Children’s plays intend to share Chinese culture with inspiration
With the performances of two of her children’s plays adapted from Chinese folklore, Heather Quan Rule hopes to share a combination of her ancestors’ culture and a modern message of inclusion and appropriate representation.
Today, Stockton’s Red Dragon Youth Theater will be performing “The Great Chinese New Year’s Race” and “The Three Water Goddesses,” two of the four plays found in Quan Rule’s new book “The Great Chinese New Year’s Race.”
Her involvement with the organization began with director Val Acoba, who was Quan Rule’s first high school theater and dance teacher at Edison High in Stockton.
Quan Rule was inspired by Acoba to pursue acting, and she went on to become a California Arts Scholar, attend California Summer School of the Arts in Valencia, and work in Fresno.
Years later, when she was in San Jose as an after-school recreation leader, Quan Rule began writing her plays for the students to perform. When she returned to Stockton and reconnected with Acoba, Quan Rule was asked if she had something to offer her former teacher.
“She looked at me and said ‘Do you have any plays for children that have to do with Chinese culture?’ ” Quan Rule said. “I pulled out ‘The Three Water Goddesses’ from 10 years ago, if not more, and ‘The Dragon’s Gift.’ ”
Each of the plays is written in a way that seeks to tell the stories of classic Chinese folklore with a modern twist. When she was writing “The Three Water Goddesses,” Quan Rule found a lack of depth in the titular goddesses, and she wanted to make a change. The story consists of a man getting his wish granted by a water goddess and the two characters get married, and Quan Rule worked to give the typical female characters of Chinese folklore more strength and purpose.
“I wanted to do more with the female character other than that she’s a goddess and she’s going to marry somebody,” Quan Rule said. “I made the girls basically be warriors because most gods and deities have a little more heft to them than ‘I’m pretty and I’m going to throw fairy dust on you.’ ”
As someone who is half Chinese and half Cajun, Quan Rule said she didn’t have many opportunities to play a character that was any more than a sidekick or a background role, and so she wrote these plays so that the next generation of children like her could have quality roles to play someday.
“Being half Chinese and half Cajun, there were no parts for me, and I wanted there to be something for kids like me and girls like me that are coming up that’s a little more outspoken and a little stronger,” Quan Rule said.
With the firm traditional Chinese influences, Quan Rule also wanted to make sure that her works encompass her American side and the modern voice.
“What you end up with is a mix of old world and new, like me,” Quan Rule said. “Most of all, I want the audience to see that the kids get it, because sometimes you get a little too traditional on either side and you lose people, and I want to think that in mine everybody is welcome and we all get to play in this. ”
Quan Rule’s book, which contains her other plays — “The Dragon’s Gift” and “Lillian and Nia’n, The Monster from the Mountain” — will be available on July 13 at The Write Place with the author herself, and it is also available online on Amazon and publisher Tuleberg Press’ website,