysia Today, December 18, 2011. Administrator. “Singapore: Artist Goes on a Hunger Strike to Protest Ethnic Indian Detentions In Malaysia.” Malaysia Today, January 1, 2008. Børdahl, Viberke. “The Man-Hunting Tiger: From ‘Wu Song Fights the Tiger’ in Chinese Traditions.” Asian Folklore Studies 66, no. 1–2 (2007): 141–63. Bielicki, Kevin T. “Hong Kong Identity and the Rise of Mandarin.” The Diplomat, February 14, 2019. Buck, Pearl S. All Men Are Brothers. New York: Heritage Press, 1933. Cage, John. Silence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966. “Democracy Index 2018: Me Too? Political Participation, Protest and Democracy: A Report by The Economist Intelligence Unit.” EIU. Accessed August 24, 2020. www.eiu.com/public/topical_report.aspx?campaignid=democracy2018. “Do Today’s Global Protests Have Anything in Common?” BBC News, October 22, 2019. www.bbc.com/news/world-50123743. Hale, Erin. “ ‘Be Water’: Hong Kong Protesters Adopt Bruce Lee Tactic to Evade Police Crackdown.” The Independent, August  7, 2019. www.independent.co.uk/news/ world/asia/hong-kong-protest-latest-bruce-lee-riot-police-water-a9045311.html. Hale, Erin, and Emma Graham-Harrison. “Hong Kong Protesters Join Hands in 30-Mile Human Chain.” The Guardian, August 23, 2019. www.theguardian.com/ world/2019/aug/23/hong-kong-protesters-join-hands-in-30-mile-human-chain. “Hong Kong, Chile, Iraq, Lebanon: Protests Erupt Around the World.” South China Morning Post, October 26, 2019. www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/ article/3034669/hong-kong-chile-lebanon-protests-erupt-around-world. Huang, Yaqi. “Anti-Chinese Extradition/Fear for Leaving Evidence for Police Arrest  .  .  . Hong Kong Citizens Donate Money for ‘Purchasing Anonymous Subway Tickets.” SETN News, July  24, 2019. www.setn.com/News. aspx?NewsID=575264. Hui, Mary. “Hong Kong Is Exporting Its Protest Techniques Around the World.” Quartz, October 15, 2019. https://qz.com/1728078/be-water-catalonia-protesterslearn-from-hong-kong/. Judkins, Jennifer. “The Aesthetics of Musical Performance.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 31 (1997): 39–53. Kania, Andrew. “Silent Music.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68, no. 4 (2010): 343–53. Kock, Leon de. “Interview With Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 23, no. 3 (1992): 29–47. Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. Conversing with Cage. New York: Limelight Editions, 1988. Kwan, Elle. “ ‘I, Wu Song’: A One-Man Cantonese Opera—Without Songs or Words.” The Theatre Times, June  13, 2017. https://thetheatretimes.com/i-wu-song-oneman-cantonese-opera-without-song-words/.

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Lei, Daphne P. Operatic China: Performing Chinese Identity Across the Pacifc. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. ———. Alternative Chinese Opera in the Age of Globalization: Performing Zero. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. ———. “Dance Your Opera, Mime Your Words: (Mis)translate the Chinese Body on the International Stage.” In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater, edited by Nadine George-Graves, 669–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. ———. Uncrossing the Borders: Performing Chinese in Gendered (Trans)Nationalism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019. Levinson, Jerrold. “The Concept of Music.” In Music, Art, and Metaphysics, edited by Jerrold Levinson, 267–78. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Lingzi. “Wu Song Solo Opera, Percussion Experiment.” Mingpao, May 19, 2017. Lionnet, Françoise, and Shu-mei Shih, eds. Minor Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Rashith, Rahimah. “Chia Thye Poh, Singapore’s Longest-Held Political Prisoner, Is Now Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.” MS News, October 5, 2015. https://mustsharenews.com/chia-thye-poh-nobel-prize/. Roy, David Tod. The Plum in the Golden Vase, or Chin Ping Mei. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Sorensen, Roy. “Hearing Silence: The Perception and Introspection of Absences.” In Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays, edited by Matthew Nudds and Casey O’Callaghan, 126–45. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Stancati, Margherita. “ ‘Be Water’: Catalonia Separatists Ride Hong Kong Protesters’ Wave.” The Wall Street Journal, October  21, 2019. www.wsj.com/articles/ be-water-catalonia-separatists-ride-hong-kong-protesters-wave-11571685796. Tadashi, Suzuki. “Culture Is the Body.” In Interculturalism and Performance, edited by Bonnie Marranca and Gautam Dasgupta, 241–48. New York: PAJ Publications, 1991. Varagur, Krithika. “Art and Dissent in Singapore: An Interview with Seelan Palay.” Los Angeles Review of Books, January  4, 2019. https://lareviewofbooks.org/ article/art-and-dissent-in-singapore-an-interview-with-seelan-palay/. Vox. “China Is Erasing Its Border with Hong Kong.” YouTube, July 25, 2018. www. youtube.com/watch?v=MQyxG4vTyZ8. Wang, Chaohua. “Hong Kong v. Beijing.” London Review of Books 41, no. 15 (2019): 11–12. Wong, Joshua. “My Journey as a Student Activist.” In Hong Kong 20/20: Refections on a Borrowed Place, edited by PEN Hong Kong Anthology Editorial Committee, translated by Jason Y. Ng, 143–50. Hong Kong: Blacksmith Books, 2017.

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8

Crossing-over as strategy

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Liu Xiaoyi

I wrote this essay in Chinese and translated it into English. As someone who was born in China but lives in a multicultural city like Singapore, as someone who studied electrical engineering but chose instead to be an artist, the constant act of ‘crossing-over’ and negotiating between languages, cultures, and frameworks has become my constant reality. I frst embarked on intercultural exchanges in 2012 and have since participated in various exchange activities in Nanjing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo, and various other cities in Southeast Asia and in Europe. From the beginning, I have developed a strong interest in exchanges between bodies and training methods that stem from diferent cultural backgrounds and art forms. In time, I have learnt to appreciate the creative possibilities brought forth by these cultural and art form exchanges. In 2017, I co-founded Emergency Stairs, an arts company with an international outlook based in Singapore, and organised the inaugural Southernmost intercultural festival. In the past two years, we have been able to invite artists and cultural workers from more than ten Asian cities to Singapore with very little resources because we have had generous support from an extensive network of fellow artists and collaborators. In my new role as the artistic director of Emergency Stairs and of the Southernmost Festival, I am forced out of my comfort zone as an artist, and I start looking at these exchanges from my new vantage position. I  learn to confront a systemic reality that is larger than the exchanges between artists and art forms, to include the interactions and dialogues between cultural organisations and the larger cultural environment. So I begin to reimagine how crossing-over can be a strategy to confront and to challenge existing cultural frameworks. Southernmost is an important action in this strategy, and it has been conceptualised in an attempt to answer the pertinent question: “How do you create an arts festival for the future?” Hence, Southernmost has been created in a format that is artist-centric and process-driven and with a focus on Asian art forms. Its oferings include a series of masterclasses, open rehearsals, showcases, performances, and open forums. It brings traditional and contemporary artists together on the

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same stage, as equal collaborators, to re-examine the connections between the past and the present in order to imagine what the future holds, collectively. Audiences are invited to follow the dialogues that take place on and of the stage, and most of the programmes are accessible to them. Through the crossing-over of cultures, processes, and products, the traversing of the past and the present, on stage and of stage, Southernmost is an attempt to develop a long-term platform and vision for exchange and to bring forth change.

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Crossing-over as method—what is the possibility of a contemporary body? Since 2017, I have designed masterclasses for body research and actor training under the Southernmost Festival framework. Two artists from two different art forms and diferent cultural backgrounds lead the classes based on my method, which I call the ‘6Cs’. It refers to the fundamental elements of core, control, circularity, cadence (of time), construction (of space), and creation training. The two masters are required to break down their training method into these six elements. At the end of the masterclasses, the participants should be able to consolidate their learning into a short presentation. Because it is broken down into basic elements—which is to say, the focus of the classes is not on the art forms and physical movements; the aim of the class is not to teach the traditional art form, for how can an art form be mastered in a matter of days, or even months?—the focus is, instead, on the philosophies and applications behind the art forms. I have a vivid recollection of a student who attended one of the masterclasses. She was terrifed of the masterclass presentation where she was required to ‘showcase’ what she had learnt; she was unsure of how she would be able to emulate the new art form. Before the presentation, I walked up to her on stage and whispered this into her ear: “Why do you bear such a burden? You are not a traditional artist.” With that reassurance, she was able to let go of her fear and move freely. I think she understood me: the purpose of the class was not for them to imitate the art form but to apply what they have learnt in their own practice. Ultimately, our purpose is not to train new traditional performing artists but to equip our artists with new performing vocabularies and philosophies. The masterclass is designed for crossing-over and experimentation on multiple levels. On the frst level, there is an exchange between art forms. The instructors are asked to re-think their body training based on the basic element, which allows them to re-evaluate, re-encounter, and deconstruct a form that is familiar to them, forcing them to re-think about their performance language. Second, there is a comparison of two or more diferent training methods and concepts. When the two masters jointly conduct a class, the students and the teachers themselves begin to compare the two diferent methods. The most direct results of this comparison are the

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Figure 8.1 Liu Xiaoyi and Danny Yung during a directors’ talk at the 2017 Southernmost Festival in Singapore.

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Credits: Emergency Stairs.

exploration of traditions and the emergence of new physical vocabulary. Third, the masterclass allows the participants to summarise, integrate, and translate their learnings in their short presentations. Hopefully, they will learn to develop and apply these learnings in their future practices. These three levels of crossing-over and experimentation embody the spirit of the ‘One Table Two Chairs’ concept in a classroom setting—or, rather, ‘One Table Many Chairs’.1 ‘Crossing-overs’ allow us to gain new knowledge and information, but what makes the masterclass unique is the questioning. It is learning by comparison, learning by analysis, and learning by applying critical thinking. When there is more than one master leading the class, the authority of the master in a master-student learning framework is challenged. Our framework instead advocates for open discussions for a deeper understanding and appreciation of diferent art forms and pushes for a more equal and fuid exchange between the masters and the participants. Therefore, during the course of teaching, while one instructor takes on the role of the teacher, the other instructor will take on the role of a student. Because the process is collaborative in nature, the teaching and learning are actually acts of crossing-over. Based on our current resources, we are able to conduct these masterclasses only as short-term classes. It can be said that the current masterclass

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Figure 8.2 kunqu master Wang Bin, from Nanjing, in Journey to the South, directed by Liu Xiaoyi, at the 2017 Southernmost Festival in Singapore.

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Credits: Emergency Stairs.

Figure 8.3 Javanese dance artist Didik Nini Thowok during a masterclass at the 2017 Southernmost Festival in Singapore. Credits: Emergency Stairs.

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Figure 8.4 Deep Structure of Chinese Culture, directed by Danny Yung, at the Southernmost Festival in Singapore, 2017.

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Credits: Zuni Icosahedron.

still stays on the scale of small experiments. It is my hope to hold in-depth and long-term collaborations with educational institutions in the future. By collaborating, we hope to hold the masterclasses for longer periods and to have the resources and expertise to conduct research and documentation. That is how the learning can be developed into new methods for body research and training. We use the traditional art forms as an entry point for the masterclass, and that is a conscientious decision because traditional performing art forms have developed over centuries and have mature sets of languages—an established set of language points to a stable framework and an established understanding and interpretation of performance elements such as body, space, time, and audience. This creates an ease in learning, and latitude for exploration and experimentation. However, it is my belief that this method can also be applied to intercultural and interdisciplinary body training and vocabulary learning, including contemporary theatre. As participants in the masterclass tend to be contemporary theatre practitioners, it is inevitable that they would often interpret the teachings using the vocabulary of contemporary theatre (the same way this essay is

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written in English). There is nothing wrong to use our primary language as an entry point because language infuences how we think and how we express ourselves. That said, I would constantly remind the participants to put traditional art forms on the same plane as their contemporary practices. Contemporary theatre should be regarded as a chair among many other chairs. This is the only way we can step out of our comfort zone, to contemplate our contemporary bodies and to explore other possibilities.

Crossing-over as form—what is contemporary art in the East?

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The fnal work of Southernmost 2018 was a piece titled Journey to Nowhere. It was directed by myself and jointly created with seven other artists from diverse cultural backgrounds. Similar to other intercultural works I  have attempted in the past, Journey to Nowhere is a journey and creation across diferent art forms. Collectively, we attempted to cross-over through the workshops and rehearsal process to fnd new forms that may potentially fnd their place in the future of Asian performing arts. Crossing-over requires a deep understanding of each other’s culture, and mutual respect is a precursor to the exchange. In my process of creating the production, I split the team of seven into pairs where each person had to

Figure 8.5 Journey to Nowhere, directed by Liu Xiaoyi, at the 2018 Southernmost Festival in Singapore. Credits: Emergency Stairs.

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Figure 8.6 Javanese dance artist Didik Nini Thowok in Journey to a Dream, by Emergency Stairs and Zuni Icosahedron, co-directed by Liu Xiaoyi and Danny Yung, at the 2019 Southernmost Festival in Singapore.

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Credits: Emergency Stairs.

alternate as a teacher and student to their fellow collaborators: in the morning you may be someone’s teacher, but in the afternoon, you would be someone else’s student. One day you may be teaching Malay dance movements to the Japanese nō master, and the next day you may be learning Javanese traditional dance movement from another master. After this exercise, we move on to collaboration. The outcome of their teaching and learning becomes the material from which the fnal creation is based on. Understanding may be the premise of creating intercultural works, but an open mind, self-refection, and the courage to experiment are equally important. During the process, I  am intrigued by the concept of ‘One Table Two Chairs’ as a metaphor for dialogue. More than that, I  am thinking about the possibility of taking ‘One Table Two Chairs’ as something concrete, as a practice. Teaching and learning often happen in the process of passing on an art form, but something else happens during cultural exchange. When we enter into the framework of another art form, with humility and curiosity, we will inevitably be challenged to think outside our existing framework. When we confront a new framework, that confrontation can ignite our imagination and fuel our experimentation to construct new frameworks.

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Figure 8.7 Javanese dance artist Didik Nini Thowok during a master showcase at the 2019 Southernmost Festival in Singapore.

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Credits: Emergency Stairs.

Hence, the constant convergence of teaching and learning and role switching within diferent frameworks and cultural settings can force each artist to step outside his/her existing frame and to explore both outwardly and inwardly. From my experience of creating works such as Journey to Nowhere, I was increasingly convinced that crossing-over is also an act of self-refection, which is the process of deconstructing and reconstructing the self through comparison and dialogue with others. I apply this self-refexivity to the concept and practice of ‘One Table Two Chairs’. In 2017, there was an absence of table and chairs on stage. Instead, there were dozens of seats from the old Parliament House of Singapore. In 2018, there was a huge wooden board and seven chairs instead of two. Hence, if ‘One Table Two Chairs’ is a concept, then the form should not be sacred. When a body can accommodate diferent forms and frameworks, then a stage can do the same. When we are able to traverse forms and frameworks, we can create new possibilities built on our understanding and appreciation of our own culture and history. For a very long time, the narrative mode of theatre has been Eurocentric, and Asian culture and history have been regarded as the ‘Other’ and subjected to the Western perspective. Our intercultural narrative has been written by the forces of globalisation.

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While globalisation has facilitated arts and cultural exchanges across geographical borders, it has blurred the distinctions between diferent Asian cultures and locations. We see the same global fast food chains, restaurants, and cafes in almost every major Asian city, and we see poor imitations of Broadway and West End theatre models at the expense of our artistic development. It may seem ironic to mull about cross-cultural exchange in Asia in a time such as this, a time of mass propagation of cultural tourism, cultural promotion, and cultural appropriation. However, the mere exporting of culture to another place does not constitute cultural exchange in a meaningful way. Exchange, as the name suggests, should be a two-way dialogue. Cultural development should go beyond the mere protecting and passing down; history should serve as a mirror to cast our gaze further into the future by exploration. Instead of looking at traditional art forms as something delicate to be protected, we can be more proactive in trying to understand the original faces of these arts and cultural forms and use crossing-over to imagine the infnite possibilities of Asian culture. While culture is more abstract and defned more broadly, art forms are relatively concrete expressions. Therefore, Southernmost chooses to start with traditional forms from East and Southeast Asia in an attempt to understand the past, present, and future of Asian culture. If contemporary theatre is a Western invention, and the source of contemporary theatre builds on traditional art forms from the West, what, then, is the contemporary theatre of the East? Asia contains many art forms that were in existence for hundreds or even thousands of years, from the Chinese to the Indian and Japanese traditions to the various Southeast Asian art forms that are in the same vein, yet have evolved very diferently. In my opinion, these art forms should not just be preserved and protected. They should continue to develop and evolve alongside contemporary practices that are not just Eurocentric. These are the values we embrace and perpetuate when we create and curate Southernmost and its artistic programmes—the values of mutual respect, equal dialogue, self-refection, and collaborative experimentation. With these underlying values, we hope to promulgate a new creation format and art form for the crossing-over of traditional and contemporary Asian art forms.

Crossing-over as politics—how do artists become cultural leaders? One of the most unique features of Southernmost is the open dialogues that happen both on and of the stage and include rehearsals, open rehearsals, all kinds of formal and informal dialogue sessions, as well as the open forum. This is because it starts dawning on me that my biggest gain from these numerous exchanges is not body research or the creation of new works, but

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how they have led to the formation of Emergency Stairs and the Southernmost Festival and the potential impact and invigoration they can bring to the cultural scene in Singapore and across the region. When artists collaborate over any length of time, they are bound to talk about the cultural organisations and cultural environment in which they practice. What generally emerges from these dialogues are challenges that are real, tangible, and urgent. During the process of creating Journey to Nowhere, I  asked each participating artist the same question: “What are the biggest challenges faced by your cultural institution?” Generally, everyone started to talk about problems surrounding sustainability, creation, and development. They were also curious about the challenges others faced and how they dealt with that. These honest dialogues become an important aspect of the festival and the performance. In the end, the materials developed during the process—the dialogues, as well as the new cultural policy paper, titled “Our SG Plan”—became the starting point and structure of Journey to Nowhere, and we created a response to our immediate cultural framework. In this work, I used the three strategies proposed in the plan to reimagine what the future may look like, outside the framing of the ofcial narrative. The work is hence a response to the policy and an imagination of the future of our artists and arts institutions. Can the dialogue between creators and ofcers be more critical and more creative? During the open forum, also part of the Southernmost Festival, I paired up the speakers using the ‘One Table Two Chairs’ format to facilitate dialogues on topics such as education, research, documentation, creation, and policy. Besides refecting on the festival, the forum also serves as a platform to understand the local cultural environment and that of the region. While I am learning how to facilitate dialogues and exchanges of ideas on a platform such as this, it is my hope that this platform can serve to facilitate a new kind of crossing-over by diferent stakeholders to come together, just like the artists, to shake up the static environment and bring in more space for creativity and dialogue. Through this process, thanks to the experiences of crossing-over, it dawns on me: organising a forum, conducting a workshop, directing a performance, curating a theatre festival, setting up a theatre company or developing a cultural policy . . . they may not be so diferent after all. I started out in theatre as an actor, and actors are very aware of the boundaries and limitations of their bodies because they have to know what they can or cannot do. Later, I took on new roles as a director and as a playwright. I became very intrigued by the physical and metaphorical boundaries of the stage and the framework of a theatre production, so I  started creating works that illuminate and also challenge the limitations of the stage and the theatre. When I  became the artistic director of Emergency Stairs and the curator of Southernmost, I  started realising that the entire artistic and cultural environment had become my stage. If I cannot make

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out the boundaries of my stage, how am I to stay within its boundaries? If I do not realise how big my stage is, how would I know my possibilities? If I  am the director of this big stage, my actors would now include new players and new platforms. When I sit in one of the two chairs, I may not just be facing another artist or creative collaborator; this other person may be a critic, an arts manager, an academic, a policymaker, a school, an arts organisation, a government agency . . . Hence, for the past three years, I have viewed the company and the festival as two of my experimental works, on an expanding stage. How do artists become cultural leaders? I think that is when the artist is not just a content creator but a driver—of a form, an institution, or a platform; that is, when the artist is no longer just on the stage but begins to care for the ofstage and what happens outside the theatre. His/her stage would then begin to expand, and the artistic institution and the cultural environment would become his/ her stage. Because the artists come from diferent backgrounds and cultural environments, their coping strategies are diferent. That is why sharing is important, as it allows participants to look beyond their immediate circumstances and to look at alternative solutions to the challenges they face. The essence of the artists is creativity. Artists use their creativity to continually expand the boundaries of their stage. But creativity should not be limited to the stage. We should be able to use our creativity to explore the

Figure 8.8 kunqu performer Shen Yili during a master showcase at the 2019 Southernmost Festival in Singapore. Credits: Emergency Stairs.

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Figure 8.9 Liu Xiaoyi and kunqu performer Wang Bin during an open rehearsal at the 2017 Southernmost Festival in Singapore.

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Credits: Emergency Stairs.

boundaries of the stage to create a more creative institution, platform, and environment. When that happens, the artist is no longer just the leader of his/her works but also the leader of an institution and even the society. If we can create a long-term, sustainable exchange platform and form a network, then the artist becomes an inter-city, intercultural, and interdisciplinary leader. Artists do not just express and inspire on the stage, but they can promote and reform with larger projects ofstage. It is my vision that Southernmost can grow into a regional platform for exchanges and a strategic exchange hub to promote research and education methods to stimulate contemporary works across cultures and to cultivate talents and leaders in order to invigorate the existing cultural environment and to shape cultural policies.

Conclusion During this process, consistent threads emerge. We start with the dialogue among bodies and engage in artistic dialogue and exploration, and then we move on to the dialogue among cultural institutions and the cultural environment, and fnally to the creation of exchange platforms and networks.

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This is a dialogue between diferent frameworks and a dialogue between big and small frameworks. There are still many problems to be solved for Southernmost: space, audiences, resources, and recognition. In addition to constantly reviewing our own structure, we are also learning how to communicate with diferent stakeholders. Policymakers and funders still view such intercultural activities as ‘productions’, demanding short-term outcomes that can be measured, such as audience numbers. But platforms like Southernmost are not about showcasing the artworks; it has bigger commitments to research and development; its signifcance cannot be easily measured because its sight is set much further. Its impact would not be in the number of audiences but in the development of audiences into stakeholders for the scene. There is still a long way to go for ‘crossing-overs’. In ‘crossing-overs’, how do we fnd the possibilities of the body? How do we explore the future development of art forms? And, more importantly, how do we fnd breathing room in a structure that is so rigid and static? I want to understand more about the boundaries of the body, the stage, the art institutions, the urban metropolis, and the frameworks of the cultural environment. We are committed to applying crossing-over as a strategy to continuously explore new spaces for creativity and dialogue. That is because, ultimately, what we need is not just large bodies of artworks, but creative arts programmes, cultural policies, and government institutions. What we need is not only artists who are critical, but also art institutions, a cultural environment, and a human society that are critical. That is why the arts should be revolutionary.

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Note 1 [Editorial note] “One Table Two Chairs” refers to the standard stage set of Chinese opera (xiqu). The table and chairs can be arranged diferently to suggest different settings and relationships. In the 1990s, Hong Kong director Danny Yung pioneered its use in contemporary theatre as an experimental framework to facilitate dialogue across cultures, media, and disciplines.

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The city and the artist Alice Theatre Laboratory’s Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka in Shanghai

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Mirjam Tröster In May  2010, Alice Theatre Laboratory (ATL) was one of three theatre companies that represented Hong Kong at the Beijing–Hong Kong–Shanghai Young Directors’ Showcase @ Modern Drama Valley Expo Season. The tour was part of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s (HKSAR) cultural programme for the Shanghai World Expo 2010. Taking stock of the Hong Kong arts troupes’ Expo presence, the Hong Kong Economic Times was obviously disenchanted with the outcome of the programme. They pointed out that “[q]uite a lot of the arts troupes [that performed in Shanghai] describe a good response to the performances, but [said that] the goal of exchange has not been met”.1 It comes as little surprise that the article included the artists’ experiences at the city-to-city showcase in its assessment. As a specifc festival format, a showcase, or ‘exhibition-style performance’ (zhanshixing yanchu; a.k.a. zhanyan),2 “serves to present a person or thing to view or notice, esp. in a favourable way”.3 Put diferently, as a vitrine would in a museum exhibition, it puts theatre productions and artists on display. When priority is given to exhibition, it is bound to hamper communication and, hence, exchange. In Shanghai, the showcase’s specifc framing, which focused on a (favourable) representation of the city, caused further constraints. Having said this, ATL’s two performances of Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka (Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi; Seven Boxes hereafter)4 in Shanghai marked the beginning of their exchange with (mainland) China. The following chapter takes this apparent contradiction between exhibition and exchange as a starting point to zoom in on ATL’s participation in the city-to-city showcase in 2010. Tying in with recent research on theatre festivals,5 it explores to what extent and how, in the restricting environment of the city-to-city showcase, Seven Boxes enabled communication as prerequisite for exchange. The chapter shows that ALT’s production responded to the requirement that both the city and the artist be presented in a skilfully conceptual way. Seven Boxes unmasks rather than displays the city, which emerges from the play as forbidding and alienating. Yet, the production does not stop here. It moves on to establish a model of artist-audience communication that has an equivalent in the realities of the showcase—namely, the creation of community for some, but not all. Following an introduction

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to ATL and Seven Boxes, the chapter will frst examine the showcase to illustrate how framing and scheduling impacted upon the possibility of exchange. In line with Jen Harvie’s call to look at performative practices and material conditions together,6 it will then dig out the production’s engagement with the city and the artist and, fnally, trace the “festival aftermath”,7 examining the (albeit limited) extent to which the performances of Seven Boxes in Shanghai were able to break through the confnes of the showcase.

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Alice Theatre Laboratory and Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka Andrew Chan Hang-fai, a graduate from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts with a degree in directing, founded ATL in 2003. Ever since its establishment, the company has been actively engaged in Theatre-inEducation programmes. In addition, ATL started to mount performances in 2007, exploring diferent theatrical styles.8 The company’s diction is tinged with vocabulary and notions of the ‘avant-garde’ (xianfeng; qianwei). Having researched and engaged deeply with Western, particularly European, (neo-)avant-garde theatre and flm, in accordance with James M. Harding’s conceptualisation of the avant-garde, ATL “have displayed cosmopolitan sensibilities that demonstrated familiarity with European theatrical innovations”.9 At the same time, however, their focus is not limited to Europe or North America. They aim at developing new artistic practices in Hong Kong and to “go beyond the theatre of the past”.10 Testifying to the “vital record of inter-Chinese and inter-Asian relationality”11 that Rossella Ferrari delineates, Chan names the works of Japanese avant-garde theatre artist Terayama Shūji as having had a major impact on his evolution as a director.12 Since 2008, ATL has regularly been using the approach of devised theatre (bianzuo juchang), which means that the creative team develops a production without starting from a script. Nevertheless, they often “use text as a stimulus for their devising”.13 With regard to subject matter, several of their productions explore life in a totalitarian system, predominantly Nazi Germany, and/or deal with the life and work of artists and philosophers. This is also the case in Seven Boxes, which premiered in 2008, and saw Hong Kong re-runs in 2009 and 2017. ATL toured the production to Shanghai and Beijing in 2010, Macau in 2011, and Taipei in 2016.14 In 2009, Seven Boxes won an award in four categories at the 18th Hong Kong Drama Awards and in fve categories at the First Hong Kong Theatre Libre.15 Without a continuous plot, Seven Boxes is roughly based on a selection of Franz Kafka’s writings as well as his life, which is mainly seen through the lenses of Max Brod and Gustav Janouch.16 A writer in his own right, Brod is mainly known today as Kafka’s early biographer and “the executor of Kafka’s literary estate”.17 Gustav Janouch, a young admirer of Kafka’s works, has become famous for his (controversial) Conversations with Kafka (Gespräche mit Kafka, 1951).18 Brod and Janouch are characters in the

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production’s outer story, which links the diferent scenes: Brod has to decide whether to respect Kafka’s last will and burn the seven boxes of Kafka’s manuscripts or to publish the work. Kafka’s family members and, more importantly, Janouch try to infuence Brod’s decision. In the epilogue, Brod conveys that he now feels able to respect Kafka’s will. This loose thread connects the seven boxes, which are for the most part arranged thematically and titled ‘Father’, ‘Sanction’, ‘Animals’, ‘Love’, ‘Aphorisms and Parables’, ‘Labyrinth’, ‘Dream and Death’. Each box distils passages, dialogues, or motifs from at least one of Kafka’s texts. Further source material is adapted and interwoven with these texts, including Kafka’s drawings and historical photographs as well as cartoon-like sketches and historical video footage not directly related to Kafka’s life.

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The showcase On its Shanghai tour, Seven Boxes was part of the Beijing–Hong Kong– Shanghai Young Directors’ Showcase @ Modern Drama Valley Expo Season. The festival was organised by the Shanghai [Jing’an] Modern Drama Valley (est. 2009), which aims to promote Shanghai’s theatre industry,19 in collaboration with the Beijing Theatre Association and Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC). Simultaneously, the showcase was among the events of HKSAR’s cultural programme for the Expo, hence adjunct to Shanghai Expo’s supporting programme. Embedded in this tripartite structure—that is, Shanghai Expo, HKSAR’s cultural programme, and the city-to-city festival—the showcase’s “schema”20 clearly favoured display over exchange. To shed light on the restrictions that this preference entailed, the following section will specifcally target both the framing of the showcase and the festival’s schedule. In the context of this chapter, framing refers to that part of “public discourse”21 that “happens before the spectacle is presented”22 and strives to establish a certain perspective on the event. The framings of the three layers mentioned earlier partly overlapped. The 2010 World Expo, dubbed the ‘Economic Olympics’ by some,23 displayed the world to a predominantly Chinese audience, with the spatial layout of the pavilions evoking ‘one China’.24 The Shanghai Expo focused on the theme of the city. Yet, while the English slogan “Better City, Better Life” conjured a sustainable city, the Chinese “Chengshi, rang shenghuo geng meihao”, literally, “ ‘City, makes life better’, represented a domestic focus on the emancipatory power of the city as the site of modernity”.25 Similarly, in “Connect to Hong Kong: A Cultural Kaleidoscope for Expo 2010” (Lianxi Xianggang: wenhua pian), city branding rhetoric takes centre stage. Coordinated by HKSAR’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD), more than 20 cultural programmes from Hong Kong were presented in Shanghai.26 The motto of the cultural programme was ‘Creativity • Connectivity • Vibrancy’ (chuangyi • lianxi • huoli), which directly links up to the then recent revamping of HKSAR’s city branding programme

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to incorporate creative arts more overtly. This readjustment of BrandHK (Xianggang pinpai), however, was mainly aimed at marketing Hong Kong internationally and, consequently, at distinguishing Hong Kong from other Chinese cities, such as Shanghai.27 Further raising expectations and reinforcing the competitive edge that the (albeit unofcial) Olympics label had equally inserted into the framing, Henry Tang Ying-yen, then chief secretary for administration and chairman of Steering Committee for HKSAR’s Participation in Shanghai Expo 2010, promised that the participating artists were “commit[ted] to [the] excellence and quality that is a defning characteristic of Hong Kong and its people”.28 The graphic design of the poster of the showcase properly chimed in with this city branding focus. It showed iconic buildings of the three cities: The Oriental Pearl Tower, placed in the middle, towered above the Gate of Heavenly Peace and Central Plaza.29 Despite focusing on Shanghai, however, the text of the poster—and most Chinese newspapers reporting in its wake—concurrently established a national frame of ‘contemporary Chinese theatre’ (Zhongguo dangdai xiju), of which the three cities were declared as the ‘most dynamic’ representatives, and the participating theatre artists the ‘youngest and most creative’. Accordingly, the organisers hoped for more diversity in style and subject resulting from the showcase. It is in this context that the notion of exchange fnally enters the frame. China’s leading experimental theatre director, Meng Jinghui, was selected to serve as the showcase’s artistic director.30 This was an apt choice, since Meng is also the artistic director of the Beijing Fringe Festival, launched in 2008, which “target[s] the young practitioners and young audiences and nurture[s] both talent and innovation”.31 The combined framing eforts suggested that the productions of the showcase ideally displayed an afrmative view of the city, branded ‘their’ respective city—in the case of Seven Boxes, creative Hong Kong—and exhibited or ‘sold’ the quality of their city’s art. Exchange was a means to an end—developing a more diverse ‘Chinese theatre’. The programming of the showcase ofered a degree of diversity, while the selection of plays simultaneously lent itself to putting labels on the three cities. Representing the two rather separate theatre scenes of the host city—the commercial mainstream and unofcial experimental theatre—two of the Shanghai directors staged the “ ‘two types of theatre that [according to Shanghai director He Nian] sell best, one kind is comedy, the other is suspense’ ”,32 while the third play was an experimental production dealing with gender issues and violence. In contrast, the productions travelling from Beijing were all, to some extent, experimental plays inspired by literary texts that had already been performed at the Beijing Fringe Festival.33 Tying in with the trope of excellence and the goal of city branding, HKADC had selected three award-winning productions that “all refected professional production standards”.34 Besides ATL, the two theatre companies representing Hong Kong were Cinematic Theatre with Waiting for the Match (Duzuo hunyin jieshaosuo), directed by Carmen Lo, and Class 7A Drama Group

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with Death (Shanghai version) (Xiang si [Shanghai ban]), written by Yatyau (i.e. Leung Shing-him), who was also artistic director. Irrespective of their diferent subject matter and approach, the Hong Kong contributions all placed emphasis on the individual and its role in society, conveying a sense of anxiety permeating the city/Hong Kong.35 The showcase ofcially kicked of on May 8, yet the schedule impeded exchange. With the exception of two of the local plays, each production was only performed twice. Provided they got access to the limited number of tickets, the high “density” of programming resulting from the tight sequence made it easier for “festival participants” to watch more than one performance and compare the diferent productions.36 However, Hong Kong directors recalled with some astonishment that the schedule did not allow for post-performance talks, limiting opportunities for exchange.37 In addition, the high programming density made it difcult for the participating artists to see all of their fellow artists’ productions. This included Andrew Chan, who only attended the performances of the plays from Beijing.38 Consequently, the schedule restricted exchange among “artist-spectators”, as Christina McMahon describes artists who participate at a festival and who “shift in and out of the roles of artist and spectator, performing on designated days and attending peers’ productions on other days”.39 For the Hong Kong artists, the choice of venues had the opposite efect. In contrast to the other plays, one of the Beijing productions as well as the plays travelling from Hong Kong were all staged at venues on the premises of Shanghai Theatre Academy—in the case of Seven Boxes, at the Duanjun Theatre.40 The location facilitated exchange with students of the academy and fellow artists, who—although not staging productions themselves—can be included into the category of artist-spectators. Andrew Chan vividly recollects the informal exchange of views after ATL’s performances.41 These informal encounters contrast sharply with the scarcity of scheduled slots for exchange. Besides the opening ceremony, the only ofcial event for all of the directors to meet was a forum held at Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre on May 10, before most of the productions had been staged. The forum was composed of a discussion by (mainly senior) artists and arts administrators, followed by a roundtable on “theatre innovation and the future of the city” with the nine directors. Class 7A’s artistic director, Yatyau, recalls that, at that stage, the artists were neither familiar with each other nor with each other’s work.42 The contrast between an ofcial schedule that complicated exchange and the carving out of informal spaces for communication at the Shanghai Theatre Academy corroborates the preference for display over exchange in the showcase.

Unmasking the city When the spectators entered the theatre to watch Seven Boxes, they received a Viewers’ Guide (Daoshang shouce) to the production.43 Frequently

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mentioned in reviews whenever the play is staged, the Guide is an impactful device that the company uses to initiate communication with the audience prior to the start of the show and to provide them with an additional frame for the performance.44 It provides information on both Kafka and the production, written by ATL as well as scholars. The creative team, including the devising actors and actresses, also share their thoughts in the Guide—on the author, the devising process, and the links that they see to life in Hong Kong. The framing of the showcase suggested that the audience could expect a positive and optimistic view of the (modern) city—possibly, even Hong Kong—from the production. Seven Boxes set out to unmask the city, however. An atmosphere of fear and foreboding permeated Seven Boxes. This was related to the city in diferent ways, the frst of which was the transmutation of Prague from a spatial signifer into a temporal one in both the Guide and the production. In the Guide, Wong Wing Man, co-producer of Seven Boxes, recalled a trip to Prague.45 From the spatial features of Prague, his essay soon wandered into Kafka’s lifetime. The production proceeded in a similar manner but went beyond Kafka’s death. An elaborate sequence of scenes sketched the formation of a totalitarian society represented by Nazi Germany. The sequence culminated in a video montage, which moved from spatial details of Prague and Kafka’s life via his love for Milena Jesenská, the translator of his texts into Czech, to Auschwitz and Milena’s death in a concentration camp.46 In addition, Seven Boxes related this pervasive sense of disquietude and foreboding to the alienation and isolation of the city dweller more generally. As the Guide suggested,

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[t]he more advanced science and technology are, the more humankind gradually becomes their slave. Under the multi-coloured neon lights, each and every face is troubled, and every soul is empty.  .  .  .  [W]e rewrite Kafka’s works for the stage because they are able to refect life’s sore spot, and awaken people’s soul.47 The spectator encountered the frst of many ‘troubled’ faces under the ‘multi-coloured neon lights’ right at the beginning of the performance. The stage was but dimly lit; limb-like objects hung centre stage, soaked in red. Lights went up and down repeatedly. The menacing atmosphere increased when a painful hissing noise set in. An actress with a bandaged head and hunched back entered with a cart. She lay down on the foor; rose again; and, piece by piece, picked up radio sets that were lying scattered on the foor. By way of its slaughterhouse-like set and the irritating, technologically produced noise, the prologue evoked the impact of city life on the individual in a capitalist society, afecting and disturbing the characters and the spectators alike.48 The stage design contributed to the evocation of unsettledness. A metal frame, partly visible behind stufed fabric objects, was the main element of

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Figure 9.1 Alice Theatre Laboratory, Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka, Prologue. Shanghai, 2010. Credits: Andrew Chan Hang-fai.

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the set. In the Guide, Andrew Chan disclosed that the following quotation from Gustav Janouch’s Conversations inspired stage designer Siu Wai-man to create a cage-like (fanlong) frame. Kafka purportedly said: Every man lives behind bars [translated as “in a cage” in the Guide], which he carries within him. . . . Safe in the shelter of the herd, [human beings] march through the streets of the cities, to their work, to their feeding troughs, to their pleasures, It’s like the narrowly confned life of the ofce. There are no longer any marvels, only regulations, prescriptions, directives. Men are afraid of freedom and responsibility. So they prefer to hide behind the prison bars which they build around themselves.49 The set thus signifed the situation of modern humanity in the city—their self-imposed confnement as well as the conformity that bureaucracy imposes on the individual. Accordingly, the prison-cage on stage at the same time refers to bureaucracy and, even, law. As for Kafka, the city in Seven Boxes is, “implicitly,

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the site of the Law,  .  .  . install[ing] it as the key arena for the question of political and judicial organization”.50 The tormenting nature of both bureaucracy and law became particularly poignant in a scene that alternately staged interweaving fragments adapted from The Trial (Der Proceß, 1914–15) and The Castle (Das Schloss, 1922). The two protagonists, K. and Josef K., became increasingly caught in a web of unfathomable events. The atmosphere became almost unbearable when actors and actresses started to hit the metal frame as if torturing K (The Castle). The scene then switched to The Trial, with Josef K. saying: “Without a doubt, a gigantic organization is operating behind this impartial court”.51 The piercing noise immediately set in again, augmenting the sense of menace that emanated from the perceived inscrutability and arbitrariness of the legal system. Through the prison-cage, the staging rendered this fear tangible. The fear, alienation, and loneliness the production evoked reverses the optimistic view that equates the city with a better life, even though it does not refer to any specifc city, not even Hong Kong. The stage design was highly conceptual, and the acting non-illusionist. The faces of the actors and actresses were painted in white, their eyelids more or less pronouncedly enlarged and painted in black, “underscoring the indiference and estrangement of city dwellers”.52 In short, the production avoided any locale-specifc coding. This being said, the introduction to the Guide, nevertheless, indicated that Seven Boxes could still be understood as investigating anxieties that existed in Hong Kong in the late 2000s. Its title, “Return (to) Kafka” (Huigui • Kafuka), appears to suggest that Hong Kong’s so-called return (huigui) to China in 1997 amounted to a return to a Kafkaesque place. What exactly may be imagined as Kafkaesque, though? The gloomiest of the readings presented earlier anticipated a totalitarian future for Hong Kong. While this allusion was spelled out rather vaguely, the blank spots may, of course, be easily flled. Seven Boxes’ engagement with contemporary Hong Kong, however, was less undetermined. On the occasion of its re-staging in 2017/2018, Andrew Chan disclosed that “in the past, we thought that the stories were rather mysterious, but we slowly came to realize that we are living right in this mysterious and absurd society”.53 Yet, even as early as 2008, some of the devising actors and actresses drew clear connections to Hong Kong. Kan Lap-keung, for example, emphatically stated: A mistake by the political or company department, mutual shirking of responsibility, the relevant departments solve the problem hastily, so much so that they leave it unresolved, leaving no way for the family of the victim to request appeal! Isn’t all of this still happening today?54 Engaging with Kafka’s texts obviously hit a nerve with the actor. The quotation expresses discontent with issues of governance in Hong Kong, which was on the rise (again) in the late 2000s when the support rates of HKSAR’s

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second chief executive, Donald Yam-kuen Tsang, decreased. This was especially the case in 2008, when Seven Boxes was devised.55 Kan’s assessment can also be read in the context of the rule of law constituting “a ‘core value’ of Hong Kong identity”.56 As Carol A. G. Jones explains, resulting from legal rights given to Hong Kongers by the colonial government starting in the 1970s, “Hong Kong developed a strong sense of itself as a ‘city of law.’ ”57 This conception has led to the emergence of a dichotomy that opposes Hong Kong to “China as a ‘law-less’ place”.58 It has also contributed to rising tensions due to the HKSAR government’s reinterpretation of the rule of law as “law and order”.59 In addition, two of the devising actors brought up the issue of death, a topic that one of the other plays from Hong Kong, Death (Shanghai version) (Xiang si [Shanghai ban]), also broached.60 Kan Lap-keung even directly addressed the rising number of suicides in Hong Kong, which in the early 2000s resulted in “Hong Kong [being] dubbed the ‘suicide city.’ ”61 Returning to the sense of foreboding in the play, death has, furthermore, repeatedly been anticipated for Hong Kong.62 In short, Seven Boxes completely unmasked the city, an unmasking that goes against the grain of the branding of Hong Kong. Looking at it from a diferent angle, however, one may, in fact, even see this impulse as attesting to the vitality and continued concern for the city of Hong Kong on the side of her artists—hence, as an alternative way of displaying Hong Kong.

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The artist and the audience In view of all the grimness that Seven Boxes delves into, is there any way out? The production proposed that solace lies in art and in the communication of kindred spirits through artistic endeavour. Particularly in the last box, the play explored artists’ relations to their audience. To do so, the box interwove “A Hunger Artist” (Ein Hungerkünstler, 1922) with the frst part of “Up in the Gallery” (Auf der Galerie, 1916–17). The scene started with a woman acting out a recurring dream. In her dream, she is an equestrienne, urged on by the whip of a circus director and an insatiable audience until an empathic spectator puts a stop to the performance. This was the moment in which she woke up. Now dressed like a trapeze artist, she sat on a swing. A man entered, opened a large metal cage, and squatted. The audience learned that her dream started when this man entered the troupe. In the following scene, the trapeze artist cum narrator recounted the story of the hunger artist, which was partly acted out in parallel. Showcasing his art of fasting, he was a sensation for a while, until the audience became bored. This is why he ended up in the circus, on display in his cage. Increasingly unheeded by the audience, he performed his art, before fnally starving to death. The woman’s behaviour changed markedly in this scene. She frst watched him, enjoying the spectacle that his performance created. When the hunger artist, uncompromising in the pursuit of his art, was unwilling to stop his

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Figure 9.2 Alice Theatre Laboratory, Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka, Box Seven. Shanghai, 2010. Credits: Alice Theatre Laboratory.

performance after 40 days, she looked bewildered at frst, apparently not understanding him, a performance artist, for whom “[self-]transformation becomes the principal value”.63 Quickly, however, she was able to relate to his frustration, caused as it was by an audience who seek nothing but distraction. Suspecting the hunger artist’s death, she fnally rushed to the

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cage and addressed the hunger artist directly. A moment of sincere dialogue ensued. Through the bars of the cage, the hunger artist disclosed himself to the woman before dying: he had always wanted the audience to appreciate his art. However, he admitted that the real reason for him to perform was that he had never found food that suited his taste. Put diferently, his art was part of his existence so that no compromise was possible. An onlooker frst, the woman turned into an interlocutor and soulmate. In light of this development, the woman’s dream at the beginning of the scene expressed her longing for a meeting of minds in performance. Seven Boxes juxtaposes two kinds of spectators—onstage, but possibly also in the theatre where the play is being performed. It exposes the majority who relentlessly spur the equestrienne on and are only interested in display and in consuming the spectacular but also acknowledges there are those who comprehend or even share an artist’s dedication to their art. This bond brings the concept of the zhiyin (“the one who knows . . . the tone”)64 to mind— sharing aesthetic sensibilities without the need of words. Translated to the realm of performance, this resonance emerges between the performer and the kindred spirits in the audience. Transcending a pure display of skills, “theatre has  .  .  . become an act/moment of communication”65 and exchange. Such moments not only emerge in the fctional world as the following comment (in this case by a spectator of a Beijing performance of the play) illustrates: At this moment, all of the emotions that had been accumulating throughout the performance erupted. Sitting in the theatre, due to these simple lines, the dyke [, which had been holding back my] tears, fnally broke. What kind of soul must that be to be able to express such despair in writing, and what deep feeling to be able to present such loneliness! At this very moment, I understood the real feelings of the director, and forbore all of the imperfections of the play. . . . The box about dreams and death is the part of the whole performance that I liked most. The girl slowly talks about the hunger artist and his art, she looks at him both in grief and in admiration. When they want to take him away [upon his death] to replace him with an animal, she shouts almost crying: ‘You cannot do this!’ In this huge circus troupe, she is the only one to understand his art, and to comprehend his sorrow. I suddenly understood that the hungry artist was Kafka and that the girl in the circus troupe was the director himself. When the girl was shedding tears for the artist, I knew that the director had also shed tears for Kafka. . . . My thanks to this show, and to that guy called Kafka, too! When the music concluded and the theatre lights went up, I thought of you, and I sensed that I was absolutely not alone.66 Going beyond the play, the zhiyin bond here also included Kafka, the production’s director, and the spectator herself, a union that Chan, who in the Guide appeals to the spectator not to forget Kafka, certainly embraces.67

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Figure 9.3 Alice Theatre Laboratory, Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka. Shanghai, 2010.

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Credits: Alice Theatre Laboratory.

There is a fip side to the zhiyin model outlined earlier, however, which brings us back from exchange to display. The zhiyin concept imagines an ideal audience for a production like Seven Boxes, which, according to Andrew Chan, targets the “taste of the minority”.68 Yet, as Beijing-based theatre critic Lin Kehuan argues, as much as the performing artist might despise the (mass) audience, they still need their recognition. For Lin, the play allegorically points to the state of avant-garde or experimental theatre in Hong Kong.69 In other words, Hong Kong experimental theatre runs the risk of having no audience beside the artists themselves. Lin’s verdict thus complicated the selection of Seven Boxes to showcase Hong Kong theatre in Shanghai. In fact, in the years between the production’s frst run and its Shanghai tour, the number of theatre productions staged in Hong Kong increased, while audience numbers declined.70 In addition, more and more performing arts groups looked towards China to broaden their audience base. Accordingly, one might even go a step further and assess the ‘death’ of the artist from a diferent angle: with BrandHK using creativity as a marketing strategy instead of improving the situation for Hong Kong’s cultural scene, Hong Kong performing artists who do not adapt and search for an audience in China will starve.71 In the context of a festival whose framing takes excellence and city branding as a given, these meta-comments

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on Hong Kong’s theatre are easily overwritten by more general statements about Hong Kong and its cultural scene—as a brief glimpse into reviews of the performances will demonstrate.

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Seven Boxes and the showcase’s aftermath Comments on the performances and debates about the showcase in general show a divided picture: while some call attention to the sharing of an experience, even more reveal a heightened perception of diference and the drawing of demarcation lines, which can partly be explained by the impact of the showcase’s framing. McMahon’s term ‘festival aftermath’ is useful in this context. She defnes it as “the cultural tensions that arise in the wake of festivals, such as new questions about collective identities or the frustrations that accompany intercultural collaborations”.72 It is noticeable that many reviewers were looking out for the display of what they perceived to be Hong Kong specifcs—a fact that Cinematic Theatre’s Carmen Lo similarly highlights when she says that, in the context of the showcase, the theatre artists were automatically regarded as ‘representatives of Hong Kong’ rather than seen in their own right.73 With Seven Boxes avoiding direct references to Hong Kong, however, reviews tended to fll in the ‘blanks’ on their own, mainly by drawing recourse to the familiar. Language was one of the most frequent elements discussed. In contrast to Cinematic Theatre and Class 7A Drama Group, which used some Mandarin on stage, ATL performed completely in Cantonese, providing Mandarin surtitles.74 Andrew Chan explained that a change to Mandarin would have caused a totally diferent feeling, especially because of the resulting change in rhythm. Turning the use of Cantonese into a marker of identity, he adds: “Hong Kong style, it is a Hong Kong play”.75 Reviews of the production and of the showcase in general clearly indicate that the use of Cantonese (or broken Mandarin in one of the other productions) served as a very strong marker of local specifcity. This “point of division”76 was also taken up frequently when the directors discussed their tour.77 Within the framework of a festival that showcased companies from Hong Kong, it appeared that— echoing Ric Knowles’ observations on international festivals—some spectators were specifcally paying attention to markers of diference, to what they associate with local specifcity.78 The search for diference, however, also turned towards the negative. One blogger, for instance, mentioned that some spectators viewed Seven Boxes as a “typical case of Hong Kong’s fast-food culture”, consuming Kafka mainly for the purposes of entertainment.79 What is more, a vitriolic debate could be found in a discussion forum to a report available on Sina. com. In the report, which was originally published in Hong Kong, the three Hong Kong directors shared their thoughts on the exchange, also voicing some criticism, particularly with regard to theatregoers’ behaviour during a performance.80 In the discussion forum, internet users started a bellicose

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argument, which centred on the notion of ‘cultural desert’ (wenhua shamo). This is a long-standing stereotype for the perceived lack of (high) culture in (colonial) Hong Kong, “which has been strategically rejected”81 by HKSAR. Although, as Ackbar Abbas has shown, the perception of Hong Kong culture has moved “from reverse hallucination, which sees only desert, to a culture of disappearance, whose appearance is posited on the imminence of its disappearance”;82 the label clearly still (or again) holds for some. In the context of the showcase, however, the trope served as a point of comparison between Shanghai and Hong Kong. While one side decried Hong Kong as a ‘cultural desert’, a fact that the showcase had supposedly reconfrmed, the other side referred to Shanghai—or even China, more generally—in the same derogatory terms.83 This dispute can be seen as both continuing and starkly contrasting with the nine directors’ roundtable discussion at the showcase’s forum mentioned earlier. On that occasion, the trope was similarly used in connection to Shanghai and Hong Kong, with the latter emerging in a much more favourable light—an argument that an article on the showcase published in Shanghai Drama (Shanghai xiju) further corroborates.84 In other words, in the debates that took place both online and during the showcase’s ofcial slot dedicated to exchange, comparison to the point of competition unfolded as a prevalent mode of engagement. The emphasis put on display, particularly on the display of excellence related to BrandHK, had backfred. In addition, against the backdrop of understanding the Expo in the light of the Olympics, the staging of productions from three diferent localities resembled cultural contests taking place at the Expo’s margins. “Localised misperceptions of Expo as cultural competition rather than cultural exchange”85 in conjunction with increasing tensions in China-Hong Kong relations in the late 2000s appear to have been played out in the showcase’s aftermath.86 The integrating function of an alleged ‘Chinese theatre’ imagined in the festival’s framing, by contrast, took a back seat. At the other end of the spectrum, reviews attest to the emergence of successful communication, hence, exchange in performance. Judging from online comments, particularly, some spectators could relate to the unmasking of the city very well. They describe how the performance created a strong emotional and bodily response, with the dark stage creating an atmosphere of “menace”87 or them drowning in “waves of emotions”.88 The shared experiences of living in a metropolis certainly intensifed the mood evoked in the performance. Another example refers to the communication between artist-friends: in the fnal scene, Brod fnally enters into a zhiyin-like relation with his late friend Kafka, whose views on the illusionary (xuhuan) nature of reality he now understands, a scene that “moved” one of the commentators.89 Although, for the Shanghai performances, such public assessments are rare, and although this comment is far less elaborate than the review by a Beijing spectator cited earlier, it still testifes to a strong resonance of the production with some spectators. Andrew Chan’s account

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of his informal post-performance talks and the invitation of Seven Boxes to the Fringe Festival in Beijing hint at similar relationships emerging between artist-spectators at the margins of the showcase. More than other commentators, theatre artists reportedly highlighted the professionalism and quality of the Hong Kong productions and were generally “pleasantly surprised” by them.90 The showcase even generated desire for more thorough exchange. In the words of a theatre artist who is active in Shanghai’s independent scene, Shanghai missed an opportunity at the Expo. Referring mainly to the showcase, he concludes: Although we currently have the opportunity to taste the gracefulness of Hong Kong artists, we still feel like strangers to each other; there are not enough public channels for joint experiences so far. For this, Expo planners would need to understand the arts and theatre, [they] would have to communicate with artists from Hong Kong and Shanghai to understand the requirements and hopes on both sides. [It is] not [enough that they] simply create a busy appearance.91 As mentioned earlier, artist-spectators still carved out their own informal spaces for exchange. For ATL, this resulted in the theatre company getting their foot in the door of the mainland festival circuit.92 However, ATL’s future tours may have fostered their networks and broadened their audience base. Diferent from what HKADC and the HKSAR administration might have hoped for, though, these were not commercial tours, but similarly fell under the rubric of cultural exchange.93

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Conclusion This chapter began with a showcase and moved into a cage. In 2010, ATL’s production Seven Boxes was put into a vitrine in Shanghai. The captions attached to this vitrine expected this ‘exhibit’ to engage with the city, cast a favourable light on Hong Kong, reach out to Shanghai audiences by displaying excellence, and ideally, contribute to shape a future ‘Chinese’ theatrescape. If time allowed, there could also be some exchange. The ‘exhibit’, however, dealt with these requests in its own way. Rather than displaying the modern city or, more specifcally, Hong Kong, Seven Boxes unmasked the city as a space in transition towards an unknown, possibly bleak, future—a forecast that appears even more urgent ten years after the production’s Shanghai tour. The city emerged as a space of alienation and fear, its institutions inscrutable. While this prison-cage of the city isolated and tormented the city dwellers, who cannot break out, Seven Boxes added another cage, which the artist turned into a performance space. The production thus established a model that can be understood as a mise en abyme of the showcase at large: the artist who enters the cage voluntarily resembles the touring artists joining up for the tour. Despite limitations and ‘bars’, they accept the

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festival’s schema. As with the performance of the hunger artist, the expectations of the audience diverge from what the artists seek to confront them with. Yet exchange between soulmates (often artist-spectators), nevertheless, ensues. To continue the allegory used earlier, the artists break through the glass pane and turn the vitrine into an artist’s cage to communicate with their audience through its bars. While most spectators continue to see the bars, others start to take note of the openings between them—not to level dissimilitude, but to respond to the “opportunity ambivalently to respect our diferences and recognize what we share”.94 Comparing Seven Boxes’ Shanghai performances with is tours to Beijing, Macau, and Taipei as well as its re-run in Hong Kong, future research could put this model to the test. What is more, in order to move on from an artistic to an academic model of the showcase, more cases studies will be needed. Nonetheless, Seven Boxes’ presence at the city-to-city showcase in Shanghai at least encourages us to take the ambiguities of the format into account—its restrictions and tensions as well as the (possibly unexpected) moments of exchange.

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Notes 1 “Gang yituan beishang tihui wenhua chayi,” Xianggang jingji ribao, October 30, 2010. 2 Hanyu da cidian, 1992, s.v. “zhan.” 3 Oxford English Dictionary, OED 3rd ed., March 2017, s.v. “showcase.” 4 I use the English play titles provided by ATL. 5 See, esp., Temple Hauptfeisch et  al., eds., Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007); Christina S. McMahon, “Theories of Festival,” in Performance Studies: Key Words, Concepts and Theories, ed. Bryan Reynolds (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 234–43; Rossella Ferrari, Transnational Chinese Theatres: Intercultural Performance Networks in East Asia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). 6 See Jen Harvie, Theatre & the City (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 69–72. 7 Christina S. McMahon, Recasting Transnationalism Through Performance: Theatre Festivals in Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Brazil (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 7. 8 Andrew Chan, interview with Mirjam Tröster, Hong Kong, December 21, 2011. On Chan and ATL (originally called Alice Education Studio [Ailisi Jiaoyu Gongzuoshi]), see also Mimi May Yee Yeung et  al., “Ailisi de wutai yanxu: fangtan Chen Henghui,” Wenhua yanjiu@Lingnan 19, no. 1 (July 2010), accessed August  25, 2019, http://commons.ln.edu.hk/mcsln/vol19/iss1/16/; “Tai xia yi fen zhong: Chen Henghui—Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi/ Of Stage: Chan Hang-fai, Andrew—Alice Theatre Laboratory,” Yicui/Artnews, June 2015, 26, 28–33; and ATL’s website, accessed June 29, 2020, www.alicetheatre.com/. 9 James M. Harding, “From Cutting Edge to Rough Edges: On the Transnational Foundations of Avant-Garde Performance,” in Not the Other Avant-Garde: The Transnational Foundations of Avant-Garde Performance, ed. James M. Harding and John Rouse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 34. For an insightful discussion of the continued use of the concept in the context of Sinophone performance cultures, see Rossella Ferrari, Pop Goes the Avant-Garde: Experimental Theatre in Contemporary China (London: Seagull Books, 2012), esp. xi–xviii, 3–22.

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10 ATL, “Objective,” ATL, accessed June  29, 2020. www.alicetheatre.com/ objective.html. 11 Ferrari, Transnational Chinese Theatres, 81. 12 The group’s name, ATL, is a reference to Terayama; see, for instance, “Tai xia yi fen zhong,” 30. 13 Deirdre Heddon and Jane Milling, Devising Performance: A  Critical History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 7. 14 See ATL’s website, accessed June 29, 2020, www.alicetheatre.com. 15 See Hong Kong Federation of Drama Societies’ website, accessed July 8, 2020: www.hongkongdrama.com/zh_hk-past_review.html; “2008–2009 di-yi jie Xianggang Xiaojuchang Jiang/The 1st Hong Kong Theatre Libre,” 101artsnet, accessed July 8, 2020, http://101arts.net/viewArticle.php?type=hktl&id=178. 16 My analysis of the play is based on an unpublished DVD recording of the 2009 re-run, notes on a performance I  attended in Macau on December  17, 2011, the unpublished manuscript, as well as photos and information ATL provided in two interviews on December 21, 2011, and March 13, 2019, and email correspondence on September 13, 2019, and July 11, 2020. I also consulted ATL, “Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi,” in Shi nian cheng shi: Xianggang juben xuan, ed. Bernice Chan and Daisy Chu (Hong Kong: IATC, 2017), 331–61. 17 Richard T. Gray et  al., A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia (Westport and London: Greenwood, 2005), s.v. “Brod, Max”; on Brod’s impact on biographical studies of Kafka, see Christian Klein, “Kafkas Biographie und Biographien Kafkas,” in Kafka-Handbuch: Leben—Werk—Wirkung, ed. Bettina von Jagow and Oliver Jahraus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck  & Ruprecht, 2008), esp. 21–25; on Brod as executor of Kafka’s will, see Annette Steinich, “Kafka-Editionen: Nachlass und Editionspraxis,” in Kafka-Handbuch: Leben—Werk—Wirkung, ed. Bettina von Jagow and Oliver Jahraus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 139–41. 18 See Gray et  al., A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia, s.v. “Janouch, Gustav”; Klein, “Kafkas Biographie,” 24. 19 See Zhang Aihua, “Huimou 40 nian: Jing’an wenhua dibiao: Xiandai Xiju Gu,” Eastday.com, October  11, 2018, accessed September  24, 2019, http-// city.021east.com/gk/20181011/u1ai11888086.html. 20 Christina McMahon (“Theories of Festival,” 236) defnes ‘schema’ as a festival’s “administration, format, programming, funding, publicity and venue.” 21 For a defnition of “public discourse” as comprising materials both before and after a show, but also brought about by the “cumulative impact of such materials” in conjunction with the material realities of the theatre experience, see Ric Knowles, Reading the Material Theater (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 91–92. 22 Mieke Bal, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 137. 23 For a discussion, see David Rowe, “The ‘Economic Olympics’? Shanghai 2010 After Beijing 2008,” in Shanghai Expo: An International Forum on the Future of Cities, ed. Tim Winter (London: Routledge, 2012), 83–98. 24 For an analysis of the spatial layout of Expo 2010, see Tim Winter, “Cultural Diplomacy, Cosmopolitanism and Global Hierarchy at the Shanghai Expo,” Space and Culture 18 no. 1 (2015): 39–54. 25 Cameron McAulife, “ ‘Better City, Better Life’? Envisioning a Sustainable Shanghai through the Expo,” in Shanghai Expo: An International Forum on the Future of Cities, ed. Tim Winter (London: Routledge, 2012), 55. 26 See LSCD, “Connect to Hong Kong: A Cultural Kaleidoscope for Expo 2010, Hong Kong SAR Cultural Programmes for Expo 2010 Shanghai,” 2010, accessed September 30, 2019, www.hkexpo2010.gov.hk/eng/index.html.

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27 See Yiu-Wai Chu, Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013), 75–79; on the evolution of BrandHK, see Chu, Lost in Transition, 69–89; on branding Hong Kong as “cultural/creative city,” see also Kristina Karvelyte, “From Arts Desert to Global Cultural Metropolis: The (Re)branding of Shanghai and Hong Kong,” in The Routledge Handbook of Global Cultural Policy, ed. Victoria Durrer et al. (London: Routledge, 2018), esp. 250–54. 28 LSCD, Connect, 1 (English in the original). 29 For the poster, see: accessed September  23, 2019, https://img3.doubanio.com/ pview/event_poster/raw/public/073a76f1670083e.jpg. 30 On Meng as artistic director, see “Meng Jinghui wei Xiandai Xiju Gu ‘Shibo zhanyanji’ xuancai,” Shanghai qingnian bao, March  31, 2010, cited from Sina.com, accessed September  23, 2019, http://ent.sina.com.cn/j/2010-03-31/ 10282914972.shtml. 31 Ferrari, Pop Goes the Avant-Garde, 300. 32 Zhu Guang, “Yunzuo zui guifan, fengge qian duoyang—Jing Gang Hu qingnian daoyan tan Shanghai huaju,” Xinmin wanbao, May 21, 2010. The productions were Shanghai Modern People’s Theatre (Shanghai Xiandairen Jushe)’s The Air Conditioner of the Upper Class (Shangliu shehui de kongtiao), directed by Liu Fangqi; Twelve Angry Men (12 nu han) by Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre (Shanghai Huaju Yishu Zhongxin), based on the play by Reginald Rose and directed by Tian Shui; and Linc2 Theatre Company’s (Lingwu Jutuan) Dark Room (Anfang), directed by Tsai Yiyun. For the schedule, see Chan Kwun Fee, “Jing Gang Hu sancheng qingnian daoyan Shibo zhanyanji,” Dang xiju zhuangji liuxing (blog), June 10, 2010, accessed August 21, 2017, http://blog.sina.com. cn/s/blog_5540382b0100jm16.html. Since Shanghai Modern People’s Theatre is a private organisation, the showcase does not mirror Ferrari’s generally valid alignment of the commercial realm with state-sponsored institutions (Ferrari, Pop Goes the Avant-Garde, 96). 33 Sun: Regicide (Taiyang · shi), adapted from Haizi’s lyric drama Sun (Taiyang), staged by Studio U (You Xiju Gongzuoshi) and directed by Shao Zehui; The Tell-Tale Heart (Xiemi de xin), adapted from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story and directed by Kanghe; and A Dream Play (Yi chu meng de xiju) by August Strindberg, directed by Pei Kuishan. For the selection, see Duan Mufu, “Jing Gang Hu qingnian xiju daoyan liangxiang Shibo zhanyanji,” Jiefang ribao, April 22, 2010. 34 Wei Wei, “Jing Gang Hu qingnian xiju yaobai zai lixiang yu xianshi zhijian,” Wen Wei Po, June 29, 2010. 35 In Waiting for the Match, three men each record a video at a marriage agency. Locked into the recording room alone, in a kind of interrogation with an of-stage voice, they are forced to confront their own selves, until the agency arranges for them to meet and fnd a way to deal with their lives. In Death, a doctor watches over and tortures a convict who is starving to death, while a musician-narrator manipulates the feelings and thoughts of the two characters. For the scripts on which the productions are based, see Elton Lau, “Duzuo hunyin jieshaosuo,” in Shi nian cheng shi: Xianggang juben xuan, ed. Bernice Chan and Daisy Chu (Hong Kong: IATC, 2017), 291–329; Yatyau, Shi nian yi xi (Hong Kong: Wheatear, 2006), 141–88. 36 On the concept of “density” in relation to festivals, see Willmar Sauter, “Festivals as Theatrical Events: Building Theories,” in Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture, ed. Temple Hauptfeisch et  al. (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007), 20; on the concept of the “festival participant,” see Schoenmakers, “Festivals, Theatrical Events and Communicative Interactions,”

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in Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture, ed. Temple Hauptfeisch et al. (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007), 30; see also McMahon, “Theories of Festival,” 235, 239–40. On the shortage of tickets, see FengziXX, “ ‘Shibo juchang’ zai Shanghai,” Mei zhou kanxi julebu (blog), June  7, 2010, accessed August 28, 2017, http://mjkc.blogspot.com/2010/06/blog-post_07.html. Chan Kwun Fee, “Jing Gang Hu.” See Wang Hong, “Jing Gang Hu qingnian daoyan tan xiju: yiyang de wutai bu yiyang de gushi,” Shanghai xiju, no. 6 (2010): 7. McMahon, “Theories of Festival,” 239. For the venues, see Chan Kwun Fee, “Jing Gang Hu.” See Wang, “Jing Gang Hu,” 7; Andrew Chan, “Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi zai Shanghai,” Wen Wei Po, June 27, 2010. See Chan Kwun Fee, “Jing Gang Hu.” Chan Hang-fai Andrew and Chan Shui-yu, eds., Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi: daoshang shouce (Hong Kong: Alice Theatre Laboratory, 2008). Literally, the term translates as ‘manual to guide appreciation.’ For Shanghai, see, for example, Zhu, “Yunzuo zui guifan.” Wong Wing Man, “Zhui xing zhui meng,” in Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi: Daoshang shouce, ed. Andrew Hang-fai Chan and Chan Shui-yu (Hong Kong: Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi, 2008), 47–48. The end of the video successively superimposed Milena Jesenská’s portrait with the hammer and sickle, the swastika, and the Star of David, establishing a highly problematic equation. For Milena Jesenská, see Lucyna Darowska, Widerstand und Biografe: Die widerständige Praxis der Prager Journalistin Milena Jesenská gegen den Nationalsozialismus (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012). There is reason to understand Seven Boxes as a kind of prelude to a more thorough (and, at times, highly disturbing) theatrical investigation of totalitarianism, above all National Socialism, in ATL’s plays. ATL, “Chuban xu: Huigui • Kafuka,” in Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi: Daoshang shouce, ed. Andrew Hang-fai Chan and Chan Shui-yu (Hong Kong: Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi, 2008), 5–6. The prologue adapts Kafka’s short story “The Burrow” (Der Bau, 1923/24) for the stage; in the case of Kafka’s texts, I provide the year(s) of writing; for the importance of ‘noise,’ see also Andrew Chan, “Tan Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi de chuangzuo yinian,” in Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi: Daoshang shouce, ed. Andrew Hang-fai Chan and Chan Shui-yu (Hong Kong: Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi, 2008), 37–38. Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, trans. Goronwy Rees, 2nd revised and enlarged ed. (New York: New Directions, 2012), 22–23. The Guide refers to Zhang Boquan’s Chinese translation of Janouch’s Conversations published by Jiuda Wenhua in 1988; see Chan, “Tan Kafuka,” 36, 42. From Seven Boxes’ tour to Beijing in autumn 2010 onwards, ATL used a steel frame that was solid enough for the actor embodying Gregor Samsa to climb (Andrew Chan Hangfai, email message to author, September 13, 2019). Andrew J. Webber, “The City,” in Franz Kafka in Context, ed. Carolin Duttlinger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 238. ATL, “Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi/ Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka (Yueyu ban),” 2011, 37–38 (unpublished manuscript). The citation is adapted from Franz Kafka, Der Prozess: Roman, ed. Max Brod (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1965), 60; consistent with the logic of the play, I refer to Brod’s edition. Hu Wei, “Zhong-wai qingnian xiju wutai shang gaibian de de-shi,” Xiju wenxue, no. 382 (2015): 12. Hu sees infuences of butō and the whiteface clown in French theatre, I  would rather see parallels to Terayama Shūji as well as to Federico

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Fellini’s use of the white clown. Chan mentioned Fellini’s infuence on his creative process in an interview with the author in Hong Kong on December  21, 2011. “Zhuanjiao yujian Kafuka: Saimahui yitan xin shili’ yazhou xunyou,” U Magazine, n.d., accessed May  23, 2020, https://umagazine.com.hk/instant_article/ article.php?pkey=493. Kan Lap-keung, “Jian Xiao K de chengbao,” in Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi: Daoshang shouce, ed. Andrew Hang-fai Chan and Chan Shui-yu (Hong Kong: Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi, 2008), 57. Public Opinion Programme, The University of Hong Kong, “HKU Pop Site,” accessed June 15, 2020, www.hkupop.hku.hk/english/popexpress/ce2005/donald_ new/poll/datatables.html; see also Chu, Lost in Transition, 50–51, 58. Carol A. G. Jones, Lost in China? Law, Culture and Identity in Post-1997 Hong Kong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 24. Jones, Lost in China?, 23. Ibid., 39; for related concerns, see Kin-ming Kwong and Chiew Ping Yew, “Is Hong Kong Dying?,” in Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule: Economic Integration and Political Gridlock, ed. Yongnian Zheng and Chiew Ping Yew (Singapore: World Scientifc Publishing, 2013), 175–76. See Jones, Lost in China?, for example, 4–5; 168. See Eric Leung, “Kafuka de wanquan biantai,” in Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi: Daoshang shouce, ed. Andrew Hang-fai Chan and Chan Shui-yu (Hong Kong: Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi, 2008), 54; Kan, “Jian Xiao K,” 57–58. Janet Ng, Paradigm City: Space, Culture, and Capitalism in Hong Kong (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009), 36. For discussions of this trope, see, for example, Chu, Lost in Transition, 1–17; Kwong and Yew, “Is Hong Kong Dying?” Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 137. Paola Zamperini, Lost Bodies: Prostitution and Masculinity in Chinese Fiction (Boston, MA: Brill 2010), 108. For a short conceptual history of the zhiyin from the frst documented mention of the term in the Book of Rites (Liji), its transference to human relationships starting with the story of the qin (zither) player Bo Ya and Zhong Ziqi, who listened to his music, in the Annals of Spring and Autumn of Lü Buwei (Lüshi chunqiu), to changing conceptualisation of the literati-courtesan relationship in late imperial fction, see Zamperini, Lost Bodies, 107–47. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 137. Huang Qiyang, “Rang Women shenqing kuankuan de jinian ni,” Douban, September 21, 2010, December 11, 2014, accessed August 21, 2017, www.douban. com/location/drama/review/7239061/. See Chan, “Tan Kafuka,” 41. “Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi (chongyan) dai guanzhong zoujin Kafuka shijie,” Ming Pao, November 15, 2009. See Lin Kehuan, “Ji’e de yishu yu yishu de ji’e,” in Xianggang xiju nianjian 2008, ed. Bernice Chan (Hong Kong: IATC, 2009), esp. 10–11. HKADC, Overview on Performing Arts Attendance 2008/09 to 2012/13 (Hong Kong: HKADC, June  5, 2015), accessed June  29, 2020, www.hkadc.org. hk/?p=7629&lang=en, 12. See Chu, Lost in Transition, 20, 77–79; see also Leung Man Tao, “Yi ge zuihou yi dai Xianggang wenhuaren de gaobai,” Ming Pao, March 6, 2008. McMahon, Recasting Transnationalism, 7. Chan Kwun Fee, “Jing Gang Hu.”

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74 See Pan Yu, “9 tai xiju fazhan,” Dongfang zaobao, May 11 2010; Chan Kwun Fee, “Jing Gang Hu.” 75 Chan, interview. 76 Wei, “Jing Gang Hu.” 77 For comments on language use, see, for example, Wudong, “Zuo 2 xiaoshi de Kafuka,” Douban, May  15, 2010, accessed July  8, 2020, www.douban.com/ note/71533663/; Tiantian Evans, “Jin wan kan Xiang si huilai,” Douban, May 17, 2010, accessed August 28, 2017, www.douban.com/event/11822898/ discussion/23839697/; Chan Kwun Fee, “Jing Gang Hu.” 78 See Knowles, Reading the Material Theater, 182. 79 FengziXX, “ ‘Shibo juchang.’ ” 80 See Chan Kwun Fee, “Jing Gang Hu.” 81 Karvelyte, “From Arts Desert to Global Cultural Metropolis,” 251. 82 Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 7. The stereotype has been in use roughly since the 1920s; see Poshek Fu, “Between Nationalism and Colonialism: Mainland Émigrés, Marginal Culture, and Hong Kong Cinema 1937–1941,” in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 199. 83 See the discussion forum to Chan Kwun Fee, “Jing Gang Hu.” 84 For the forum see, for example, Zhu, “Yunzuo zui guifan”; Chan Kwun Fee, “Jing Gang Hu”; Wei, “Jing Gang Hu”; Shi Jun, “Qingnian daoyan de dao yu lu,” Shanghai xiju, no. 6 (2010): 9–11. The reporting further testifes to the marking of diference between the three theatrical scenes. 85 Hilary Hongjin He, “I Wish I Knew: Comprehending China’s Cultural Reform Through Shanghai Expo,” in Shanghai Expo: An International Forum on the Future of Cities, ed. Tim Winter (London: Routledge, 2012), 46. 86 On the rising tensions, see Kin Ming Kwong and Hong Yu, “Identity Politics,” in Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule: Economic Integration and Political Gridlock, ed. Yongnian Zheng and Chiew Ping Yew (Singapore: World Scientifc Publishing, 2013), 125–49. 87 Wudong, “Zuo 2 xiaoshi de Kafuka.” 88 Yunshang rizi, “Sina.com,” May  14, 2010, http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/ blog_4cfa305b0100iheb.html#comment1 (ATL archive, no longer accessible). 89 Wudong, “Zuo 2 xiaoshi de Kafuka.” 90 FengziXX, “ ‘Shibo juchang.’ ” see also Wei, “Jing Gang Hu.” 91 FengziXX, “ ‘Shibo juchang.’ ” 92 Besides Seven Boxes’ tour to the Beijing Fringe Festival, ATL also toured Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (Di san diguo de kongju he ku’nan, 2011), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Bainian gudu, 2012), and Once the Muse Speaks (Shifang yi nian, 2015) to Beijing, Hamletmashine (Hamulaite jiqi, 2017) to Wuzhen Theatre Festival (Wuzhen Xijujie), and participated in The Inn (Si qing lüdian, 2016) under the auspices of Taipei-based Creative Society (Chuangzuo She) and performed in Beijing. They returned to Shanghai with Once the Muse Speaks in 2014 and Endgame (Zhongju) in 2015. 93 See, for example, Li Meng, “Yaoqing mingxing canyan, qifa guanzhong sikao, shiyan xiju tansuo fazhan kongjian,” Ta Kung Pao, April 23, 2011. 94 Harvie, Theatre & the City, 77.

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Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi [Alice Theatre Laboratory; ATL]. “Chuban xu: Huigui • Kafuka.” In Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi: Daoshang shouce, edited by Andrew Hangfai Chan and Chan Shui-yu, 5–7. Hong Kong: Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi, 2008. ———. “Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi/ Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka (Yueyu ban).” 2011, Unpublished manuscript. ———. “Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi.” In Shi nian cheng shi: Xianggang juben xuan, edited by Bernice Chan Kwok-wai [Chen Guohui] and Daisy Chu [Zhu Qiongai], 331–61. Hong Kong: IATC, 2017. Bal, Mieke. Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Chan, Andrew Hang-fai [Chen Henghui]. “Tan Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi de chuangzuo yinian.” In Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi, edited by Andrew Hang-fai Chan and Chan Shui-yu, 34–43. Hong Kong: Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi, 2008. ———. “Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi zai Shanghai.” Wen Wei Po [Wenhuibao], June 27, 2010. Chan, Andrew Hang-fai [Chen Henghui], and Shui-yu Chan [Chen Ruiyu], eds. Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi: Daoshang shouce. Hong Kong: Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi, 2008. Chan, Bernice Kwok-wai [Chen Guohui], and Daisy Chu [Zhu Qiongai], eds. Shi nian cheng shi: Xianggang juben xuan. Hong Kong: IATC, 2017. Chan Kwun Fee [Chen Guaner]. “Jing Gang Hu sancheng qingnian daoyan Shibo zhanyanji.” Dang xiju zhuangji liuxing (blog), June 10, 2010. Accessed August 21, 2017. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5540382b0100jm16.html. Chu, Yiu-Wai. Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China. Albany: SUNY Press, 2013. Darowska, Lucyna. Widerstand und Biografe: Die widerständige Praxis der Prager Journalistin Milena Jesenská gegen den Nationalsozialismus. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012. Duan Mufu. “Jing Gang Hu qingnian xiju daoyan liangxiang Shibo zhanyanji.” Jiefang ribao, April 22, 2010. FengziXX. “ ‘Shibo juchang’ zai Shanghai.” Mei zhou kanxi julebu (blog), June 7, 2010. Accessed August  28, 2017. http://mjkc.blogspot.com/2010/06/blog-post_ 07.html. Ferrari, Rossella. Pop Goes the Avant-Garde: Experimental Theatre in Contemporary China. London: Seagull Books, 2012. ———. Transnational Chinese Theatres: Intercultural Performance Networks in East Asia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Fu, Poshek. “Between Nationalism and Colonialism: Mainland Émigrés, Marginal Culture, and Hong Kong Cinema 1937–1941.” In The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, edited by Poshek Fu and David Desser, 199–226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. “Gang yituan beishang tihui wenhua chayi.” Xianggang jingji ribao, October  30, 2010, WiseSearch. Gray, Richard T., et al. A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia. Westport and London: Greenwood, 2005. Harding, James M. “From Cutting Edge to Rough Edges: On the Transnational Foundations of Avant-Garde Performance.” In Not the Other Avant-Garde: The Transnational Foundations of Avant-Garde Performance, edited by James M. Harding and John Rouse, 18–40. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.

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Harvie, Jen. Theatre & the City. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Hauptfeisch, Temple et al., eds. Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007. He, Hilary Hongjin. “I  Wish I  Knew: Comprehending China’s Cultural Reform Through Shanghai Expo.” In Shanghai Expo: An International Forum on the Future of Cities, edited by Tim Winter, 44–53. London: Routledge, 2012. Heddon, Deirdre, and Jane Milling. Devising Performance: A Critical History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Hong Kong Arts Development Council [HKADC]. Overview on Performing Arts Attendance 2008/09 to 2012/13. Hong Kong: HKADC, June 5, 2015. Accessed June 29, 2020. www.hkadc.org.hk/?p=7629&lang=en. Huang Qiyang [Ivy Huang, Qiongsihuang]. “Rang Women shenqing kuankuan de jinian ni.” Douban, September 21, 2010, December 11, 2014. Accessed August 21, 2017. www.douban.com/location/drama/review/7239061/. Hu Wei. “Zhong-wai qingnian xiju wutai shang gaibian de de-shi.” Xiju wenxue, no. 382 (2015): 4–13. Jagow, Bettina von, and Oliver Jahraus, eds. Kafka-Handbuch: Leben—Werk— Wirkung. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008. Janouch, Gustav. Conversations with Kafka. Translated by Goronwy Rees, 2nd revised and enlarged ed. New York: New Directions, 2012. Jones, Carol A. G. Lost in China? Law, Culture and Identity in Post-1997 Hong Kong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Kafka, Franz. Der Prozess: Roman. Edited by Max Brod. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1965. “Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi (chongyan) dai guanzhong zoujin Kafuka shijie.” Ming Pao [Mingbao], November 15, 2009, WiseSearch. Kan, Lap-keung [Jian Liqiang]. “Jian Xiao K de chengbao.” In Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi: Daoshang shouce, edited by Andrew Hang-fai Chan [Chen Henghui], and Shui-yu Chan [Chen Ruiyu], 56–58. Hong Kong: Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi, 2008. Karvelyte, Kristina. “From Arts Desert to Global Cultural Metropolis: The (Re) branding of Shanghai and Hong Kong.” In The Routledge Handbook of Global Cultural Policy, edited by Victoria Durrer et  al. London and New York: Routledge, 2018. Klein, Christian. “Kafkas Biographie und Biographien Kafkas.” In Kafka-Handbuch: Leben—Werk—Wirkung, edited by Bettina von Jagow and Oliver Jahraus, 17–36. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008. Knowles, Ric. Reading the Material Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Kwong, Kin Ming, and Chiew Ping Yew. “Is Hong Kong Dying?” In Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule: Economic Integration and Political Gridlock, edited by Zheng Yongnian, and Chiew Ping Yew, 165–83. Singapore: World Scientifc, 2013. Kwong, Kin Ming, and Hong Yu. “Identity Politics.” In Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule: Economic Integration and Political Gridlock, edited by Zheng Yongnian, and Chiew Ping Yew, 125–49. Singapore: World Scientifc, 2013. Lau, Elton [Liu Haoxiang]. “Duzuo hunyin jieshaosuo.” In Shi nian cheng shi: Xianggang juben xuan, edited by Bernice Chan Kwok-wai [Chen Guohui] and Daisy Chu [Zhu Qiongai], 291–329. Hong Kong: IATC, 2017. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Translated by Karen Jürs-Munby. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

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Leisure and Cultural Services Department [LCSD]. Connect to Hong Kong: A Cultural Kaleidoscope for Expo 2010, Hong Kong SAR Cultural Programmes for Expo 2010 Shanghai, 2010. Accessed September  30, 2019. www.hkexpo2010. gov.hk/eng/index.html. Leung, Eric Chi Chung [Liang Zhicong]. “Kafuka de wanquan biantai.” In Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi: Daoshang shouce, edited by Andrew Hang-fai Chan [Chen Henghui], and Shui-yu Chan [Chen Ruiyu], 53–55. Hong Kong: Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi, 2008. Leung Man Tao [Liang Wendao]. “Yi ge zuihou yi dai Xianggang wenhuaren de gaobai.” Ming Pao [Mingbao], March 6, 2008, WiseSearch. Li Meng. “Yaoqing mingxing canyan, qifa guanzhong sikao, shiyan xiju tansuo fazhan kongjian.” Ta Kung Pao [Dagongbao], April 23, 2011, WiseSearch. Lin Kehuan. “Ji’e de yishu yu yishu de ji’e.” In Xianggang xiju nianjian 2008, edited by Bernice Chan Kwok-wai [Chen Guohui], 10–13. Hong Kong: IATC, 2009. McAulife, Cameron. “ ‘Better City, Better Life’? Envisioning a Sustainable Shanghai through the Expo.” In Shanghai Expo: An International Forum on the Future of Cities, edited by Tim Winter, 54–68. London: Routledge, 2012. McMahon, Christina S. Recasting Transnationalism through Performance: Theatre Festivals in Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Brazil. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. ———. “Theories of Festival.” In Performance Studies: Key Words, Concepts and Theories, edited by Bryan Reynolds, 234–43. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. “Meng Jinghui wei Xiandai Xiju Gu ‘Shibo zhanyanji’ xuancai.” Shanghai qingnian bao, March 31, 2010, cited from Sina.com. Accessed September 23, 2019. http:// ent.sina.com.cn/j/2010-03-31/10282914972.shtml. Ng, Janet. Paradigm City: Space, Culture, and Capitalism in Hong Kong. Albany: SUNY Press, 2009. Pan Yu. “9 tai xiju zhanxian Jing Hu Gang qingnian liliang, Xiangdai Xiju Gu ‘Sancheng qingnian xiju Shibo zhanyanji’ riqian kaimu.” Dongfang zaobao, May 11, 2010, WiseSearch. Rowe, David. “The ‘Economic Olympics’? Shanghai 2010 After Beijing 2008.” In Shanghai Expo: An International Forum on the Future of Cities, edited by Tim Winter, 83–98. London: Routledge, 2012. Sauter, Willmar. “Festivals as Theatrical Events: Building Theories.” In Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture, edited by Temple Hauptfeisch et al., 17–25. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007. Schoenmakers, Henri. “Festivals, Theatrical Events and Communicative Interactions.” In Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture, edited by Temple Hauptfeisch et al., 27–37. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007. Shi Jun. “Qingnian daoyan de dao yu lu.” Shanghai xiju, no. 6 (2010): 9–11. Steinich, Annette. “Kafka-Editionen: Nachlass und Editionspraxis.” In KafkaHandbuch: Leben—Werk—Wirkung, edited by Bettina von Jagow and Oliver Jahraus, 137–49. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008. “Tai xia yi fen zhong: Chen Henghui—Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi/ Of Stage: Chan Hang-fai, Andrew—Alice Theatre Laboratory.” Yicui [Artnews], June 2015, 26, 28–33. Tiantian Evans. “Jin wan kan Xiang si huilai.” Douban, May 17, 2010. Accessed August 28, 2017. www.douban.com/event/11822898/discussion/23839697/.

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Wang Hong. “Jing Gang Hu qingnian daoyan tan xiju: yiyang de wutai bu yiyang de gushi.” Shanghai xiju, no. 6 (2010): 7–8. Webber, Andrew J. “The City.” In Franz Kafka in Context, edited by Carolin Duttlinger, 233–40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Wei Wei. “Jing Gang Hu qingnian xiju yaobai zai lixiang yu xianshi zhijian.” Wen Wei Po [Wenhuibao], June 29, 2010, WiseSearch. Winter, Tim, ed. Shanghai Expo: An International Forum on the Future of Cities. London: Routledge, 2012. ———. “Cultural Diplomacy, Cosmopolitanism and Global Hierarchy at the Shanghai Expo.” Space and Culture 18, no. 1 (2015): 39–54. Wong Wing Man [Huang Yingwen]. “Zhui xing zhui meng.” In Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi: Daoshang shouce, edited by Andrew Hang-fai Chan [Chen Henghui], and Shui-yu Chan [Chen Ruiyu], 47–48. Hong Kong: Ailisi Juchang Shiyanshi, 2008. Wudong. “Zuo 2 xiaoshi de Kafuka.” Douban, May  15, 2010. Accessed July  8, 2020. www.douban.com/note/71533663/. Yatyau [Leung Shing-him, Liang Chengqian]. Shi nian yi xi: Yixiu. Hong Kong: Wheatear, 2006. Yeung, Mimi May Yee [Yang Meiyi] et  al. “Ailisi de wutai yanxu: fangtan Chen Henghui.” Wenhua yanjiu@Lingnan 19, no. 1 (July 2010). Accessed August 25, 2019. http://commons.ln.edu.hk/mcsln/vol19/iss1/16/. Yunshang rizi, “Sina.com.” May  14, 2010. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/ blog_4cfa305b0100iheb.html#comment1 (ATL archive, no longer accessible). Zamperini, Paola. Lost Bodies: Prostitution and Masculinity in Chinese Fiction. Boston, MA: Brill 2010. Zhang Aihua. “Huimou 40 nian: Jing’an wenhua dibiao: Xiandai Xiju Gu.” Eastday.com, October  11, 2018. Accessed September  24, 2019. http-//city.021east. com/gk/20181011/u1ai11888086.html. Zheng Yongnian, and Chiew Ping Yew, eds. Hong Kong under Chinese Rule: Economic Integration and Political Gridlock. Singapore: World Scientifc, 2013. “Zhuanjiao yujian Kafuka: Saimahui yitan xin shili’ yazhou xunyou.” U Magazine, n.d. Accessed May  23, 2020. https://umagazine.com.hk/instant_article/article. php?pkey=493. Zhu Guang. “Yunzuo zui guifan, fengge qian duoyang—Jing Gang Hu qingnian daoyan tan Shanghai huaju.” Xinmin wanbao, May 21, 2010, WiseSearch.

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10 Unequal cosmopolitanisms Staging Singaporean nanyin in and beyond Asia Shzr Ee Tan

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Introduction Nanyin (‘Southern Sounds’)—also known as nanguan, nanyue, and nanqu in China and its diaspora—is a genre with a contested history in Singapore. Primarily practised today by musicians playing in the 78-year-old guild of the Siong Leng Musical Association, the form was re-adapted during the 1950s by founder Teng Mah Seng, whose revisions and shortening of classic texts to refect a ‘Singaporean’ perspective has stirred up controversy. In recent years, nanyin has undergone a mini-revival alongside other local cultures, following broader national social and policy changes that have led to the re-evaluation of heritage deemed ‘traditional’.1 Against this backdrop, Siong Leng has attempted to bring its practice, self-identifed as distinctive, out of Singapore in musical performance to various cities around the world, within and beyond Asia. The diferent approaches to showcasing diferent works within the guild’s emerging, expanded repertoire, played to a range of international audiences, refect Siong Leng’s changing positionalities in the worlds of presumed ‘traditional’ Chinese heritage vis-à-vis cosmopolitan ‘artistic’ practice. International tours to Paris and New York were staged to elite crowds on behalf of the Singaporean national agenda as exhibitions of soft power, even as they were designed as multi-sensorial, contemporary Zen-inspired experiences invoking invented rituals of handwashing and meditation, alongside a reclaiming of nativist Chinese practice. Visits to Asia—particularly Quanzhou in China—exist for completely diferent and multifunctional purposes. First, as smaller scale but more frequent projects, they are designed around research and learning over intensive musical camps with wellknown teachers in China. Second, these visits are also aimed at musical exchange and capacity-building among specifc and local folk music communities in Quanzhou and Xiamen, in strategic staking of a Singaporean nanyin presence within wider diasporic networks, re-afrming Chinese clan-based transnational links. Third, these trips serve to exhibit the doubly ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ capabilities of Singapore’s younger performers (trained post-revival) in claiming new Singaporean decentred authenticities

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of performance within and beyond the Chinese ‘motherland’ and Taiwanese strongholds of the genre. The invocation of city-based reference frames for nanyin’s cultural legitimacy as opposed to national frameworks is crucial here. However, it is not only during overseas tours where city-to-city collaboration occurs. In the name of festivals and symposia held by Siong Leng on the home ground of Singapore, nanyin groups from China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, as well as ‘traditional’ artists from Korea and Japan have in the past been invited to the city for shared performances organised under the banner of Da hui chang (‘Large Song Gathering’). These exercises refect as much intra-Asian exchange and fusion initiatives as they also demonstrate high-end theatrical infrastructure and are designed to exhibit Singapore’s new arts centres as homes for internationally trained purveyors of ‘professional’ stagecraft. Based on feldwork conducted in Singapore from 2004 to 2019, and supplemented with interviews via email and phone, this chapter considers the transforming cultural fows and positionalities at stake in the making of such international artistic collaborations. On the one hand, deployment of the proverbial ‘East vs West’ cultural model might seem superfcially applicable to the curation and marketing of Singaporean nanyin outside Asia, in Europe and the US. On the other hand, digging deeper, one can also see how multi-layered aesthetics presented in these shows (some of them repeated for audiences within Asia) intersect in variously scaled playing felds, where notions of audience ‘knowingness’, class, imagined Chinese authenticity, Singaporean trans/nationalism, and presumed ‘universal’ standards of artistic professionalism come into unequal and fascinating interplay.

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Historicising Siong Leng and nanyin in Singapore: clan associations, Chinese diasporas, and contested authenticities Siong Leng Musical Association’s history in Singapore is one that is inextricably linked with the historical establishment and proliferation of Chinese guilds and clan associations, which have changed and adapted over time as the city transformed from a colonial trading centre in the 19th century to become a sovereign state in 1965. Founded in 1941 by departing members of several extant Hokkien associations, the guild counted among its key members (and eventual leader) the Fujian-born musician Teng Mah Seng. As a troupe, the guild initially functioned along the lines of a social club much like clan associations of the time, where amateur music-making in this Southern Chinese style of sung poetry in the Quanzhou dialect was the social activity of choice and community-building modus operandi.2 In its early days and to a signifcant extent today, most of the association’s activities revolved around ad hoc musical get-togethers at the organisation’s headquarters in Chinatown. As a semi-professional, and eventually professional, troupe began to coalesce within the guild’s structure, select members began playing music for rituals at local temples and shrines, providing

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entertainment during the celebration of deities’ birth anniversaries. Like other guilds, the fostering of interpersonal musical relations via a familial focus on members’ welfare was, and still continues to be, very much a part of Siong Leng’s organisational structure.3 Today, the current executive director of the organisation, Celestina Wang Phek Geok, in her ffties, is directly related to the Teng lineage by marriage. Wang’s two sons in turn hold important positions within the company. Arts manager and artist Lyn Lee, a key consultant for this chapter, is also married to one of the key members of the organisation. Members refer to the association as a large supportive family, and many of its musicians frst learnt nanyin within a home context. Its current rehearsal headquarters on Bukit Pasoh Road in Chinatown is also an unofcial teahouse and “hangout zone” for “grannies” and long-time fans or relatives of musicians playing in the group.4 As with many Singapore Chinese guilds, these familial links extend and extrapolate into wider diasporic networks both within and beyond the island, particularly through the reinforcement of its networks within the Hokkien-speaking and operating world. Indeed, following the Communist takeover of China in 1949, the genre of nanyin itself has been thought of as historically and transnationally relocated to what Wang describes as the “Hokkien quadrangle” comprising Taiwan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and British Malaya.5 Within Singapore, Siong Leng collaborates regularly with sister organisations such the Hokkien Huay Kuan and the Thian Hock Kheng temple on Telok Ayer Street, performing musical rituals on sacred premises. In this sense, the troupe’s wider collaborative activities refect what Wing Chung Ng describes as the bang approach to reinforcing local dialect-group inter-organisational collective links.6 Siong Leng also counts among its regular patrons and funders key members of the Singaporean and overseas Hokkien political, cultural, and business community, who turn up to buy seats at their annual fundraising performances and ceremonies. Beyond Singapore, the association maintains active profles in China and Southeast Asia through clan forged as well as musically forged links, the diferentiation of which will become a discussion point later in this chapter. Over the years, Siong Leng—as with various clan associations in Singapore that have expanded beyond their social club, worker- or trade-union functions—has come to be a stalwart marker of regional Chinese identity preservation7 and even vestigial resistance.8 However, as to what this has come to mean in terms of national identity, and also culturally, artistically, and professionally is a question of debate even among its current members. One key point to remember here is that prior to Singapore’s independence in 1965, whereupon Mandarin became promoted as the only Chinese dialect accepted in ofcial use across the island, Singapore’s diverse Chinese communities primarily conversed in regional dialects and accents, of which Hokkien was the most common. This understanding of heteroglossia in the Chinese world can be read within more recent academic conversations on the decentring of China.

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Writing on the concept of the Sinophone, Shu-mei Shih identifes heterogeneity, dissonance, and the problematising of authenticity in diferent assemblages of localised and glocalised constructions that complexify meanings of ‘China’, ‘Chinese’, and ‘Chineseness’. She argues for pluralities in understanding constructs of Chineseness especially in the margins, notably in the post-diasporic networks and cities (as opposed to nation-states) of Taipei and Hong Kong, coming to conclusions on how incoherence and inauthenticities shape emerging senses of Chinese transnationality.9 Specifcally writing on performing Chineseness in multicultural Singapore, Chua Beng Huat critiques the state-administered essentialisation of projected huaren (Chinese people)’s characteristics as stereotypes of Confucian ethics.10 Weighing in separately on the same subject, Sy Ren Quah provides a counter-discursive perspective, illustrating how artists and local Chinese literati have contested as well as corroborated these state projections over time, nuancing their shifting stances on national/Singaporean/identity vis-à-vis their afnity to China as the imagined ‘motherland’ in ideological, psychological, and economic terms.11 Over the course of history, Siong Leng’s own approach to managing and problematising the issue of authenticity has not so much functioned as a method of performing Chineseness than keeping the specifc nanyin lineage alive through an articulation of traditional regionality as diasporic specifcity, centred around notions of the performed genre as an important artefact of ‘Hokkien’ identity within the Mandarin-centric exercising of huaren identity in Singapore. This formulation is intersectional and bears the imprint of a cultural Moebius strip and a paradoxical double-consciousness. For Siong Leng, nanyin’s Hokkien roots as traceable to Quanzhou, in China, gave its practice in Singapore a certain ‘traditional’ stamp. At the same time, in context to the rapid urban development and nationalised projection of Singapore as a teched-up city of the future, these ‘traditional’ Hokkien manifestations could also be identifed in themselves as signifcant markers of diasporic identity for many pre-1965 Singaporeans. As such, Hokkien culture also became signifed as a deeply local (Singaporean) culture, far removed from the ofcial ways of ‘being Chinese’ promoted by Beijing. Nanyin performances, ‘traditional’ to a bygone era but also ‘local/ regional’ to both Singapore and the not-Beijing city of Quanzhou, could even be “subaltern”;12 they functioned often as articulations of resistance-cultures to orthodoxies in both China and Singapore. A reinforcement of this sense of the deliberate non-mainstream local has taken place through the invention and inscription of new ‘Singaporean’ content into the form itself. As members of Siong Leng afrm of its late music director Teng Mah Seng, his biggest contribution to the guild was to localise the Southern Chinese genre as a yet even more Southern—Nanyang (Southern Seas)—articulation in Singapore. Shortening tunes in the canonic suites of the zhi, pu, and qu from 20-minute continuous items into disjunct, audience-friendly pieces of fve to eight minutes each, he also wrote new

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literary texts refecting local Singaporean fora and fauna. Many of Teng’s revamped texts made references to Singapore as a garden city, an image popularised by the late prime minister Lee Kuan Yew in greening campaigns of the late 1960s and 1970s. One might frst observe here that Teng’s innovations were made partly in the 1960s’ zeitgeist of new national fervour as Singapore came to be a republic following the end of British rule. During this period, artists and citizens of the new multicultural sovereign-state were eager to shed their colonial heritage while also redefning new relationships to various diasporic hinterlands.13 Second, as with many politicised modernisation campaigns carried out by Chinese arts communities that, for example, saw the formation of symphonic Chinese orchestras from folk ensembles,14 Teng’s adaptations were also made in the name of professionalising art forms so as to refect or take advantage of the needs and oferings of new stage performance norms, opportunities, and audience demographics. The stylisation of tunes into more compact and teleological phrases, with more regular repetitions, were committed to this end. Not surprisingly, Teng’s adaptations were initially met with resistance, both within the nanyin and Hokkien community in Singapore as well as nanyin and Hokkien guilds in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.15 Notwithstanding the academic positioning of authenticity as an ultimately untenable concept as far as an aspired ‘original’ can ever be claimed, this nostalgic need for ‘the original tradition’ was palpably felt, for Siong Leng’s audiences and even some of its members during the 1970s and 1980s. In fact, this period is remembered by current members of the guild as ‘the crisis years’, during which problems of artist succession and audience loss loomed heavily.16 Even today, while most members of the troupe view Teng’s texts as once radical but now incorporated additions to the canon, as recently as the 2000s, a splinter group called the Traditional Nanyin Organisation (Chuantong Nanyin She) had decided to break away from Siong Leng. Citing dissatisfaction with Teng’s pieces as well as developments undertaken by its newer generation of artists, this group of self-declared conservatives viewed the pathway taken by Siong Leng as inauthentic to the broader practice of nanyin in their own aspired orthodox heritage, imagined as particularly maintained in China and Taiwan. The politics of authenticity in safeguarding Chinese culture troped through the imagined and real roles played by diasporic artists in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia, untouched by or escaped from the vicissitudes of and damage to art forms within mainland China itself during the Cultural Revolution, has taken on an interesting spin in Singapore.17 This can be seen in the range of critiques of Siong Leng’s and Teng Mah Seng’s musical innovations as neotraditional or even anti-traditional, differentiated according the chosen transnational loci of separate diasporic Chinese cultural identities among Siong Leng’s detractors. Often, to both conservative and liberal Chinese appreciators of nanyin, it was not only a

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question of whether Teng had tarnished the image and practice of nanyin but also whether his new audiences were ‘Hokkien’, generically ‘Chinese’, or ‘knowing’ enough. Yet, in a matter of a decade or so, other early critics had also come round to the idea that as long as Teng did not label his new tunes nanyin, there was no fault committed.18 Indeed, even these early criticisms in turn have also transformed over time, as Siong Leng’s musicians themselves have come to re-adapt Teng’s 1960s repertoire for yet newer and more contemporary needs in the 2000s, fusing his texts with multimedia and theatrical elements. As newer expressions continue to surface, so have newer generations of appreciators and critics. Today in 2019, Siong Leng’s musicians and directors maintain that innovation has always been a matter of necessity, with audience outreach, portfolio diversifcation, and adaptation to new tastes in a changing, hypermediated world being crucial aspects of a 21st-century business model. Celestina Wang herself spoke of the ‘crisis years’ in the 1980s during which membership dropped signifcantly due to low interest in the:

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very traditional way of doing things. In order to encourage younger generations to stay on or come we had to do something very diferent. . . . The past 20–30 years have been very hard, but we are fnally now in a good place and we will not take it for granted. Some people may say that some of the things we do aren’t nanyin anymore. But that’s ok, I think maybe they are right. But we do these things, so that we also do more traditional nanyin alongside the new shows. They complement each other.19 Wang, a nanyin singer and lute player who had grown up learning the genre in a family context, had herself been at the very heart of the controversy during the 1980s crisis, when Teng had handpicked her to become his successor amid concerns about dilution of Siong Leng’s presumed ‘original’ heritage. In 1992, at the age of 26, she succeeded Teng as chairwoman of the organisation and continued with his reformist campaigns beyond the revision of traditional texts, taking the company into the age of modern dramaturgies and collaborations with non-Hokkien and non-Chinese artists.

Siong Leng in Paris and New York: Chinese cosmopolitanism via Zen aesthetics Some of the bigger artistic projects Siong Leng has undertaken in the past decade have strategically and unabashedly refashioned (assumed) ‘traditional’ models of nanyin performance. In this section, I choose to focus on its lauded and high-profle productions made in conjunction with partners in France and the US. These have been produced as part of touring presentations actively supported by the Singapore government and specifcally facilitated by Singapore’s National Arts Council and the Singapore Tourism Board.

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In 2015, the 75-minute-long Soul Journey, frst conceptualised in 2008, was adapted and restaged in collaboration with the Musée du Quai Branly (later travelling to a theatre in Nantes) as a special showcase made on behalf of Singaporean culture, as part of the Singapour en France—Le Festival. The event, which drew a sold-out audience of primarily Parisians who were regular, cultured, and curious visitors of the museum, was presented as a theatrical rather than music-only production. Deliberate care was placed on lighting, costume design, and dramaturgy. Musicians and their instruments were staged with a view towards encouraging an interactive and immersive experience. Audiences encountered nanyin not only through music and acoustics but also poetry, masks, and movements from nanyin’s associated opera genre, liyuan theatre. Additionally, the concert also incorporated elements of touch, smell, texture, and enhancement of temporal awareness into its musical narrative: light food and drink was served, incense and fres were lit just outside the theatre area, and bowls of water were ofered for audiences to ablute with. While potentially overwhelming in its multi-mediated approach to performance poetics, this deliberately multi-sensorial aesthetic was paradoxically engineered through the channelling of a Zen and pareddown aesthetic, which in turn was styled and imagined by producers as an underlying ethos of nanyin itself. A social media blurb in 2018 posted by Siong Leng on its Facebook page describes Soul Journey in such terms:

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Presented in a minimalist style with strong infuences of Zen philosophy, the music performance will feature movements that depict the cycle of life and self-realisation: Germinate, Awakening, Introspection, Purity, Happiness, Heart and Enlightenment. Chinese instruments, cello, Indian tabla, and vocalscome together to create a unique sound that is traditional, yet fresh and new. Theatrical, dance, lighting and multimedia elements will also enhance this reinterpretation of nanyin.20 Here, two new interactive narrative-framing devices used in the production consciously invoked the notion of ritual: a hand-raising ceremony ofered to queueing audiences and a tea-drinking segment staged with Chinese porcelain teacups. The troupe’s practitioners pointed out that neither of these semi-invented rituals had really featured in its past, regular nanyin performances to communities in Singapore. Neither had they existed as structured elements of performances of nanyin in China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. However, as immersive theatrical experiences alongside the production’s general observance of quiet moments and empty spaces in stripped-down staging areas, the rituals were described by producers as drawing from a deeper Buddhist and spiritual underpinning behind nanyin and traditional Chinese culture at large. This particular framing brings to mind Shih’s assertion of Chinese heterogeneity as “an abstract concept [that] can itself be easily universalised to avoid the hard work of having to sort it through”. Borrowing

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her phraseology, one could by extension argue that nanyin was now “contained by a benign logic of global multiculturalism”;21 its heterogeneous quality expressed through a Singaporean unique selling point/‘take’ on a larger regional genre was now conveniently mapped onto fuzzier notions of East Asian heritage. Such a deliberate confation of ‘ancient’ tradition with new age mysticism, and of stoic meditation with wonderment, was in the words of one of its gibei (nanyin pipa-lute) performers Lyn Lee:

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a nice thing to do for our audiences, and also to get everyone into the mind-set to enjoy the performance. It was also Siong Leng’s own way of contributing to the genre.22 Lee, a classical violinist trained at a local arts college who had come to join Siong Leng ‘accidentally’ after being recruited for a fusion project in the 2010s, is a relatively new addition to the Siong Leng family. Learning nanyin notation in Chinese characters and the gibei from scratch as ‘an outsider’, she talks about how her early struggles with learning and singing in the Quanzhou dialect were mitigated by the warm welcome she received “as a member of the Siong Leng family . . . almost immediately like I was one of them”. Her promotion to principal artist in 2017 was based on her quick uptake of the repertoire and singing styles, and her commitment to the troupe saw her take important roles in high-profle tours, ‘representing Singapore’ overseas most notably in the milestone production at the Musée du Quai Branly in 2015.23 Indeed, as far as press reviews and musicians’ feedback demonstrate, the show in Paris turned out to be a hit with audiences and was revised and restaged in New York later in 2017 in collaboration with the Asia Society, where further media and video previews were promoted across various channels.24 In Singapore, the production was reimagined yet again for a diferent instalment in 2018 at the Esplanade–Theatres on the Bay in newer incarnations, returning as Soul Journey–Nine Songs. Two points can be made about the two overseas productions: the frst is how both shows were marketed as distinctly traditional and refned art forms suited to the cultured palates of cosmopolitan and knowing international audiences in vibrant urban centres such as New York and Paris. To be sure, overseas performances were not the frst for Siong Leng, which already had a history of sending its solo singers to compete in professionalised folk events such as the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod to award-winning success in the 1980s and 2000s. However, Soul Journey was dramatically diferent in its formal and stylistic manifestations. Repackaging nanyin in content as well as in form, away from the temples, makeshift stages, or semi-professional community performances in Singapore (and also in villages in China), the boutique-stylised performances recall Rao’s descriptions of sophisticated spectacle (wrapped up in the language of

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Figure 10.1 Soul Journey projection, Siong Leng Musical Association, New York, 2017.

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Credits: Siong Leng Musical Association.

cultural diplomacy) around the marketing and presentation of jingju star Mei Lanfang in the 1930s among New York’s high social circles.25 In Rao’s account, Mei’s historical performances of jingju demonstrated to diplomats, politicians, high-powered businessmen, and New York’s (white) bourgeoisie had been simultaneously held in stark contrast to the noisy and boisterous xiqu productions targeted at local Chinese diasporic hoi polloi in the same city’s Chinatown district. Ninety years on with Siong Leng, its Paris show of distilled beauty maintained a similar parallel, playing to a particular species of cultured, upper-middle class crowd. That the troupe’s overseas marketing strategy was a success in terms of desired audience demographic is evident through musician Lyn Lee’s account of immediate feedback in Paris and New York: We were very surprised that people came already knowing a little bit about Chinese culture. They were educated. Even in comparison to our local audiences they were very enthusiastic but also respectful. They kept silent at the important parts and clapped only at the end, asking for an encore—which we did not actually prepare for! I think some people were very moved.26

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Figure 10.2 Soul Journey projection, Siong Leng Musical Association, New York, 2017. Credits: Siong Leng Musical Association.

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One might surmise here that Soul Journey’s symbolism was so steeped in Orientalist expectation that its performance became highly theatricalised and distilled in self-essentialist notions of the ‘traditional’. A preview of the event in American media, constructed of the troupe’s promotional material, reads as such: In today’s hectic world Soul Journey provides a rejuvenating experience for the senses and nourishment for the soul and mind. Siong Leng Musical Association, founded in 1941 to preserve nanyin in Singapore, brings the ancient art form to new, contemporary audiences. The association’s principal musicians, in their 20s, have injected outside elements into nanyin, such as keyboard, tabla and a cappella singers, and added multimedia elements to the performances. To mirror the development of nanyin music as it migrated to South and East to Singapore, and to refect Singapore’s multicultural society, the musicians have also brought in traditional Malay and Indian music instruments, such as the kompang and sitar.27 Couched within the celebratory language above lies another key observation that can be made about Siong Leng’s forays into the world of

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cultural capacity-building and brand-making across global cities, that of its productions’ uniquely Singaporean and curated aesthetic bearings. Make no mistake; the nanyin presented was not just ‘traditional’ to the Chinese mainland in Quanzhou and wider Fujian or even to diasporic practices in Taiwan. It had been deliberately localised and improved with a Singaporean favour in its infusion of South Asian and Malay elements drawn from the cultural fabric of the island-state. The company’s harking of ‘ancient culture’ was deliberately made vague and universalised through its explicitly neotraditional and modernistic styles, which included unabashedly and highly curated minimalist presentations identifed as unique to its (Singaporean) creators’ artistic visions. It is the latter aspect of this pared-down presentation in Siong Leng’s productions that have been maintained as the troupe’s characteristic style, in diferentiation to another well-known but now-defunct group known as Hantang Yuefu, led by the Taiwan-born but now China-based Chen Mei-e. As Celestina Wang describes:

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We are not the frst to make nanyin diferent, or to repackage or remodel it. Hantang Yuefu and [the Taiwanese contemporary dance company] Cloud Gate Theatre have always been inspirations. But I think we do it our own way, we are not so glamorous, we are quieter, and we want to respect the quiet aesthetic of nanyin. We reach out to our audiences at home and overseas in ways that only people in our city, in modern Singapore can. And the National Arts Council recognizes this enough to use us as part of its Singapore branding process.28 Wang’s—and by extension Siong Leng’s—acknowledgement and capitalisation of the troupe’s soft power is astute and strategic. As far as its overseas trips are concerned, the troupe’s presentations are parallel exercises in cultural diplomacy and part of a broader and sustainable approach towards drawing from diverse funding sources and (state) support structures in maintaining a wider ecosystem for its institutional survival. Its showcases with overseas partners have by and large been brokered by the Singapore government (via the National Arts Council, the Singapore International Festival of the Arts, and the Singapore Tourism Board), and its tours have been extensively supported by government agencies in marketing, media promotion, and production campaigns. Borrowing from Blanchard and Lu’s model of cultural diplomacy, Siong Leng’s musical productions constituted the ‘form’ element of a soft power campaign; its cosmopolitan audiences in important European and American cities made for its “targets”, and membership to an elite global community comprised its “context”.29 In terms of a campaign ‘message’, these productions—in their slick, professional, and neotraditional immersive engagements presented as rarefed oferings overseas—specifcally located Singapore as an aspirationally cosmopolitan state that had fnally arrived on the global platforms of international

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culture-making, now backed up and attested to by artists and audiences with deliberately cultivated notions of taste and class.

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Reaching back to China: capacity-building in the ‘motherland’, professionalised practice, and unaligned standards Siong Leng’s ventures overseas have not always operated as such strategic exercises in state-engineered Singapore branding, however. Outside Europe and the US, since the 1980s, the troupe has been continuously involved in a history of city-to-city (or perhaps more accurately city-to-village) collaborations with a range of organisations in China itself. Here the ensuing diferent kinds of interactions function on agendas separate from the national campaigns described earlier. Rather, they tap into the Singaporean group’s original clan association, and Hokkien networks, in distinct ways. More interestingly, they operate within intersectional approaches at framing Sinophone cultures beyond simplistic mainland diaspora binaries. Indeed, many of the transnational fows I describe below are asymmetrical and multilateral. As Shih writes, at the heart of the heterogeneity found in expressions of Chinese identities in the fringes is a deeply embedded heterogeneity within China itself, and Siong Leng is a case in point.30 But frst, a conventional take on bilateral relations can be made and analysed. Over the years Siong Leng has maintained its diasporic links to both Hokkien clan associations as well as a range of sister nanyin musical associations in China itself. While contact between musical guilds has ebbed and fowed through the decades, the Singapore organisation has irregularly hosted visiting performers from specifc societies coming to Singapore in small-scale, one-of events and short tours. Additionally, it has also sent its own practitioners to China for musical exchange and visiting performer projects. In the past 15  years, following criticism from practitioners in China and Taiwan about the lack of musicians’ grounding in the genre’s basic knowledge of zhi, pu, and qu repertoire, and following doubts over the emphasis on Teng Mah Seng’s shortened and adapted pieces, the troupe also began taking an active approach towards educating a new, younger generation of performers. Among the pathways it pursued was the hiring of well-known and/or rising nanyin practitioners from China to hold training courses for Siong Leng’s younger musicians in Singapore. Artists who have come to stay in the city’s Chinatown headquarters for extended periods of time include Quanzhou-based Cai Yayi in the 2000s and Cai Weibiao more recently in 2009. These moves were twofold: they helped build new musico-cultural foundations direct from the imagined source so as to vouch for the future musical credibility of Siong Leng’s succeeding generations.31 At the same time, the bolstering of links to China assisted in reinforcing links to traditional Chinese and Hokkien diasporic networks in which the troupe operated. These

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collaborations were reciprocal to an extent; apart from receiving training from incoming tutors directly from China, Siong Leng’s younger musicians were also regularly sent out of Singapore for nanyin boot camps in Quanzhou City or its neighbouring villages. In recent years these trips have been organised by Cai Weibiao, who has brought rotating rosters of Siong Leng’s artists to take part in various nanyin courses and classes. Siong Leng’s musician Lyn Lee describes: The trips generally allow us to be humble and learn and experience nanyin in its reality and context in China itself. We also got to experience China and the ways of life there.32 More signifcantly, the trips have served the third purpose of cultural and social capacity-building. Lee says of her visits to China:

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It’s not just a chance for us to learn things; it’s also a chance for us to visit the China guilds and musicians in their everyday lives, it’s important for them to also know that ‘Oh, there are people in Singapore also playing nanyin. And oh, we are all connected in a bigger nanyin family and network. That China has been identifed as the source of nanyin here, for its reeducation campaigns at least, is interesting in the wider debate over authenticity issues in transnational Chinese contexts where, as already mentioned, diasporic enclaves have come to be regarded as the preservation grounds of genres destroyed or corrupted by the artistic pogroms visited by the Cultural Revolution on the ‘mainland’ following the communisation of China.33 For many appreciators of nanyin/nanguan, Taiwan is said to have replaced Quanzhou as the centre of musical life.34 In Siong Leng’s case, it is interesting that Taiwan’s capital Taipei, where a multitude of nanguan groups have fourished over the past seven decades and longer, was not the go-to city for its training programmes. Even the use of the term ‘nanyin’ by Siong Leng, more widespread in China than the term ‘nanguan’ (used in Taiwan), is revelatory in its own right. Part of Siong Leng’s reaching back to China—more specifcally Quanzhou as opposed to Taipei—refects strategised choices in pinpointing cultural loci by its leaders and musicians, partly on account of its desire for broader contextualisation of nanyin as a genre used within liyuan opera (where Quanzhou remains more of a centre than Taipei) and also for reasons of pragmatic economy (where a collaboration with Taipei would be more expensive to fund as opposed to China). While Siong Leng’s practitioners speak of Taipei and its nanguan musicians as ‘inspiration’, particularly via the work of the modernised nanguan troupe Hantang Yuefu, they point out that the group’s music director Wang Xinxin, an acknowledged master of the genre, was born in Quanzhou.35 Where some of Taipei’s more cosmopolitan and internationally travelling

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troupes could be said to ofer models for Singapore’s musicians, it was the need to innovate and adapt. In Singaporean terms, this would in turn become a matter of localised artistic ‘Nanyang-style’ soul-searching. One might argue that, in context to recent Sinophone writings on decentring China via the siting of multiple cultural productions in its fringes, a secondary eddy current generated through the narcissism of smaller diferences in these sub-fows (Singapore rifng of Taiwan) has brought the circulation of Singapore-mediated nanyin back to the mainland, albeit in a very regional/ localised part of it.36 This can be shown in how the acquiring of nanyin skills and knowledge of musical basics was, to Siong Leng’s performers, a matter of reactivating already-existing and historical guanxi-based and personalised connections to specifc guilds on the mainland in the 2010s. While Siong Leng’s musicians acknowledge that the Cultural Revolution did indeed wreak havoc on many art forms and musical lineages, they also remain alert to the fact that newer, rehabilitation campaigns in China itself have allowed nanyin to thrive in Quanzhou and Fujian again, particularly via China’s proclamation of nanyin as a form of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2009 under UNESCO’s cultural safeguarding schema. Siong Leng’s fostering of links to Quanzhou in the Chinese mainland, as well as other cities in the Sinophone world, however, have not only operated along the lines of education and training. Here is where asymmetries in the bilateral fows turned multilateral emerge. Separate to the boot camps and China-imported guest instructors and musical directors, Siong Leng has actively engaged in an institutionalised type of activity with Chinese nanyin partners via the format of the Da hui chang. Launched in 1977 by Singapore’s and Siong Leng’s Teng Mah Seng, this repeating pageant took place in key nanyin city enclaves of China and its diasporas of Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Echoing the celebratory narratives of collaborative cultural projects, which both camoufaged as well as exposed other kinds of diferences, these mini-festivals saw the coming together of 20–30 nanyin and nanguan groups from all over the world.37 Juxtaposed one after another or heard side by side, they performed set pieces in the nanyin repertoire to primarily audiences of each other. Hundreds of artists were featured over three-day to week-long afairs. While the earliest such events featured mainly Chinese, Taiwanese, and Singaporean groups, in recent years, the Da hui chang have showcased troupes from Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, and also Vietnam. The frst Da hui chang was launched in Singapore and functioned by and large as a networking and conference-inspired event for transnational communities of nanyin, nanguan, and liyuan opera practitioners to interact, show-of their distinct diasporic lineages, and explore musical or professional diferences. Over the years, Siong Leng’s participation in these events has been received with mixed reviews. During the 1970s and 1980s, even up till the 1990s, its performances were deemed lacklustre and not up to scratch by their Chinese and Taiwanese compatriots. Lyn Lee recalls with a grimace:

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To be honest, in the beginning we were really Cannot Make It38—we were baad. But the shock of how bad we were then, when we heard other people, and when they put us down, forced us to rethink our path. Do we want to train ourselves up? Or do we want to chase a diferent new path?39 In recent years, following decade-long investment in the education of younger musicians, Siong Leng has received more favourable feedback at its appearances during the Da hui chang. Lyn Lee afrms: Of course, a lot of us are still learning and there is more to go. But people have seen that we have improved greatly, and they mention these things. We understand subtle things like yun, the favour and accents of nanyin originating in Hokkien or Quanzhou dialect. We know more repertoire from the zhi, pu, and qu. We play in tune; we know when to come in slightly out-of-sync according to the aesthetic. Sometimes even our singing is more ‘authentic’ than some of the singers from China who sound more Western and opera-like in their tone. For sure there will be better musicians than us. But they cannot say we are bad performers anymore.

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Beyond grudging acknowledgement of Siong Leng’s recent achievements, at these large-scale events, counterparts in China and Taiwan have often also commented on perceived diferences in notions of professionalism and production values upheld by the Singaporean troupe and Singapore’s arts workers at large. This had become apparently evident in the course of a recent massive Da hui chang production held in Singapore in 2017, during which Siong Leng had reportedly efciently and professionally stagemanaged a series of complex multiple-ensemble movements across diferent venues. Siong Leng’s Celestina Wang speaks of how: Our Chinese counterparts are constantly awed by how we are so professional in the way we hold ourselves, and approach the stage, the demeanour of our musicians, and how we run things smoothly. In some of the China events people just rent a hotel and shufe people around anyhow [sic]; it can be a bit messy. But at the last Da hui chang held in Singapore, we showcased people in a proper theatre, we created a sense of atmosphere, we had lighting and costume designers, we had movement and visual directors, we looked really really professional. We were also very good hosts, we made sure everyone had a good nanyin and Singaporean experience. Maybe we had better facilities in Singapore, but I think it’s also that we have a more dedicated attitude. Everyone was very impressed by that; it shows we are world-class in our approach to performance. Wang’s last statement refects an unsaid dynamic tension at stake in cityto-city collaborations involving Siong Leng in Singapore, vis-à-vis China

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playing the role of the cultural and geographic motherland in transnational Chinese, Hokkien, and nanyin networks. Her words also hark at Singapore’s motivations for self-branding, echoing Saskia Sassen’s evocation of how the insertion of the global into the national is both a process of de-nationalisation as well as re-territorialisation.40 Such diferentiated regional foci of nanyin across the Sinophone world is an interesting lesson in itself: where state-of-the-art theatres are mushrooming up across China’s frst-tier and international cities of Shanghai and Beijing, Quanzhou is (relatively speaking at least for the community-based setups of various semi-professional nanyin groups) neither the same cosmopolitan city of Taipei nor the aspirationally cosmopolitan city that Singapore can be, where ballad-singers are now ‘artists’. At Siong Leng in professionalised Singaporean settings, its guild members bear ofcial titles of ‘associate artist’, ‘principal artist’, and ‘artistic director’, among other designations. While things may yet change with the rapid urbanisation and industrialisation of China’s second- and third-tier cities, leading to the bridging of critical-audience ‘lags’ in cultural catch-up, Quanzhou’s oferings as a centre for nanyin to Siong Leng’s Singaporean performers paradoxically lie in the city’s relative ‘authenticity’ of community and guild-based groups who teach and provide music from ‘the source’ instead of in adapted, reformed, or creatively innovated versions for the modern stage.

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Southeast Asian and inter-Asian networks: Singapore as cultural broker The notion of professionalism invoked by Wang in the last section serves to underline recent moves by the Singapore state and its artists (not just in the nanyin world) to locate the city as an international cultural centre, infrastructurally and socio-economically class-aligned with broader industry standards of global art-making. At the heart of this is a key role enacted and advanced by Singaporean artists, curators, festival directors, and politicians—that of the cultural broker. Here, Siong Leng has also played its part in recent inter-Asian collaborations strategically located in the islandcity ‘hub’ of Southeast Asia and more. Apart from the last Da hui chang event mentioned earlier by Wang, Siong Leng has also hosted several international nanyin conferences and meets. In fact, just a year before his appointment as music director to Siong Leng in 1977, Teng Mah Seng had launched the frst Asian International Nanyin Conference, which had also been the same occasion for the institution of the Da hui chang pageants. More recently in 2015, Siong Leng attempted to stage another large-scale world nanyin conference held across three separate venues of the Drama Centre, the expansive and newly opened Resorts World, and the SOTA Hall, this time ramping up its organisational stakes to include hosting of known names in international nanyin and traditional Chinese music scholarship such as Tian Qing and Wang Ying-fen. It also

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consciously encouraged more troupes in lesser-known parts of the nanyin Chinese diaspora—particularly Indonesia and Vietnam—to join in the festivities. The latter move was strategic in the refocusing of nanyin in Southeast Asia, where Singapore has long held cultural cachet as the centre of ‘Nanyang’ culture. Nanyin could now not only be Chinese, Sinophone, and global but also deeply local and Southeast Asian. More importantly, it was brokered through the aspirationally cosmopolitan afordances of Singapore’s global positionality, cultural infrastructure, and human/artist/audience resources. This reinforced tropes of the tiny Southeast Asian nation as ‘hub’ to and ‘gateway’ of New Asia.41 Alongside such large-scale events, Siong Leng has also used its Singapore base to facilitate smaller boutique-style projects on a workshop basis. In 2016, it hosted musicians from Japan and Korea, schooled in both traditional Japanese and Korean art forms, in a jazz-fusion inspired collaboration that was staged at the Esplanade Rectal Studio. While the event was small-scale and niche, participants and organisers acknowledged that it was a useful ‘hothouse’ environment and provided the basis for experimenting with diferent musical genres and musicians from diferent parts of Asia. The concert was well received by a small, if select and elite, audience. In interviews with Siong Leng’s participants in the inter-Asian project, the takeaway was that it revealed an interesting hierarchy when it came to locating standards of professionalism and aesthetics in an Asian collaboration that did not function solely within a Chinese diasporic context. Lyn Lee for example was:

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very, very impressed by how the Koreans and Japanese carried themselves, and the dedication and discipline they brought to rehearsals, and to stagecraft. . . . In comparison to China we thought we were already quite good at production values. But we realised we had more to learn from them. Also—we were so impressed by their training and longterm dedication to their art forms, whether it was the kayagum Korean zither, or jazz.42 Collectively speaking, and summarising the various sections above, Siong Leng’s approaches to collaborating with diferent and ever-expanding circles of communities of musicians in China, the Chinese diaspora, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Europe, and the US betray intersectionalities in articulations of their artistic cosmopolitanism. Here, one is tempted to apply Gladney’s theory of relational alterity, where cultural allegiance to one community fips into opposite alignment following the relocation of self in widening circles and boundaries of identity.43 For example, within a China and Taiwanlocated context, Siong Leng struggled to fnd its specifcally Singaporean voice and earn its nanyin stripes, locating itself as a would-be fellow competitor among sister nanyin groups in its cultural exchanges and training boot camps. In the wider Southeast Asian diaspora, however, Siong Leng

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became a big sister in partnership alongside Chinese and Taiwanese compatriots, who could collectively encourage other fedgling nanyin groups in the ‘Nanyang’ world along their developmental journey. In cosmopolitan Europe and the US, it could now draw upon and represent the much fuzzier and broader notion of not simply nanyin or Fujianese but Chinese at large— even generically East Asian Buddhist and Zen—aesthetics, albeit with a Singaporean ‘twist’ on an international playing feld. And yet, a straight application of Gladney’s schema without fexibility may also run the risk of oversimplifying the granular nature of cultural operations and collaborations. An intersectional approach taking into consideration theories of Sinophone decentralisation is needed. As can be seen in the two types of activities with Chinese collaborators, Siong Leng’s terms of engagement changed according to function (e.g. education vs capacitybuilding vs forging of diasporic links). Here, notions of aspired ‘international’ professional practice in Singapore versus commitment to community authenticity were constantly recalibrated according to who the cultural and artistic partners were (Southeast Asian artists, Japanese artists, Quanzhou artists, etc.) in the Singapore-partnered collaborations. A broader comment on Siong Leng’s modus operandi on collaboration can be made here by way of a concluding note. To be sure, it is easy to see the troupe’s attempts at cultural negotiation functioning along the vortices of facility hosting and national branding in Singapore and operating in intersecting and ever-widening playing felds of the stage and cultural representation (variously in Asia, Southeast Asia, the Chinese diasporic world, and the imagined ‘West’). However, it is also important to locate Siong Leng and its nanyin/ neo-nanyin practices within a larger context of cultural and economic sustainability. Operating from its headquarters of a historic shophouse building in Chinatown, Siong Leng’s positionality is not only measured in relation to other nanyin communities around the world but also to other Chinese musical ensembles—clan associations devoted to sister Chinese cultural forms such as calligraphy, opera, or lion dancing—and indeed a whole host of other multidisciplinary theatre, dance, and literary companies operating in the area and all competing for a limited pot of funds from the National Arts Council. Within the Chinese musical world, Siong Leng pitches itself as ‘traditional’ and ‘folk’, distinctly diferent from a comparatively wider multitude of normatively schooled ensembles comprising symphonyorchestra-modelled Chinese orchestral groups from across the island. At the same time, Siong Leng continues to explore various fusion and collaborative projects, if only—in the words of Wang: “To stay relevant and keep newer generations and audiences engaged, and refect our own new artist’s choices and creativity”. This, as Wang and her troupe members attest, is a matter of learning to work within a broader ecosystem of cultural economics. Her understanding of this chimes with van Liempt’s and Nakamura’s separate assertions

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that inter-institutional collaborations almost always work on the basis of diversifcation and assemblage and rely on both personal as well as political commitment.44 Apart from jazz, fusion, and world music with ‘multicultural’ elements, Siong Leng’s by now highly diversifed profle includes fundraising balls and multi-sensorial events that are designed around extended food and drink experiences. While it counts the National Arts Council and the Chinese business community among its key patrons, it is also in possession of critical real estate: the frst foor of its centrally located Chinatown shophouse is rented out to provide a baseline income for the troupe. Wang herself could not put it better for an afrmative concluding remark here:

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We can fnally get to the stage of professionalising ourselves. Yes, I think we are still very family- and community-based. But we have to innovate, try diferent avenues. In order to keep on doing the traditional things which maybe are not so popular with younger audiences or cost a lot of money—like the temple outings, we have to try the new things which we end up being criticised for. We have to fund-raise in new ways, create musical banquets, come up with beautiful costumes. We have to learn to collaborate with everyone, and do diferent things all the time. For a professional arts organisation like us, it becomes necessary that we have to do a lot more things than just the arts. Wang’s vision for Siong Leng, thus, must be understood not just within the broader arc of local history but also in its strategic management of notions of authenticity, relative to the geocultural identity of its existence in the city-state of Singapore located as both Chinese, and, beyond Chinese. As with Singapore, Siong Leng is transnational, global and also fnancially viable, technologically facilitated, and community aware. Positioning itself in the ‘traditional Chinese’ cultural marketplace, the group is able to emphasise older diasporic styles perceived as authentic to a bygone, pre–Cultural Revolution era potentially no longer accessible in China itself. And yet, in the face of more recent investment in ofcially rehabilitated ‘traditional’ art forms on the ‘mainland’ as a result of China only recently waking up to the global trend of heritage resource management, the Singaporean group can also deploy its other cosmopolitan identities: it can signify as ‘multicultural’ (as opposed to Chinese) in its Southeast Asian embeddedness, or it can ramp up its ‘modern’ show of technological and aesthetic adherence to international standards and professional production values. Finally, in its networked gestures to both mainland as well as diasporic compatriots, styling everyone as co-learners in a wider, translocal nanyin (as opposed to Chinese, or Southeast Asian) community, Siong Leng demonstrates the ability to lead in capacity-building initiatives. Brokering separate, fnely balanced, and committed stakes in diferent communities and their consequential perspectivities, the once struggling group has learnt how to survive—and thrive into the 21st century.

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Notes 1 Examples of campaigns pushing forward an agenda situating Singaporean local culture as ‘branded’ heritage include the launch of the still-ongoing annual Singapore Heritage Festival in 2004, as well as the state’s intention, in 2019, to submit hawker culture as an item inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. See Melody Zaccheus, “Singapore Submits UNESCO Bid to Recognise Hawker Culture,” The Straits Times, March  29, 2019, www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ singapore-submits-unesco-bid-to-recognise-hawker-culture. 2 See Nora Yeh, “Nanguan Music Repertoire: Categories, Notation, and Performance Practice,” Asian Music 19, no. 2 (1988): 31–70; Ying-fen Wang, “The ‘Mosaic Structure’ of Nanguan Songs: An Application of Semiotic Analysis,” Yearbook for Traditional Music 24 (1992): 24–51; Nora Yeh, “Amateur Music Clubs and State Intervention: The Case of Nanguan Music in Postwar Taiwan,” Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theater and Folklore 141, no. 9 (2003): 95–168. 3 See Charles Gamba, “Chinese Associations in Singapore,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 39, no. 2 (1966): 123–68; ChingHwang Yen, “Early Chinese Clan Organizations in Singapore and Malaya, 1819–1911,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12, no. 1 (1981): 62–91; Wing Chung Ng, “Urban Chinese Social Organization: Some Unexplored Aspects in Huiguan Development in Singapore, 1900–1941,” Modern Asian Studies 26, no. 3 (1992): 15. 4 Lyn Lee, Interview with Shzr Ee Tan, Bukit Pasoh Road, Singapore, August 31, 2018. 5 Ying-fen Wang, “The Transborder Dissemination of Nanguan in the Hokkien Quadrangle Before and After 1945,” Ethnomusicology Forum 25, no. 1 (2016): 58. 6 Ng, “Urban Chinese Social Organization,” 472. 7 Gamba, “Chinese Associations,” 123; Frederick Lau, “Performing Identity: Musical Expression of Thai-Chinese in Contemporary Bangkok,” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 16, no. 1 (2000): 37–69. 8 Kai Khiun Liew and Brenda Chan, “Vestigial Pop: Hokkien Popular Music and the Cultural Fossilization of Subalternity in Singapore,” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 28, no. 2 (2013): 272–98. 9 Shu-mei Shih, Visuality and Identity Sinophone Articulations across the Pacifc (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 4. 10 Chua Beng Huat, “Being Chinese under Ofcial Multiculturalism in Singapore,” Asian Ethnicity 10, no. 3 (2009): 239–50. 11 Sy Ren Quah, “Performing Chineseness in Multicultural Singapore: A Discussion on Selected Literary and Cultural Texts,” Asian Ethnicity 10, no. 3 (2009): 225–38. 12 Liew and Chan, “Vestigial Pop.” 13 Daniel P. Goh, “From Colonial Pluralism to Postcolonial Multiculturalism: Race, State Formation and the Question of Cultural Diversity in Malaysia and Singapore,” Sociology Compass, no. 2 (2008): 232–52. 14 Sooi Beng Tan, “The ‘Huayue Tuan’ (Chinese Orchestra) in Malaysia: Adapting to Survive,” Asian Music 31, no. 2 (2000): 107–28; Kun Fang et al., “A Discussion on Chinese National Musical Traditions,” Asian Music 12, no. 2 (1981): 1–16. 15 Lee, interview, August 31, 2018; Celestina Wang, interview with Shzr Ee Tan, Shuang Lin Temple, Singapore, August 31, 2018. 16 Wang, interview. 17 Shih, Visuality and Identity, 4; Horng Luen Wang, “National Culture and Its Discontents: The Politics of Heritage and Language in Taiwan, 1949–2003,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, no. 4 (2004): 791.

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18 Lyn Lee, interview with Shzr Ee Tan, Bukit Pasoh Road, Singapore, July 5, 2018. 19 Wang, interview. 20 Siong Leng Musical Association, “Facebook,” June 6, 2018, accessed August 23, 2019, www.facebook.com/SiongLengMusicalAssociation/posts/ten-years-afterits-premiere-soul-journey-returns-in-soul-journey-ten-years-a-jo/1835246223163236/. 21 Shih, Visuality and Identity, 7. 22 Siong Leng Musical Association, “About Us,” Siong Leng, www.siongleng.com/ about-us.html, accessed August 23, 2019; Lee, interview, August 31, 2018. 23 Lyn Lee, Interview with Shzr Ee Tan, Bukit Pasoh Road, Singapore, October 22, 2015. 24 “This Week: Soul Journey with Singapore’s Siong Leng Musical Association,” Broadway World, April 25, 2017, www.broadwayworld.com/article/This-WeekSoul-Journey-with-Singapores-Siong-Leng-Musical-Association-20170425; Asia Society, “A Preview of ‘Soul Journey: Traditional Nanyin Music Reimagined,’ ” YouTube, accessed August 23, 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRPS28f5lwo. 25 Nancy Yunhwa Rao, “Racial Essences and Historical Invisibility: Chinese Opera in New York, 1930,” Cambridge Opera Journal 12, no. 2 (2000): 137. 26 Lee, interview, August 31, 2018. 27 “This Week: Soul Journey.” 28 Wang, interview. 29 John M. F. Blanchard and Fujia Lu, “Thinking Hard about Soft Power: A Review and Critique of the Literature on China and Soft Power,” Asian Perspective 36, no. 4 (2012): 566. 30 Shih, Visuality and Identity, 38. 31 Wang, interview. 32 Lee, interview, July 5, 2018. 33 Shih, Visuality and Identity, 4; Wang, “National Culture,” 791. 34 Wang, “Transborder Dissemination,” 58. 35 Lim Ming Fong, interview with Shzr Ee Tan, Singapore, August 31, 2018. 36 Shih, Visuality and Identity; Alison M. Groppe, Sinophone Malaysian Literature: Not Made in China (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2013); Jing Tsu and David Der-wei Wang, “Introduction: Global Chinese Literature,” in Global Chinese Literature, ed. Jing Tsu and David Der-wei Wang (New York: Brill, 2010), 1–13. 37 Daniel C. San and Michael Paul Jordan, “Contingent Collaborations: Patterns of Reciprocity in Museum-Community Partnerships,” Journal of Folklore Research: An International Journal of Folklore and Ethnomusicology 52, no. 1 (2015): 41. 38 ‘Cannot Make It’, or CMI is local Singlish parlance for the state of falling below the expected standard. 39 Wang, interview. 40 Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 18–19. 41 See Audrey Yue, “Cultural Governance and Creative Industries in Singapore,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 12, no. 1 (2006): 17–33; Can-Seng Ooi, “Brand Singapore: The Hub of ‘New Asia’,” in Destination Branding, ed. Nigel Morgan, Annette Pritchard, and Roger Pride (Oxford: Elsevier, 2007), 242–60. 42 Lee, interview, July 5, 2018. 43 Dru C. Gladney, “Relational Alterity: Constructing Dungan (hui), Uygur, and Kazakh Identities Across China, Central Asia, and Turkey,” History and Anthropology 9, no. 4 (1996): 445–77. 44 Ilse van Liempt, “Safe Nightlife Collaborations: Multiple Actors, Conficting Interests and Diferent Power Distributions,” Urban Studies 52, no. 3 (2015): 486–500; Hidenori Nakamura, “Report Part Title: Appendix 1: City-toCity Cooperation for Environmental Education—Initiatives Implemented by CITYNET,” Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (2011): 49–77.

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Bibliography Blanchard, John M. F., and Fujia Lu. “Thinking Hard About Soft Power: A Review and Critique of the Literature on China and Soft Power.” Asian Perspective 36, no. 4 (2012): 565–89. Chua Beng Huat.  “Being Chinese under Ofcial Multiculturalism in Singapore.” Asian Ethnicity 10, no. 3 (2009): 239–50. Fang, Kun, Keith Pratt, Robert Provine, and Alan Thrasher. “A Discussion on Chinese National Musical Traditions.” Asian Music 12, no. 2 (1981): 1–16. Gamba, Charles. “Chinese Associations in Singapore.”  Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 39, no. 2 (1966): 123–68. Gladney, Dru C. “Relational Alterity: Constructing Dungan (hui), Uygur, and Kazakh Identities Across China, Central Asia, and Turkey.” History and Anthropology 9, no. 4 (1996): 445–77. Goh, Daniel P. “From Colonial Pluralism to Postcolonial Multiculturalism: Race, State Formation and the Question of Cultural Diversity in Malaysia and Singapore.” Sociology Compass, no. 2 (2008): 232–52. Groppe, Alison M. Sinophone Malaysian Literature: Not Made in China. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2013. Lau, Frederick. “Performing Identity: Musical Expression of Thai-Chinese in Contemporary Bangkok.” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 16, no. 1 (2000): 37–69. Liempt, Ilse van. “Safe Nightlife Collaborations: Multiple Actors, Conficting Interests and Diferent Power Distributions.” Urban Studies 52, no. 3 (2015): 486–500. Liew, Kai Khiun, and Brenda Chan. “Vestigial Pop: Hokkien Popular Music and the Cultural Fossilization of Subalternity in Singapore.”  Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 28, no. 2 (2013): 272–98. Nakamura, Hidenori. “Report Part Title: Appendix 1: City-to-City Cooperation for Environmental Education—Initiatives Implemented by CITYNET.” Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (2011): 49–77. Ng, Wing Chung. “Urban Chinese Social Organization: Some Unexplored Aspects in Huiguan Development in Singapore, 1900–1941.” Modern Asian Studies  26, no. 3 (1992): 469–94. Ooi, Can-Seng. “Brand Singapore: The Hub of ‘New Asia’.” In Destination Branding, edited by Nigel Morgan, Annette Pritchard, and Roger Pride, 242–60. Oxford: Elsevier, 2007. Quah, Sy Ren. “Performing Chineseness in Multicultural Singapore: A Discussion on Selected Literary and Cultural Texts.” Asian Ethnicity 10, no. 3 (2009): 225–38. Rao, Nancy Yunhwa. “Racial Essences and Historical Invisibility: Chinese Opera in New York, 1930.” Cambridge Opera Journal 12, no. 2 (2000): 135–62. Sassen, Saskia. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Shih, Shu-mei. Visuality and Identity Sinophone Articulations across the Pacifc. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Siong Leng Musical Association. “About Us.” Siong Leng. Accessed August  23, 2019. www.siongleng.com/about-us.html. Swan, Daniel C., and Michael Paul Jordan. “Contingent Collaborations: Patterns of Reciprocity in Museum-Community Partnerships.” Journal of Folklore Research: An International Journal of Folklore and Ethnomusicology  52, no. 1 (2015): 39–84.

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Tan, Sooi Beng. “The ‘Huayue Tuan’ (Chinese Orchestra) in Malaysia: Adapting to Survive.” Asian Music 31, no. 2 (2000): 107–28. “This Week: Soul Journey with Singapore’s Siong Leng Musical Association.” Broadway World, April 25, 2017. www.broadwayworld.com/article/This-WeekSoul-Journey-with-Singapores-Siong-Leng-Musical-Association-20170425. Tsu, Jing, and David Der-wei Wang. “Introduction: Global Chinese Literature.” In Global Chinese Literature, edited by Jing Tsu and David Der-wei Wang, 1–13. New York: Brill, 2010. Wang, Horng Luen. “National Culture and Its Discontents: The Politics of Heritage and Language in Taiwan, 1949–2003.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, no. 4 (2004): 786–815. Wang, Ying-fen. “The ‘Mosaic Structure’ of Nanguan Songs: An Application of Semiotic Analysis.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 24 (1992): 24–51. ———. “Amateur Music Clubs and State Intervention: The Case of Nanguan Music in Postwar Taiwan.” Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theater and Folklore 141, no. 9 (2003): 95–168. ———. “The Transborder Dissemination of Nanguan in the Hokkien Quadrangle Before and After 1945.” Ethnomusicology Forum 25, no. 1 (2016): 58–85. Yeh, Nora. “Nanguan Music Repertoire: Categories, Notation, and Performance Practice.” Asian Music 19, no. 2 (1988): 31–70. Yen, Ching-Hwang. “Early Chinese Clan Organizations in Singapore and Malaya, 1819–1911.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12, no. 1 (1981): 62–91. Yue, Audrey. “Cultural Governance and Creative Industries in Singapore.” International Journal of Cultural Policy 12, no. 1 (2006): 17–33. Zaccheus, Melody. “Singapore Submits UNESCO Bid to Recognise Hawker Culture.” The Straits Times, March  29, 2019. www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ singapore-submits-unesco-bid-to-recognise-hawker-culture.

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11 Minor translocalism Messy and marginal networks in and beyond Singapore. An interview with Tan Suet Lee

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Amanda Rogers This interview focuses on the work of the playwright Tan Suet Lee, who was born in the UK to Malaysian parents but who has lived for nearly 30 years in Singapore. Coming late to playwriting after training as a chartered accountant, Tan’s experience of becoming a writer is, as she puts it, “messier” than most. It is also marked by feelings of being an outsider to theatre scenes in Singapore and London, refecting the challenges of straddling multiple locations of cultural and creative belonging. Tan is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing (playwriting) at Swansea University and is developing new plays that refect her dual, culturally located optic, such as Going Wild in the Country, about the racism faced by a British Chinese girl growing up in Thatcher’s Britain in the 1980s, and The Only Son, about the disruption faced by a same-sex couple living in Singapore when the sperm donor’s father claims paternity to the couple’s son.1 The interview was conducted via Skype on July 25, 2019, with Tan in Singapore. In the interview, we discuss Tan’s connections to Singaporean and British East Asian theatre worlds, the way in which the fuidity of identity is harnessed to try and gain production opportunities, and the difculty of establishing and maintaining networks in and across diferent places. In the process, particular cities (notably London), locations, and people are revealed as key components in connecting communities of practice across borders, including in the digital realm. Importantly, however, these connections vary in their degree of success: at times, a particular person or place opens up key development or production opportunities, but equally there are loose ends, unfnished plans, and missed boats. Indeed, the drive to get one’s work ‘out there’ can lead to plays being submitted to a range of locations internationally without anything materialising. Underpinning the interview is a sense that a whole sphere of transnational theatrical production exists that is grounded in marginal cultures, ones that provide support, empowerment, and creative development. Elsewhere, I have examined these alternate worlds by considering the extent to which practitioners who are rendered marginal by mainstream theatre worlds owing to their racial identity can develop, and then harness, international networks to open up creative opportunities abroad that are unavailable to

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them at home.2 However, such spaces of activity are often uneven, tenuous, and fragile. Marginalisation is contingent upon context, and the multiplicity and intersectionality of identities mean that practitioners may be able to leverage one part of their identity in order to develop their collaborative opportunities and creative practice in one place that they may not be able to do in another. It is tempting, for instance, to suggest that practitioners of East or South East Asian descent in the UK fnd greater opportunities in ‘Asia’, but as this interview demonstrates, this is complicated by language, culture, and gender, with Tan fnding synergies with other female playwrights and companies in particular. Inhabiting the margins can therefore be a fuid experience, with Tan’s creative life at times also criss-crossing with mainstream worlds, depending upon the opportunities accessed. A key example of this is her play The Swing,3 based on her familial experience in Malaysia, developed at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company’s Playwriting Retreat in Umbria, Italy, read at La MaMa in New York, with excerpts also read at the British East Asian new writing showcase Foreign Goods held at Theatre 503 in London.4 The play was then published by Oberon Books as part of the Foreign Goods anthology.5 The trajectory of this work illustrates the simultaneity of marginality and mainstream that a creative practitioner and their work can occupy, with The Swing being developed via funding from the National Arts Council of Singapore, at an established, internationally recognised but, nevertheless, avant-garde theatre venue. It was then performed as part of a British East Asian theatre showcase. British East Asian artists are a racial minority in British theatre, even as they make strides into gaining wider creative visibility and recognition (something signalled by the anthology’s publication by a leading publisher of new plays). Conceptually, the conversation refects how creative practice can work as a form of what I call ‘minor translocalism’. This idea combines Michael Peter Smith’s pioneering work on “translocalism”,6 on the material, social, and imaginative transnational connections between urban locations, and postcolonial literatures on “minor transnationalism”7 that emphasise the cross-border relationships between marginal groups in ways that do not always take dominant cultures and imaginations as their primary point of reference. A minor translocalism emphasises connectedness and the potential for mobility across localities, but it also highlights that the fows often associated with transnational cultures of exchange are not always smooth.8 Rather, cross-border relationships can be more tenuous as well as multidirectional and rhizomatic. The potential of thinking about minor translocalism lies in how it draws attention to spaces of transnational mobility that are not elite. There is a danger in some literatures on transnationalism of over-emphasising elite spaces of fast-paced, frictionless fow, with not enough attention paid to the orderings underpinning and being created by cross-border worlds.9 Instead, thinking translocally in a minor key emphasises the inequalities that are reproduced through being located in particular places, the concomitant in/ability to access particular resources, as well

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as the political potential and cultures of belonging that marginal worlds can create. Minor translocalism can therefore highlight transversal relationships, the halting, stop-start networks of collaboration and individual praxis between cities, and the smaller organisations, individuals, and cultures that help to constitute creative forms of transnationalism. I know you were born here in the UK, so can you start by talking about how you became a playwright in Singapore? TSL: My parents are both Malaysian Chinese. My father came to England in around 1959. He hitchhiked—so that’s an interesting story in itself— from a small village in Kedah in Malaysia to England. My mother also came from Kedah. They didn’t know one another, but she came to be a nurse at St Charles Hospital in London in 1961. They met at a party at Malaysia Hall in London and they got married. So I  was born in London at St Mary’s Hospital. But from the age of nine, I grew up in Farnborough, Hampshire, and lived there until I was 26 when I came to Singapore. I took what was supposed to be a one-year trip to Asia, frst stop Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tokyo and then back to England, with some side-tracks of to China and Thailand. I don’t think I specifcally thought of it as a ‘back to my roots trip’ at the time but most people thought that’s what the trip was. I was curious about these places that I had read about or seen on television; these places where the people looked more like me. I was curious to know if I would ft in. I had never been to any countries in Asia other than Malaysia and Singapore.

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AR:

When I  arrived in Singapore in November  1991, my frst stop, I  realised I didn’t have much money, so I got a temporary job in an accounting frm thinking, “I’ll work there for six months because it’s peak period and get some money and then continue on my journey.” However, one day, at the photocopier, I  got talking to a manager, a Singaporean who had recently returned from England. We did not get on at all, but a year and a half later, we were married! And that is how a one-year trip turned into a lot longer! After I got married, I had two sons. Being a parent is all-consuming, so in my mid-30s, I felt the need to reinvent myself, and I thought why not try acting, something very diferent from accountancy. But I wasn’t very good at it! What I did enjoy was reading the scripts and thinking about how they worked. This led me to sign up for a playwriting workshop with TheatreWorks conducted by Tan Tarn How. From that I had my frst play performed at (the now discontinued) Singapore Buskers Festival in 2001. That workshop kick-started my love for playwriting, but my development as playwright since then hasn’t been straightforward. In some ways it has been quite messy. AR: What do you mean by messy? TSL: I  mean my development as a

playwright has not been supported by any theatre company. Being attached to a theatre company has many

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benefts. These include access to other creatives, mentors, and the resources and space to experiment with diferent ideas and techniques. At the early draft stage, the writer benefts from the input from directors, actors, and other creatives. She then goes away and reworks it. This back and forth process can go on for months, a year or even more. Hearing Voices, the one-year programme developed by TheatreWorks, which I  participated in during 2002, tried to give us that experience, and it was very useful. But after the programme, there was this, “So what now? How do I continue developing as a playwright?” Without the support of a theatre company, you don’t have the infrastructure and budget to continue reworking a piece until it is stage ready. So you have to fnd a way to recreate that support by joining writing groups, attending workshops, or cajoling actor friends to read your script for a cup of cofee. You have to create your own community; if you want to grow as a playwright, you have to be driven, work hard, network, and make things happen. AR: Who gets those opportunities then? TSL: Most established theatre companies in Singapore have resident playwrights who have access to directors and actors and a ready platform to present and promote their work. Some of these playwright/director relationships go back decades, as in The Necessary Stage or W!ld Rice. On the other hand, Checkpoint Theatre, co-founded by Huzir Sulaiman, fnds most of their writers from the playwriting course that Huzir teaches at the National University of Singapore (NUS). In addition to the English-language theatres, there’s Chinese theatre, Malay theatre, and Tamil theatre groups, but they have their own ecosystems from which they draw their own playwrights. In 2014, the National Arts Council opened Centre 42, a space to present and develop new writing. However, there are still limited avenues for fnancial support to take a play from initial read to full production. Aside from the limited spaces, what plays are chosen for development depends on the artistic voice of the company. In Singapore, there is a strong desire for a true ‘authentic’ Singaporean voice. This can be problematic for me. Although I  have lived in Singapore for nearly 30 years now, my accent is still very British, and, despite my best eforts, my Singlish is quite poor. Some people even think I put on a fake accent. This can create distance, between me and other creatives, and even the audience. I remember once, after watching A Second Life,10 an audience member said, “It’s not a very Singaporean play, is it?” I wasn’t sure what she meant, and if that was a good or a bad thing. But it’s comments like that, that reinforce the idea that, “You’re not one of us”, and “You can’t tell our stories.” I didn’t grow up here. I  didn’t experience the pressures of the Singaporean school system, and I  haven’t really lived in the heartlands. My experience is growing up in England on a council estate in the home counties in the 1970s and ’80s, and being the only Chinese girl at school. I try to bring

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that outsider’s perspective to the stories I set in Singapore, in the hope that they ofer something diferent. Whether that successfully translates into an authentic Singaporean voice is hard to say. But Singapore is a global city with diverse citizens, so I feel perhaps the idea of the ‘Singapore story’ needs to be more fuid. Also joining the theatre community in my late 30s with two young children probably hasn’t helped. At that age, I was neither an established playwright nor was I a ‘young emerging playwright’. I didn’t have an easy ft. Nevertheless, I have soldiered on. I’m 54 now, and I’ve been writing for quite a while! The type of plays I write may also be a factor. Maybe they aren’t sexy, or political, or edgy enough. People say my work is “poignant”, “heart wrenching”, “funny”. I need to fnd the right outlet, or if it doesn’t exist, fnd a way to create it! AR: So how have you got your work produced—let’s start in Singapore? TSL: In terms of Singapore, I  had a play called Sperm11 performed at the Singapore Theatre Festival in 2008. In those days there wasn’t a formal open call like there is now, so I submitted the script cold to Ivan Heng. His feedback was that he liked it, but it was too short to be included. Later, it was accepted as one of four plays in a collection called Blood Binds produced by Magdalena (Singapore).12 Most of my creative opportunities have come from my playwriting peers in Singapore or through initiatives proposed by actor friends. A few of my playwriting friends have set up their own theatre companies to provide a platform for their own works and for others. For example, Jean Tay set up Saga Seed Theatre, Marcia Vanderstraaten co-founded Dark Matter Theatrics, and Jacke Chye set up Playground Entertainment. They have provided me with several opportunities to do readings of my work. I have also had my work produced by smaller outfts. A Second Life was produced by Little Red Shop, a small theatre collective set up by Richard Chua. Working with smaller outfts is very collaborative, and everybody chips in and uses whatever skills they have. For example, because I’m an accountant, I sometimes get involved in preparing budgets or writing funding requests. There are budget pressures, and everyone is very cost conscious. For A Second Life, The Arts House supported our venue space, and one of the actors helped us rent his multifunction room for rehearsals. My director, Yeo Hon Beng, is amazing. He was the director, costume designer, set designer, and sound designer. With help from an assistant, he also did all the stage management. He was a one-man band. Being so understafed, the work may not have the spit and polish of big stage shows, but they are earnest and heartfelt, and there is a strong feeling of camaraderie and ownership. AR: But you’ve not only had your work developed, read, or produced in Singapore, so how have you made those connections? TSL: Internationally it’s been the same sort of thing—through friends, or going to workshops, doing readings, networking, and developing a community.

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Figure 11.1 A  staged reading of Tan Suet Lee’s The Swing by Saga Seed Theatre, Singapore.

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Credits: Tan Suet Lee.

For example, in 2006, I did a reading of Shopping with Ang at Crossroads Festival in Singapore produced by Magdalena (Singapore). One of the participants at the reading was a drama educator from Thammasat University in Bangkok. Afterwards she said to me, ‘I’d like to translate this piece into Thai, because I feel it would resonate with Thai audiences.’ Her students did a reading of the play in 2007. Recently I received a rejection from the ‘Hello, my name is . . . Festival’,13 but one of the producers liked the piece I submitted, My Beautiful Companion,14 and she emailed saying she would like to try and get it produced separately either in the UK or in Singapore. It might not come to anything, but it helps soften the sting of rejection knowing that your work might still have legs. David Tse [the former artistic director] of Yellow Earth Theatre was my connection to getting Shopping with Ang into the Typhoon Festival, London, in 2004. I heard David talk on a BBC Radio 4 programme about the British Chinese,15 and I was so excited to hear ‘my story’ on mainstream British media that I wrote to him saying how much I enjoyed the programme. When I told him I was a playwright, he asked me to submit for Typhoon.

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So the answer is submit whenever you have the opportunity, and get your work out there. AR: How do you make those choices then about where you submit your work? TSL: For me it’s often through friend recommendations and networks, word of mouth, maybe Facebook. For example, I submitted a play to the Lark Theatre in New York a few years ago on the recommendation of my friend Jean (Tay), who has submitted to them before. AR: But are you trying to match your work to specifc identity- or placebased experiences? So a play about women could be sent to a women’s writing festival, and then there is being of South East Asian descent, can you even harness living in Singapore? TSL: Yes, all of the above. I think the themes and topics I write about are usually informed by one, or sometimes all, of these labels or experiences. One thing that is quite consistent is that I like to tell the stories from a female perspective, with a female protagonist. The Swing is a good example of all three labels coming into play. But it depends. However, I don’t always know how to label myself. If you’d asked me years ago, I’d probably have said, “I’m British, but my parents are from Malaysia, and I live in Singapore.” But now, I can capture my hyphenated background simply by calling myself British East Asian. If I want to be more specifc, I can say, “South East Asian.” Given the fuidity of these labels, I use whatever I feel may add to my advantage! At the end of the day, there’s such a shortage of platforms to get your work produced that you’ve got to maximise your chances by playing to your strengths or whatever you can sell. I’m coming across as a real snake salesman! But if you don’t have the support of a theatre company, you have to do that; to get work out there, you have to leverage what you can. So you’re right; if they want international, then I’ll say I’m Singaporean. I applied to the Royal Court International Playwright’s Programme as a Singaporean playwright! I don’t have a Singapore passport, but I’ve lived here 30 years, and a lot of my work is set in Singapore and about Singaporeans, so I see that as a fair description, even though if we’re talking passports, then that’s not strictly true. When Jingan Young16 frst put the call out for female writers with East or South East Asian backgrounds for the Foreign Goods showcase at Theatre 503, it was the frst time I thought, “That fts me perfectly, I don’t even have to explain myself.” That was one of the few times, and that was just a call I saw on Facebook, and I got The Swing published in full with Oberon as part of the collection from that showcase. AR:

Thinking about this, I don’t like to put it this way, but all of these identities are perhaps marginal in some way, certainly from a UK point of view, so I wondered if that marginality perhaps has infuenced your perspective on your professional world(s)? I mean the way you have talked

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so far, you seem to have placed yourself on the edge of the Singaporean theatre world as well. TSL: Exactly. I think in both worlds [the UK and Singapore] I feel to some extent an outsider. I’m never enough British or enough Singaporean. I  am someone who lives between these worlds, and that does create challenges. The last few years I  have seen the British East Asian arts community grow enormously in numbers and strength. However, because I’m not in the UK for long periods, I am not plugged into the community as much as I’d like. I am Facebook friends with some of the BEA actors, and I try to attend as many productions or events as I can. But I  don’t have the same strong community of support that I  have in Singapore. When I’m in the UK, I  usually stay in the home counties with my family, so it is costly to travel back and forth to London where most of the work and networking happens. I’m still working on building a network in London; I’m always on the lookout for future collaborators to create new opportunities. Often after a show, I  will approach a writer or an actor and compliment or discuss their work. After that we might stay in contact via Facebook. Jennifer Lim,17 an actress, director, and producer, whom I met at Yellow Earth’s Typhoon Festival in 2004, has been very supportive and helpful in connecting me with other BEA creatives. She also directed a reading of A Second Life at Woolfson and Tay Bookshop in London in 2013. As I wasn’t plugged into the BEA community, she helped source the venue and the actors. Without leveraging on her help, it would have been a lot harder to have had the reading. So again, it’s all about relationships and a supportive network. AR: What about your experience with LoNyLa with A Second Life? Did that enable you to develop connections or establish new ones in the UK or elsewhere? TSL: In 2011, through friends, I met an American playwright called Drayton Hiers who was in Singapore doing an MFA in dramatic writing at NYU Tisch Asia, Singapore. He put the word out that he was interested in reading some local work, and I submitted A Second Life. He then contacted me and said he was interested in doing a reading of the play for LoNyLa Singapore. LoNyLa was founded by Dakota Powell, an American artist, writer, and director, who is interested in the use of technology in theatre and the idea of harnessing the web to screen readings of plays across borders internationally.18 This was really a predecessor of something like NT Live and a really exciting concept. A few of us, Jean Tay and Chong Tze Chien, from The Finger Players, had readings of our plays this way. The reading would take place at NYU Tisch Asia’s drama studio in Singapore, and then depending on the local organisers, it was webcast in London, Los Angeles, and New York. My reading was due to webcast at the Woolfson and Tay bookshop in Southwark, but unfortunately, there was a hitch with the technology, so it didn’t

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Amanda Rogers happen in the end. Audiences were also able to join the reading online live in real time and give feedback. That’s quite common now, but it was a cool thing at that time getting feedback straightaway. A friend of mine in Leeds did that. One of the problems with live international webcasts is the time diference. For example, my webcast started at 8 pm at night in Singapore, but in UK it was 12 pm, and nobody skips lunch to watch a play. I have a director friend in the US, whom I met at the Magdalena Project’s Transit Festival in 2009, and she sometimes says, “Hey I’ve got a show that I’m doing, it’s got a live feed, do you want to watch it?” But because of the time diference, it’s dinner time in Singapore, and that isn’t convenient.

However, I think it is a great idea being able to access new works in diferent countries online in real time and have a discussion with the creatives and audience. Out of the three plays in Singapore, I think the LoNyLa set up worked best for Tze Chien’s play, The Book of Living and Dying, which was inspired by his trip to Tibet. He had an audience in London and New York, and he got some interesting feedback, as those artists were experiencing the play through their particular flters, which is especially useful if the play is going to travel. It can help the playwright localise where necessary or at least manage expectations of how the play might be received. LoNyLa also ofered another way to connect with international actors and directors which again opened up the possibility of future collaborations. But although LoNyLa presented itself as the potential to access the world’s audience, I don’t think it fully realised this because of the lack of awareness and support from wider theatre communities. So these small-scale experiments have the potential to make connections, but whether they are realised is a more open question. Just to move on, I wondered if you could talk more about some of your mainstream support, like your La MaMa experience, which I guess has come particularly from the Singaporean end? TSL: Yes. I had a reading in New York at La MaMa after being sponsored by the National Arts Council of Singapore to attend a La MaMa playwriting workshop in Umbria. It was there that I experienced a big shift in my work. I was very lucky to have Erik Ehn as the facilitator who is very generous and supportive and has a very unusual approach to teaching playwriting. He never talked about character, storyline, or subtext. Instead, he made us do daily writing and movement exercises. I found his ‘Write anything!’ approach very liberating. I remember one of the writing exercises involved sellotaping something like 30 pieces of A4 paper together to make a pattern, and then we had to write on that pattern! No plays were read except our own. Instead he gave us lots of poetry and made us do drawings. We even had to make paper boats and foat them! It was very obtuse and unorthodox, but I found

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AR:

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it so freeing. I have always liked dance and movement, but I had never thought of dance as a way into my writing. Then there is Umbria, which is a gorgeous place. Every day, before breakfast, I and a few other writers would take a walk past olive groves, and that would set us up for the day. That balance of being physically and mentally present. Also, as a mum, I was grateful to leave all my domestic concerns in Singapore and simply focus on being a writer. AR: Was that where you started to develop The Swing? TSL: Yes. Before La MaMa I  always began a play by thinking about the plot and the characters. But this time, my focus was a single image—the swing, the swing was the protagonist. I’d never worked in that way before. I frst met the swing on my frst trip to my grandmother’s home in Malaysia when I was seven years old. 1972. When I arrived, everything was unfamiliar, the language, the weather, the smell, the people. Outside my grandmother’s house was a swing. This is very common in South East Asia. After my parents went into the house, I  stayed outside, unsure and uneasy with the strangeness of everything, but I found comfort sitting on the swing. So my frst connection with this ‘foreign land’ of Malaysia was through the swing. That eased me into my roots if you like. But swings are also communal places. The weather is very hot and humid in Malaysia, so in the old days it was very common for family and neighbours to congregate around the swing after dinner. The men might smoke, the old women eat raw peanuts, the children run around playing, and the studious read books under the dim light. It was a communal place where dreams were announced and shared. Every time I  visited my grandmother, which wasn’t that often in the early days, because aeroplane tickets were expensive, I would always sit on the swing. It was in 2010, I think, I was at my grandmother’s house for the Chinese New Year—she had passed away by then—and as I sat on the swing and watched my children play around it, it struck me how the swing was a witness to my family’s history. This swing, or at least an incarnation of it, had witnessed all the births and deaths, the big and small things of my family, and it was then the seed was planted to one day write a play about it. However, the seed did not germinate until La MaMa. With Erik’s encouragement, I found the courage to write about the swing in a way that was diferent from my usual style of writing. The play weaves in poetry with naturalistic dialogue. I wanted to use poetry not to make literal sense but to evoke or create a sense of the emotion rising. Whether it’s successful or not, I don’t know. When I came back to Singapore, I wanted to keep experimenting, but for now I’ve gone back to the more traditional form of writing. Perhaps, it’s time to go on another La MaMa playwriting workshop! I don’t know if it’s the physical landscape of Singapore, a very pragmatic place that feeds the more structured writer in me, or whether it is my lifestyle here, but

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that’s where I’m at now. I’m hoping the PhD will give me more opportunities to experiment and fnd diferent ways to tell my stories. Is that where Swansea fts? It is breaking the mould—because Swansea is a small place to end up in some ways coming from Singapore? TSL: It’s true, how did I end up in Swansea?! Again, it was through a recommendation. I got to a stage where I was tired of knocking on doors, getting rejected, and thinking, “Why? Is it because I’m an accountant turned playwright? Or because I  don’t have the proper credentials?” I’ve got no theatre experience; I’m not an actor or a director. I felt that if I’m going to call myself a playwright, I want at least one paper qualifcation that says that I can write. Very Asian! AR:

I was sharing this with my friend Verena Tay, a writer, who was heading to Swansea University to do a PhD supervised by David Britton. David has a long history with Singapore theatre and TheatreWorks, and as it happened, when I told her, she said, “I’m meeting David on Sunday, do you want to meet him, maybe he can share more about the creative writing programme at Swansea.” I  hadn’t heard of it, but when I  checked it out, I  thought, “This is exactly what I want, the opportunity to try diferent genres, because maybe I’m getting rejected from playwriting because I’m not a playwright, I’m a poet, or a short story writer, or a fction writer.” After my experience at Swansea University, I am more comfortable saying, “I’m a writer.” I know that even though I write plays, I can write short stories and poetry. In fact, in 2017, after submitting a collection of poems to the Golden Point Award, a premier creative writing competition in Singapore, I won a prize. But I still call myself a playwright, because that’s what I enjoy, writing. I  am just interested in this marginal/mainstream dynamic, big places, small places, how they ft together. TSL: I  don’t consider myself mainstream, because I’m not attached to a theatre company. I’m not a household name that is well known in the wider theatre community. As I have said before, my artistic opportunities come from a loose network of friends and connections in Singapore and overseas. My development as a writer is very much directed by my own wallet and the opportunities I choose to accept or reject. There is always the thought that if I’d pushed harder, or tried to do the ‘right thing’, I might be more successful. But I don’t mind being on the margins. [Long pause]. So maybe that’s where I ft, that has just dawned on me now, that’s why the silence. I’ve always thought I’ve been pushed to the margins, because of my age, or my hyphenated origin, but maybe I chose the margins, and it is up to me to make the best of it. [Pause]. One of the advantages of being on the margins is that you have creative control, because you’re literally doing everything anyway. Whereas if I was a cog in a bigger machine, the producer may say, “No that’s not

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AR:

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going to sell, let’s change that character to a young girl, or a guy”, and you’re going to have to do it, because you’re just one cog in a big wheel. When you’re on the margins, you have much more say. I  mean, my plays have always been produced as I’ve wanted them to be produced; I’ve never had to compromise. In that way, I’ve been quite lucky. [Pause] Did I choose the margins or did the margins choose me? Is it a selfperpetuating cycle? I feel I’ve been pushed to the margins, so I operate in the margins, but then I quite like the margins, and I choose the margins, so I don’t really get out of it. Is that it? Recently, I got rejected again for the Singapore Theatre Festival. It’ll be interesting to see if they’ve chosen younger and newer writers. “Menopausal and still emerging” is always a hard sell! But there is always the margins.

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Notes 1 Going Wild in the Country and The Only Son were written as part of Tan’s MA in Creative Writing at Swansea University in 2016/17. 2 See Amanda Rogers, “British Chinese Performance in Minor Transnational Perspective,” in Contesting British Chinese Cultures, ed. Ashley Thorpe and Diana Yeh (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 241–60; Amanda Rogers, Performing Asian Transnationalism: Theatre, Identity and the Geographies of Performance (New York: Routledge, 2015). 3 The Swing explores the hopes and dreams of the Chinese diaspora through the eyes of Mei Sun, her mother, and her daughter Shirley. 4 The frst showcase, of which The Swing was part, was held on November  9, 2016, at Theatre 503, London. 5 Jingan Young, ed., Foreign Goods (London: Oberon Books, 2018). 6 Michael Peter Smith, Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). 7 Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, “Introduction: Thinking Through the Minor, Transnationally,” in Minor Transnationalism, ed. Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 8. 8 Rogers, Performing Asian Transnationalism. 9 Ulf Hannerz, Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places (London: Routledge, 1996). 10 A Second Life looks at the dynamics of emotional infdelity and the world of virtual reality. 11 Sperm explores challenges to the traditional notion of family when Margaret, 43 and single, decides to have artifcial insemination. 12 The Magdalena Project is an international network of women in contemporary theatre to give women a greater platform and recognition of their work. 13 This is a week-long theatre festival being held in June  2019 in Walthamstow, East London, with a specifc focus on under-represented groups. 14 My Beautiful Companion shows the destruction of Lily and Rosemary’s relationship when Lily wants to remarry. 15 This was the landmark BBC Radio 4 series Chinese in Britain created by the poet, writer, and broadcaster Anna Chen. It comprised ten episodes broadcast beginning April 30, 2007. 16 Jingan Young is a Hong Kong–born playwright who lives in London and founded Pokfulam Road Productions in 2013.

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17 Jennifer Lim is a Singaporean-born actress, director, and producer who cofounded Moongate Productions. She lives in London. 18 See Richard Chang, “Global Artist Group LoNyLA Hones Work via Webcasts,” Reuters, June  28, 2011, www.reuters.com/article/us-stage-webcastsidUSTRE75R5U420110628.

Bibliography

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Chang, Richard. “Global Artist Group LoNyLA Hones Work via Webcasts.” Reuters, June 28, 2011. www.reuters.com/article/us-stage-webcasts-idUSTRE75R5U 420110628. Hannerz, Ulf. Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge, 1996. Lionnet, Françoise, and Shu-mei Shih. “Introduction: Thinking Through the Minor, Transnationally.” In Minor Transnationalism, edited by Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, 1–23. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Rogers, Amanda. Performing Asian Transnationalism: Theatre, Identity and the Geographies of Performance. New York: Routledge, 2015. ———. “British Chinese Performance in Minor Transnational Perspective.” In Contesting British Chinese Cultures, edited by Ashley Thorpe and Diana Yeh, 241–60. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Smith, Michael Peter. Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. Young, Jingan, ed. Foreign Goods. London: Oberon Books, 2018.

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12 Facilitating exchange Kok Heng Leun

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Site of exchange as cultural space In any exchange that happens between artistic disciplines and forms, between artists from diferent cities, countries, and cultural backgrounds, besides creating a fnal product or presentation, there is this want to create an understanding of each other. Through the exchange, hopefully, we will innovate and make each other better artists, or better persons. Art is an expression of culture; hence, in artistic exchange, it is also a cultural exchange, meaning that the site of this exchange is a cultural space. The material of exchange is the artistic forms investigated and interrogated, but on another level, the artists, who are cultural beings, are also going through a process of cultural learning and unlearning, processes of excavating and recovering old knowledge, making new knowledge and meaning. Hence, in these exchange programmes, while processes and tasks are set up to lead towards an artistic outcome, one must also know that the process engages the artists more deeply, challenging them in understanding their cultural sense of being: their practices, expressions, behaviours, words, values, identities, histories, and memories, inspiring deep and meaningful change—what Édouard Glissant describes as “change through exchange without losing ourselves or our true nature”.1 Conversely, what this also implies is that when exchange is not done well, damage will be done—where cultural identities are disrespected and the sense of dignity of a cultural being is undermined. Culture, as mentioned in the previous section, comprising both the material and immaterial, is about how individuals behave, act, speak, perform, value, and so on. Culture informs how society is organised, politics is being played, and economics is being conducted. So, at the same time, politics, society, and economics also inform how culture can be shaped. In Henry Giroux’s words, culture is not monolithic and unchanging. It is “a site of multiple and heterogeneous borders where diferent histories, languages, experiences and voices intermingle amidst diverse relations of power and privilege”.2

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Hence, while navigating through this process of exchange, critical facilitation is needed. ‘Critical facilitation’, a term introduced by Sheila Preston in Applied Theatre: Facilitation: Pedagogies, Practices, Resilience,3 frames facilitation within the discourse of critical pedagogy. To be critical, as Giroux posits, is to “penetrate the world of objective appearances to expose the underlying social relationships they often conceal”.4 A  critical analysis, according to Giroux, is to expose “the social relationships that took on the status of things or objects”.5 Critical facilitation means dialectically exploring the interconnectedness of these things. Through these, change through exchange can happen. Hence, through critical facilitation, intercultural exchange opens the channel for border crossing. This essay will look at some aspects of critical facilitation based on my experience. In many exchange projects, the director or the artistic director of the project would usually take on facilitating the exchange as part of the process, by setting up tasks and processes to achieve the artistic outcome of the exchange. In recent years, a dramaturg may be the one who is hired not only to provide dramaturgy to the artistic product, but also to dramaturg the process and, in the process, becoming the critical facilitator, helping everyone to navigate through the complex cultural spaces of multiple meanings.

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Criticality in facilitation: seeing power In the setup of an exchange, the participating individuals or organisations enter into this relationship on a diferent footing. The power relations are not equal. In fact, how power dynamics during the exchange play out depends on a lot of factors. Who initiated the exchange? What pays for the exchange? Who contributes more resources for the exchange? Who has the domain knowledge? Essentially, economics, knowledge, relations, all contribute to the power relations and dynamics afecting how exchange can happen. I led an exchange project in 2003, in Bangalore, as a director and facilitator for the process. Freedom From Toil was an overseas service-learning project for Singaporean youths funded by the Singapore International Foundation. Collaboration was with Janothsava, a youth group led by artist John Devaraj, advocating for the abolishment of child labour. The project had two main objectives: 1) where Singapore youths raised funds for Janothsava to build Born Free schools for children in villages, and 2) collaborate with the youths of Janothsava to create Forum Theatre performances for schools and villages, addressing issues of child labour. Two Forum Theatre performances were created with four performances: two at Dalit villages, one at the crossroad junction of a busy street, and one performance in a public school. In our frst meeting with John Devaraj, he was passionate and talked deeply about the issues of child labour in India. When we started talking about how the activities of the exchange could be planned, he was most accommodating. He asked what the activities were that we would like to

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do. We talked about doing a Theatre of the Oppressed Workshop. He did not object to it. We asked what kind of theatre workshop he would ofer. He asked, what did we want? We asked him to propose, as we were interested to learn from what he had, and we needed to know, in order to plan and make a detailed schedule of the exchange. He asked us to work out the schedule of the exchange and, in whatever time was left, he would think about what kind of workshop he would do. And he said: “We really wanted to learn from you.” We can see from this instance that the organisation with a deeper pocket would have a bigger negotiation space and have directed the exchange in a particular way. The issue does not just stop at who has put in more resources. The idea that we are from a more developed country, as compared to our partners from Bangalore, also afects how the partners perceive each other. When cultural diferences surface (through practice or exchange of ideas), this will interplay with other factors; it will colour the process, and without critical refection, reinforce hegemonic practices. In another instance of this same project, we were supposed to meet John Devaraj for a full day of planning, but there were delays, and in the end, not much was discussed. The next day John Devaraj was supposed to pick us up at 12 noon and meet over lunch to continue on the discussion, after which we would travel to the university to meet a professor to understand the issue of child labour in Bangalore. John came around 1 pm, and then we drove to a place for lunch. Lunch only started at about 2 pm. I was anxious about the meeting time, but he was really cool about it. We fnished lunch at 2:30 pm, but before we could get to the fower power van, a group of youths outside the eating place saw that John had a drum and guitar with him. John saw them looking curiously at his guitar, and then he picked up his guitar and passed the drum to one of the youths, and an impromptu concert started. Suneeta6 and I were looking at our watches to see when we would even start going to the next meeting, and in our minds we thought: “Indian time. Again!” If we analyse both examples more deeply, we can see that, as Singaporeans, we embraced a culture of work that required us to be punctual, efcient, and very task oriented. This would be refected in the way Singaporeans organise themselves; the organisational structure that we have built up also refect these cultural practices. By institutionalising these practices into an organisational structure, it became a source of power for those who embraced it. Hence, when collaborating, our institutionalised way of working, or even through the way it is fnanced, or how knowledge is being shared, by who or by what means, or even what kind of knowledge, would all create new power structures in the collaborative process. I am not saying that we are creating a space where there is no hegemonic setup. It is impossible. Power is everywhere, as Foucault has noted. The ability to see power will allow us to be able to understand why we do things the way we do, which includes our organisation practices, our art practices,

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our way of relating to people, and how we understand others. To quote from Nato Thomson, “(T)he capacity to see power matters”;7 we have to see beyond the familiar and also to see through the haze. So, in the instances I mentioned, without being self-refective to cast a critical lens on ourselves, I became discriminatory and disrespectful, disregarding the spontaneity and empathy that form the core of John’s and Janosavath’s work. If in a cultural exchange there is also an exchange of knowledge and engagement with knowledge, then, following Giroux’s proposition, we are border-crossers who:

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move in and out of borders constructed around coordinates of diference and power. These are not physical borders, they are cultural borders historically constructed and socially organised within rules and regulations that limit and enable particular identities, individual capacities and social forms.8 Hence, by seeing power, we enact the crossing of borders, thereby allowing us to understand and expand our possibilities as human beings, as cultural beings, as artists. Critical facilitation means that by creating a dialogic environment it allows participants in the exchange to learn through questioning and refecting. The art of good questioning is one that opens up discussion, refective moments, and prods one to challenge one’s values and familiar ways. Why do we do what we do? Can we look at how we practice our arts? Do we know how our practices have evolved? What are the political and social conditions that have contributed to the evolution of our artistic practices? Can we deconstruct our artistic practices and forms and understand how they are framed and constructed? Critical questioning de-familiarises us, creating a critical distance to the subject that we are investigating, thereby allowing us to re-examine the subject, raising consciousness and refectivity. When Danny Yung of Zuni Icosahedron works with young xiqu artists, asking them to repeat a particular gesture again and again, the repetition is a way to create a critical distance and de-familiarity, and then, when asked what is the meaning of this particular gesture, or why should this gesture be made this way, the repetition and the de-familiarisation give a critical distance for the artist to refect from. I saw the young xiqu artist excavating in depth the old knowledge that was passed to him, but also started to discover new meaning to himself, and then create new knowledge through experimentation and invention.

Deep listening A dialogic process should be accompanied by deep listening. It is something that the facilitator of the exchange process should cultivate and make happen.

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An exchange means that we need to learn from the other person. We can only learn from the other person if we listen deeply. By listening deeply, it means that one listens with all senses, through the ears, the eye, and the whole body. By listening deeply, you bear witness to another person’s sharing, without judgement. It requires you to listen with empathy and curiosity. So it is a response to the giving, thereby opening the door for a deep exchange. Only with this, can one respond with critical questioning, thereby allowing the investigation and the sharing to be deeper. It is important to note that, in a critical process, one would easily feel vulnerable. When your artistic practice is being questioned and examined, deconstructed and broken down, it would be tantamount to an act of bearing yourself. Listening deeply is an act of care. This act of care provides a resistance to power, to allow the person who shares to feel that by letting go of power, one may be vulnerable, but one also becomes stronger. I recall that, for the project Freedom From Toil, we were devising a scene of the problems that child beggars were facing on the streets. An image was made by a youth from Janothsava—a policeman threatening a child, who was begging on the street. When the image was activated, the policeman asked for money from the child, or else the child would be beaten. After the improvisation, I asked if it was okay to put this out as a play, and how true this was. As a Singaporean director devising this play, I wondered how I should handle this. The youths from Janothsava replied, matter-of-factly, that this was true and asked why shouldn’t it be shown. As director, I was really excited by this. This is something that we can’t even talk about, and we have to accept that there is no corruption in Singapore. Then I checked myself asking myself. Who am I to decide if this should be in the fnal work? Would it get them into trouble? I asked again if it was alright. The youths unanimously said: “If it is real, why not?” They then followed by telling more stories of what happened with corruption. I was fascinated, yet wary. I knew deep in me, my experience in Singapore—a place where you could not cast any doubt on a police ofcer—had entered into my being. In the moment described earlier, I  was listening to myself, the struggle inside me. I was listening to the fear and censorship that have been planted inside my head. I was struggling with my own fear and self-censorship, and I was not listening to what my Indian partners were saying and experiencing. I did not listen to their pain, but only to my own fear. To listen deeply is to pay attention not only to others, but also to yourself. To listen out to your prejudices, your fears, and desires while, at the same time, also listening deeply to the person you are working with.

Safe space and time It is quite common to hear people say that we need to create a safe space for dialogues to happen, a safe space where one is not ofended when disagreement and contestation happen.

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But how do we create such a safe space? A safe space would mean people responding with openness and being non-judgemental. Hence, by advocating deep listening in the process, we are making a safe space for openness, care, and generosity. However, to do that, we must give time to such a process. Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep is an interdisciplinary project that looks at the artistic inspiration of pianist Margaret Leng Tan, known as the ‘Queen of the Toy Piano’ as well as for her collaborations with John Cage. It is conceptualised as a sonic portrait that incorporates theatre, music, and videos. It is performed by Margaret herself, directed by Australian director Tamara Salwick of Chamber Made Company, with music composed by Erik Griswold, video by Nick Roux, and dramaturgy by myself. Margaret Leng Tan, a world-renowned toy pianist and pre-eminent interpreter of John Cage’s music, had to work in a completely diferent environment—a collaborative project with artists from diferent disciplines. In an interview, Margaret acknowledged that she did not like to work with people and to collaborate with a theatre director and a dramaturg is something she had to deal with. She mostly works as a soloist, planning her own concerts, rehearsing by herself, and even managing her own concert setup. During the process of creating Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep, Margaret was most comfortable when she was at the piano, playing those pieces that were specially written for her. In fact, she would interpret the pieces and rehearse them, and in the rehearsal room, she would give her very best. But as we were working towards a theatrical piece, Tamara, as the director, had to consider the dramaturgy of the performance and hence also have opinions on how the pieces could be interpreted. Each piece of music should lead to the next one, unlike in a concert, where each piece of music completes itself. In order to let Margaret embrace the dramaturgy of the whole theatre performance, Tamara and I had set up many conversations in the rehearsal process. We needed to create space and time for listening and questioning to happen. So we would let her play what she had rehearsed. Then, by questioning, we got her to speak about her interpretation. We had to listen deeply to her interpretation in order to embrace it and see how it could ft into the proposed dramaturgy of the work. Then by ofering an alternative—which in the beginning Margaret would resist—being an adventurous and open artist, she would listen and then try it out. After trying it out, there would be further dialogue, listening to how each other felt about the trial. So, time must be given for this in such a process. But at the same time, we must also know that such dialogues can and should continue outside of the workspace. The rehearsal space is not always necessarily a good space for deep conversation. One tends to want to be focused on the task; hence the rehearsal space can sometimes be counterproductive in creating dialogue. During the frst week of the frst phase of workshops in Melbourne, Margaret was still trying to adapt to the rehearsal process. We would ask Erik, the composer, to play the music that he had written, and the rest of us would

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talk about it. We were also talking about how the music and text (from a stream-of-consciousness writing exercise given to Margaret) could come together to realise the concept of a sonic portrait about Margaret Leng Tan. The workshop also had a lot of sharing, but we could see that Margaret was not used to so much sharing and talking. She kept talking about how she could see the performance evolving. But we were still at the infant stage of fnding the form and dramaturgy. In the evening, because Margaret was staying in the same apartment as me, I had the opportunity to have dinner with her. It was during these dinner times that Margaret was more relaxed, and I could slip in and start conversations to learn how she always prepared for her concerts, and then share how theatre practitioners work. Because it was out of the rehearsal space, there was time for us to talk, to even wander away from talking about work, and then back again to talking about work again. Rebecca Solnit, in her book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, talks about the value of being lost and how by being lost, “the unknown, the idea or the form or the tale that has not yet arrived, is what must be found”.9 I also think that for deep exchange to happen, we should create a safe space with extended time for the participants to get lost, to wander, and then to come back again.

Mondiality

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The process of an exchange allows us to wander within a space where diferences co-exist. The diferences present many opportunities for us to explore, to experiment, and venture further, crossing borders. Glissant coined the word ‘mondialité’, or mondiality, as opposed to the idea of globalisation. While globalisation is a homogenisation of markets and exemplifes consumption, mondiality privileges diversity and diferences. The purpose of exchange is not just to add one more product to the market, but to efect changes through the critical process of learning and sharing and co-creating. In other words, exchange is that process of being and becoming.

Notes 1 Édouard Glissant, “The Unforeseeable Diversity of the World,” in Beyond Dichotomies: Histories, Identities Cultures, and the Challenge of Globalization, ed. Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, trans. Haun Saussy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002), 287. 2 Henry A. Giroux, Border Crossing: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2007), Chap. 5, Kindle. 3 Sheila Preston, Applied Theatre: Facilitation: Pedagogies, Practices, Resilience (New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016), Chap. 1, Kindle. 4 Henry A. Giroux, “Critical Theory and Education Practice,” in The Critical Pedagogy Reader, ed. Antonio Darder, Marta Baltodano and Rodolfo Torres, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2008), 27. 5 Ibid. 6 Suneeta initiated this project and was also one of its three facilitators.

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7 Nato Thompson, Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century (New York and London: Melville House, 2016), 116. 8 Giroux, Border Crossing, Chap. 1. 9 Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2017 [2005]), 5.

Bibliography

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Giroux, Henry. Border Crossing: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2007, Kindle. ———. “Critical Theory and Education Practice.” In The Critical Pedagogy Reader, edited by Antonio Darder, Marta Baltodano, and Rodolfo Torres, 2nd ed., 27–56. London: Routledge, 2008. Glissant, Édouard. “The Unforeseeable Diversity of the World.” In Beyond Dichotomies: Histories, Identities Cultures, and the Challenge of Globalization, edited by Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, translated by Haun Saussy, 287–95. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002. Preston, Sheila. Applied Theatre: Facilitation: Pedagogies, Practices, Resilience. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016, Kindle. Solnit, Rebecca. A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2017 [2005]. Thompson, Nato. Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century. New York and London: Melville House, 2016.

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13 Postscript Asian city crossings as a strategy for freedom?

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Rossella Ferrari and Ashley Thorpe

“At this juncture,” Chen Kuan-hsing suggests in Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization, published in 2010, “Asian regional integration is strategically central.”1 However, regional integration, the central impulse behind ‘Asia as method’, is not without its problems or limitations. As Chen observes, “The most obvious difculty is the imbalance between big countries and small ones, evident in the relationships between India and the rest of South Asia, Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia, and China and the rest of Northeast Asia.”2 Thus, questions of imperialism and neoimperialism need to be recognised as impulses generated from within Asia, tied to questions of nationalism and participation in neoliberal globalisation, as well as from the West.3 The negotiation of power fows—expressed as sociocultural and economic capital—is central to city-to-city collaboration. Who is endowed with the power to collaborate? Who is given a platform to speak? How and why? Access to networks aforded by social class, personality, and charisma are important, and often overlooked, factors. Yet, there is also practicality; the ability to access fnance that does not bind work to specifc political or city branding agendas. As established in the introduction, Hong Kong and Singapore are important sounding boards for each other not only because of their shared imperial histories, but also because economic infrastructures and city branding campaigns make city-to-city collaboration viable at a basic level. Moving beyond sanctioned collaboration is thus a question of funding and strategy (as documented by Yung in Chapter 2 and Tröster in Chapter 9) or the exploitation of the wider social and political milieu that makes travel and artistic networking possible (something Kok acknowledges in Chapter  12). In many ways, this book is a document of the privileged; those artists who have been able to spawn positions of transnational agency. Yet, as Lei highlights in Chapter 7, such freedoms are by no means universally enjoyed. In fact, freedoms are precarious and transient, dictated by fows of regional power that are themselves a product of nationalist agendas that are frequently attended to the silencing of dissent. When the idea for this collection frst came about, at a symposium held in London in 2017, little did we know that by the time we would begin editing

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this volume in 2019, Hong Kong—then a beacon of cultural exchange— would be in the midst of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (AntiELAB) protests. We also could not anticipate that, as we wrap the volume up in 2020, the COVID-19 global pandemic would temporarily suspend physical performance-making and activism, although both have continued in the socially distanced realms of the digital. The 2017 symposium intended to mark 20  years since Hong Kong’s handover to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and to refect on possible developments that the next two decades might bring to the performing arts in the city and its creative connections with other cities in Asia. But how can we write about the future of Asian city crossings under these conditions? How can we reach any sort of defnitive conclusion? It would be unrealistic, and unwise, to attempt any predictions on the arts and artistic collaboration in and between Hong Kong and Singapore at this juncture. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that since the beginning of the Anti-ELAB protests, also known as the ‘Be Water’ Movement, in 2019, the notion of ‘city as method’—the relations between cities as a network that operates beyond nation-state ideology—has acquired a whole new set of meanings.4 The comparative inter-city framework, or inter-city referencing, which we present in the introduction to describe a structure of collaboration in the performing arts, has meanwhile expanded into a comparative framework for global repertoires of protest. Quite rapidly and unexpectedly, the protest methods of Hong Kong’s leaderless movement have provided a model for social activism ranging from the student protests in India in summer 20195 and those in Catalonia later in the same year6 to Black Lives Matter in summer 2020.7 Furthermore, several media commentators have compared strategies of activism in Hong Kong and past performances of protest such as the anti-Soviet ‘Baltic Way’ in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in August 1989 and democracy movements in Taiwan and South Korea.8 In this respect, the act of city crossings resonates with the second dimension of city-to-city collaboration outlined in the introduction—namely, cross-city—in that it foregrounds crossing as, on the one hand, a type of movement that connects communities across borders, in this case, through cross-fertilisation and performative reproduction of protest techniques, and, on the other hand, one that implies “opposition or contrary action”.9 The inter-referencing of performance and protest across cities suggests a performative understanding of ‘city as method’ as “restored” or “twice-behaved behaviour”;10 that is, “protest re-enactments”11 and practices of reciprocal modelling through multiple dimensions of city crossings—embodied and virtual, performative and political. Cities can thus serve as models for each other not only in the realm of performance as a creative practice but also in the domain of performance as a socio-political action. This kind of city-to-city connection has fostered expressions of transnational solidarity (often articulated as digital solidarity, as refected in the key role played by social media and online platforms such as Telegram, Bridgefy, and LIHKG

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in the Hong Kong and Indian protests),12 and sharing of tactics of “creative activism”13 across cities. The “repertoire of contention” (a phrase coined by social movements scholar Charles Tilly)14 shared between cities of protest encompasses a catalogue of actions, gestures, attires, props, and soundtracks along with a common awareness of “the afective and instructing power of embodying the speech and actions of others; the importance of witnessing and responding to such acts; and the value of repeating them, again.”15 A desire to move beyond state-sanctioned machinations is clearly an imperative for the practitioners documented in this volume. As Lim observes in Chapter 3, city-to-city collaboration ofers “a niche, yet strategic, position that places it on the margins while simultaneously enabling it, via its global networks, to continue playing an eminent critical role away from the political power centre”. This should not, however, be characterised as an unerringly utopic or automatically afective space. Testimonies from many practitioners in this volume highlight the importance of collaborative failure as a directional force in the shaping of approaches. Yet, in highlighting the “signifcance of the city both as a situational ‘place of performance’ and a conficted performing entity in its own right”, as Nicolas Whybrow describes it,16 the chapters in this volume evidence, in diferent ways, that the study of performance and/in the city—and of crossings between cities—is not only useful to “demonstrate urban process” but “is a part of urban process, producing urban experience and thereby producing the city itself”.17 An appreciation of the city as a performing entity with afective potential, as we portray it in the introduction, can therefore comprehend both forms of inter-urban artistic creation taking place in conventional performance spaces and varieties of creative activism that engender a “dramaturgy of urban space through public practices”.18 32 Years: The Interrogation of a Mirror, Seelan Palay’s 2017/18 performance in front of Singapore’s Parliament House examined in Lei’s chapter, resonates with this interpretation. In Hong Kong, the work of performance artist Kacey Wong provides another case in point. Wong performed the live art piece, The Patriot (Aiguozhe), in front of the Hong Kong Central Government Complex on the 21st anniversary of the handover on July 1, 2018. Confned inside a mobile red cage, Wong played three songs on his accordion: “God Save the Queen”, the national anthem of the United Kingdom, signifying British colonialism; “March of the Volunteers”, the national anthem of the PRC, representing Chinese authority; and “Do You Hear the People Sing”, from the musical Les Misérables, voicing the Hong Kong citizens’ call for free and fair governance.19 Moreover, in Hong Kongese Warning Squad (Xianggangren jinggao budui), performed during the July 1 protest marches in 2014, and HK to CN (Xianggang wang Zhongguo),20 created for the 2019 Anti-ELAB rallies, Wong’s re-enactment of scenes of police violence in the city against nonviolent protesters resonated with André Lepecki’s refections on “the relations between political demonstrations as expressions of freedom, and police counter-moves as implementations of obedience”—or, as he describes

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it, “between choreopolitics and choreopolicing”—and how these afect the kinetic articulation of the political.21 In Palay’s and Wong’s public urban dramaturgies in/of Singapore and Hong Kong, respectively, major city landmarks serve as backdrops for contentious performances “that address contested issues and whose audiences are consequently fractured”.22 In addition to divided public opinion within Hong Kong on the matter of the protests, it is worth drawing attention to the fractured response to the Hong Kong situation in Singapore. While there has been decisive support and solidarity for the Hong Kongers’ pursuit of justice and democratic rights since the outbreak of the 2019 demonstrations, the more subdued and pragmatic approach of the Singaporean public towards the increasingly radical forms of activism that the Hong Kong protesters have embraced underscore the complex and somewhat paradoxical reality of two cities that, as mentioned earlier, share many commonalities but also marked diferences in their approach to governance and authority; as a Singaporean reporter has phrased it: “One with liberty without democracy, another with (some) democracy without liberty.”23 City-to-city networks have the potential to chart such similarities and differences by evincing collaborations that are liminal to socio-political and nationalistic discourses and that result in very particular kinds of discovery, often at the level of the individual and the personal. Such discoveries are, of course, predicated on choices of collaborative methodology. Yung’s assertion, made in Chapter  2, that “we should consider taking the ‘city’ as the unit for exploring cultural exchange practices and theories across sectors and felds” has clearly found much resonance among practitioners, but this, in itself, does not document the minutiae of exchange within the rehearsal room. In Chapter 4, Ng notes how the rehearsal process of one Zuni projects consisted of “challenges, negotiations, and disagreements”. Kok frames such challenges and negotiations through technique, specifcally recognition that “repetition is a way to create a critical distance and defamiliarity”, so that questioning “the meaning of this particular gesture, or why should this gesture be made this way . . . gave a critical distancing for the artist to refect”. Critical questioning thus represents a key tool in uncovering and resituating the relationship between performer and their existing sense of cultural identity. Indeed, as noted in Chapter 5, Mok focuses upon “the participant’s search for personal growth. Participation in a cross-cultural collaboration should lead to aesthetic growth, international awareness, empowerment, and individual learning and capacity-building for each participant”. In Chapter 8, Liu highlights his process as “a dialogue between diferent frameworks and a dialogue between big and small frameworks”. From these statements, it becomes clear that ‘city as method’ prompts negotiations and discussions that are fundamentally political as well as cultural. There is resistance to the homogenising impulses of prevailing nation-state discourses on relational identity, a critical questioning of the role of embodied power as well as artistic technique. Such interrogations draw attention

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to collaboration as operating at the interstices of diferent power relationships but as articulated in the minutiae of the interactions between individuals. Through such discoveries, as Tröster observes, there is the opportunity to share with audiences a recognition of new collective positions, ones that are nevertheless constituted by amorphous voices that are fundamentally rhizomatic in nature. Such positioning opens up spaces for the agency of the individual—both artist and audience—to locate themselves in the transnational and intercultural politic of each project. As Lei remarks, even “solitary silence inspires vociferous solidarity and brings an irreversible ‘climate change’ to the global ecosystem”. Such readings are contingent upon recognising city-to-city collaboration within the framework of a disjunctive intercultural ecology. Such a model articulates inequality of access to the global cultural economy as a fundamental aspect of collaboration. It is also a politicised model that interrogates how and why such inequality is produced, how it afects the individual, and how solitary decisions might multiply into communal action. As Yeung notes in Chapter 6, Asian peoples “are shown to experience circumstantial commonality rather than being essentially similar”. For Liu, recognition of this enables a “process of deconstructing and reconstructing the self through comparison and dialogue with others”. Similarly, for Kok, disjuncture becomes an exercise in deep listening, “to pay attention not only to others, but also to yourself. To listen out to your prejudices, your fears and desires while, at the same time, also listening deeply to the person you are working with.” For individual practitioners who rely upon collaborative networks for the realisation of their work, a sense of disjuncture facilitates greater creative control, even if it simultaneously compromises the production and circulation of work, as Rogers’ interview with Tan testifes in Chapter 11. City-to-city collaboration thus reveals the signifcance of place-making as constituted in and through bodies that operate in the interstices between places. As Tan’s analysis in Chapter  10 highlights, it is ‘in betweenness’ that creates a sense of place, asserts specifc heritages, as well as cosmopolitan ambition. Inequalities mark out specifc relationships of place through the peculiarity of global and regional fows of power. Without disjuncture, relations between specifc, even individualised, embodied techniques and perspectives, artistic projects, agendas, and socio-political, cultural and economic contexts risk being fattened out by a utopic horizontal cosmopolitanism that automatically equates collaboration with the nation-state. It is abundantly clear that power fows through Asia, through Hong Kong and Singapore, in diferent iterations. Indeed, this unevenness is refected in the implementation of laws that raise the spectre of an unprecedented kind of transnational censorship, whereby individuals who speak out overseas could be prosecuted upon their return home. In such instances, criticism of the state is, in efect, outlawed globally unless the artist is prepared for arrest or to enter into exile. The desire to bring extranational projects within the domain of domestic law implicitly recognises the agency of city-to-city

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collaboration in resisting state narratives. As Lei argues, perhaps city-to-city collaboration can foster “quiet soloness as an alternative form of resistance, which inspires transnational solidarity and galvanises more dissent against hegemony in the future”. At the level of the individual artist, might there emerge new alternate strategies for free expression? If so, they may rely upon the elevation of the “quiet soloness” identifed by Lei into a kind of cosmopolitan camaraderie. This is not as fanciful as it might seem. Black Lives Matter has shown how the violent silencing of one individual can reverberate globally. As editors, all we can hope is that this volume, in some small way, amplifes the political potency of city-to-city collaboration.

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Notes 1 Chen Kuan-hsing, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 14. 2 Ibid., 213. 3 Ibid., 11–12. 4 The protests started with a one-million-strong rally on June  9, 2019, against the Extradition Law Amendment Bill (ELAB) that the Hong Kong government proposed in February 2019. The bill, formally withdrawn on October 23, 2019, would have allowed the PRC to persecute fugitives to Hong Kong and consequently—its critics warned—to curtail freedom of expression within Hong Kong, since anyone expressing dissenting views on China could be transferred to the mainland to be judged under PRC law. The protests continued into the summer and autumn and, albeit reduced in scale and frequency since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, discontent did not cease and was further exacerbated by the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law on July 1, 2020. 5 Kunal Purohit, “How Hong Kong Protest Tactics Are Being Used in India,” Inkstone, December  19, 2019, www.inkstonenews.com/politics/how-hong-kongprotest-tactics-are-being-used-india-demonstrations-against-citizenship-law/ article/3042771. 6 Mary Hui, “Hong Kong Is Exporting Its Protest Techniques around the World,” Quartz, October 15, 2019, https://qz.com/1728078/be-water-catalonia-protesterslearn-from-hong-kong/; Jacky Chan Man Hei, “Can Our ‘Global City’ Ofer Transnational Solidarity?” Lausan, October  23, 2019, https://lausan.hk/2019/ can-our-global-city-ofer-international-solidarity/. 7 JS and Promise Li, “The Hong Kong Movement Must Stand with Black Lives Matter,” Lausan, June 3, 2020, https://lausan.hk/2020/hong-kong-must-standwith-blm/; Joshua Wong, “From Hong Kong to Black Lives Matter—Unity against Oppression and Police Brutality,” The Chronicle Herald, June 17, 2020, www.thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/local-perspectives/joshua-wong-fromhong-kong-to-black-lives-matter-unity-against-oppression-and-police-brutality463085/. 8 See Andrius Sytas, “Lithuanian Human Chain Links Anti-Soviet and Hong Kong Protesters,” Reuters, August  23, 2019, www.reuters.com/article/ us-ww2-anniversary-baltics/lithuanian-human-chain-links-anti-soviet-and-hongkong-protesters-idUSKCN1VD2C7; Crystal Tai, “Fiery Hong Kong Student Protests Evoke Memory of South Korea’s Own 1987 June Struggle,” South China Morning Post, November  15, 2019, www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/ article/3037807/fery-hong-kong-student-protests-invoke-memory-south-koreasown; Milo Hsieh, “Understanding and Fostering Hong Kong-Taiwanese

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13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

239

Solidarity,” Taiwan Insight, November  20, 2019, https://taiwaninsight.org/ 2019/11/20/understanding-and-fostering-hong-kong-taiwanese-solidarity/. Collins, s. v., “Cross-,” accessed July  1, 2019, www.collinsdictionary.com/ dictionary/english/cross_2. Richard Schechner, Performance Theory (London: Routledge, 2003), 324. Lara Shalson, Theatre & Protest (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 10. Kunal Purohit, “WhatsApp to Bridgefy, What Hong Kong Taught India’s Leaderless Protesters,” South China Morning Post, December  18, 2019, www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3042633/whatsapp-bridgefy-whathong-kong-taught-indias-leaderless. Shalson, Theatre & Protest, 14. Charles Tilly, Contentious Performances (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 194, cited in Shalson, Theatre & Protest, 18. Shalson, Theatre & Protest, 76. Nicolas Whybrow, “Writing Performing Cities: An Introduction,” in Performing Cities, ed. Nicolas Whybrow (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 1–18, 5. Jen Harvie, Theatre & the City (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 7. Carol Martin, “Performing the City,” TDR: The Drama Review 58, no. 3 (2014): 14. See “The Patriot 愛國者July 1st 2018 March by Kacey Wong,” YouTube, July 3, 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOSz_E6m7W4&list=WL&index=35&t=0s. See “HK to CN by Kacey Wong,” YouTube, May 3, 2020, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=yROx_2t96Ho. André Lepecki, “Choreopolice and Choreopolitics: Or, the Task of the Dancer,” TDR: The Drama Review 57, no. 4 (2013): 16. Shalson, Theatre & Protest, 8. Kirsten Han, “Two Cities, Two Priorities: What Singaporeans Misunderstand about Hong Kong’s Protest Movement,” Hong Kong Free Press, September  16, 2019, https://hongkongfp.com/2019/09/16/two-cities-twopriorities-singaporeans-misunderstand-hong-kongs-protest-movement/. See also “Singapore Stands to Gain from Hong Kong’s Troubles,” The Economist, October  10, 2019, www.economist.com/asia/2019/10/10/singapore-stands-togain-from-hong-kongs-troubles/.

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Bibliography Chan, Jacky Man Hei. “Can Our ‘Global City’ Ofer Transnational Solidarity?” Lausan, October  23, 2019. https://lausan.hk/2019/can-our-global-cityofer-international-solidarity/. Chen Kuan-hsing. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Han, Kirsten. “Two Cities, Two Priorities: What Singaporeans Misunderstand about Hong Kong’s Protest Movement.” Hong Kong Free Press, September 16, 2019. https://hongkongfp.com/2019/09/16/two-cities-two-priorities-singaporeansmisunderstand-hong-kongs-protest-movement/. Harvie, Jen. Theatre & the City. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. “HK to CN by Kacey Wong.” YouTube, May 3, 2020. www.youtube.com/watch?v= yROx_2t96Ho. Hsieh, Milo. “Understanding and Fostering Hong Kong-Taiwanese Solidarity.” Taiwan Insight, November  20, 2019. https://taiwaninsight.org/2019/11/20/ understanding-and-fostering-hong-kong-taiwanese-solidarity/.

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Hui, Mary. “Hong Kong Is Exporting Its Protest Techniques Around the World.” Quartz, October 15, 2019. https://qz.com/1728078/be-water-catalonia-protesterslearn-from-hong-kong/. JS and Promise Li. “The Hong Kong Movement Must Stand with Black Lives Matter.” Lausan. June 3, 2020. https://lausan.hk/2020/hong-kong-must-stand-with-blm/. Lepecki, André. “Choreopolice and Choreopolitics: Or, the Task of the Dancer.” TDR: The Drama Review 57, no. 4 (2013): 13–27. Martin, Carol. “Performing the City.” TDR: The Drama Review 58, no. 3 (2014): 10–17. “The Patriot 愛國者July 1st 2018 March by Kacey Wong.” YouTube, July 3, 2018. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOSz_E6m7W4&list=WL&index=35&t=0s. Purohit, Kunal. “WhatsApp to Bridgefy, What Hong Kong Taught India’s Leaderless Protesters.” South China Morning Post, December  18, 2019. www. scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3042633/whatsapp-bridgefy-whathong-kong-taught-indias-leaderless. ———. “How Hong Kong Protest Tactics Are Being Used in India.” Inkstone, December  19, 2019. www.inkstonenews.com/politics/how-hong-kong-protesttactics-are-being-used-india-demonstrations-against-citizenship-law/article/ 3042771. Schechner, Richard. Performance Theory. London: Routledge, 2003. Shalson, Lara. Theatre & Protest. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. “Singapore Stands to Gain from Hong Kong’s Troubles.” The Economist, October  10, 2019. www.economist.com/asia/2019/10/10/singapore-stands-to-gainfrom-hong-kongs-troubles/. Sytas, Andrius. “Lithuanian Human Chain Links Anti-Soviet and Hong Kong Protesters.” Reuters, August  23, 2019. www.reuters.com/article/us-ww2anniversary-baltics/lithuanian-human-chain-links-anti-soviet-and-hong-kongprotesters-idUSKCN1VD2C7. Tai, Crystal. “Fiery Hong Kong Student Protests Evoke Memory of South Korea’s Own 1987 June Struggle.” South China Morning Post, November  15, 2019. www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3037807/fiery-hong-kong-studentprotests-invoke-memory-south-koreas-own. Tilly, Charles. Contentious Performances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Whybrow, Nicolas. “Writing Performing Cities: An Introduction.” In Performing Cities, edited by Nicolas Whybrow, 1–18. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Wong, Joshua. “From Hong Kong to Black Lives Matter—Unity Against Oppression and Police Brutality.” The Chronicle Herald, June  17, 2020. www. thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/local-perspectives/joshua-wong-from-hong-kongto-black-lives-matter-unity-against-oppression-and-police-brutality-463085/.

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Glossary of names, terms, and titles

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Note on the use of Chinese characters: Names of persons and organisations and titles of literary and performance works are given in either simplifed or traditional Chinese script depending on the convention in use in the city or region of origin—that is, simplifed script for Singapore and mainland China and traditional script for Hong Kong and Taiwan. Specialist terms and phrases are provided in both scripts wherever there are diferences between the two. 12 nu han (Twelve Angry Men) 《12怒汉》 1984/1997 《一九八四／一九九七》 Alice Education Studio 愛麗絲教育工作室 Alice Theatre Laboratory 愛麗絲劇場實驗室 An 俺 Aiguozhe (The Patriot)《愛國者》 Anfang (Dark Room) 《暗房》 Bainian gudu (One Hundred Years of Solitude)《百年孤獨》 Bainian zhi guji 10.0—Wenhua da geming (One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution) 《百年之孤寂10.0: 文化大革命》 bang 邦 Beijing Fringe Festival 北京国际青年戏剧节 Beijing–Hong Kong–Shanghai Young Directors’ Showcase @ Modern Drama Valley Expo Season 京港沪三城青年戏剧导演作品世博展演季 Beijing Theatre Association 北京戏剧家协会 bentu yishi 本土意识/本土意識 “Better City, Better Life” 城市，让生活更美好 bianzuo juchang 编作剧场/編作劇場 Bo Ya 伯牙 BrandHK香港品牌 butō (Butoh) 舞踏 [Japanese] Cao Cao 曹操 Chan, Andrew Hang-fai (Chen Henghui) 陳恆輝 chang nian zuo da 唱念 (唸) 做打 Cheung, Tat-ming (Zhang Daming) 張達明 Chibi (The Red Clif)《赤壁》

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242

Glossary of names, terms, and titles

Chinese Theatre Festival 华文小剧场节 Chng Seok Tin (Zhuang Xinzhen) 莊心珍 Chong, Ping (Zhang Ping) 張平 chuanju 川剧/川劇 Chung Chiao (Zhong Qiao) 鍾喬 Class 7A Drama Group 7A 班戲劇組 Cinematic Theatre 影話戲 City-to-City Cultural Forum 城市文化交流會議 “Connect to Hong Kong: A Cultural Kaleidoscope for Expo 2010” 連繫香 港 ~ 文化篇 Contemporary Legend Theatre 當代傳奇劇場 Creative Society 創作社 ‘Creativity • Connectivity • Vibrancy’ 創意 • 連繫 • 活力 Cultural Godfather of Hong Kong 香港的文化教父 Da hui chang 大会唱/大會唱 Danny Yung Experimental Theatre (series) 榮念曾實驗劇場 Daoshang shouce (Viewers’ Guide) 导赏手册/導賞手冊 Dawu (American House)《大屋》 Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 Di san diguo de kongju he ku’nan (Fear and Misery of the Third Reich) 《第三帝國的恐懼和苦難》 Diaoman gongzhu (The Prankish Princess)《刁蠻公主》 Drama Box 戏剧盒 Duanjun Theatre 端钧剧场 Dudang yimian: Shiyan Zhongguo chuantong juchang jiaoliu jihua (Solo: Experimenting Traditional Chinese Operas)《獨當一面：實驗中國傳 統劇場交流計劃》 Dujiao xi: Shiyan Zhongguo chuantong xiqu (Solos: Experimenting Traditional Chinese Operas)《獨腳戲：實驗中國傳統戲曲》 Duzuo hunyin jieshaosuo (Waiting for the Match)《獨坐婚姻介紹所》 Elegant Voice Ensemble 雅音小集 Emergency Stairs 避难阶段 Expo 2010 Shanghai China 中国2010年上海世博展览会 fanlong 樊笼/樊籠 fanyi ju 翻译剧/翻譯劇 Foluoyide xunzhao Zhongguo qing yu shi (Sigmund Freud in Search of Chinese Matter and Mind)《佛洛伊德尋找中國情與事》 gaige kaifang 改革开放/改革開放 gezaixi 歌仔戏/歌仔戲 Guancai taida dong taixiao (The Cofn Is Too Big for the Hole) 《棺材太 大洞太小》 Haizi 海子 (Zhao Haisheng 查海生) Hamulaite jiqi (Hamletmachine) 《哈姆萊特機器》 Handan meng (Handan Dream)《邯鄲夢》 He Nian 何念

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243

Hong Hong 紅虹 Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts 香港演藝學院 Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) 香港藝術發展局 Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference 2017 香港_帶_路2017—香港一帶一路城市文化交流會議 Hong Kong Drama Awards 香港舞台劇獎 Hong Kong Economic Times香港經濟日報 Hong Kong Federation of Drama Societies 香港戲劇協會 Hong Kong Theatre Libre 香港小劇場獎 huadan 花旦 huaju 话剧/話劇 huaren 华人/華人 Huang Hsiang-lian (Huang Xianglian) 黃香蓮 Huayu xiju ying 华语戏剧营 huigui 回归/回歸 Huigui • Kafuka (Return [to] Kafka) 《回歸 • 卡夫卡》 Ji gu ma Cao (Beating the Drums and Castigating Cao Cao)《擊鼓罵曹》 Jiangsu Performing Arts Group Kun Opera Theatre 江苏省演艺集团昆剧院 Jin Ping Mei (The Plum in the Golden Vase)《金瓶梅》 jingju 京剧/京劇 jiuqi ju 九七剧/九七劇 jiuqi qingjie 九七情结/九七情結 Journey to the East (series) 中國旅程 kabuki (Kabuki) 歌舞伎 [Japanese] Kafuka de qi ge xiangzi (Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka)《卡夫卡的七 個箱子》 Kanghe 康赫 Kan Lap-keung (Jian Liqiang) 簡立強 Ke Jun 柯军 Khoo, Eric (Qiu Jinhai) 邱金海 Kok Heng Leun (Guo Qingliang) 郭庆亮 kunqu 昆曲/崑曲 kunju 昆剧/崑劇 Kuo Pao Kun (Guo Baokun) 郭宝昆 Kuo Shiao-chuang (Guo Xiaozhuang) 郭小莊 Kwan, Stanley (Guan Jinpeng) 關錦鵬 Lai, Stan (Lai Sheng-chuan) 賴聲川 Lam, Edward (Lin Yihua) 林奕華 Lao Jiu (Lao Jiu: The Ninth Born)《老九》 Lee, Hugh Kuo-hsiu (Li Guoxiu) 李國修 Lee Kuan Yew (Li Guangyao) 李光耀 Lee Wen (Li Wen) 李文 Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) 康樂及文化事務署文化 交流聯絡辦事處 Li Baochun 李寶春

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244

Glossary of names, terms, and titles

Li Liuyi 李六乙 Li Xiaofeng 李小锋 Li’er zaici (Lear Is Here)《李爾在此》 Liang Shanbo yu Zhu Yingtai (The Butterfy Lovers)《梁山伯與祝英台》 Liangshanbo 梁山泊 liangxiang 亮相 Liji (Book of Rites)《禮記》 Lin Chong ye ben (Lin Chong’s Night Escape)《林沖夜奔》 Lin Kehuan 林克欢 Lin Zexu 林則徐 Lin Zhaohua 林兆华 Linc2 Theatre Company 聆舞剧团 Lingxi (The Spirits Play) 《灵戏》 Liu Fangqi 刘方祺 Liu Xiaoyi 刘晓义 liubai 留白 liyuan 梨园/梨園 Lo, Carmen Ching-man (Luo Jingwen) 羅靜雯 Lu gui bu (Book of Ghosts)《錄鬼簿》 luogu 锣鼓/鑼鼓 luogudian 锣鼓点/鑼鼓點 Luomi’ou yu Zhuliye (Romeo and Juliet)《羅密歐與茱麗葉》 Lüshi chunqiu (Annals of Spring and Autumn of Lü Buwei) 《呂氏春秋》 M1 Chinese Theatre Festival M1华文小剧场节 M1 Patch! A Theatre Festival of Artful Play M1戏剧节 “Memory, Place, Dialogue 2011–2013” Noh and Kun Cultural Exchange Program「記憶、場所、對話 2011–2013」能與崑劇文化交流計劃 Meng Jinghui 孟京辉 Meng Xiaodong 孟小冬 Mi Heng 禰衡 Ming Ri 明日 Mok, Augustine Chiu-yu (Mo Zhaoru) 莫昭如 nanguan 南管 nanqu 南曲 Nanyang 南洋 nanyin 南音 nanyue 南乐/南樂 Ng, Kelvin Kwok-wa (Wu Guohua) 吳國華 Ngo我 nō (Noh) 能楽 [Japanese] On & On Theatre Workshop 前進進戲劇工作坊 One Belt One Road 一带一路 ‘One Country, Two Systems’ 一国两制/一國兩制 One Table Two Chairs (series) 一桌二椅 Ong Keng Sen (Wang Jingsheng) 王景生

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

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Glossary of names, terms, and titles

245

Pei Kuishan 裴魁山 People’s Theatre 民众剧场/民衆劇場 pingdeng duihua 平等对话/平等對話 qianwei 前卫/前衛 qin 琴 qinqiang秦腔 Reinvent Traditions (series) 傳承與創新 Sanguo yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms)《三國演義》 Sanchakou (At the Crossroads)《三岔口》 Satō Makoto 佐藤信 [Japanese] Seiji Shimoda 霜田诚二 [Japanese] Shaguniang yu guailaoshu (The Silly Little Girl and the Funny Old Tree) 《傻姑娘与怪老树》 Shanghai Drama 上海戏剧 Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre 上海话剧艺术中心 Shanghai [Jing’an] Modern Drama Valley 上海[静安]现代戏剧谷 Shanghai Modern People’s Theatre 上海现代人剧社 Shanghai Theatre Academy 上海戏剧学院 Shangliu shehui de kongtiao (The Air Conditioner of the Upper Class) 《上流社会的空调》 Shao Zehui 邵泽辉 Shi Xiaomei 石小梅 Shifang yi nian (Once the Muse Speaks）《十方一念》 Shihai (Ebb)《逝海》 Shuihuzhuan (The Water Margin)《水滸傳》 Si qing lüdian (The Inn)《四情旅店》 Siong Leng Musical Association 湘灵音乐社 Siu Wai-man (Shao Weimin) 邵偉敏 Southernmost: One Table Two Chairs Project 2017 最南阶段：一桌二椅计 划2017 Studio U 优戏剧工作室 Taiyang (Sun)《太阳》 Taiyang • shi (Sun: Regicide) 《太阳 • 弑》 Tang, Henry Ying-yen (Tang Yingnian) 唐英年 Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖 Terayama Shūji 寺山修司 [Japanese] The 70s Biweekly《70年代雙週刊》 The Gong Strikes One 一才鑼鼓 The Theatre Practice 实践剧场 Tian Mansha 田蔓莎 Tian Shui 田水 To, Raymond Kwok-wai (Du Guowei) 杜國威 Toki Experimental Project: Preservation and Development of the Traditional Performing Arts 朱鹮實驗計劃－藝術保存和發展 Toki Project 朱䴉計劃

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246

Glossary of names, terms, and titles

Traditional Nanyin Organisation 传统南音舍 Tsai Ming-liang (Cai Mingliang) 蔡明亮 Tsai Yiyun (Cai Yiyun) 蔡艺芸 Tsang, Donald Yam-kuen (Zeng Yinquan) 曾蔭權 Tsoi, Hardy Sik-cheung (Cai Xichang) 蔡錫昌 Wang Bin 王斌 Wei Hai-min (Wei Haimin) 魏海敏 Wei Ying-chuan (Wei Yingjuan) 魏瑛娟 wenhua shamo 文化沙漠 “When Petals Fall Like Snow—The World of Kuo Pao Kun, Playwright” 花降る日へ：劇作家郭宝崑の世界 [Japanese] Wo [Ngo] 我 Wo xi Xianggangren/Ngo hai Heunggongyan (I Am Hong Kong) 《我係香 港人》 Wong, Kacey (Huang Guocai) 黃國才 Wong, Paul (Huang Bowei) 黃柏武 Wong Shun Kit (Wang Chunjie) 王純杰 Wong Wing Man (Huang Yingwen) 黃穎文 Woo, Mathias (Hu Enwei) 胡恩威 Wu Hsing-kuo (Wu Xingguo) 吳興國 Wu Song (Wu Sung) 武松 Wuzhen Theatre Festival 乌镇戏剧节 xianfeng 先锋/先鋒 Xiang si (Shanghai ban) (Death [Shanghai version]) 《想死（上海版）》 Xianggang meng (Hong Kong Dream) 《香港夢》 Xianggang wang Zhongguo (HK to CN)《香港往中國》 Xianggangren jinggao budui (Hong Kongese Warning Squad)《香港人警 告部隊》 Xiemi de xin (The Tell-Tale Heart) 《泄密的心》 xieshi 写实/寫實 xieyi 写意/寫意 xiqu 戏曲/戲曲 xiqu dujiaoxi, wuchangqu nianbai 戏曲独角戏, 无唱曲念白/戲曲獨腳戲, 無 唱曲念白 Xinwen juchang (Newstheatre)《新闻剧场》 Xiyou huangshan lei (Tears of Barren Hill)《西遊荒山淚》 xiongdipashan, gezinuli 兄弟爬山, 各自努力 xuhuan 虚幻/虛幻 Yang, Edward (Yang Dechang) 楊德昌 Yapian zhanzheng: Zhi Deng Xiaoping de sifeng xin (Opium War: Four Letters to Deng Xiaoping)《鴉片戰爭：致鄧小平的四封信》 Yatyau (Yixiu) 一休 (Leung Shing Him/Liang Chengqian 梁承謙) Ye ben (Flee by Night)《夜奔》 Yee, Amos (Yu Pengshan) 余澎杉 Yi chu meng de xiju (A Dream Play) 《一出梦的戏剧》

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Glossary of names, terms, and titles

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yichui 一才 (一槌) Yu, Louis Kwok-lit (Ru Guolie) 茹國烈 yuanchuang ju 原创剧/原創劇 yueju (Cantonese Yue opera) 粵剧/粵劇 yueju (Shanghainese Yue opera) 越剧/越劇 Yuen Che-hung (Yuan Zhixiong) 阮志雄 Yung, Danny Ning-tsun (Rong Nianzeng) 榮念曾 Za-Koenji Public Theatre 座⋅ 高円寺 [Japanese] zhanshixing yanchu 展示性演出; a.k.a. zhanyan 展演 Zhang Xian 张献 Zhao Zhigang 赵志刚 Zheng He de houdai (Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral) 《郑和的后代》 zhiyin 知音 Zhong Ziqi 鐘子期 Zhongguo dangdai xiju 中国当代戏剧/中國當代戲劇 Zhongguo lücheng jiuba (Journey to the East 98) 《中國旅程九八》 Zhongguo lücheng yijiu jiuqi (Journey to the East 97) 《中國旅程1997》 Zhongguo (Xianggang) wenhua shenceng jiegou (The Deep Structure of Chinese [Hong Kong] Culture)《中國（香港）文化深層結構》 Zhongju (Endgame) 《終局》 Zhuhuan de gushi (The Tale of the Crested Ibis) 《朱䴉的故事》 Zuni Icosahedron 進念⋅ 二十面體

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

Index

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7:84 97, 115 32 Years: The Interrogation of a Mirror 132, 135–36, 144, 235 1984/1997 15, 65n7 Ajoka Theatre 103 Alice Theatre Laboratory 21, 164–88 alienation: efect 79–81 (see also Brecht, Bertolt); social 126, 141; urban 169, 171, 178 Alternative Living Theatre 123 Applied Theatre: Facilitation: Pedagogies, Practices, Resilience 226 Aranyak Theatre 97, 99 Arirang Theatre Company 99 Arts with the Disabled Association (ADA) 93–94, 98, 100–01, 103 Asia 2–3, 96, 122, 126–28, 189, 255; arts organisations in 11, 36–38, 42, 46, 53, 92–93; communism in 74; economy in 1, 8, 74, 106, 117; as episteme 3; as method 1, 71, 75, 233 (see also city as method); theatre in 97, 99, 108, 115–16, 156, 253; theatre research and 1, 4; traditional cultures in 31, 39, 58, 133, 141, 192; traditional performing arts in 53–56, 58–60, 93–94, 116–18, 151–53, 189–90 Asia Arts Net (AAN) 11, 37, 38, 42, 53 Asia-Europe Cultural Network (AECN) 38 Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) 31, 38 Asian Council for People’s Culture (ACPC) 92, 99 Asian Cultural Council (ACC) 93, 99 Asian People’s Theatre 15, 17, 20; see also People’s Theatre

Asian People’s Theatre Festival 99, 115–18 Asian People’s Theatre Festival Society (APTFS) 15, 93, 95, 103 Asia Pacifc Performing Arts Network (APPAN) 38 At the Crossroads 140 Baghdad 145 Bakhtin, Mikhail 73, 84 Balinese dance 94 Bangkok 38, 42, 47, 60, 100, 105 Bangladesh: democracy movement in 105; performance destination 103, 104, 125; theatre collaboration with Hong Kong 97, 99, 105–06, 115, 120; see also Dhaka Basic Integrated Theatre Arts Workshop (BITAW) 92, 97 Baudrillard, Jean 6, 7 Beijing 11, 42, 53, 204; Fringe Festival 167, 178, 184n92; Olympics 137, 177; opera (see jingju (Beijing opera)); Theatre Association 166 Beijing–Hong Kong–Shanghai Young Directors’ Showcase @ Modern Drama Valley Expo Season 21, 164, 166 Beirut 145 Berlin: exchange with Hong Kong 38, 41–42, 60, 88n41; see also Festival of Vision—Hong Kong/Berlin Black Lives Matter 234, 238 Black Tent Theatre 59, 97, 115 Boal, Augusto 88n41, 92, 95, 97; see also Forum Theatre; Theatre of the Oppressed Bogota 60

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Index

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border: crossing of 11–12, 16–17, 212–13, 225–26, 228; national 11, 18 Bread and Puppet Theatre, The 97, 99 Brecht, Bertolt 56, 73, 79, 109, 125 Brisbane 93, 95 Britain see United Kingdom (UK) British Chinese 212, 217 British East Asian: identity 218–19; theatre 21, 212–13, 219 Brook, Peter 117, 118, 126 Butler, Judith 118 butō (Butoh) 104 Cage, John 73, 139, 230 Cairo 104 Cai Weibiao 200, 201 Cai Yayi 200 Cambodian dance 47, 61 Cantonese: culture 125; heritage 114; language 13, 82, 108, 142, 143, 176; opera (see yueju (Cantonese opera)) capitalism 5–6, 43, 97, 114, 124, 126–27; transnational 71, 110, 116, 120–21; urban 17 censorship 51, 229, 237 Centre for Community Cultural Development (CCCD) 103, 104 Chan, Andrew Hang-fai 165, 168, 170–71, 174–77 Chang Soik 104 Chen Kuan-hsing 1, 71, 75, 233 Cheung Tat-ming 99, 106, 119 Chia Thye Poh 135, 137–39, 142, 146n7 China (Mainland): Belt and Road Initiative 2, 43–49, 63, 65, 107, 127; Communist Party of 11, 88n50; Cultural Revolution 74–75, 77, 85, 114, 193, 201–02; national anthem 235; Nationalist Party of 11; National People’s Congress 111; relations with Japan 58, 71, 124; spoken drama (see huaju (spoken drama)); Tiananmen Square protests 19, 50, 52–53, 99, 115, 143; see also Beijing; Fujian; Nanjing; ‘One Belt One Road’; ‘One Country, Two Systems’; Quanzhou; Shanghai Chinese-language theatre 11, 60, 94, 139 Chineseness 3, 56, 75, 192 Chinese opera see xiqu (Chinese opera)

249

Chng Seok Tin 20, 96 Chomsky, Noam 114, 129n10 Chong, Ping 53 choreopolitics 236 Chosen Power 94 chuanju (Sichuan opera) 55 Chumley, Dan 117–19, 121 Chung Chiao 99, 104, 105, 115 Cinematic Theatre 167, 176 city: cosmopolitan 1, 204–05; as frontier zone 12; global 2, 3, 5, 12, 199, 216; as infra-structure 5, 12, 18; multicultural 15, 151; networks of 3, 42, 236; postcolonial 12, 15; postmodern 6–7, 10; as strategy 13; as structure 5–6, 13; see also city as method; city-to-city; cross-city city as method 1, 3, 5, 13, 15–19, 234, 236 city-to-city, as model of collaboration 1, 11–14, 17 City-to-City Cultural Forum (CTCCF) 37, 40, 42–43, 53 Class 7A Drama Group 167, 168, 176 Cold War 1, 74, 75, 127 collaboration: city-based model of 11– 15; city-to-city 5 – 10, 18 –20, 31, 58, 71, 113, 190, 200, 233– 38; cross-cultural 59, 92; goals of 108 –11; inter-Asian 204; intercultural 4, 15, 20, 74, 176; intra-city 14; mechanics of 104– 08; networks of 21, 214, 237; politics of 121; power relations in 17, 20, 117– 19, 121– 22, 223, 233, 237 colonialism 3–4, 11, 12, 20, 114, 116, 117, 124, 142, 235; see also Japan; United Kingdom (UK) comparison: East-West 20; Hong KongSingapore 2, 177; inter-Asian 1; intercity 5, 10–11, 14, 21; as learning method 10–11, 14, 43, 152–53; relational 1, 14, 19 Conference of Asian Foundations and Organizations (CAFO) 37 Contemporary Legend Theatre 54, 55, 137, 138; see also Wu Hsing-kuo cosmopolitanism 1, 9, 237; artistic 205; aspirational 199, 204–05; Chinese 194; unequal 189–90 COVID-19 pandemic 234, 238n4 cross-city 16–18, 40, 43, 60, 234

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cross-cultural exchange 16, 20, 53, 58, 59, 63, 236; strategies for 31–49, 92–112, 151–63, 225–32 cross-cultural theatre 99, 108; see also intercultural theatre cross-disciplinarity 32 Crossing (performance series) 94, 103, 107 Cry of Asia (performance series) 92, 97, 99, 103, 116

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Dalai Lama 128 Damascus 60 Dark Matter Theatre 216 decolonisation 1, 75, 110, 142 deep listening 21, 228–29, 237 Deep Structure of Chinese [Hong Kong] Culture, The 51, 61, 155 deimperialisation 1, 75 Deng Xiaoping 11, 51, 52 Devaraj, John 226–27 Dhaka 100, 104, 105 dialectics 19, 32, 35, 43, 70–71; as creative process 69–73; Hegelian 71–72, 76 dialogue 83, 151–52, 157–59, 162–63; cross-city 43; cross-cultural 58–59, 63; equal 62, 159; safe 229–30 diplomacy: cultural 12, 197, 199; national 11 disability arts organisations 93–94; deaf practitioners and audiences 103, 104 Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep 230 Drama Box 15, 19, 71–72, 74–76, 94, 112 Duanjun Theatre 168 ecology: cultural 37; of intercultural theatre 5, 9, 237 Elegant Voice Ensemble 54 Emergency Stairs 5, 15, 60–62, 76, 151, 160 English 13, 142–43; hegemony of 4, 15–16; as language of intercultural collaboration 104, 106, 108–09, 121–22 equality 63, 109; racial 144; social 128; in theatre 121–22 Expo see Shanghai World Expo 2010 Eurocentrism 158–59 Europe 1, 3, 21, 165, 205–06; Eastern 112, 147

exchange: Asia-Europe 11, 19, 31, 38, 42, 46, 96, 151; city-to-city 11, 20–21, 40, 190; East-West 43–48; facilitation of 225; intercultural 21, 151, 221; policy of 33; power relations and 226–29; strategy 31–36 Fanshen 121 festival 13, 108; aftermath 165, 176; city-to-city 31, 41–42, 45, 166; density 168; framing 166–67, 169, 175, 177; participants 168; schema 166, 179; showcase 164, 166–68; spectators 176 Festival of Vision—Hong Kong/Berlin 11, 31, 41 Filipino People’s Theatre 117 Finger Players, The 87n31, 88n54, 89n63, 219 focal reality 10 Forum Theatre 72, 94–95, 97, 88n41 Foucault, Michel 227 France 97, 104–07, 108, 194–95; see also Paris Freedom From Toil 226, 229 Fujian 199, 202, 206, 190 García Márquez, Gabriel 76 gezaixi (Taiwanese opera) 55 Giroux, Henry 225–26, 228 Glissant, Édouard 225, 231 Gong Strikes One, The 133–34, 136, 138, 140 Guha, Probir 106, 123–24 Hanoi 47, 60 Hantang Yuefu 199, 201 Heng, Ivan 216 He Nian 167 Hiah, Jeremy 95, 96 Hindu Rights Action Force 144 Hokkien: associations in Singapore 190–91, 200; identity 192; language 191, 203; networks 193, 200, 204 Holden, Joan 99, 105–06, 117–21 Hong Hong 55, 56 Hong Kong: 1997 handover of 2, 10, 15, 34, 40–41, 50–51, 142, 171, 235; anarchist movement 114–15; Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill protests 12, 144–45, 147n17, 234–35, 238n4;

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Index

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Arts Development Council 93, 105, 166, 167, 178; Basic Law 40, 111, 132, 142–43; ‘Be Water’ Movement 114, 234; British colonialism 97, 110, 114–16, 124–26, 235; city branding 2, 46, 166–67, 175–77; colonial memory 138; compared to Singapore 1–3, 11, 75, 112; ethnic composition 13; identity 19, 50–52, 125, 127, 143, 172; language policy 13, 122, 142–43; Legislative Council 111, 142; Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) 166; ‘Localism’ movement 13, 127; migration from China to 127, 142; migration from India to 15, 106, 120, 122, 124–26; National Security Law 111, 238n4; regionalism 127–28; Sino-British Joint Declaration 51–52; Umbrella Movement 12, 111, 114, 127, 143 Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts 165 Hong Kong Drama Awards 165 Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture 41, 42, 76 Hong Kong National Security Law 111, 238n4 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR) see Hong Kong Hong Kong Theatre Libre 165 huaju (spoken drama) 60, 64 Huang Hsiang-lian 55, 56 Hyderabad 60 imperialism 6, 20, 233; American 97; British 1; Japanese 1, 97; linguistic 4, 15–16; Western 125 India 1, 14, 16, 92, 99, 116, 120, 233; child labour in 226; music of 195, 198; protests in 234–35; theatre collaboration with Hong Kong 92, 95, 99–100, 103–05, 123–25; theatre of 66n29; see also Hyderabad; Kolkata; Mumbai; New Delhi Indian People’s Theatre 107 Indonesia 14, 233; Chinese diaspora 205; dance of 58, 61, 157; migrants from 106; theatre collaboration with Hong Kong 116, 202; theatre of 66n29; see also Jakarta

251

Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (UNESCO) 64, 202, 208n1 inter-Asian: referencing 3, 14; relationality 165 inter-city 3, 5, 13–16, 162, 234 intercultural theatre 9, 15; Asian 18; as disjuncture 9–10; as ecology 5, 9, 237; language of 4; Sinophone 70; see also collaboration, intercultural; cross-cultural theatre; exchange, intercultural inter-imperiality 15–16 International Drama/Theatre and Education Association (IDEA) 93, 95 International Network for Cultural Diversity (INCD) 3 International Network on Cultural Policy (INCP) 39 Islamabad 60 Istanbul 60 I, Wu Song 132–35, 137–38, 140–44 Jakarta 42, 58 Janothsava 226, 229 Janouch, Gustav 165–66, 170 Japan 1, 74, 92, 110, 116; music of 190, 205; occupation of Singapore 59; performance art of 95; relations with China 58, 71, 124; theatre of 94, 97, 115, 117, 157, 165; see also butō (Butoh); kabuki (Kabuki); nō (Noh); Osaka; Tokyo Java, dance 58, 61, 62, 154, 157, 158 Jiangsu Performing Arts Group Kun Opera Theatre 58, 84 jingju (Beijing opera) 54–55, 94, 137–38, 148n27, 197 Journey to Nowhere 156–58, 160 Journey to the East (performance series) 15, 53–54, 60, 121 kabuki (Kabuki) 117 Kafka, Franz 21, 165–66, 169–71, 174, 176–77 Kampala 104 Kan Lap-keung 171, 172 Kathmandu 99, 100, 104, 105 Ke Jun 55, 56, 58, 60 Kenya 103 Khoo, Eric 54 Koh Wan Ching 78, 80, 83

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Kok Heng Leun 5, 11, 15, 76–78, 94, 225–32 Kolkata 100, 104, 105, 106, 123, 125 Kuala Lumpur 61 kunju see kunqu (Kun opera) Kun opera see kunqu (Kun opera) kunqu (Kun opera) 55–56, 58, 61, 65, 76, 80, 82–84, 161–62 Kuo Pao Kun 2, 11, 84, 93–94, 96, 112 Kuo Shiao-chuang 54 Kusumo, Sardono Waluyo 57, 58 Kwangju 103 Kwan, Stanley 53 Laban, Rudolf 92 Lahore 60, 103 Lai Shu-ya 76, 88n41 Lai, Stan 4, 23n25, 53 La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company 213, 220, 221 Lam, Edward 4, 53 Lam, Kai 95, 96 language see Cantonese, language; Chinese-language theatre; English; Hokkien, language; Malay; Mandarin Chinese; Singapore, languages of; Singapore, multilingualism; Sinophone; Tamil law 17, 34, 135, 170–72, 237; see also Hong Kong, Basic Law; Hong Kong, National Security Law; Singapore, Internal Security Act; Taiwan, martial law Lear Is Here 137–38 Lee King-Chi 133, 140 Lee Kuan Yew 92, 93, 111, 135, 193 Lee Kuo-hsiu 4, 53 Lee, Lyn 191, 196–97, 201–03, 205 Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity 76 Lee Wen 20, 94, 96 liangxiang 140 Li Baochun 58 Li Liuyi 53, 83 Lima 104 Lin Kehuan 175 Lin Zhaohua 53 Lithuania 234 Little Red Shop 216 Liu Xiaoyi 4, 5, 11, 15, 16, 20, 60, 61, 62, 76, 82, 84, 151–53 Living Theatre, The 97, 99, 115 Li Xiaofeng 65 liyuanxi (Pear Garden opera, Quanzhou) 195, 201, 202

Lo, Carmen Ching-man 167, 176 London 2, 3, 38, 60, 212–13, 217, 220, 233 LoNyLa 219–20 Los Angeles 219 M1 Patch! A Theatre Festival of Artful Play 61, 67n32 Macau 42, 47, 84, 93, 103, 165, 179 Macau 1,2,3 93, 103, 109 Macau Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China see Macau Magdalena Project, The 216–17, 220, 223n12 Makhampom Theatre 97 Malay 13; dance 157; music 198–99 Malaysia 11, 53, 75, 139, 144, 213–14; see also Kuala Lumpur Mandarin Chinese 13, 15–16, 72, 142–43, 176, 191–92 Manila 37, 38, 42, 99, 105 Mao Zedong 84, 114 mapping 3, 6, 10, 19 Mei Lanfang 138, 197 Mejudhon, Patravadi 58 Melbourne 230 Meng Jinghui 167 Meng Xiaodong 138 Meng Xiaodong 138 Middle East Arts Net (MAN) 38 Mi Heng 56 Ming Ri 11 mobility 13, 16–18, 213; see also movement; travel Mok, Augustine Chiu-yu 2, 15, 17, 20, 113; Asian People’s Theatre connections 115–16; exchanges with Singapore 92–96; position in Hong Kong theatre 126–28 mondiality (mondialité) 21, 231 movement 9–10, 14, 16, 18, 55, 234; of capital 95, 106, 109; performance and 55–56, 78–80, 136–37, 139–41, 234–35; social 114, 116, 127–28, 132, 143, 145; see also mobility; travel multiculturalism 43–44, 207; global 196; in theatre 93, 95–96; see also Singapore, multiculturalism Mumbai 60 Munich, exchange with Hong Kong 31–32, 40–42

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Index

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nanguan 189, 201–02 Nanjing 58–60, 65, 151; massacre 58 Nanyang 192, 202, 206; culture 205 nanyin 189–211 nation see nation-state nationalism 3, 6, 12, 233, 236 nation-state 3–4, 18, 40, 75, 192; as ideology 234, 236; as model of collaboration 11–13, 19, 237, 192 Necessary Stage, The 61, 95, 112, 215 neoliberalism 5, 17, 137, 138, 141, 233 Nepal: migrants from 106; theatre collaboration with Hong Kong 95, 103–05, 115; theatre of 97, 99; see also Kathmandu network: city-to-city 4, 12, 236; collaborative 21, 214, 237; cultural 7, 32, 36 – 38, 42, 64; global 19, 50, 235; infrastructural 36; inter-Asian 204; intercultural 9; international 20, 212; marginal 212; non-governmental 44; of performance 4; post-diasporic 192; Southeast Asian 204; trans-Asian 50; transnational 65 New Delhi 38, 42 New York: participation in networks 218; performances in 21, 116, 137, 189, 194, 196–98, 220; playreading in 219; signifcance of theatre in 3; as site for exchange 38, 60 Ng, Kelvin Kwok-wa 20, 132–33, 136, 138, 140 Ng, Zelda 77, 78, 79, 80, 82 Ngo, Judy 74, 80, 84, 87n31 nō (Noh) 53, 58–59, 64 Ofshore 103, 105, 116–18 ‘One Belt One Road’ 2, 63, 65, 107, 127 ‘One Country, Two Systems’ 40, 132, 138; benefits of 31, 34, 65, 70; safeguarding of 12, 127; transregional implications of 15; see also Hong Kong, 1997 handover of One Hundred Years of Solitude 76, 184n92; see also One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0: Cultural Revolution 19, 69; collaborative relationships in 76–84; decentring China in 74–76

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One Table Two Chairs (performance series) 54, 60, 63, 84, 153, 157–58, 160, 163n1 Ong Keng Sen 4, 17–18, 20, 53, 93 Ong Kian Sin 74, 87n31 Opium War: Four Letters to Deng Xiaoping 15, 52 Osaka 60 Pakistan 125; theatre collaboration with Hong Kong 103, 105, 107–08, 116, 120; see also Islamabad; Lahore Palay, Seelan 20, 132, 135–39, 141–42, 144, 235–36 Paris 21, 108, 189, 194–97 pathway: defnition of 10; of performance 4–5, 13–19 Patriot, The 235 Pear Garden opera, Quanzhou see liyuanxi (Pear Garden opera, Quanzhou) Pei Kuishan 181n33 People’s Republic of China (PRC) see China (Mainland) People’s Theatre 15, 96–97, 103–04, 107, 122; see also Asian People’s Theatre Philippine Educational Theatre Association (PETA) 92, 95, 97, 99 Philippines 115, 191, 202; migrants from 106; theatre collaboration with Hong Kong 92, 103–05; theatre of 99, 116, 120; see also Manila Phnom Penh 60 place-making 9–10, 237 Playback Theatre 95, 97–99 Playground Entertainment 216 Portugal 103 postcolonialism 3, 7, 12, 15, 75, 117, 143, 213; see also city, postcolonial postmodernism 6, 7, 10, 81, 113, 115; see also city, postmodern Practice School, The 94 protest, as performance 10, 132, 144, 234–35 Quanzhou 192, 199, 200; dialect 190, 196, 203; music communities in 189, 201–02, 204, 206; see also liyuanxi (Pear Garden opera, Quanzhou)

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Index

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Rady, Nget 61 Rashid, Mamunur 99, 104 Red Clif, The 137 Republic of China (ROC) see Taiwan Return [to] Kafka 171; see also Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka Saga Seed Theatre 216, 217 San Francisco 95, 99, 105, 115, 117 San Francisco Mime Troupe (SFMT) 95, 97, 103, 105–06, 115–20 Santos, Al 92, 97, 99, 104 Sarwanam Theatre 97, 99 Satō Makoto 58–59, 61, 66n29, 115 Sau, Peter 77–78, 80–81, 83, 88n49 Second Life, A 215–16, 219, 223n10 Second World War 58; see also SinoJapanese War Seiji Shimoda 95 Seoul 38, 42, 99 Seven Boxes Possessed of Kafka 164–66, 169–77; see also Return [to] Kafka Shanghai 53, 151, 164, 204; comparison with Hong Kong 177; participation in city-to-city networks 11, 37, 39, 43, 47 Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre 168 Shanghai [Jing’an] Modern Drama Valley 164–66 Shanghainese opera see yueju (Shanghainese opera) Shanghai Theatre Academy 47, 168 Shanghai World Expo 2010 58, 65, 164, 166–67, 177–78 Shenzhen 11, 37, 42, 43 Shi Xiaomei 82, 88n42 Shopping with Ang 217 Sichuan opera see chuanju (Sichuan opera) Sigmund Freud in Search of Chinese Matter and Mind 55, 76 Silly Little Girl and the Funny Old Tree, The 66n29, 93 Singapore: Chinese Drama Camps 11; city branding 2, 199–200, 204; compared to Hong Kong 1–3, 11, 75, 112; as cultural broker 204–07; independence 75, 139; Internal Security Act 92, 139; Japanese occupation of 59; languages of 13, 191; multiculturalism 1, 15, 96, 144, 151, 192–93; multilingualism

3, 13, 15, 19; National Arts Council 76, 95–96, 194, 206–07, 213, 215; Parliament House 20, 135, 158, 235; performance art of 95–96; People’s Action Party 77; racial classifcation in 13; School of the Arts 76 Singapore Drama Education Association 94 Singapore International Festival of the Arts 84, 199 Singapore International Foundation 226 Singapore Tourism Board 194, 199 Sino-Japanese War 71; see also Second World War Sinophone: theatre 4, 70, 72; theory 3, 75, 191–92, 195, 200 Sinosphere 2, 11, 16 Siong Leng Musical Association 189, 190–94 Siu Wai-man 170 solidarity: digital 234; silence and 140; transnational 22, 109, 135, 138, 147n17, 238 soloness, as tactic 136–39 solo performance 132, 136; as resistance 137–39, 143 Solos: Experimenting Traditional Chinese Operas 54–55 Soul Journey 195–200 Southernmost Festival 15, 60–63, 151–62 South Korea 74, 190; democracy movement in 234; music of 205; theatre collaboration with Hong Kong 92, 99, 103–04; see also Kwangju; Seoul Sperm 216, 223n11 Spice Road, The 104, 107, 109 Spirits Play, The 59, 64 Spivak, Gayatri 143 Sri Lanka 116 subalternity: racial 144; subjectivity and 20, 132, 135–36, 142–44 Swansea 212, 222 Swing, The 213, 218, 221, 223n3 T:> Works see TheatreWorks Takeuchi Yoshimi 1 Tamil 13, 215 Tan, Alvin 20, 95 Tan Beng Tian 78, 79 Tan, Margaret Leng 230–31 Tan, Royston 76

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley

Copyright © 2021. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

Index Tang, Henry Ying-yen 167 Tang Xianzu 60 Taipei 53, 58, 70, 151, 165, 201; participation in city-to-city networks 11, 37, 42, 43, 60 Taiwan 19, 69, 74, 84, 96, 190; democracy movement in 234; martial law 11; Nationalist Party 11; theatre of 54–56, 99, 115, 137–38; see also Taipei Taiwanese opera see gezaixi (Taiwanese opera) Tale of Two Cities, A—Beijing 1989/ Dhaka 1990 99, 105 Tel Aviv 60 Teng Mah Seng 189, 190, 192–93, 200, 202, 204 Terayama Shūji 165, 180n12, 182n52 Thailand 95, 97, 99, 106, 115, 120; dance of 61; see also Bangkok Thatcher, Margaret 51, 212 Théâtre du Soleil, Le 97 Theatre of the Oppressed 92, 95, 97, 227 Theatre Practice, The 61 TheatreWorks 18, 214, 215, 222 Third Stage 92, 96, 97, 99 Tian Mansha 55 To, Raymond Kwok-wai 52 Toh, Doreen 79 Tohti, Ilham 128 Toki Experimental Project 71 Tokyo 42, 58–60, 66n29, 70, 117, 151 touring 107–08, 175–76, 178–79; international 21, 92, 103–04, 189–90, 196, 199; politics of 5 Traditional Nanyin Organisation 193 translation 4, 17, 52, 121, 151, 153 translocalism 17, 21, 207; minor 213–14 transnationalism: horizontal 12; imagined 131–32; minor 17, 70, 75, 85, 135, 213; solidarity and 20, 22, 132, 138, 234, 238; see also network, transnational travel 4, 14, 18–19, 233; see also mobility; movement Tsai Ming-liang 53 Tsang, Donald Yam-kuen 172 Tsoi, Hardy Sik-cheung 52 Tung Chee-hwa 2 United Kingdom (UK): colonialism in Hong Kong and Singapore 1–3,

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74–75, 132; national anthem 235; theatre of 60, 104; see also London; Swansea United States of America (USA): anti- 39; collaboration with theatre companies in 97, 105, 115, 205 (see also Bread and Puppet Theatre, The; Living Theatre, The; San Francisco Mime Troupe (SFMT)); as hegemonic power 1, 3, 9; as home for exiled 111; as imperialist 7; as performance destination 21, 55, 190, 194–95, 198, 199, 206; practitioners from Asia visiting 93, 99, 104; as source of capitalist exploitation 117; see also Los Angeles; New York; San Francisco Vietnam 202, 205; see also Hanoi W!ld Rice 61, 215 Waiting for the Match 167, 181n35 Wang Bin 61 Wang, Celestina Phek Geok 191, 194, 203 Water Margin, The 56, 131, 133 Wei Hai-min 138 Wei Ying-chuan 53 Western-centrism 1, 3–4, 7, 9, 71; see also Eurocentrism Wong, Joshua 142, 147n16, 148n43 Wong, Kacey 235–36 Wong, May 94, 95 Wong, Paul 53 Wong Shun Kit 53 Wong Souk Yee 92 Wong Wing Man 169 Woo, Mathias 11, 40, 44 World Culture Forum 38–39, 43, 49 Wu Hsing-kuo 4, 54–56, 138 Wu Song 131–35 xiqu (Chinese opera) 70, 117, 136–38, 146n5, 197, 228; alternative 138, 140–41, 147n14; anti- 133–34; experimental 76, 79; movement 83; stage setting 54, 163n1; training 55; see also chuanju (Sichuan opera); gezaixi (Taiwanese opera); jingju (Beijing opera); kunqu (Kun opera); liangxiang; liyuanxi (Pear Garden opera, Quanzhou); Mei Lanfang; yueju (Cantonese opera); yueju (Shanghainese opera)

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Index organisations 37–39, 43–49; views on cultural exchange 31–37 Za-Koenji Public Theatre 58 Zen Buddhism 194, 206 Zhang Xian 53 Zhao Zhigang 55 zhiyin 174–75, 177 Zuni Icosahedron 5, 10, 19, 69, 121, 228; collaboration with Singapore 60–65, 69–70, 83–84, 94; involvement in city-to-city networks 44–49; role in Hong Kong theatre 50–52, 113; transnational collaboration and 52–59; see also Woo, Mathias; Yung, Danny Ning-tsun Zurich 60

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Yang, Edward 53 Yatyau (Yixiu) 168 Yee, Amos 111 Yellow Earth Theatre 217, 219 Yogyakarta 60 Yours Most Obediently 106–07, 116, 122–26 Yu, Louis Kwok-lit 119 yueju (Cantonese opera) 20, 23n16, 55, 113, 132, 133, 134, 137 yueju (Shanghainese opera) 55 Yung, Danny Ning-tsun 5, 19, 51–52, 94, 121; Asian theatre and 56–59; Chinese opera (xiqu) and 53–56, 228; city-to-city model and 10–11, 15–16, 31–40; dialectical method 70, 76–84; involvement in city-based

Asian City Crossings : Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore, edited by Rossella Ferrari, and Ashley