POWER OF THE STAGE
Nathan Joe and Jane Yonge challenge audiences to examine their assumptions about race and privilege in the work Scenes from a Yellow Peril.
“ONE CHALLENGE WAS HOW TO KEEP THE SCRIPT ALIVE AND RELEVANT.” JANE YONGE
When playwright Nathan Joe and director Jane Yonge first met for coffee to determine whether they could work together, they weren’t sure how it was going to play out. “It was a little bit like a blind date,” explains Yonge. “This is what happens in the sector, where two creatives meet hoping that there will be some kind of shared interest. The only shared interest we [then] had was that we were both Asian practitioners, so it was like, ‘This could go really well or really badly’,” she laughs.
But the pair hit it off and went on to join forces for multiple theatre projects. “She is the person I’ve collaborated with the most in an official capacity, in a leadership role capacity,” says Joe of Yonge. Adds Yonge: “When I start a creative process now and Nathan isn’t involved, it feels like there’s something missing.” Together they are bringing Joe’s play Scenes from a Yellow Peril: Scenarios for the Assimilated Asian to life on the ASB Waterfront Theatre stage for a co-production between Auckland Theatre Company, SquareSums&Co and Oriental Maidens. This provocative work by Joe delves into the minefield of modern identity politics in Aotearoa, offering a political stream of consciousness exploring racism and privilege in our country through an East Asian lens.
A rehearsed reading of the work took place at Auckland Arts Festival in 2021 to wide acclaim, and now the play is set to be experienced by theatre lovers on a much larger scale. Having directed the initial reading, Yonge is back to direct the Auckland Theatre Company production, while Joe will feature in the cast.
The play’s format comprises poetry, direct address and live music, presenting audiences with an unconventional theatre form. Joe first wrote the play in 2018, at a time when he was trying to fit his writing around working full time.
“I didn’t have much space to write – I was stealing hours in the evening or stealing hours between work – so it was always quite a fragmentary work process and I think that’s the fundamental thing that shapes the form of the play, the fact that I could not sustain [writing] and the fact that my attention span felt very, well, lacking. And the way I was consuming media was very frenetic. I had a billion tabs open, listening to podcasts, watching something at the same time – utter chaos. But that really fed into the process of writing this play.”
Part of Yonge’s job as director has been to work out how to translate the play from its original read form into a mainstage production. “My role has taken on board two components. One has been working with the design team, pulling together an overall production design for the piece, which has been bloody incredible and we have some amazing people on board.” That includes Rachel Marlow and Brad Gledhill from production design company Filament Eleven 11, costume designer Steven Junil Park of label 6x4, and musician Kenji IwamitsuHoldaway as the show’s musical director. “And then on the other side of it, I’ve been working with Nathan and Nathan’s been updating the text from what we did last year for the Auckland Arts Festival. So one of the challenges we set ourselves was, how do we keep the script alive and relevant and current?” says Yonge.
Yonge says figuring out how to put on a compelling production without taking the emphasis away from Joe’s powerful script is a difficult balancing act. “Something that we talked about with the designers in terms of a major challenge for making this work is, the words are so fundamental and beautiful, do we need design? Do we need lights? Do we need costumes? Do we need a set? Do we need actors? Can people just read it? How do we use all these elements to help amplify what Nathan has created?”
Joe is presenting a deeply personal work facing uncomfortable truths about the East Asian-New Zealand experience. But Scenes from a Yellow Peril could also be seen as a love letter to language – making equal use of anger and humour, Joe hopes the play demonstrates the power of language to change thought. “I hope the audience ... is transformed in being there into being better listeners, and treating language with a sacredness and sincerity,” he says. “Language can empower and change lives and make us see things differently, to provide us with a different lens.”
Scenes from a Yellow Peril, ASB Waterfront Theatre, 21 June - 3 July, atc.co.nz