In Search of Contemporary Theatre Writing
I still remember how I was attracted to theatre. It all started with my first theatre performance in high school from which I know there’s a space on earth that can play magic. That is the theatre. It might well be natural for me to start engaging in the theatre as an actress. The course of performance became an important self-discovery journey on knowing what kind of an artist I wanted to be. For the world that I was born into – an artist shares and embraces the voice of different nations.
While exploring my passion in theatre performance, I have also been developing my professional career as a writer. I have been looking for a creative writing platform that provides freedom for creative impulse and imagination. I started in the exciting but consuming industries of television and advertising which have won me two advertising awards in my first year in the industry. But it had never stopped me from pursuing art and cultural development and social justice. I decided to continue my pursuit through journalism when I was invited to join the culture page of Ming Pao Daily, one of Hong Kong’s most widely distributed Chinese newspapers, where I covered art and cultural news and policies in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
As you probably know, Hong Kong has been a British colony for a hundred years before 1997. During the colonial period, economic development in this densely populated city has always been a priority of the then government. We are best known for our role as an international financial and shopping centre, instead of artistic and cultural heritage. We are proud of being in the centre of global economy with a highly efficient business and financial system, but we also struggle with extreme level of materialism and consumerism, which is also reflected in the theatre scene in recent years. We face with similar situations with our theatre counterparts in other countries where the majority of the audiences are attracted to highly entertaining shows, or what we called “white collar shows”.
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Hong Kong theatre practitioners have been searching our Hong Kong identity through theatre work since the 1980’s, during the period when the UK government declared the handover of Hong Kong to China which took effect on July 1st, 1997. We hold an identity of our own. We embrace both eastern and western culture. We inherited the sophistication of British and western society while keeping the core values of family solidarity and courtesy of being Chinese. These all contributes to our rich and complex art and cultural heritage. The search of identity has also developed into a wide range of theatre discourse and aesthetics in the past decades, which contributed to the evolution of different companies specified in creating traditional drama, physical theatre, ensemble theatre, musical theatre, experimental theatre, children’s theatre, puppet theatre and Cantonese opera.
The search of identity is a never-ending journey. It has become more challenging when our government announced an extremely ambitious cultural project, to establish a new cultural district on 40 acres of land along the waterfront facing the beautiful Victoria Harbor, where 15 new theatres and a couple of museums and exhibition centers will be built. The next ten years will be a critical period for Hong Kong artists to reveal their identity and artistic pursuit in view of all the upcoming challenges including but not limit to art education, leadership training, cultural exchange and collaboration with mainland China.
The calling to devote myself into theatre profession came during this critical period when I was invited to join PIP Theatre Limited (former Theatre Ensemble) in 2005, one of Hong Kong’s most active theatre companies. In view of the possible challenges in the new performing arts scene, I was actively involved in pushing forward a pilot venue partnership scheme which became a reference model for the government scheme launched years after. I introduced and led an art development approach to what we know as public relations and marketing, which became one of the main driving forces that enabled the company to grow three times as big in three years. With regard of the future need of artistic development of both the company and Hong Kong, I started to distinguish myself as the person responsible for establishing the first literary department in Hong Kong theatre under the mentorship of Master Lin Ke-huan, a renowned dramatist in mainland China.
The literary department is one of the three leading departments in a theatre company. For me, it is as important as the artistic and the management department for a theatre company. It is a place to mentor and nurture dramatists, a driving force to pursuit artistic growth, a mirror to reveal the truth, an intellectual to construct discourse and a witness to write history. When Lessing started the position as a dramaturg and advisor in the German National Theatre in Hamburg, his theoretical writings Laocoon and Hamburg Dramaturgy (Hamburgische Dramaturgie) set the standards for the discussion of aesthetic and literary theoretical principles.
The framework of the literary department is laid with a vision. We have successfully promoted theatre arts and culture to the general public through literary and theatre appreciation programs, facilitated research and development projects for strategic development of the company, provided dramaturgical support for company productions, and put together an archive and documentation system. We’ve also inaugurated the first annual Hong Kong Playwright Festival and a Conference on Contemporary Performing Arts. The experience of establishing the literary department enables me to become an active cultural worker in Hong Kong, contributing in the capacities as a theatre critic, playwright, culture writer, performer, producer, project curator and media consultant.
Thanks to a twelve-month fellowship support from Asian Cultural Council, I have the invaluable opportunity to reside in New York City since March 2010 to conduct research on dramaturgy and new play development. My residency at the Lark Play Development Center provided an open and supportive community on my research and led me to an in-depth exploration of the process and value of play development. They are there to listen, to ask questions, to reflect, and as they said, to be the sounding board. They provided a safe, embracing and reflective environment for play development. My exposure in helping with organizing the Playwrights’ Week and hotINK at the Lark also provided me invaluable opportunities to learn and to meet with international playwrights. The Lark’s every trust, respect and detail in their programming and organization that distinguish them in achieving their specific goals, as mentioned in one of the articles written by their producing director John Clinton Eisner, “to use the arts as a way to invent a vocabulary with which we can describe our versions of a desirable future to one another and find ways of playing them out.”
My journalistic background has strengthened my observation and broadened my horizon to the world in an analytical way that is always reflected in the theme and notion of my plays. To write a play becomes a creative platform and a critical process to understand more of the cause and consequences of the complex human behavior. My acting background has provided me physical and directorial windows to explore the possibilities of narrative in theatre. I have been pursuing innovative ways to marry the form and the notion of a play, a new voice of theatre that explores a structure, language and musicality which will better represent the contemporary world and play more beautiful magic in theatre.
The theatre works that I have been experiencing in the United States have provided me valuable reflections on the cultural merits and differences among different nations. My experience in this fellowship year mirrored my personal aesthetic pursuit to broaden my horizon to the art of playwriting, in the hope that I might contribute to the Hong Kong and Chinese theatre scene, to bridge the gap between Hong Kong and Chinese theatre with the rest of the world through cultural exchange, and to tell the stories of Hong Kong and Chinese communities.
2011 Written exclusively for “The Soul of the American Actor”
JANICE SZE WAN POON is a writer and theatre professional from Hong Kong who has been awarded the Asian Cultural Council fellowship to pursue research on dramaturgy and play development in the United States for twelve months from 2010-11. She has been a creative writer before she began her professional career as a cultural journalist for Ming Pao Daily in 2001. She joined PIP Theatre Limited in 2005, one of Hong Kong’s leading theatre companies, where she distinguished herself as the person who is responsible for establishing the first literary department in Hong Kong theatre. Ms. Poon has been an active cultural worker in Hong Kong, working also in the capacities as a culture and theatre critic, playwright, actress and producer. She has edited five publications on Hong Kong theatre and culture. Recent theatre projects include two solo performances “Yi” and “Bie.” Ms. Poon participated as a translator, collaborator and performer in “Spring time at Wuhu Street” by Theatre Fanatico, “Crave”by Sarah Kane, as well as “Death and the Maiden” by Elfriede Jelinek. Three of her plays received staged presentation in the Hong Kong Playwright Festival, namely “Liao,” “The Room,” and “This is Love.”
