Reconciling with family history at the heart of one-man show
Jeff Ho might not have had the courage to study theatre if not for Sandra Oh.
As the son of a single mother who immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong, the Toronto-based playwright, actor and composer was expected to go to university and study something that would lead to a good, stable job. He even had academic scholarships lined up.
But after watching Grey’s Anatomy throughout his high school years, he became fascinated with Oh’s portrayal of Dr. Christina Yang. Further research on his part revealed Oh had also grown up in Ontario, and was also the offspring of immigrant parents.
“I found out she’s from Ottawa and she went to the National Theatre School in Montreal. That was why I pinned all my hopes and dreams as an actor on the NTS,” said Ho in a recent interview. “Sandra Oh is my absolute idol. She’s the person I reference in terms of why I’m an actor, why I wanted to go to theatre school.”
Ho was determined to pursue his calling. He didn’t tell his mother he had auditioned for the theatre school in Montreal, never mentioning it until he was accepted.
Her reaction was to cut him off financially, preventing him from accessing his bank account.
“I basically ran away from home at 17 to go to theatre school,” he said. “It was super-frustrating for my parents — ‘Why would you want to live a life where you don’t know when you’re going to get your next paycheque?’ Another constant thing they would say was, ‘Do you want to be homeless?’ ”
While at theatre school, he started writing the script that became trace, his first play, which will be presented Nov. 12-23 at the National Arts Centre. The one-man show features Ho playing the piano and acting the roles of three women: his mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
It was first produced by Toronto’s Factory Theatre in 2017.
The idea developed out of his efforts to understand why his mother “abandoned” him. He came to realize there was no easy answer.
“There are so many reasons,” he said. “She had a hard life; her parents were refugees from China to Hong Kong in the Second World War. For them, art is a privilege. Art is for when you have time to think about creativity, not during times of survival. That was her upbringing. A huge shift was required for her to change, and I forced that upon her.”
The story begins with his greatgrandmother, who left China as a single mother to take her two young sons to Hong Kong. Along the way, something happened to the second son and she arrived without him. According to Ho, the loss was a mystery to the family, a tragedy they never spoke of.
But he saw a parallel to his mother’s experience bringing her two sons to Canada, and then “losing” one son to the arts. Ho’s elder brother is a “good Chinese boy,” married with children and a stable job.
“The comparison is not direct but there is a loss,” Ho says.
“The play explores how these sacrifices are intergenerational and the trauma continues so it’s bearing witness to that part of history in my family. It’s also the history of war, and how my family went from being Hong Kong-based to being based in Canada.”
Absent from this version of the family history are the male voices, which are instead represented by the music. “I was really tired of hearing men speak,” says Ho, “so all the male characters speak through the piano. We only hear the voices of the females — every scene is me dueting with a piano. I speak to it and it talks back to me in music.”
He describes the job of voicing three characters and playing piano at the same time, often behind his back, as a juggling act. “It feels impossible in the most wonderful way but then it’s great to do something you never thought you could do,” he said.
Ho has a solid background in music, and is grateful for the piano lessons he had throughout his childhood. He says his parents appreciate the arts; they just didn’t want him to live the life of a struggling artist. “Stability was the priority for their children,” he said.
In the end, it was the musical elements of the play that connected with his mother.
“The piece is a little bit of a letter of reconciliation to my mother,” he said. “I chose pieces that my mother loved, or loved hearing me practice as a kid, and then there are the compositions I wrote specifically for the characters. She saw it once and we’ve gotten her permission, and her affirmation, that she loved both the music and the play. So that’s our moment of healing.” lsaxberg@postmedia.com