Citizens of Nowhere?

This summer I was commissioned by Chinese Arts Now to write a site-specific live audio drama for London Southbank Centre’s China Changing Festival, exploring British Chinese identity.  

In rehearsal: Siu Hun Li, Pik-Sen Lim, Jennifer Lim
(Photo: Ikin Yum)

Directed by David Jiang, the show was tailored for the Concrete Café at the Southbank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall – a wide-open space in the concert hall’s foyer, with busy through traffic and challenging acoustics.  The technical premise was that the actors would be seated among the audience in the café, with ticket-holders listening into their conversation via headphones, as if eavesdropping on fellow customers.  

This audio concept had been premièred by Beijing 707N Theatre (a partner organisation of CAN), at Shanghai Xintiandi Festival in 2016; but while it was novel enough to attract an audience, I knew that to hold attention for the 45 minutes it would play in real time in a public setting with many distractions the content had to be strong in narrative and emotional involvement.  My brief was for a play with three characters, to run no longer than 45 minutes; other than that, I had carte blanche to create an entirely new script, storyline, and characters for the UK context. 

Siu Hun Li & Jennifer Lim (Photo: Ikin Yum)

As I’m mixed race myself (my late father was born in Shanghai and came to the UK in 1957; mum is Welsh) I was able to draw on personal experience, but also wanted to canvass others for their real-life stories and opinions to avoid cliché.  So, during July, CAN’s Artistic Director An-Ting Chang and I conducted interviews with a number of people from the British-Chinese community, which became our source material.  One of the interviewees was Scots Chinese actor, Siu Hun Li, whom we later cast as a character inspired by his own story!

Jennifer Lim (Photo: Ikin Yum)

The catalyst for the title, Citizens of Nowhere?, was Prime Minister Theresa May’s controversial 2016 Conservative Party Conference speech, in which she contended that those who believe themselves “citizens of the world” are “citizens of nowhere”, with no roots and no allegiance. Our play was commissioned to reflect its setting in the tourist heart of multi-cultural London, arguably the most cosmopolitan city in the world, and one which had resoundingly voted to Remain in the European Union in the Referendum of 2016.  As a Londoner myself, who has grown up with multiple cultural identities, my starting point was to think about the characters we might encounter in this café on the Southbank on the eve of the rupture of Brexit – who could they be, where did they come from, why were they here, where did they feel they “belonged”?  And what would this emotionally-charged point in time mean for them?

I decided on a mother, Linda Lo, arriving for a rendezvous with her son, Jun Chi, and daughter, Jane.  A first generation immigrant in childhood, Linda is divorced from her children's father, with whom she had spent 40 years building up a successful chain of restaurants, and now has an announcement to make; but actor Jun Chi is mystified by her refusal to engage with plans for his upcoming wedding to Dutch fiancée, Marit, while his businesswoman sister, Jane, has big news of her own...

Pik-Sen Lim (Photo: Ikin Yum)

Schedule for the work was tight, with the script written in August and in rehearsal by early September.  Siu Hun was joined in the cast by Pik-Sen Lim, playing his fictional mother, Linda, and Jennifer Lim as ambitious Jane.  We were lucky to be able to rehearse from the beginning in the Concrete Café for half the time, so that the actors could get a feel for the performance space and its particular challenges.  For instance, on the day of our dress rehearsal we were unexpectedly joined by a large party of school children, attending a Schools National Poetry Day Live event.  Not only did this mean we had to move our rehearsal to a different part of the venue and compete with the sound of their performance, but the loos were closed to adults for the whole afternoon for safeguarding reasons - a good test of concentration…

In rehearsal, we experimented with different types of audio tech, at one point aiming to offer audience the option of listening via their own smartphones on an internet connection, but this proved too risky; we decided on a more stable radio mic system, using tour-guide headsets.  

Excited to see our listing on the billboard outside
a windy Southbank Centre!

The script was fine-tuned, not least to allow for entrances and exits in the café to be timed in real distance, with the performance style as naturalistic as possible: the audience would be able to see the actors among them, but to those outside the ticketed space, the drama would be imperceptible – just a normal afternoon in the café.  The acoustics were such that dialogue was not audible without headphones, while for those equipped with head-sets it was a surprisingly intimate experience.  

This Instagram photo (taken from the audience by Daniel York) gives an idea of how the show appeared in performance.  The actors are the three people in the middle of the shot (Pik-Sen Lim with her back to camera; Jennifer Lim with ponytail, left; Siu Hun Li with beard, right.)  The audience inside the black ribbon cordon and with their backs to us are listening via headphones; people outside the cordon by the window are going about their own business, oblivious.  

Siu Hun Li & me

With only four performances over two days (6 & 7 October 2018) during the China Changing Festival, adrenaline was running high.  In addition to producing the play, An-Ting also assisted director David Jiang and played a waitress who serves the characters with “champagne”, whose pop she engineered for each performance with chemical expertise!  Along the way, the cast coped with distractions including the late running of a concert in the main auditorium, which disgorged its audience of hundreds into the foyer ten minutes into the start of our show.  

We were delighted to find the show sold out and received positive feedback, with many audience members recognising their own experience in the story of familial conflict and identity crisis – with, thankfully, a few laughs along the way! 

Our time at the Southbank was over all too soon, but we look forward to reviving the show at Duddell's restaurant, London Bridge, for Chinese Arts Now's own inaugural festival (#CANFestival2019) in January 2019, and at Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham on 4 February 2019.  Meanwhile, this review gives a flavour of the piece.  

Update: we sold out all performances at Duddell's, but you can read more about the production there in this interview for Cathay Pacific Discovery Magazine and a review. The show also played to acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2019. Reviews here: Exeunt Magazine; The Student Newspaper; The Skinny.

Photo: David Hepburn