Review-Choices-Deaf Drama Festival
27-9-12
Breaking Barriers
On Wednesday evening, the 26th of September 2012, the Hong Kong Arts Centre presented the first in a two-part series of programs featuring performing artists who are deaf or hard of hearing. Their intention is to promote the dogma that there “are no boundaries in the world of arts.”
This program, entitled Choices, was written by deaf playwright Angel Yu and was produced by Bernard Lee, the Director of the Hong Kong School for the Deaf Alumni Association. It was presented through an assemblage of four performers from the Hong Kong School for the Deaf Alumni Association, UKNOW, Spice Theatre and the Hong Kong Theatre of the Deaf.
Using a combination of dance, movement, gesture, mime and multi-media, they told the story of a young girl who begins in poverty, jumping from one tedious job to another until she hears about a job at a dance company. While there, she is enamored by the jewelry, glamour and her desire for the club manager. Soon, she is enticed into becoming one of the dancers. She quickly earns fame and fortune and the supposed affections of her boss. However, she soon discovers that she is not the only one who he has affections for. The other dancers flee when they learn of his infidelities but the girl chooses to forgive him – at first. She wrestles with this choice and in the end must choose between the life she always dreamed about and her own sense of worth.
When I first read the plot summary, I believed it to be a fairly easy choice in regards to story line. It seemed similar to most dance centered movies such as Center Stage or Burlesque where a pivotal story line is the young ingénue falling for her boss or fellow dancer and getting in over their heads. But I was truly anxious to see if they could take a fairly common story and tell it in a different way.
And they did their job well. The story runs in a linear pattern, except for the very beginning moment where they reveal the ending of the story – an effective touch. Then, throughout the piece, they used many conventions to help tell the story. Since there wasn’t any spoken, signed or written language used throughout the story (except for a few flashes on the wall that noted a passage of time), the performers had to rely heavily on their ability to use physicality, expressions and gestures to make clear what their characters were experiencing and saying to one another.
The play begins with a completely blank stage in McAulay’s Black Box Theatre. After that, there were only a few chairs used and very minimal props, giving the performers the opportunity to create the settings in the mind of the audience. Throughout this play, this is the one convention they used most effectively. Mime instructors would be proud.
Throughout the first scenes, they began by using a lot of overtly slow movement. I had assumed that this was to help the audience feel comfortable with the story telling style; however, their Producer, Mr. Lee, said that this was intended to help the audience gain insight into the characters and truly understand who they were. I can accept this; however, this strategy was a little bit overused. The performers carried their characters well enough that the slow motion was not needed as much as it was used. Brief moments of this technique were nice mixed in with faster moments, but long periods of it became slightly tedious.
They also used a stop motion technique where all actors on the stage would freeze except for one, giving that character a moment to show and express what they are feeling – kind of a Shakespearean aside through movement. Because there isn’t any formalized language, these were used very well, although, again, they didn’t need to be as long as they were. The message could have been told more quickly or they could have made it bigger and explored the thought process more through bigger movement.
As the story progressed, they began to have some soliloquies and dream sequences that were performed beautifully by Angel Yu. She is very skilled at using mime and physical story telling. She has many moments where she is the only person on the stage and she fills the space.
The other two actresses in the play, Pan Hui and Sheung Sheknam, also portrayed their characters well, using very effective physical story telling. From the moment they walked on stage, they clearly embodied their vixen type characters. However, I believe they could have gone further with it. After speaking with them after the show, it was clear that they understood their characters and had a good understanding of their motivations and backgrounds; I would have liked those inner stories to be made more clear on stage – more smarmy side glances, bigger haughtiness, more conviction in their dances. They have the skills, they just need to go for it.
The villain of the piece was played by Jason Cheng. He was a lot of fun to watch. He was energetic and charming. He began by interacting with the audience, trying to pull them into the story. He was flirtatious and you could truly believe he could get any girl he wanted. But he was so charming throughout that I didn’t quite believe him as a villain. Mr. Cheng said that he felt his character was just a bad sort of guy who grew up on the streets and kind of did what was needed to survive. If he could add some more scheming glances and greed in his eyes and portray a little more clearly that he didn’t really care about the girls, showed he cared about the money more, I could have bought his duality more easily.
Despite the need to tighten it up a bit and add a few more character nuances, I was truly touched by this performance. When asked why they wanted to begin a Deaf Theatre Festival, Mr. Lee stated that there is such a huge divide between the hearing and deaf world, even though we all live together. And he is hoping that by developing drama that is accessible to both the hearing and deaf world, they can begin to break down these barriers. I believe that this group of performers proved quite palpably that we don’t all need to speak the same language to communicate.
In November, the HKAC will present “Hong Kong Deaf Drama Festival Programme 2”, entitled “Time Moves”. This program will recall “the history of Hong Kong on the city’s development from a fishing village into an international metropolis, taking its audience on a journey of Hong Kong history and culture."
For Cantonese, Mandarin, English, Deaf or Hearing audiences, I would encourage everyone to check it out. It will be a performance you really won’t see anywhere else in Hong Kong. Choices will continue playing at the HKAC in Wanchai through Saturday. Tickets are available through URBTIX. You can find all the event details on our site, here.
Comments
vlad
Didn't know this show was happening until it appeared on your blog. So glad I went in saw it. Matthew is completely right that it drags in some places but it's affordable and great entertainment. I really enjoyed myself.
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