Out of the wings comes a strong, diverse cast of Asian-Australians
Asian-Australians make up a fair portion of our population and that fact is finally being reflected on stage and screen.
As the lights come up on the stage play White Pearl, they reveal something rarely, if ever, seen in Australian theatre: five Asian-Australian actresses.
In fact there’s a sixth, to whom we’re later introduced as she sobs on the floor of a toilet cubicle in this searing comedy from Thai-Australian writer Anchuli Felicia King that careens from prejudice to toxic corporations, intra-Asian politics and everything in between. Critics lauded the play as fearless and razor sharp, acknowledging the bravery with which King tackles thorny issues that deserve to be addressed.
“It is kind of staggering when you look at the demographic of Asian-Australians in this country that we’re so under-represented in the media here,” says King, who spent her childhood between Thailand and the Philippines before the family moved to Melbourne.
“Doing White Pearl post-pandemic, with the surge in anti-Asian hate crimes, and having this all-Asian female cast [there’s one male] giving incredibly virtuosic, ferocious performances feels like even more of a radical political gesture than it did when it debuted in 2019. It feels crazy that I wrote this play six years ago and it still feels as timely and radical and unique in the cultural landscape. I wish the play would feel more dated.”
The groundbreaking play, co-produced by National Theatre of Parramatta (NTofP) and Sydney Theatre Company (STC), is just one of a number of firsts quietly shaking up the stage and screen industry.
Just this year we’ve had Charithra Chandran, the UK-raised daughter of Indian parents, make headlines as the star of steamy period drama Bridgerton. Last year China’s Chloe Zhao claimed the Academy Award for best director (for Nomadland), a first for an Asian woman; while Yuh-Jung Youn became the first Korean performer to win an Oscar, taking home the best supporting actress gong for her role in Minari.
It wasn’t just the women: Riz Ahmed and Steven Yeun were the first men of South Asian and East Asian heritage to be nominated for best actor, for their roles in Sound of Metal and Minari respectively.
Closer to home, Melbourne actor Jillian Nguyen recently made history when she became the first Asian-Australian female lead in a feature film, headlining Ivan Sen’s Loveland.
It is 2022 and one in three Australians was born overseas, six out of 10 of them in Asia. Yet it is noteworthy to see a well-credentialed mainstage cast of strong, diverse Asian-Australian performers. The local screen industry hasn’t fared much better, although there are signs that things are finally changing.
Joanne Kee is executive producer at NTofP, an organisation committed to creating and presenting transformative theatre that reflects the diversity of contemporary Australia.
A former general manager of The Song Company and business manager of programming at the Sydney Opera House, she has worked in the industry for three decades and says broad cultural representation is lacking across the performing arts.
“You don’t see much diversity, and particularly in leadership roles there’s a real lack of diversity,” she says, citing Queensland Ballet’s Li Cunxin and Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (CAAP) chief Annette Shun Wah as rare exceptions. “That’s really important. When people have decision-making roles it will loosen things up to provide more access points.”
While Kee believes companies are starting to address inclusivity, she says the issue needs to be well thought through rather than merely an exercise in box ticking. One of the key drivers behind the establishment of NTofP was to give opportunities to creatives from diverse backgrounds, but also to help them develop the craft and skills needed to sustain a career. “It’s one thing to write a play,” says Kee, “but what do you do once you’ve written it?”
Kee says it’s all about taking calculated risks. She cites director Bali Padda, whose directorial debut Guards at the Taj was supported by mentor and associate artist Darren Yap. The play, which finished its NTofP season in March earned Padda astonishing reviews and offers of more work. Similarly, Orange Thrower, a recent NTofP co-production with Griffin Theatre, saw Griffin artistic director Declan Greene step into the role of dramaturge, enabling Sydney actress, musician and TV presenter Zindzi Okenyo to experience her first role as director. “We could have just had Declan directing and Zindzi as associate … but now someone will see on her bio she has directing experience. The talent is there, it’s about showing them next steps and letting them be seen, so people will start thinking of these artists.”
Many theatre companies are now tackling the issue head on with real, sustainable approaches. The STC’s collaboration with CAAP on a two-year directors training program developing Asian-Australian directors for the stage is already showing promise: Courtney Stewart became the 2020 Richard Wherrett Fellow and has now been appointed artistic director of La Boite in Queensland. She will make her directorial debut at STC next month with Top Coat, written by Michelle Law, whose play Single Asian Female debuted at Sydney’s Belvoir. Tasnim Hossain won the Sydney Theatre Awards’ best director award on an independent production for Yellow Face (KXT) and will be associate director on Lifespan of a Fact from September.
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Last year, STC announced the inaugural associates involved in a professional development initiative for First Nations and culturally and linguistically diverse artists, to tackle underrepresentation in theatre design.
Melbourne’s Malthouse has for many years supported work by artists from diverse backgrounds, most recently Stay Woke – Sri Lankan-Australian writer Aran Thangaratnam’s probing cultural comedy starring Dushan Philips and Kaivu Suvarna, which also toured to Darlinghurst Theatre.
Sydney’s Belvoir has an associates program to nurture emerging creatives, in collaboration with Co-Curious, led by artistic associate and Counting and Cracking playwright S. Shakthidharan and Belvoir producer Zainab Syed. (Counting and Cracking – another groundbreaking play featuring a cast of 16 actors of colour in an epic production spoken in six languages – will tour the UK in August).
Diverse audiences, too, need to not only feel welcome but that their own stories are being represented on stage. Too often the on-stage fare has seemed interested in only appealing to the white folk sitting in the audience.
“It’s important people don’t see the theatre as something that’s not for them, that they feel part of a wider community,” says Kee. “It’s all very well to make this work, but are we just making it for a white audience or do we want to really embrace and bring along others?”
Griffin Amplify is a new three-year audience initiative funded by the Girgensohn Foundation that enables Griffin to run community engagement strategies around select productions to reach audiences who historically have been under-represented in mainstream theatre.
There are plenty more shows to get excited about: Melbourne Theatre Company’s Laurinda, a reimagining of Alice Pung’s novel by Diana Nguyen, is an exploration of class, status and identity with a cast of six Asian-Australian women, including Jillian Nguyen. The latter is also starring in the ABC TV series Barons, which explores the real-life drama behind the billion-dollar surf brands Billabong and Quicksilver.
‘I genuinely believe in the value of telling our own stories and creating our own culture’
Nguyen is one of a growing number of impressive young Asian-Australian actors making their mark on screen, including Arka Das (Bali 2002; Shantaram), Yerin Ha (Halo, Sissy), Geraldine Viswanathan (Bad Education), Remy Hii (Wellmania), Michelle Lim Davidson (After the Verdict) and Catherine Van-Davies (It’s Fine, I’m Fine; Barons), among others.
Meanwhile, White Pearl’s King is now living between the US, London and Melbourne and working on not one but four TV shows, including The Baby, a “darkly funny political feminist horror comedy” series for HBO/Sky alongside a team of writers including Succession’s Susan Stanton; Australian trial drama The Twelve, starring Sam Neill and Marta Dusseldorp and airing on Foxtel in June; Amazon comedy Deadloch; and another “very exciting” US TV show she is unable to talk about.
As the STC’s Patrick White Fellow, she is also working on the stage adaptation of an epic historical Australian novel that “hasn’t gotten its cultural dues”. Watch this space.
Speaking from New York, where she is overseeing the off-Broadway debut this month of her 2019 MTC play Golden Shield, King says it’s a privilege to bring such complex characters to life: “I continue to work on projects where I get to write nuanced, ugly, messy females of colour on everything I work on in theatre and on screen.”
Despite the ongoing opportunities to work for the big streamers abroad, King is determined to keep returning home. “As an artist I’ve always been really driven by a genuine belief in the potential of political representation and I think there remains a dearth of Asian-Australian representation in Australia, particularly behind the camera and writing the scripts,” she says. “The conversation is happening but the change is too slow for my liking and that’s the impetus for me to come back.
“I believe in the value of participating in that conversation, and I genuinely believe in the value of telling our own stories and creating our own culture.”