A Dragon year

So in a few hours it's going to be the Year of the Dragon. A big year for me, with many personal 'projects' (the biggest of which I can't yet divulge), and if you believe such things as Zodiac predictions, it's going to be a year bursting with creativity, innovation and unpredictability. I can believe it!

Good thing I'm well stocked up on sleep. Since late November, when The Bone Feeder wrapped, I've been lounging in a pleasurable creative limbo - sleeping, reading (comics and newspapers mostly, though other books have crept in) and, I admit it, sampling the various crappy programmes that passes for TV these days (I now know all I really wanted to know about Gypsy Weddings, the inner workings of the restaurant industry and old antiques. I draw the line at spending any time on the X Factor, though. Just the adverts are cringeworthy.) I've caught up with a few excellent films on DVD too, spent lots of 'couple time' with my lovely squeeze, and we've done a bit of travelling around the South Island where I've been based for the summer. (I should mention that my creative laziness contrasts with my work in the medical realm, as I've had locums right through Xmas and January).

So. That's why there's been no movement on this blog (or my other blog on The Big Idea)... nothing's been happening! But we're back to the big smoke tomorrow, and I see the creative crowd are cranking up for the year, and a few deadlines are looming for me...

I am the 1%

I am the 1%. I am the daughter of a doctor. I grew up in Remuera, the suburb many of our leaders, industry heads and politicians choose to live; I went to a private girl's school. I had access to the best education money can buy, my parents ensured I had the space and energy to study. I got into medical school on my own merits, but all the good role modelling and encouragement must have helped.

At university, I was encouraged to question accepted truths, to look for evidence with my own eyes, and to read and think widely. I was taught how to identify if someone was sick and how to look after them. I was taught about risk factors, pathology, microbes and the doctor's role in society.

But this training did not prepare me for when I entered the real world, with real people. People who were not in hospital because of a simple 1+1 =2 equation, but a far more complex sequence of events which sometimes started before they were born. People whose health was almost nothing to do with pathology and microbes but much more to do with where they lived and how much education they'd had. In my first year dealing with real patients, I learnt more about being a doctor than in 6 years of medical school.

I've since learnt many more things. How health is determined by the manner in which our society looks after its members. How a small intervention early on, such as support for a struggling parent, or a good education, can save lives and money down the track. How the most valuable interventions come from the community itself, working together in cooperation. How much we know now compared to twenty years ago and how much we still have to learn.

I am the 1%. But please don't look down on me for it. I am trying to learn. I know there are others, too, who don't automatically accept what our colleagues in power tell us. After all, we received the best education money can buy. So please accept our help. Talk to us. Teach us. Tell us how we can cooperate together to make things the best they can be for our society. Then there doesn't need to be a 1% and a 99%; there will only be the 100%.

The Bone Feeder trailer (performance footage)

Tuesday Poem: The Problem of Descendants by Tim Jones

They reassort your genes
and sort through your things when you're gone.
They ask: why did he keep that ridiculous hat, those
palaeolithic music magazines?

Half to the tip, half to the Sallies,
plus a small urn on the mantelpiece,
three photos, the fading diaries
they can't quite bear to throw away.

They remember you at birthdays, Christmas.
You recede into scrapbooks,
the photos growing faint, your children's children
forgetting why they know your name.

File formats are rendered obsolete.
Anthologies go out of print.
In a provincial library, behind a rack of shelves,
your last book battles silverfish.

Ashes, vanity. The years
scroll past like autocues. Yet,
scavenging the ruins, or terraforming Mars,
still someone somewhere has your nose.


I love this poem - funny, poignant and sad, it taps into our small hidden fears and anxieties. It's just one of the many wonderful poems published in Tim's recently launched collection "Men briefly explained". i was lucky enough to attend the Auckland leg of the book tour and to hear Tim read. I also interviewed him for The Big Idea: http://www.thebigidea.co.nz/news/blogs/talkwrite/2011/oct/105031-cultural-storytellers-tim-jones

The Bone Feeder trailer (behind the scenes)

Us in rehearsal last week! The singing is now much better ;)

Radio NZ panel discussion on Asians in the arts

This is only the second time Roseanne and I have been in a panel discussion together, although I think more and more people are twigging onto the idea of 'the sisters in the arts'. We've never properly worked together, but we do bounce ideas off each other and swap contacts. In this panel discussion, our friend Sonia Sly interviews us, along with a discussion with visual artist Liyen Chong.

Tuesday poem: Coming Home by He Zhizhang

七言絕句

賀知章

回鄉偶書


少小離家老大回， 鄉音無改鬢毛衰；
兒童相見不相識， 笑問客從何處來。



COMING HOME


I left home young. I return old;
Speaking as then, but with hair grown thin;
And my children, meeting me, do not know me.
They smile and say: "Stranger, where do you come from?"

**
From "300 Poems of the Tang Dynasty" http://etext.virginia.edu/chinese/frame.htm
This is a poem I quote in my play The Bone Feeder. Yesterday over lunchtime, in order to give my actor something to practise with, I recorded my Dad reading this in his native Cantonese (with my mum in the background exhorting him to read it with 'more feeling'!) It was pretty emotional to me to hear my dad reading this, as I cannot read Chinese but understand it at a basic conversational level. The play, as might be suggested by the poem, deals with the migrant experience but is based on Chinese-NZ history.

The Bone Feeder : Press release

Play brings to life ghosts of Chinese immigrants

20th Nov – for immediate release

In 1902, the SS Ventnor sank in the Hokianga Harbour with the bones of 499 Chinese miners bound for ancestral graves in Canton. A century later Ben, a young man, arrives in the Far North to try to find some link with his past. A new NZ play which draws on the traditions of Asian storytelling, The Bone Feeder is a sumptuous professional theatre production which uses a cast of 19 performers, live music, high-wire martial arts, dance, drama and comedy to tell this story of one of the first times of contact between NZ Chinese and Maori.

The Bone Feeder is a fictional exploration of what is for many Chinese New Zealanders a very real and significant piece of their history. The story of the SS Ventnor, chartered in 1902 by the Shin Tong Association to carry the exhumed bodies of immigrant Chinese back to their home villages, is one which carries emotional weight for the many NZ Chinese who lost family members in the shipwreck, and for the local Maori families who found bones washed up on the coast.

“Back in the 1900s, it was considered important for Chinese to return to their home villages,” playwright Renee Liang (The First Asian AB, Lantern) explains. “So the Chinese which had migrated to New Zealand to work, mainly in the gold fields, considered themselves only temporary visitors. They always intended to return home once they had made enough money. Of course, life being harsh at that time, many of them didn’t make it."

Those who died were buried in temporary graves, and the then-vast sum of four thousand pounds raised by subscription among the local Chinese community to charter a ship, the SS Ventnor, to carry the exhumed bones home. It was believed that people needed to return to their home villages in order to watch over their descendants and in return, have their graves looked after and spirits nourished.

Unfortunately, the Ventnor struck a rock and subsequently sank near the Hokianga Harbour. The coffins and bones were lost, along with 13 lives of crewmen. But some of the coffins and bones were washed ashore where, local stories reveal, they were found by local Maori and buried in family urupa.

The Bone Feeder follows the fictional Ben, a young fifth-generation Chinese New Zealander who travels to the present-day Hokianga to look for the bones of his great great grandfather. Driven by his father's dying wish, he encounters some unusual ‘locals’ – who may or may not be cheeky ghosts. It’s also the story of Kwan, a man who emigrates to NZ in the 1800s and has to decide where he belongs.

Liang says, “The story has evolved from a simple hero-quest to a much more layered consideration of what it means to be an immigrant or to inherit an immigrant story. I delve into history and intergenerational relationships, and hopefully make it funny and dramatic along the way. Because it is set in the Hokianga and involves 'ghosts', there's also a fair amount of magic which we use theatrical techniques to bring to life - high-wire flying, live music with traditional Maori and Chinese instruments, light and shadow play, puppetry and dance.”

It is believed to be the first time in NZ that martial arts with high-wire flying have been used for a professional play. Dragon Origin, NZ’s first martial arts stunts company, are providing the technical expertise and muscle power. Stunt choreographer and actor Willie Ying is excited about the show. “It is a chance for us to tell the real Chinese stories, stories that mean something to us.”

Significantly, many of the cast have family history intertwined with the real history explored in The Bone Feeder. Lead actors Gary Young (Apron Strings, Underbelly) and Rob Mokoraka (Strange Resting Places, Tama Tu), have both drawn on their heritage while developing their characters. Young’s family immigrated to NZ during the turbulent post-WWII era, and Mokoraka, who is of Ngapuhi ancestry, spent part of his childhood in the Hokianga. Even director Lauren Jackson (Passage, Exchange) has Chinese ‘ancestry’ – through her young daughter, who is one-eighth Chinese and whose great-great grandmother was one of only six Chinese women living in NZ at the start of the 20th century.

With set design by Jessica Verryt (Young and Hungry Festival 2011, Yours Truly), The Bone Feeder is heavily influenced by both Asian and Western theatre techniques.
Liang’s brief of “creating a magical environment where anything can and does happen” is explored to its fullest potential, with poetic touches and references to Chinese paper cuts and shadow play – with a distinctly NZ feel.

Talented composer Andrew Corrêa leads a group of musicians playing traditional Chinese and Maori instruments, who provide all the sound effects and music for the play. As in Asian theatre, the arrival of the musicians on stage will herald the start of the play.

Liang says that she hopes the story will have universal resonance. “ I can imagine what it’s like to have a foot in two worlds, torn between what is left behind and what is hoped for in the new country. New Zealand is a nation of immigrants – even Maori have their immigration stories. Ultimately it is the people we love – our whanau– that bring us home. And that to me is the most important thing.”

****
Website: www.bonefeeder.com

Season dates: 10-20 November 2011 (Preview 9 Nov)
Venue: TAPAC, 100 Motions Rd, Western Springs
Times: Tuesday – Saturday @ 7.30pm (Sunday at 4pm)
No performance Monday 14 November
Tuesday 15 November matinee @ 12pm
Cost: Tickets $15-$30, concessions for seniors, students, children and groups

75 mins. Parental guidance recommended for children under 10. In English with phrases in Cantonese and Maori.
Bookings phone (09) 8450295 from 10am – 5pm or online at http://tapac.org.nz

**

Full cast and crew:

Creative Team
Director - Lauren Jackson
Writer /Producer - Renee Liang
Dramaturg - Fiona Samuel
Production mentor - Andrew Malmo
Set design/props - Jessika Verryt
Design Mentor- John Verryt
Master craftsman/design - Ronald Andreassend
Lighting design - Nik Janiurek
Costume design - Estelle Macdonald
Martial arts choreographer - Willie Ying
Dance choreographers - Philippa Pidgeon, Su Ka
Animateur consultant - Felicity Horsley
Production consultant - Margaret-Mary Hollins
Production manager/Stage Manager - Theresa Hanaray and Jamie Blackburn


Cast
Kwan - Gary Young
The Ferryman - Rob Mokoraka
Ben - Kevin Ng
Wang - Charles Chan
Dan- Llanyon Eli Joe
Sam - Willie Ying

Chorus
Henry Cheng
Monica Mu
Benjamin Teh
Ally Xue

Musicians
Musical director/percussion - Andrew Corrêa
Composer/Ghuzheng - Jessica Wu
Composer/Taonga puoro - Riki Bennett
Composer/Chinese flute - TBA

Dragon Origin martial arts stunt operating team
Willie Ying
Rus
Salman Haider
David Mei
Walid Hossaini
Beyond Wen
Benjamin Teh
Henry Cheng