Hi,
Thanks for reading this blog. I haven't been writing much because I just don't get any response. It's sort of shouting into a cavern, "Hello (hello, hello)... is anyone there (there, there)???" I've written some newer articles that I put on Medium in hopes of more readership. Which hasn't happened there either but maybe...?
If you're interested in reading my latest articles, you can find them all here on this page in Medium.
Or here's a list of all the articles as of June 25, 2020:
June 8, 2020
The First Black Neighborhood in NYC
A March Brings Up the Secret History of Washington Square
May 4, 2020
7 Music Stars You Should Know for Asian Pacific Heritage Month
Musings on why Asian-Americans haven’t really broken into mainstream music, the ones that should’ve, & the ones on the verge now
March 18, 2020
Diary of an Accidental Coronavirus Tourist
Part 1 of a planned 3-part personal essay on coronavirus in Sicily, Berlin, & NYC. I never wrote Parts 2 or 3.
Sept. 1, 2019
The Burlesque Dancer My Mother Never Was
My fraught relationship with my mother reflects my fraught relationship with my femininity.
If you enjoy my writing, give a clap to these articles. Better yet, recommend me to Medium to get some more eyes on my literary endeavors. It's really hard to continue writing when there is no response.
Much love,
Victoria // Viva
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Sunday, July 28, 2019
The Cultural Appropriation War in Berlin Burlesque
The cultural appropriation debate in Berlin burlesque is blowing up in a very ugly way. (See below for the long back story...) I’ve been staying out of the conversation because I’ve been busy trying to survive and it’s just way too much, but I feel like I should perhaps chime in, being one of the only Asian-American performers in continental Europe.
What I see is a huge gap in understanding. At the cultural appropriation panel during Berlin Burlesque Week, I wanted to talk more about the history in the U.S. which has led to the current climate in the states. I am pretty certain, for instance, that most people in Europe don't know about the 1965 immigration act that got rid of the quota system and allowed more brown people to come to the U.S. so that now, in most of the major U.S. cities, the "minorities" are actually the majority. Non-hispanic whites are less than half the population in NYC (42%), LA (29%), Chicago (31%), and Miami (12%).
So while the U.S. is backwards in a lot of ways (healthcare, education…) it is ahead of Europe when it comes to race relations. We now have more than 60 years – 2.5 generations – of brown people born in the U.S. who are articulate and empowered enough to demand an end to being erased and belittled. We are also 2.5 generations after the Black Power Movement that began in the 1960s and Wounded Knee in 1973. The U.S. is at a transitional point where the old white, male, Anglo Saxon power structures are getting dismantled because, to be honest, the future is already here and it’s brown.
Europe isn’t there yet. We have to remember that Europe is where white people come from. It’s still largely homogenous. Germany is 89% European; Berlin is 82% European. Germany and Italy barely have a colonial history. This is all rather new to them.
(And let me digress a moment to clarify that I am speaking from the perspective of someone from the diaspora. There is a difference between Asian-Americans and Asians from Asia. Asians from Asia did not grow up treated as a barely literate outsider in a place that they were born. They were never belittled or humiliated for looking different. They were never told to go back to a country that they had barely any connection to. They were never a minority.)
So there’s that… and there’s the differences in how burlesquers view burlesque.
I think a lot of the problem is that burlesque isn’t entirely understood as an art form. In theatre, there is a long process of development called Research & Development (R&D). We do this in burlesque too, but we are much less articulate about it. I mean, we dream up the act, look around to make sure others aren’t doing the same thing, create a costume, rehearse, do a test run in front of an audience, and tweak it until we are satisfied. That’s much the same process as R&D in theatre. But in theatre, the research bit includes dramaturgy: delving into the history and social context, trying to be clear in your perspective, and precise in what you are trying to convey. That’s what I think a lot of burlesquers are missing: the understanding that they are on a visible platform and they have a responsibility as to what they are saying.
To be fair, burlesque is in such a funny place. I mean, at the root of it all, we are all making money by taking off our clothes. And a lot of European burlesquers are very commercial, with a rigid old-school idea of burlesque being a glamorous showgirl stripping off her glamorous costume. (My first big culture shock in Germany was hearing a burlesque dancer say, "Burlesque is not funny.") But the difference between stripping and burlesque is that a stripper is trying to get a rise out of a guy who can’t stick it in her, so he sticks a buck in her g-string instead. Whereas in burlesque, the man (or the audience) is not the central impetus.
Yes, the performer directly teases the audience without any pretence of a fourth wall (which is one of the prime differences between burlesque and theatre). But a burlesque performer is not really trying to sexually arouse the audience. They are onstage to empower themselves and by extension empower others. The very word “burlesque” means to satirize or make fun of something. The power of burlesque is that a performer – usually a woman – is onstage declaring what they themselves think of sexuality or beauty or gender norms. For centuries, this has been taboo, with women being projected upon and told how to behave, how to dress, how to be attractive. Burlesque uses all the old colours in the palette to paint a radically different picture. The most common storyline is to take a stereotype and smash it to itty bitty bits. What many of the performers who are taking on a cultural trope don’t understand is that they are actually reinforcing the stereotypes and belittling a culture. This is the opposite of what burlesque is supposed to be about. This is the opposite of what an artist is supposed to do.
The painful arguments that are going on now can be an amazing moment for a sea change in Berlin burlesque. The whole world still looks toward Germany for its cabaret, little realizing how much of it was eradicated by the Nazis. Germany is still haunted by the extermination of Weimar Cabaret, cut off in its prime, at a time when it was important that it existed. And it was important because it was the opposite of glamorous or pretty; it was dark, sardonic, defiant, grotesque, and often a caustic social critique. The Nazis shut down the most subversive cabarets and turned the others into toothless state varietés that were nothing more than glorified dinner theatres. That’s where things still were in 2004 when the neo-burlesque movement arrived in Berlin.
Now that a decade has passed, it’s time that Berlin burlesquers consciously pick up the baton of their predecessors. Instead of digging its heels in the sand and maintaining the status quo, Berlin burlesque can blaze new paths as they once did in the 1930s. But to do this, we have to embrace burlesque as an art form and realize that we have a responsibility as artists to see where we've come from, understand where we are in the continuum, and pave the next part of the path.
______________________________________________________________________
The background to this essay is two recent incidents of blackface in European burlesque: one in 2016 and then another at the Toulouse Burlesque Festival in 2017. Since then, there's been an escalating debate about cultural appropriation in European burlesque. It's been very heated, with a lot of Europeans dismissing cultural appropriation as nothing more than censorship.
Then at the last Berlin Burlesque Festival, the main producer did a Silk Road act, where she donned a hodgepodge of various Asian garb. The outcry resulted in a Berlin burlesque community meeting addressing cultural appropriation and then a Cultural Appropriation Panel Discussion during Berlin Burlesque Week. (Note that Berlin Burlesque Week is different from Berlin Burlesque Festival.)
A few of the black dancers at the Panel Discussion mentioned that they felt unsafe at some European festivals, which led the organizer of Berlin Burlesque Week to start making a list of unsafe festivals. One of these was the Berlin Burlesque Festival. The producers of Berlin Burlesque Festival retaliated by defending their position, citing Equity's cultural appropriation policy. Equity Burlesque UK responded by reprimanding them for "distort[ing] the meaning of Equity's guidelines." Now the European burlesque community seems to be dissolving into a cacophony of shouts and accusations.
What I see is a huge gap in understanding. At the cultural appropriation panel during Berlin Burlesque Week, I wanted to talk more about the history in the U.S. which has led to the current climate in the states. I am pretty certain, for instance, that most people in Europe don't know about the 1965 immigration act that got rid of the quota system and allowed more brown people to come to the U.S. so that now, in most of the major U.S. cities, the "minorities" are actually the majority. Non-hispanic whites are less than half the population in NYC (42%), LA (29%), Chicago (31%), and Miami (12%).
So while the U.S. is backwards in a lot of ways (healthcare, education…) it is ahead of Europe when it comes to race relations. We now have more than 60 years – 2.5 generations – of brown people born in the U.S. who are articulate and empowered enough to demand an end to being erased and belittled. We are also 2.5 generations after the Black Power Movement that began in the 1960s and Wounded Knee in 1973. The U.S. is at a transitional point where the old white, male, Anglo Saxon power structures are getting dismantled because, to be honest, the future is already here and it’s brown.
Europe isn’t there yet. We have to remember that Europe is where white people come from. It’s still largely homogenous. Germany is 89% European; Berlin is 82% European. Germany and Italy barely have a colonial history. This is all rather new to them.
(And let me digress a moment to clarify that I am speaking from the perspective of someone from the diaspora. There is a difference between Asian-Americans and Asians from Asia. Asians from Asia did not grow up treated as a barely literate outsider in a place that they were born. They were never belittled or humiliated for looking different. They were never told to go back to a country that they had barely any connection to. They were never a minority.)
So there’s that… and there’s the differences in how burlesquers view burlesque.
I think a lot of the problem is that burlesque isn’t entirely understood as an art form. In theatre, there is a long process of development called Research & Development (R&D). We do this in burlesque too, but we are much less articulate about it. I mean, we dream up the act, look around to make sure others aren’t doing the same thing, create a costume, rehearse, do a test run in front of an audience, and tweak it until we are satisfied. That’s much the same process as R&D in theatre. But in theatre, the research bit includes dramaturgy: delving into the history and social context, trying to be clear in your perspective, and precise in what you are trying to convey. That’s what I think a lot of burlesquers are missing: the understanding that they are on a visible platform and they have a responsibility as to what they are saying.
To be fair, burlesque is in such a funny place. I mean, at the root of it all, we are all making money by taking off our clothes. And a lot of European burlesquers are very commercial, with a rigid old-school idea of burlesque being a glamorous showgirl stripping off her glamorous costume. (My first big culture shock in Germany was hearing a burlesque dancer say, "Burlesque is not funny.") But the difference between stripping and burlesque is that a stripper is trying to get a rise out of a guy who can’t stick it in her, so he sticks a buck in her g-string instead. Whereas in burlesque, the man (or the audience) is not the central impetus.
Yes, the performer directly teases the audience without any pretence of a fourth wall (which is one of the prime differences between burlesque and theatre). But a burlesque performer is not really trying to sexually arouse the audience. They are onstage to empower themselves and by extension empower others. The very word “burlesque” means to satirize or make fun of something. The power of burlesque is that a performer – usually a woman – is onstage declaring what they themselves think of sexuality or beauty or gender norms. For centuries, this has been taboo, with women being projected upon and told how to behave, how to dress, how to be attractive. Burlesque uses all the old colours in the palette to paint a radically different picture. The most common storyline is to take a stereotype and smash it to itty bitty bits. What many of the performers who are taking on a cultural trope don’t understand is that they are actually reinforcing the stereotypes and belittling a culture. This is the opposite of what burlesque is supposed to be about. This is the opposite of what an artist is supposed to do.
The painful arguments that are going on now can be an amazing moment for a sea change in Berlin burlesque. The whole world still looks toward Germany for its cabaret, little realizing how much of it was eradicated by the Nazis. Germany is still haunted by the extermination of Weimar Cabaret, cut off in its prime, at a time when it was important that it existed. And it was important because it was the opposite of glamorous or pretty; it was dark, sardonic, defiant, grotesque, and often a caustic social critique. The Nazis shut down the most subversive cabarets and turned the others into toothless state varietés that were nothing more than glorified dinner theatres. That’s where things still were in 2004 when the neo-burlesque movement arrived in Berlin.
Now that a decade has passed, it’s time that Berlin burlesquers consciously pick up the baton of their predecessors. Instead of digging its heels in the sand and maintaining the status quo, Berlin burlesque can blaze new paths as they once did in the 1930s. But to do this, we have to embrace burlesque as an art form and realize that we have a responsibility as artists to see where we've come from, understand where we are in the continuum, and pave the next part of the path.
______________________________________________________________________
The background to this essay is two recent incidents of blackface in European burlesque: one in 2016 and then another at the Toulouse Burlesque Festival in 2017. Since then, there's been an escalating debate about cultural appropriation in European burlesque. It's been very heated, with a lot of Europeans dismissing cultural appropriation as nothing more than censorship.
Then at the last Berlin Burlesque Festival, the main producer did a Silk Road act, where she donned a hodgepodge of various Asian garb. The outcry resulted in a Berlin burlesque community meeting addressing cultural appropriation and then a Cultural Appropriation Panel Discussion during Berlin Burlesque Week. (Note that Berlin Burlesque Week is different from Berlin Burlesque Festival.)
A few of the black dancers at the Panel Discussion mentioned that they felt unsafe at some European festivals, which led the organizer of Berlin Burlesque Week to start making a list of unsafe festivals. One of these was the Berlin Burlesque Festival. The producers of Berlin Burlesque Festival retaliated by defending their position, citing Equity's cultural appropriation policy. Equity Burlesque UK responded by reprimanding them for "distort[ing] the meaning of Equity's guidelines." Now the European burlesque community seems to be dissolving into a cacophony of shouts and accusations.
Monday, April 15, 2019
The Dirt on DTLA
Downtown Los Angeles is a blight, asphyxiated by freeways and festering with neglect. I'm not exaggerating. Look on a map and you’ll see the freeway tightly circling the neighborhood like a noose. It’s a textbook case of all the horrors described by Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
Yeah, sure, people keep saying there’s a renaissance in the neighborhood but all I see are streets devoid of life, scores of homeless people, and callous pockets of ostentatious wealth. It's a huge culture shock after Japan, where the streets were bustling and immaculate, and I only saw three homeless people in two weeks. Well, okay, DTLA has great tacos. But it still smells like piss and desperation.
My chef friend Chris who is an L.A. native suggested that I check out Grand Central Market. That was the best advice I could’ve gotten. I swear I died and went to taco heaven. It was great to be reminded that underneath all the flashy Americana, Los Angeles is really Latino.
Across the street from Grand Central Market, I spotted Angel’s Flight and recognized the beautifully ornate archway from that amazing 1961 film The Exiles. (Here's the trailer if you've never seen this gem of a film.)
Standing all by itself surrounded by concrete buildings that look like tombstones, the truncated funicular was a sad reminder of what Downtown L.A. used to be. I flashed to the scenes in the film of Yvonne wandering through the busy streets of L.A., gazing longingly at fancy shop windows, passing by rollicking bars full of people grooving to the brawny sound of an R&B beat. Now the only people on the street are curled up under ugly velour blankets with a shopping cart next to them.
I spent three days in DTLA feeling more and more depressed. What's saddest to me is that a huge percentage of the homeless people are brown. Yes, there are a lot of homeless people who are mentally ill or have substance abuse problems. But a lot of them are just old and poor. I can't help but walk down the street thinking that one or two mistakes and I would be huddled under an ugly velour blanket too.
If you don't believe that the economic divide cuts across race lines, then all you need to do is get on a Los Angeles bus. It takes hours to get anywhere. You wouldn't be on a bus in Los Angeles if you had a freaking choice. You're only on a bus in Los Angeles because you can't afford more than $1.75 for transportation. And everyone on the bus is some shade of brown. Because if you're white, you can afford an Uber or a Lyft.
The only things that help with the bleakness of the city are the good people here, the food, and the natural beauty of the place. I keep stopping in my tracks in amazement at the botany here. The sun shines even in scrubby DTLA.
I'm trying to like this city but I hate it. I've got to make some money and get out of here.
For more about The Exiles and Downtown L.A., see this amazing series of blog articles with photographs comparing the locations in the 1960 film with the same places now.
Yeah, sure, people keep saying there’s a renaissance in the neighborhood but all I see are streets devoid of life, scores of homeless people, and callous pockets of ostentatious wealth. It's a huge culture shock after Japan, where the streets were bustling and immaculate, and I only saw three homeless people in two weeks. Well, okay, DTLA has great tacos. But it still smells like piss and desperation.
 |
My chef friend Chris who is an L.A. native suggested that I check out Grand Central Market. That was the best advice I could’ve gotten. I swear I died and went to taco heaven. It was great to be reminded that underneath all the flashy Americana, Los Angeles is really Latino.
 |
| Grand Central Market neon. |
 |
| El Torres spices. So much chipotle and beans. |
 |
| Window into the Pupusería. It's the El Salvador version of arepas. After much deliberation, I decided to try a pupusa because they don't have these in NYC. And also, it seemed like a meal for just $5. |
 |
| Holy shit this was good. |
Standing all by itself surrounded by concrete buildings that look like tombstones, the truncated funicular was a sad reminder of what Downtown L.A. used to be. I flashed to the scenes in the film of Yvonne wandering through the busy streets of L.A., gazing longingly at fancy shop windows, passing by rollicking bars full of people grooving to the brawny sound of an R&B beat. Now the only people on the street are curled up under ugly velour blankets with a shopping cart next to them.
 |
| A still from "The Exiles" showing Angel's Flight in 1960. Omigod there was actually street life in L.A. once! |
 |
| Angel's Flight today. Bunker Hill was levelled in 1969 and the funicular was disassembled. In 1996, the city set it up again a block away from its original location. |
I spent three days in DTLA feeling more and more depressed. What's saddest to me is that a huge percentage of the homeless people are brown. Yes, there are a lot of homeless people who are mentally ill or have substance abuse problems. But a lot of them are just old and poor. I can't help but walk down the street thinking that one or two mistakes and I would be huddled under an ugly velour blanket too.
If you don't believe that the economic divide cuts across race lines, then all you need to do is get on a Los Angeles bus. It takes hours to get anywhere. You wouldn't be on a bus in Los Angeles if you had a freaking choice. You're only on a bus in Los Angeles because you can't afford more than $1.75 for transportation. And everyone on the bus is some shade of brown. Because if you're white, you can afford an Uber or a Lyft.
The only things that help with the bleakness of the city are the good people here, the food, and the natural beauty of the place. I keep stopping in my tracks in amazement at the botany here. The sun shines even in scrubby DTLA.
 |
| And to think, two weeks ago, I was in Japan where people have picnics under these trees. |
 |
| What even is this? It looks like it should be in the ocean with some yellow fishes hiding inside of it. |
 |
| There are bushes of this crazy plant everywhere. The red tube-like things are stamen & they unfurl from little buds. |
I'm trying to like this city but I hate it. I've got to make some money and get out of here.
Monday, September 17, 2018
Mahjong, Dumplings, & the Mambo Girl: Reflections on Crazy Rich Asians
SPOILER Alert! A meandering essay because I don't know any Asian-Americans in Berlin to talk to about this film. And maybe I should mention that I've not read the book so maybe some of my questions can be easily answered.
--------
After resisting Crazy Rich Asians for several weeks, I finally went to see it last night, girding myself for a syrupy, wealth porn, romcom that I would utterly hate. But I burst into tears the minute the movie opened. Then I pretty much cried off and on through the entire fucking film. I’m a skeptical New York snob who is really only moved by moments of authenticity. I’m shocked that this film delivers.
So what got me going was the opening song. Rose Rose I Love You dates from the 1940s. It’s the only Chinese song that ever became a hit in the West. Frankie Laine and Petula Clarke covered the song. David Bowie knew it. The song instantly telegraphed the film’s ambitions, set up a jaunty playfulness, and also relayed that this was going to be a rare Asian-American film that knows its culture. Cue the tear ducts.
Yes, the movie soundtrack does give in to Hollywood moments, with lush orchestral mood muzak over the Singapore skyline. But most of the music is utterly brilliant, eschewing current Mandopop or Cantopop hits (the easy choice) for a cheeky soundtrack that ricocheted from East to West and back again. Material Girl was sung in Cantonese. Money (That’s What I Want) had verses in Mandarin. And of course, there was the crazy heroic idea of turning Coldplay’s Yellow into a heart-tugging Mandarin ballad, reappropriating a word that has been used as a slur against Asians for centuries.
But what I loved most was the choice of several songs by Grace Chang, the Mambo Girl of 1950s Hong Kong movie musicals, including Wo Yao Ni Di Ai, her cover of the jump blues tune I Want You To Be My Baby. The Grace Chang music made me think of a conversation I had with a dance acquaintance who thought that there was no swing and jazz music in Asia in the 1950s. And it made me think of a party that I recently worked outside of Berlin, which was supposed to have some kind of 1920s Asian theme, but all the music sounded like tinkly New Age wind chimes in a minor key, as if no one had an inkling that they could just google “Music, Shanghai, 1920s.”
Yes, white people, I hate to tell you that we Asians don’t live in a parallel universe. We aren’t just some exotic chop-socky “other”. We actually exist at the same time as everyone else. The popular culture of the time does come all the way to Asia. In fact, there was actually some pretty fabulous Asian cha-cha and jump blues and psychedelic garage music.
In this way, the film is similar to the central tenet of The Joy Luck Club. An Asian-American friend said that as he left Crazy Rich Asians, he heard a white woman exclaim, “Wow, Asians are just like us.” That’s something that would have likely been said after The Joy Luck Club too.
But I detest The Joy Luck Club for its dishonesty. No freaking Chinese mother would ever in a thousand years tell her daughter anything about her past. No Chinese family would ever cry and hug one another. Instead, a Chinese mom would show she loves you by telling you how sloppy you look and that you need to comb your hair and wear more makeup. And then she would shove some food in your face and scold you for being too skinny. But I know that why I hate The Joy Luck Club is exactly why other Asian-Americans love the film. It’s wishful thinking. It’s an Asian family behaving like an American family in a beige homogenous suburb like in all the American sitcoms.
Crazy Rich Asians has a mother/daughter pair that is similar to Joy Luck Club. The bonding scene between Rachel and her mother Kerry opens with Rachel jumping into her mother’s arms weeping. And then Kerry actually flops onto the bed as she tells her daughter something about her past. I can’t imagine ever trying to hug my mother. And my mother would never in a million years ever lounge in bed with me. I can hear her dying of laughter if I ever even suggested it.
But the mother/daughter relationship in Crazy Rich Asians is tempered by its direct contrast to the relationship between Singapore-born Nick and his mother Eleanor. The two of them stand awkwardly side by side, staring at some vague middle distance in front of them, neither daring to look at one another. The scene was cut, but if it was truthful, it would have been all pregnant pauses and trailing sentences, and then maybe a moment when someone finally has the courage to take the other person’s hand and squeeze it before they both let go in embarrassment because yeesh, too intimate.
With all these strong mothers in the film, though, I started to wonder where the men were. Nick’s father was ostensibly away on business and his grandfather was presumably dead. He also had no uncles. The older generation of men was completely absent, leaving nothing but a few geeks and lots of eye candy. Both Nick and his bestie Colin take off their shirt at different points in the film and the camera salivates all over their ripped abs, glistening with droplets of water. I wonder how deliberate was the homoerotic undertone between the two men. (Colin actually says to Nick, “If it weren’t for Araminta, I would’ve asked you to marry me.”) I’m sure the topless scenes are a deliberate response to the stereotype that Asian men are unattractive and effeminate. So it’s rather interesting that the power is still all in the hands of Asian women, though the film neatly evades the dragonlady stereotype, with Eleanor clearly struggling to maintain her place within the rigid heirarchal structures of Asian society.
There are other things in the movie that bear criticism. It’s true that Singapore seems to be entirely Chinese in the film, with not one Indian or Malay character except for the docile and silent servants. But then again the film is called Crazy Rich Asians, and in Singapore, all the money does belong to the Chinese. Beyond the invisibility of brown people, the biggest hole was the lack of Singlish with all its rich colloquialisms. On the other hand, it was very enjoyable to hear the upper classes speaking in Mandarin, while Eleanor (the outsider) spoke in Cantonese, and the nouveau riche family spoke Hokkien. And I laughed when Nick's super-wealthy family mentions that they are Methodist, because I know what that means in Taiwan.
It’s details like this that give Crazy Rich Asians a deeper resonance. The genius of the film is that by being so culturally specific, it evades the claptrap of exotica. Rachel and Eleanor don’t play mahjong in the film because they're Asian and that's just what Asian ladies do. There is a pointed significance to their seating arrangement (Rachel is in the West seat, Eleanor is in the East); the meaning of Eleanor’s hand (she tells Rachel that she doesn't belong, while collecting tiles that are all the same suit); and the winning tile that Rachel throws away (it’s lucky number 8 but it’s also Bamboo and Rachel is a jook sing or a hollow bamboo). I got most of that, but I am missing the significance of Eleanor’s dumpling fold… I wish I could bring my mother and ask her why the camera kept lingering on that one bad dumpling. (Was it just missing a fold? Does anyone know?)
And that’s a testament of the film’s success. I’ve never had the privilege of seeing a major film that made me want to ask my parents questions, that reflects the conflicted experience of being from two cultures and from neither. Crazy Rich Asians not only recognizes the divide between Asian-Americans and Asians-from-Asia, but it makes being Asian-American -- a hyphenate, a jook sing, a banana -- into something to be proud of. Rachel can take that bamboo tile and play it if she wants to. Or she can throw it away and go back to acing poker in New York. Because she's got game. Both games.
--------
After resisting Crazy Rich Asians for several weeks, I finally went to see it last night, girding myself for a syrupy, wealth porn, romcom that I would utterly hate. But I burst into tears the minute the movie opened. Then I pretty much cried off and on through the entire fucking film. I’m a skeptical New York snob who is really only moved by moments of authenticity. I’m shocked that this film delivers.
So what got me going was the opening song. Rose Rose I Love You dates from the 1940s. It’s the only Chinese song that ever became a hit in the West. Frankie Laine and Petula Clarke covered the song. David Bowie knew it. The song instantly telegraphed the film’s ambitions, set up a jaunty playfulness, and also relayed that this was going to be a rare Asian-American film that knows its culture. Cue the tear ducts.
Yes, the movie soundtrack does give in to Hollywood moments, with lush orchestral mood muzak over the Singapore skyline. But most of the music is utterly brilliant, eschewing current Mandopop or Cantopop hits (the easy choice) for a cheeky soundtrack that ricocheted from East to West and back again. Material Girl was sung in Cantonese. Money (That’s What I Want) had verses in Mandarin. And of course, there was the crazy heroic idea of turning Coldplay’s Yellow into a heart-tugging Mandarin ballad, reappropriating a word that has been used as a slur against Asians for centuries.
But what I loved most was the choice of several songs by Grace Chang, the Mambo Girl of 1950s Hong Kong movie musicals, including Wo Yao Ni Di Ai, her cover of the jump blues tune I Want You To Be My Baby. The Grace Chang music made me think of a conversation I had with a dance acquaintance who thought that there was no swing and jazz music in Asia in the 1950s. And it made me think of a party that I recently worked outside of Berlin, which was supposed to have some kind of 1920s Asian theme, but all the music sounded like tinkly New Age wind chimes in a minor key, as if no one had an inkling that they could just google “Music, Shanghai, 1920s.”
Grace Chang doing cha-cha with a bunch of teens in 1957.
Yes, white people, I hate to tell you that we Asians don’t live in a parallel universe. We aren’t just some exotic chop-socky “other”. We actually exist at the same time as everyone else. The popular culture of the time does come all the way to Asia. In fact, there was actually some pretty fabulous Asian cha-cha and jump blues and psychedelic garage music.
In this way, the film is similar to the central tenet of The Joy Luck Club. An Asian-American friend said that as he left Crazy Rich Asians, he heard a white woman exclaim, “Wow, Asians are just like us.” That’s something that would have likely been said after The Joy Luck Club too.
But I detest The Joy Luck Club for its dishonesty. No freaking Chinese mother would ever in a thousand years tell her daughter anything about her past. No Chinese family would ever cry and hug one another. Instead, a Chinese mom would show she loves you by telling you how sloppy you look and that you need to comb your hair and wear more makeup. And then she would shove some food in your face and scold you for being too skinny. But I know that why I hate The Joy Luck Club is exactly why other Asian-Americans love the film. It’s wishful thinking. It’s an Asian family behaving like an American family in a beige homogenous suburb like in all the American sitcoms.
Crazy Rich Asians has a mother/daughter pair that is similar to Joy Luck Club. The bonding scene between Rachel and her mother Kerry opens with Rachel jumping into her mother’s arms weeping. And then Kerry actually flops onto the bed as she tells her daughter something about her past. I can’t imagine ever trying to hug my mother. And my mother would never in a million years ever lounge in bed with me. I can hear her dying of laughter if I ever even suggested it.
But the mother/daughter relationship in Crazy Rich Asians is tempered by its direct contrast to the relationship between Singapore-born Nick and his mother Eleanor. The two of them stand awkwardly side by side, staring at some vague middle distance in front of them, neither daring to look at one another. The scene was cut, but if it was truthful, it would have been all pregnant pauses and trailing sentences, and then maybe a moment when someone finally has the courage to take the other person’s hand and squeeze it before they both let go in embarrassment because yeesh, too intimate.
With all these strong mothers in the film, though, I started to wonder where the men were. Nick’s father was ostensibly away on business and his grandfather was presumably dead. He also had no uncles. The older generation of men was completely absent, leaving nothing but a few geeks and lots of eye candy. Both Nick and his bestie Colin take off their shirt at different points in the film and the camera salivates all over their ripped abs, glistening with droplets of water. I wonder how deliberate was the homoerotic undertone between the two men. (Colin actually says to Nick, “If it weren’t for Araminta, I would’ve asked you to marry me.”) I’m sure the topless scenes are a deliberate response to the stereotype that Asian men are unattractive and effeminate. So it’s rather interesting that the power is still all in the hands of Asian women, though the film neatly evades the dragonlady stereotype, with Eleanor clearly struggling to maintain her place within the rigid heirarchal structures of Asian society.
There are other things in the movie that bear criticism. It’s true that Singapore seems to be entirely Chinese in the film, with not one Indian or Malay character except for the docile and silent servants. But then again the film is called Crazy Rich Asians, and in Singapore, all the money does belong to the Chinese. Beyond the invisibility of brown people, the biggest hole was the lack of Singlish with all its rich colloquialisms. On the other hand, it was very enjoyable to hear the upper classes speaking in Mandarin, while Eleanor (the outsider) spoke in Cantonese, and the nouveau riche family spoke Hokkien. And I laughed when Nick's super-wealthy family mentions that they are Methodist, because I know what that means in Taiwan.
It’s details like this that give Crazy Rich Asians a deeper resonance. The genius of the film is that by being so culturally specific, it evades the claptrap of exotica. Rachel and Eleanor don’t play mahjong in the film because they're Asian and that's just what Asian ladies do. There is a pointed significance to their seating arrangement (Rachel is in the West seat, Eleanor is in the East); the meaning of Eleanor’s hand (she tells Rachel that she doesn't belong, while collecting tiles that are all the same suit); and the winning tile that Rachel throws away (it’s lucky number 8 but it’s also Bamboo and Rachel is a jook sing or a hollow bamboo). I got most of that, but I am missing the significance of Eleanor’s dumpling fold… I wish I could bring my mother and ask her why the camera kept lingering on that one bad dumpling. (Was it just missing a fold? Does anyone know?)
And that’s a testament of the film’s success. I’ve never had the privilege of seeing a major film that made me want to ask my parents questions, that reflects the conflicted experience of being from two cultures and from neither. Crazy Rich Asians not only recognizes the divide between Asian-Americans and Asians-from-Asia, but it makes being Asian-American -- a hyphenate, a jook sing, a banana -- into something to be proud of. Rachel can take that bamboo tile and play it if she wants to. Or she can throw it away and go back to acing poker in New York. Because she's got game. Both games.
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Edinburgh Post-Mortem 2018
Well, I'm finally back from travels & it's the end of summer, beginning of a new season. So I've been doing a lot of soul searching.
Edinburgh was amazing in unexpected ways. I didn't anticipate that we'd be packed every single night. Especially after our experience in London. But wow, the audiences just kept coming! There was only one night where there were like two empty chairs. Most nights, there were people everywhere: on the floor, on the unused bar, standing several rows deep behind the seats. And what an audience! In 20 years of performing, I've never had the experience of coming out onstage to a huge cheering crowd.
But 'm not sure what the future is. We didn't get any reviews. And although there were a few bites, I don't think any industry people came. Maybe this wouldn't matter, but after two years, I need to find a way to make the show pay off. I've been relying upon the generosity of one person to make the Full Moon happen every month & he's getting (understandably) a bit impatient at the drain on his finances. He also isn't really in the biz & doesn't believe that there is any way to make ends meet in the arts. So I hoped Edinburgh would lead to a fix guarantee tour or some reassurance that we were on track to at least breaking even.
But here I am, back in Berlin & back to the same old worries about how to make things happen with such limited resources.
And also, the bigger question to me is what I'm actually doing. Full Moon was always something a little more than a regular burlesque or variety show. Because I'm stupid that way. I never want to do anything that anyone else does. I'm always veering off in an unknown direction instead of following a clear path, no matter how tried & true.
Perhaps I haven't been so good at articulating the bigger picture, but the biggest stress in this Full Moon production was me trying to get the small moments that would add up to a bigger arc. That's something more like theater. And maybe because the company is mostly comprised of solo performers who've never done theater, it was hard to get them to see what I was after. To them, I was being stubborn about negligent details. "You have to let go!" "Who cares?" And the worst thing you can ever say to a New Yorker: "Relax!"
So maybe I should go back to doing theater instead, if that's what I keep trying to make happen. Or film. Where is this cabaret life going anyway, especially if it's not paying off? How much of a difference am I making? Does any of this matter?
Maybe some of this existential crisis is my reaction to the death of two friends (both not much older) - one in April & one just last week. Life is so short. What am I doing?
Edinburgh 2016 Post-Mortem
I found this draft essay & I don't know why I didn't publish it back in 2016. It's an interesting read after I just got back from Edinburgh after doing Full Moon Cabaret there. I forgot that Full Moon Cabaret partly came out of my first sweet-but-sour experience at Edinburgh.
-------
“I’m asexual,” she announced, “Maybe you saw that on my profile. I’m actually XXY. I’ve got an extra chromosome.”
I looked up at Xena and realized this really might be true. When she first opened the door, I did think that either she’s a transsexual or a large and oddly proportioned woman. Not that this bothered me. What did bother me was her kitchen. It was beyond disgusting. A shopping trolley was parked in the middle of it with some random junk. The sink was surrounded by plates crusted up with dried pellets and streaks that must have once been food. There wasn't a sponge or any soap in sight. And Xena had just cooked something up in that kitchen that I was supposed to eat.
The food wasn’t too bad if you didn’t know where it had come from. I examined the pasta on my plate. Some kind of tortellini that was a bit overcooked but still edible. I dutifully chewed and swallowed, as Xena asked questions about burlesque. Being asexual, she couldn’t understand it. Later, she played the ukulele, somehow turning the instrument into a mini blues guitar with percussive slaps and thumps. I still don’t understand how someone who plays music like she does can be asexual. Music is sex.
This was my fourth night in Edinburgh and Xena was my couchsurfing host. For the first three nights, I had paid for an airbnb room that was quite nice but it was a 20-minute bus ride from the center of the city. This would be okay if you were a tourist, but I was performing at midnight and night buses only came once every half an hour. I was relieved to drag my luggage down a steep winding street off the Royal Mile to the invisible square where Xena’s flat was located. Putting up with her questionable housekeeping was a small price to pay for being a 10-minute walk from everything.
I was in Edinburgh for the last five days of the Fringe, during which time I did seven performances for three different Free Fringe cabarets. Two other cabarets had booked me but their venues cancelled on them. Apparently, this had not really happened in previous Fringes, but at this one, three different venues cancelled all the cabarets that had been booked. Roxy Stardust was the one who originally booked me but her show got cancelled after three performances at Malone’s. Similarly, Bar Bados cancelled all their cabaret shows and so did Chalky’s. The Secret Circus was at Chalky’s but they valiantly went ahead and found two other venues to perform at.
Thank heavens, because the Secret Circus was the only show where I made any money. They were also the smallest show I performed for and the average split between 7 or 8 performers amounted to £4. Possibly because their audience was still looking for them at Chalky’s.
My other two shows were at the Voodoo Rooms, which is one of the top cabaret venues at the Fringe. It was a gorgeous place, with rooms poshed out in gilded moulding and dripping chandeliers. I was expecting a little more of a split from these shows and was shocked to discover that they did not share the money they collected.
All the cabarets I did were part of the Free Fringe, which means the producers don’t pay for the venue and the show is free to the public. After the show, someone stands at the door with a wine bucket collecting donations. I naïvely assumed that the money in that bucket would be split with all the performers. But it seems that at most of the shows, the dough is split between the tech person and host, who also books the events. The performers just get exposure. Which always makes me think of a friend who quips, “You know, you can die from exposure.”
According to a cabaret friend who has done several Fringes, the policy is that if you're promoting a show you don't get any money, but if you're just performing, you'd get a split. Well, that isn’t what’s happening. Of the three shows I did, only one split the bucket. I spoke to one gal who did six shows and five of them did not split the bucket. The poor thing was working her tush off running between shows that didn't pay her. Even worse is that these shows aren’t all that up front about expecting people to perform for free. I wasn’t the only one who hung around after a show waiting for a bucket split that never happened.
This doesn’t sit right with me. I’ve been producing shows since I was 17 years old and I’m the poorest person I know. But I’ve always paid people some small amount: $25, $50, $100, whatever I had. Sometimes the payment came late when I was waiting on a donation, but everyone always got something. At very least, it’s a gesture of respect. Yes, yes, the MC has a harder job than the performers, and as producers, they have the booking and promotion to handle, which isn't easy. But then they should work out a bigger split. Even if they take half the box and share the rest with the performers, that would be way more fair than not sharing at all. It shocks me that these hosts don't feel like utter shits for not giving performers a dime. After all, without the performers, they wouldn’t have a show. And I am certain that the audience expects that their money will be shared between everyone.
I’m also surprised that more performers aren’t up in arms over this. I suppose they must be new and worried that they won't get bookings if they speak up. But we all shelled out for our own flights and our own rooms. The very least would’ve been to get a bit of money that would pay for drinks and food. I had to get an advance on a writing project to stay afloat in Edinburgh.
So the Fringe was a mixed experience that left a bit of a sour taste. I departed from Xena’s wishing that I had had more money to buy her some cleaning implements to give her sink and bathtub a nice scrub. And I was rather depressed for several days, questioning why I was in burlesque. I don’t think I’ll go back to the Fringe unless I am invited for a top cabaret that is ticketed. Or for a theater production that is of my own making.
On the other hand, I did meet some producers who said they would book me if I ever made it to London. And after thinking about it, I’ve decided that if I have problems with the way burlesque is produced, then I should do it the right way myself. So I’ve started to work on a monthly variety show. And maybe I will go back to Edinburgh. With this new show. Which gives all the performers a piece of the pie that they helped make.
My advice to other burlesque dancers who are thinking of going to Edinburgh is to stay in a central location (free if possible) and ask about payment before accepting a booking. And as for all the hosts who aren't sharing the dough, seriously, is there some way for you to adequately compensate yourself without exploiting others? Yeah, it’s a hard way to make an easy living. But we're in it together. It shouldn’t be a hard way to make a hard living for others.
-------
“I’m asexual,” she announced, “Maybe you saw that on my profile. I’m actually XXY. I’ve got an extra chromosome.”
I looked up at Xena and realized this really might be true. When she first opened the door, I did think that either she’s a transsexual or a large and oddly proportioned woman. Not that this bothered me. What did bother me was her kitchen. It was beyond disgusting. A shopping trolley was parked in the middle of it with some random junk. The sink was surrounded by plates crusted up with dried pellets and streaks that must have once been food. There wasn't a sponge or any soap in sight. And Xena had just cooked something up in that kitchen that I was supposed to eat.
The food wasn’t too bad if you didn’t know where it had come from. I examined the pasta on my plate. Some kind of tortellini that was a bit overcooked but still edible. I dutifully chewed and swallowed, as Xena asked questions about burlesque. Being asexual, she couldn’t understand it. Later, she played the ukulele, somehow turning the instrument into a mini blues guitar with percussive slaps and thumps. I still don’t understand how someone who plays music like she does can be asexual. Music is sex.
This was my fourth night in Edinburgh and Xena was my couchsurfing host. For the first three nights, I had paid for an airbnb room that was quite nice but it was a 20-minute bus ride from the center of the city. This would be okay if you were a tourist, but I was performing at midnight and night buses only came once every half an hour. I was relieved to drag my luggage down a steep winding street off the Royal Mile to the invisible square where Xena’s flat was located. Putting up with her questionable housekeeping was a small price to pay for being a 10-minute walk from everything.
I was in Edinburgh for the last five days of the Fringe, during which time I did seven performances for three different Free Fringe cabarets. Two other cabarets had booked me but their venues cancelled on them. Apparently, this had not really happened in previous Fringes, but at this one, three different venues cancelled all the cabarets that had been booked. Roxy Stardust was the one who originally booked me but her show got cancelled after three performances at Malone’s. Similarly, Bar Bados cancelled all their cabaret shows and so did Chalky’s. The Secret Circus was at Chalky’s but they valiantly went ahead and found two other venues to perform at.
Thank heavens, because the Secret Circus was the only show where I made any money. They were also the smallest show I performed for and the average split between 7 or 8 performers amounted to £4. Possibly because their audience was still looking for them at Chalky’s.
My other two shows were at the Voodoo Rooms, which is one of the top cabaret venues at the Fringe. It was a gorgeous place, with rooms poshed out in gilded moulding and dripping chandeliers. I was expecting a little more of a split from these shows and was shocked to discover that they did not share the money they collected.
All the cabarets I did were part of the Free Fringe, which means the producers don’t pay for the venue and the show is free to the public. After the show, someone stands at the door with a wine bucket collecting donations. I naïvely assumed that the money in that bucket would be split with all the performers. But it seems that at most of the shows, the dough is split between the tech person and host, who also books the events. The performers just get exposure. Which always makes me think of a friend who quips, “You know, you can die from exposure.”
According to a cabaret friend who has done several Fringes, the policy is that if you're promoting a show you don't get any money, but if you're just performing, you'd get a split. Well, that isn’t what’s happening. Of the three shows I did, only one split the bucket. I spoke to one gal who did six shows and five of them did not split the bucket. The poor thing was working her tush off running between shows that didn't pay her. Even worse is that these shows aren’t all that up front about expecting people to perform for free. I wasn’t the only one who hung around after a show waiting for a bucket split that never happened.
This doesn’t sit right with me. I’ve been producing shows since I was 17 years old and I’m the poorest person I know. But I’ve always paid people some small amount: $25, $50, $100, whatever I had. Sometimes the payment came late when I was waiting on a donation, but everyone always got something. At very least, it’s a gesture of respect. Yes, yes, the MC has a harder job than the performers, and as producers, they have the booking and promotion to handle, which isn't easy. But then they should work out a bigger split. Even if they take half the box and share the rest with the performers, that would be way more fair than not sharing at all. It shocks me that these hosts don't feel like utter shits for not giving performers a dime. After all, without the performers, they wouldn’t have a show. And I am certain that the audience expects that their money will be shared between everyone.
I’m also surprised that more performers aren’t up in arms over this. I suppose they must be new and worried that they won't get bookings if they speak up. But we all shelled out for our own flights and our own rooms. The very least would’ve been to get a bit of money that would pay for drinks and food. I had to get an advance on a writing project to stay afloat in Edinburgh.
So the Fringe was a mixed experience that left a bit of a sour taste. I departed from Xena’s wishing that I had had more money to buy her some cleaning implements to give her sink and bathtub a nice scrub. And I was rather depressed for several days, questioning why I was in burlesque. I don’t think I’ll go back to the Fringe unless I am invited for a top cabaret that is ticketed. Or for a theater production that is of my own making.
On the other hand, I did meet some producers who said they would book me if I ever made it to London. And after thinking about it, I’ve decided that if I have problems with the way burlesque is produced, then I should do it the right way myself. So I’ve started to work on a monthly variety show. And maybe I will go back to Edinburgh. With this new show. Which gives all the performers a piece of the pie that they helped make.
My advice to other burlesque dancers who are thinking of going to Edinburgh is to stay in a central location (free if possible) and ask about payment before accepting a booking. And as for all the hosts who aren't sharing the dough, seriously, is there some way for you to adequately compensate yourself without exploiting others? Yeah, it’s a hard way to make an easy living. But we're in it together. It shouldn’t be a hard way to make a hard living for others.
Monday, June 12, 2017
Shaking a Spear at Delta and Bank of America
I've been out of the loop with theater in NYC for a lot of complex reasons which I may
write about one day... but I feel compelled to write about Delta
Airlines and Bank of America withdrawing sponsorship from the Public
Theater for their production of JULIUS CAESAR.
For my friends in Europe, you might not know that the Public Theater is where HAIR, A CHORUS LINE, and HAMILTON premiered. (No, Broadway is NOT where plays premiere; it’s where plays go to cash in on their success.) If you've ever enjoyed the songs "Tits & Ass" or "Age of Aquarius" you owe something to the Public. In fact, if you've enjoy any American theater in past 50 years, you owe something to the Public. It's one of the theaters that birthed the American nonprofit theater system for better or for worse. It’s where Meryl Streep got her start. It’s where New Yorkers have seen Shakespeare with stars like Streep (and Al Pacino and James Earl Jones and John Lithgow, etc. etc.) for FREE every summer for nearly 60 years.
Like any great theater, the Public would naturally mine JULIUS CAESAR for what the play has to say about the world today. Thank GOD the Public has a freaking perspective on the play instead of just tossing together another dusty old toga party. That’s what art is supposed to do, for chrissakes – give us perspective, context, a lens through which we can see the world from an angle we hadn’t considered. If it’s safe and reassuring, then it ain’t art.
I’m posting this because the theater community is teensy and we’re always preaching to the converted. But I’m in Europe where no one knows what the Public Theater is. I haven’t heard people here talking about boycotting Delta. (Bank of America doesn’t exist, so they can’t boycott it here...)
It's a slippery slope. Theater doesn't have enough funding as it is and corporate sponsorships is one of the hardest money to come by. The Public is probably doing okay with HAMILTON raking it in on Broadway but the summer Shakespeare productions are free to the public. Entirely kostenlos except for like 50 seats that are impossible to come by. And we all know that a company of 10+ union actors and stagehands, not to mention sets, lights, and costumes ain't cheap. So the entire summer season needs to be subsidized somehow.
Delta and Bank of America pulling out absolutely bites. If they're being swayed by Fox & Breitbart, then people who give a shit about art should give them a piece of their mind.
-- Here is an article about the debacle in The NewYork Times, which repeats incendiary quotes by Fox News and Breitbart, but gives the reader very little idea about the actual Public Theater production.
-- In contrast, here is what a smart friend of a friend says, who has actually seen the play. He makes the very good point, “If there ever were an ANTI-assassination play, this is it.”
For my friends in Europe, you might not know that the Public Theater is where HAIR, A CHORUS LINE, and HAMILTON premiered. (No, Broadway is NOT where plays premiere; it’s where plays go to cash in on their success.) If you've ever enjoyed the songs "Tits & Ass" or "Age of Aquarius" you owe something to the Public. In fact, if you've enjoy any American theater in past 50 years, you owe something to the Public. It's one of the theaters that birthed the American nonprofit theater system for better or for worse. It’s where Meryl Streep got her start. It’s where New Yorkers have seen Shakespeare with stars like Streep (and Al Pacino and James Earl Jones and John Lithgow, etc. etc.) for FREE every summer for nearly 60 years.
Like any great theater, the Public would naturally mine JULIUS CAESAR for what the play has to say about the world today. Thank GOD the Public has a freaking perspective on the play instead of just tossing together another dusty old toga party. That’s what art is supposed to do, for chrissakes – give us perspective, context, a lens through which we can see the world from an angle we hadn’t considered. If it’s safe and reassuring, then it ain’t art.
I’m posting this because the theater community is teensy and we’re always preaching to the converted. But I’m in Europe where no one knows what the Public Theater is. I haven’t heard people here talking about boycotting Delta. (Bank of America doesn’t exist, so they can’t boycott it here...)
It's a slippery slope. Theater doesn't have enough funding as it is and corporate sponsorships is one of the hardest money to come by. The Public is probably doing okay with HAMILTON raking it in on Broadway but the summer Shakespeare productions are free to the public. Entirely kostenlos except for like 50 seats that are impossible to come by. And we all know that a company of 10+ union actors and stagehands, not to mention sets, lights, and costumes ain't cheap. So the entire summer season needs to be subsidized somehow.
Delta and Bank of America pulling out absolutely bites. If they're being swayed by Fox & Breitbart, then people who give a shit about art should give them a piece of their mind.
-- Here is an article about the debacle in The NewYork Times, which repeats incendiary quotes by Fox News and Breitbart, but gives the reader very little idea about the actual Public Theater production.
-- In contrast, here is what a smart friend of a friend says, who has actually seen the play. He makes the very good point, “If there ever were an ANTI-assassination play, this is it.”
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Celebrating Silvester, Whoever He Was
I've been writing for Berlin Loves You and they asked me to write up an alternative guide to New Years Eve. I started with an introduction to why New Years is called "Silvester" in Berlin, but it was too long for the article. I cut it down but in the final article, it got cut even more. I thought maybe some people would be interested in the full expanded trivia, so here it is, expanded even more with annotations and everything. The Berlin Loves you article can be found here in case you're curious about the cut or looking for last minute non-techno things to do in Berlin for New Years.
In America, Sylvester is a tuxedo cat with a bad lisp. Sylvester is an Eye-talian knucklehead who made a couple of boxing films. But in Berlin, Silvester is what the locals say when they mean New Years Eve. So who the heck is this Silvester guy? I finally looked it up and it turns out that he was the pope who converted the Roman emperor Constantine to Christianity.
If you google this Pope Silvester guy, you'll immediately turn up rumors that he and Constantine were both rampantly anti-Semitic but that’s just hearsay. There's plenty of evidence of anti-Semitism in the middle ages so I have no idea why an alt-right website feels the need to make this up. Maybe the writer is a sourpuss who wants to pour cold water over New Year celebrations? (I went on a google dive and apparently there are conflicts in Israel over Rosh Hashanah vs. everyone else's New Year.) You'll also find a source that says Silvester was black and a few other sources about him slaying a dragon. So if you believe everything that's on the internet, Silvester was the first black man to slay a dragon and became pope. That's a way better rumor to spread around and I'm very happy to help you do that. But sadly, it doesn't serve anyone's agenda, so I doubt if it will gain much traction.
The truth is that no one knows anything about Sylvester except that he was too sick to attend the Nicean Council and he happened to die on December 31. That was right in the middle of a 12-day pagan festival to banish evil spirits called the Rauhnächte. Germanic tribes throughout Central Europe believed that during those “Rough Nights,” the sun slowed down to a crawl while Wotan led a band of bellicose ghosts on a wild hunt through the dark skies. In response, the Teutons filled their houses with smoke, banged kitchen utensils, beat on trees with flaming cudgels, and rolled burning wooden wheels down mountainsides. Good times. Naturally, sourpuss early Christians disapproved and they set about convincing pagan Germans to fête Silvester instead. In the late 1500s, Europeans countries began to move the first day of the calendar to 1 January and the feast day for Silvester gradually turned into celebrations for a new year.
***
Like in NYC, there are a billion things to do in Berlin tonight. I might lay low after two days of going out and performing. But everyone keeps telling me that Warschauer Strasse is like a warzone of fireworks. That sounds amazing to me after 20 years of fireworks restrictions in NYC. And my dad comes from Yanshui, a small town in Taiwan whose claim to fame is that it hosts the craziest fireworks festival in the world. People literally wear full face helmets and hazmat suits. I've never been to Asia during Lunar New Year and I probably would hate Yanshui's fireworks, but I am all about down home street celebrations. Maybe I will go and take some photos of Berliners making a big ruckus for Silvester like it's 330AD.
Running out now to get groceries before all the grocery shops close for two days. Leaving you with this video of Joshua Samuel Brown in Yanshui a few years back.
-->
In America, Sylvester is a tuxedo cat with a bad lisp. Sylvester is an Eye-talian knucklehead who made a couple of boxing films. But in Berlin, Silvester is what the locals say when they mean New Years Eve. So who the heck is this Silvester guy? I finally looked it up and it turns out that he was the pope who converted the Roman emperor Constantine to Christianity.
If you google this Pope Silvester guy, you'll immediately turn up rumors that he and Constantine were both rampantly anti-Semitic but that’s just hearsay. There's plenty of evidence of anti-Semitism in the middle ages so I have no idea why an alt-right website feels the need to make this up. Maybe the writer is a sourpuss who wants to pour cold water over New Year celebrations? (I went on a google dive and apparently there are conflicts in Israel over Rosh Hashanah vs. everyone else's New Year.) You'll also find a source that says Silvester was black and a few other sources about him slaying a dragon. So if you believe everything that's on the internet, Silvester was the first black man to slay a dragon and became pope. That's a way better rumor to spread around and I'm very happy to help you do that. But sadly, it doesn't serve anyone's agenda, so I doubt if it will gain much traction.
The truth is that no one knows anything about Sylvester except that he was too sick to attend the Nicean Council and he happened to die on December 31. That was right in the middle of a 12-day pagan festival to banish evil spirits called the Rauhnächte. Germanic tribes throughout Central Europe believed that during those “Rough Nights,” the sun slowed down to a crawl while Wotan led a band of bellicose ghosts on a wild hunt through the dark skies. In response, the Teutons filled their houses with smoke, banged kitchen utensils, beat on trees with flaming cudgels, and rolled burning wooden wheels down mountainsides. Good times. Naturally, sourpuss early Christians disapproved and they set about convincing pagan Germans to fête Silvester instead. In the late 1500s, Europeans countries began to move the first day of the calendar to 1 January and the feast day for Silvester gradually turned into celebrations for a new year.
***
Like in NYC, there are a billion things to do in Berlin tonight. I might lay low after two days of going out and performing. But everyone keeps telling me that Warschauer Strasse is like a warzone of fireworks. That sounds amazing to me after 20 years of fireworks restrictions in NYC. And my dad comes from Yanshui, a small town in Taiwan whose claim to fame is that it hosts the craziest fireworks festival in the world. People literally wear full face helmets and hazmat suits. I've never been to Asia during Lunar New Year and I probably would hate Yanshui's fireworks, but I am all about down home street celebrations. Maybe I will go and take some photos of Berliners making a big ruckus for Silvester like it's 330AD.
Running out now to get groceries before all the grocery shops close for two days. Leaving you with this video of Joshua Samuel Brown in Yanshui a few years back.
-->
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Miles in Berlin
[Written on Sept 15th but I didn't have a chance to post until just now...]
I'm waiting at the airport for my son. His flight is about half an hour late and of course I got here way too early. Most people in Berlin don't know that I have a grown son. I had him way young (actually it was an immaculate conception when I was 8 years old but no one believes me). It's weird to me that he's an adult and that I had this whole other life when I was a mom. So when Miles said that he bought tickets and he was coming to visit me, I started to tell people that my little brother was coming. Partly because I'd have to really open up to everyone here and I'm not sure if I'm ready to do that. (It's so refreshing not to be in your hometown where everyone seems to have known you since you were an angry 14-year-old.) And also, I knew everyone would instantly wonder how old I am.
Two years ago, I somehow got involved with a much younger guy for a very brief moment in London and when he dropped me for no reason, I wondered if it was because I was ten years older than him. Not that we ever had a discussion about this. But it did seem that our understandings & experiences were so different simply because of the different times that we came of age. The way I realized that he must be way younger was a discussion when I mentioned the fall of the Berlin Wall & I realized he had no personal memory of it.
He's older now than I was when I had him. So our relationship will be different than when I last spent time with him. And we'll be together almost every day for nearly a month. I hope that we can be good friends. I hope I can make it up to him for losing our home and sending him out in the world before he was really ready.
I'm waiting at the airport for my son. His flight is about half an hour late and of course I got here way too early. Most people in Berlin don't know that I have a grown son. I had him way young (actually it was an immaculate conception when I was 8 years old but no one believes me). It's weird to me that he's an adult and that I had this whole other life when I was a mom. So when Miles said that he bought tickets and he was coming to visit me, I started to tell people that my little brother was coming. Partly because I'd have to really open up to everyone here and I'm not sure if I'm ready to do that. (It's so refreshing not to be in your hometown where everyone seems to have known you since you were an angry 14-year-old.) And also, I knew everyone would instantly wonder how old I am.
Two years ago, I somehow got involved with a much younger guy for a very brief moment in London and when he dropped me for no reason, I wondered if it was because I was ten years older than him. Not that we ever had a discussion about this. But it did seem that our understandings & experiences were so different simply because of the different times that we came of age. The way I realized that he must be way younger was a discussion when I mentioned the fall of the Berlin Wall & I realized he had no personal memory of it.
I've never
been anxious about my age before. This is a whole new thing for me. I was at a gal's 28th birthday party and a mutual friend told
her that she had to start lying about her age. (Yes, I know, craaaazy...) I'm a lot older than 28 but this thought never
entered my mind until the incident with that guy in London.
My whole life I've been
hampered by things I have little control over: my gender, my ethnicity,
my lack of money. And now, great, let's add age to this list. Well,
actually, age was an issue when I first began working in theater since I
was too young to be taken seriously. And now I'm too old to still be
"emerging." I never seem to be able to do anything when I'm supposed to.
But after a few weeks of telling people about my "little brother," I'm thinking, to hell with it. I was a single mom and
it was damn tough. And I was a good mom even though I had no idea about
parenting from my own parents who were never around and treated me
terribly. Miles calls me and says he misses me, so I must have done
something right to have a son who actually wants to spend time with me.
And he's a huge reason why I am who I am today. Before he came into my
life, I didn't know that I could be loved. So not mentioning that I have
a son just feels like I'm denying a huge and essential part of myself.
And Miles still kicks my butt. On my own, I mostly don't care that I have
barely enough money to eat. On my own, I rarely want to buy anything
unless it's something for a show. But for Miles, I want a
nice place for him to stay and enough money to take him out to dinner
and I can't wait to go out dancing with him and his lovely girl. I've
been hustling these last three weeks in a way that I've never done before in
Berlin.
I'm also a little nervous meeting him and feeling sentimental that he's
now an adult. My beautiful little boy who used to gaze at me with such
adoration. I envy more stable parents that they kept their child with
them through their teenage years. We lost our home when he was 16 and
since then, I've never spent more than a day with him here and there.
Even after I found a new place for us to live, he decided to stay at his
father's friend's place, perhaps so he wouldn't be a burden on me.
He's older now than I was when I had him. So our relationship will be different than when I last spent time with him. And we'll be together almost every day for nearly a month. I hope that we can be good friends. I hope I can make it up to him for losing our home and sending him out in the world before he was really ready.
[This is when Miles tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Hello, mom."]
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Sunday, September 11, 2016
Fifteen Years Later
This is the article I wrote two weeks after 9/11 for www.edreams.com The website was really new and they had a section where writers gave local travel advice. I was their New York correspondent. I was also the Development Director of Theater for the New City at that time. That's the theater that is mentioned in the article.
Re-reading this article is really poignant. It was a strange time in New York, sort of like being in a funeral with 8 million other people. I think people in 1963 who watched JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald get shot on television must have had the same experience. Our hopeful illusions about the world were suddenly dashed. Suddenly, we woke up and saw how much things had changed. Suddenly, there was a new sober reality that we all had to face.
I still think of the gathering I attended the day after 9/11 in Union Square. This is the usual place New Yorkers rally and without facebook or twitter or even any word of mouth, everyone instinctively knew to go to Union Square and bring a candle. In fact, there were no candles to be found in any bodega south of 23rd Street. So I went to the basement of the theater and scrounged around in the prop area, emerging with three dusty orange candle holders that had some meager stubs of candles in them. With these in hand, my co-workers, my little boy, and I set off for Union Square. We arrived to find it jam packed. I've never seen so many people in one place. Just going the one city block from Union Square East to Union Square West literally took an hour. I swear there must have been 50,000 people there. And no one said a word. All 50,000 of us walking silently through the park carrying candles. MISSING posters plastered on every available wall....A deep sense of unity....A sobering sense of loss. That was 9/11 in NYC.
My brother called from Tokyo at 8:55 in the morning on September 11th. I was lying in bed, enjoying the sleep of someone who had worked HARD the night before on a benefit that was pretty terrific, I must say. The answering machine picked up and I heard my brother say, "I hope you're nowhere near the financial area. I know you probably aren't but I thought I should call." And then he hung up before I could get to the phone. What the hell is he talking about? I wondered. I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep. Outside a few people screamed about something. I put the pillow over my head. The phone rang just as my cat curled up comfortably next to me. I was loathe to get up. The machine picked up again and it was my friend Mark yelling, "Wake up! Wake up!" So I got up, got the phone and very grumpily barked,"WHAT???" He replied, "One of the World Trade Centers just fell down."
Needless to say, I turned on the telly and watched with the whole world as the World Trade Center turned to rubble. Only two channels were being transmitted; television had been shot down like the stock market. Another friend called. He didn't have a television so I spent the next half hour describing to him all the terrible images on the screen. At noon, I finally went to the theater where I work, walking in bright, beautiful autumn sunshine, with many confused and dazed people. There were lines in front of every telephone kiosk and lots of people just standing around in shock. From every store you could hear the same news blaring. Channel 5 coming from every shop and restaurant. At the theater, the news was on too. I found it impossible to work, to type out what suddenly seemed utterly mundane grant applications for this or that artist. We closed early, at 3, and I went to fetch my little boy since his dad was working across the water in New Jersey and wouldn't be able to get back to New York in time. (Turns out it took him 14 hours to get back home.) I spent the rest of the night watching TV with my boy, wondering what terrible precipice we were now on.
After that crazy day, there were candle-light vigils practically every night in Union Square Park. New Yorkers are a bit more somber than usual. I still can only get a few channels on the television. And of course, the skyline is missing its two front teeth. In many ways, though, this tragedy has shown what a great place New York is. For goodness sakes, where else can you imagine 40,000 people running from two collapsing 103 story towers and NO ONE is trampled to death??? Incidents of racist attacks are much less in New York than anywhere else in this country. There have been none in my neighborhood, despite the many Arabic newsstands and falafel shops that dot the Lower East Side. Our local mosque locked up on the day of the tragedy but they haven't been attacked. Despite New York receiving a solar plexis blow, we are still standing and still reaching out to each other.
For those of you who may be worried about coming to the city, I want to reassure you that New York does not look like blitzed-out London now. The lower west side area south of Canal and west of Broadway was cordoned off for a while, but lower Manhattan is now open except for the few blocks immediately around the disaster area. While you can no longer visit the World Trade Center, parts of Battery Park will be open and you can still take rides on the Staten Island ferry for one of the most beautiful views of New York. I love this city and I feel, like most New Yorkers, that I've been dealt some kind of great psychic blow. But New York is still beautiful, it's still bustling and still bountiful to people of all nations. We've been exposed as being vulnerable like everyone else, despite our tough talk and fast walk, but in our vulnerability, we're relearning that our real strength isn't in big buildings or economic institutions, our real strength lies in unity and love. And unity and love is something New York has plenty of.
Re-reading this article is really poignant. It was a strange time in New York, sort of like being in a funeral with 8 million other people. I think people in 1963 who watched JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald get shot on television must have had the same experience. Our hopeful illusions about the world were suddenly dashed. Suddenly, we woke up and saw how much things had changed. Suddenly, there was a new sober reality that we all had to face.
______
My brother called from Tokyo at 8:55 in the morning on September 11th. I was lying in bed, enjoying the sleep of someone who had worked HARD the night before on a benefit that was pretty terrific, I must say. The answering machine picked up and I heard my brother say, "I hope you're nowhere near the financial area. I know you probably aren't but I thought I should call." And then he hung up before I could get to the phone. What the hell is he talking about? I wondered. I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep. Outside a few people screamed about something. I put the pillow over my head. The phone rang just as my cat curled up comfortably next to me. I was loathe to get up. The machine picked up again and it was my friend Mark yelling, "Wake up! Wake up!" So I got up, got the phone and very grumpily barked,"WHAT???" He replied, "One of the World Trade Centers just fell down."
Needless to say, I turned on the telly and watched with the whole world as the World Trade Center turned to rubble. Only two channels were being transmitted; television had been shot down like the stock market. Another friend called. He didn't have a television so I spent the next half hour describing to him all the terrible images on the screen. At noon, I finally went to the theater where I work, walking in bright, beautiful autumn sunshine, with many confused and dazed people. There were lines in front of every telephone kiosk and lots of people just standing around in shock. From every store you could hear the same news blaring. Channel 5 coming from every shop and restaurant. At the theater, the news was on too. I found it impossible to work, to type out what suddenly seemed utterly mundane grant applications for this or that artist. We closed early, at 3, and I went to fetch my little boy since his dad was working across the water in New Jersey and wouldn't be able to get back to New York in time. (Turns out it took him 14 hours to get back home.) I spent the rest of the night watching TV with my boy, wondering what terrible precipice we were now on.
After that crazy day, there were candle-light vigils practically every night in Union Square Park. New Yorkers are a bit more somber than usual. I still can only get a few channels on the television. And of course, the skyline is missing its two front teeth. In many ways, though, this tragedy has shown what a great place New York is. For goodness sakes, where else can you imagine 40,000 people running from two collapsing 103 story towers and NO ONE is trampled to death??? Incidents of racist attacks are much less in New York than anywhere else in this country. There have been none in my neighborhood, despite the many Arabic newsstands and falafel shops that dot the Lower East Side. Our local mosque locked up on the day of the tragedy but they haven't been attacked. Despite New York receiving a solar plexis blow, we are still standing and still reaching out to each other.
For those of you who may be worried about coming to the city, I want to reassure you that New York does not look like blitzed-out London now. The lower west side area south of Canal and west of Broadway was cordoned off for a while, but lower Manhattan is now open except for the few blocks immediately around the disaster area. While you can no longer visit the World Trade Center, parts of Battery Park will be open and you can still take rides on the Staten Island ferry for one of the most beautiful views of New York. I love this city and I feel, like most New Yorkers, that I've been dealt some kind of great psychic blow. But New York is still beautiful, it's still bustling and still bountiful to people of all nations. We've been exposed as being vulnerable like everyone else, despite our tough talk and fast walk, but in our vulnerability, we're relearning that our real strength isn't in big buildings or economic institutions, our real strength lies in unity and love. And unity and love is something New York has plenty of.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
I Am a Vase
This is the first of three articles about art modeling.
A filmmaker has asked me to be part of a documentary about art modeling. And after talking to him, I’m peeved enough to express my own views. What irritates me is his prurient idea that nudity is what art modeling is about. Um, no, art is what art modeling is about. Anyone can take off their clothes. I bet that at some point in the past 24 hours, you too took off your clothes! Okay, perhaps you’ve never disrobed in public, but the novelty of that lasts for all of like two seconds. And then your neck has a horrible crick but you can’t move for another Ten. Long. Agonizing. Minutes.
A filmmaker has asked me to be part of a documentary about art modeling. And after talking to him, I’m peeved enough to express my own views. What irritates me is his prurient idea that nudity is what art modeling is about. Um, no, art is what art modeling is about. Anyone can take off their clothes. I bet that at some point in the past 24 hours, you too took off your clothes! Okay, perhaps you’ve never disrobed in public, but the novelty of that lasts for all of like two seconds. And then your neck has a horrible crick but you can’t move for another Ten. Long. Agonizing. Minutes.
Everyone has a body. The point of art modeling
isn’t the nudity of a body, but the structure of a body. Drawing from a nude model allows an artist to
go back to basics and understand the architecture of the human form. It’s just easier
to draw a naked person than one enveloped in clothing.
I would think this is obvious but from the
conversation I had with the filmmaker, it seems that some people can’t see
beyond the nudity aspect. It’s hard for me to grasp this but I think they must have a deeply internalized Puritanical
morality through which everything is viewed. For them, a nude body isn’t just a
nude body. For them, nudity is inseparable from sexuality and/or shame. To be
nude in public is terrifying or daring or provocative.
But an art model isn’t there to purge their
internal issues or to get someone worked up. Nude or not, an art model is supposed to come up with an expressive
pose and sustain it for a certain length of time. This is a lot more difficult
than it seems.
First, you need to have a varied physical
vocabulary. Especially if the session is
comprised of several short poses. Being a dancer helps. Seeing lots of artwork
helps. And having the schizophrenic ability to view yourself from the outside
is rather instrumental. The other thing that is required is the
strength to hold a position. Even the most comfortable reclining pose becomes
unendurable after a while. The body is just not really meant to be still.
So it might seem like something anyone can
do, but there is actually an art to art modeling. A good art model has the uncanny ability
to find a pose that is interesting from at least three different angles, while accurately calculating how long it can be held. Anyone
who’s ever art modeled knows this is not easy. Even if you’ve posed for artists
as long as I have, you still make mistakes and find yourself in pins and
needles, with your arm screaming to be moved.
I started posing for artists when I was
about 17 years old. A photographer approached me on the subway and asked if I
would model for him. He paid $25 per hour, a small fortune to a teenage
runaway. It might have been him who introduced me to the Art Students League of NY, which kept me decently employed for the next three years. Looking back,
this was probably one of the best places to learn about art modeling. Put all
your weight on one leg, I was told. Turn your body slightly. Tilt your head. A pose is more interesting if
it’s asymmetrical. And then for a while, I was the lecture model for Gustav Rehberger and learned a lot about anatomy from being his guinea pig: the three
planes of a foot, the difference between a man’s neck and a woman’s, the
complex parts that make up an eye.
At the Art Students League, I got
experience posing for all kinds of mediums, including sculpture, where the
modeling occurs on a giant turntable. The instructor comes and turns you every
so often like a plate of bok choy on a Chinatown banquet table. “I am a vase. I
am a vase,” I found myself thinking. I was desperate
to keep my mind occupied since I had a standing pose that was incredibly painful.
Quentin Crisp said once that he never had
thoughts about anything while posing except for the pose itself. But I find that
thinking is one of the keys to being still. Not only can you quickly pass the
time, but I’ve also developed the ability to drift away in my thoughts, leaving
my body relatively immobile. I’ve composed entire essays in my head, won heated
arguments with my parents, and come up with an amazing set design for a
production of Agamemnon. I actually
find art modeling rather meditative. Either that or it’s just contributing to
my ultimate mental collapse.
During breaks, I usually wander around the
room. Partly, this is to get some needed circulation in cramped up body parts.
But it’s also interesting to see the work that is being produced. Not because oh look, it’s me me me me me! Well
maybe, but I like to think that I’m more fascinated to see the same pose
from 10 different angles as seen by 10 different people. It’s the Rashomon effect on a page. And it’s so
interesting to see that most pictures look a lot like the artist.
There was only one time that I ever saw an
artist draw me as an Oriental stereotype. Like literally, there were slanted
lines where my eyes ought to be. It was in a beginner’s class but I’ve posed
for high school students and never once have I ever seen a picture of me with
chinky eyes. Interestingly, it was a
black guy on the outskirts of London who drew that picture. I think maybe he
was a recent immigrant and hadn’t been exposed to much of the world yet. Every
other artist I’ve ever encountered draws from what they see, not what they
think they should see.
This is what I think is the most radical
thing about drawing from life. In order to depict someone accurately, an artist
has to see beyond preconceived ideas and break everything down into geometric
shapes. It’s the great equalizer. No matter what our size, gender, or race, we’re
really just a bunch of spheres and cylinders hanging on a skeletal frame.
But it seems that some people like the
filmmaker and that black guy on the outskirts of London can’t get beyond
themselves to see a body just the way it is. For that black guy, I’m Asian so I
must have Mongoloid eyes. His unconscious racism makes him incapable of seeing
that I do have eyelids. For the filmmaker, I’m nude so I must be an
exhibitionist or a libertine. His body issues make him incapable of seeing the
eloquence of a pose, the uniqueness of a particular position, the expressiveness
of a gesture. To him, I’m just nude.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
How to Solve the Yellowface Problem
It’s great that everyone is making noise
about Scarlett Johanssen being cast in Ghost in the Shell and #whitewashing in
Hollywood and in major regional theaters. I'm totally with you all but excuse me while I chime in with a thought.
Yes, actors are the recognizable face of
the business and everyone else is behind the scenes. But it’s the producers,
directors, and writers who are really the driving force of a project. If we
really want things to change, we can’t just bang on the door of the
gatekeepers. We’ve got to support our own producers and directors and writers.
And we’re not doing it.
I’m going to keep this short. I’m not going
to dwell. And perhaps a few sour grapes are in the mix. But I’m in Berlin because I don’t feel any support for
my work in New York. And it’s not like I’ve been dilettanting around and just
threw in the towel after being a little miffed. I’m a lifer who has about ten ideas for
Asian-American pieces that can’t get a start. (Yes, go ahead, ask me.) The sad thing to me after nearly
a year here in Berlin is that my stories will probably continue to be
Asian-American and New York. Even though it hurts to write and hurts more to
produce these theater pieces that can’t seem to find a home anywhere.
#MyYellowFaceStory is probably not one that
you want to hear. Because it’s about how the odds are stacked against you even
in your own community. One of the final straws that led me to pack up my bags? A theater company that I adore had
a residency with a bunch of Chinese-speaking writers from Asia that culminated
in a series of readings. I didn’t find out about this until they sent out the
newsletter even though I’d been volunteering there for over three years. They
know my work, they know I speak Chinese, but they didn’t think to call me. The
two Asian-Americans that were involved in the program were Filipino and Korean.
And male, if that makes a difference. I think they’re both fantastic, but they
certainly don’t speak Chinese. And to be blunt, what they know about Chinese
culture could fit in a thimble. I sent a note to the Artistic Director
expressing my chagrin. He apologized and connected me with the woman who was
running the program, whom I slightly know. She never emailed me at all.
I felt very slighted by the whole thing. I
still do. Okay, fine, maybe they don’t like the work I do. Maybe they don’t think I’m
that talented. But sheesh, you would think that I’d at least get a stab at a
program simply because I can sort of talk
with the writers. And this is just one of the examples I’ve had that no one
really wants an Asian story with depth. They want a sanitized middle-class
version of Asian-America, which is not the Asian-America that exists in my
writing or my work.
Like I said, I don’t want to dwell. But I
see so much energy being put into storming the gate of the lord up the hill and not any at
all in sowing the field. There are plenty of fantastic Asian-American actors
and a healthy growing group of Asian-American writers. But where is there
support or mentoring for Asian-American theater producers or directors? Where
is there funding for Asian-American theater or film? I already wrote
about this years ago. And it’s still the elephant in the room. We can’t
expect writers, directors, and producers who aren’t Asian-American to put our
stories on the screen or on the stage. Why the hell would they? It’s just not their
story. So the most they can do is add Asian-Americans to their consideration. Which is quite significant, but it will largely be tokenism and window dressing. If we want things to really change, we have to support our own. And how are we doing this?
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Gone but Not Forgotten - HOT KEYS
I tossed 20 years of theater files but that doesn't mean they're gone gone gone. This is a series of articles with photographs and musings of some of the more special items.
Here's the flyer for HOT KEYS by Jeff Weiss, a serial soap opera that won an Obie Citation. (Click to see it enlarged.)
I met Jeff through Tony Nunziata, also known as Tony Fish, who was part of the gay musical trio Hot Peaches. Sometimes I think how funny it was that all the people who looked out for me when I was a snotty teen were all gay men. But then, if you grew up in a downtown NYC theater in the 1980s and 1990s, everyone you knew happened to be a gay man. I didn't know Tony very well but he asked me to be part of a reading. It was at that big building on 10th Street and Broadway across from Grace Church. The apartment was fabulous, one of my first instances of seeing a place decorated with incredible taste. I stared in awe at some gorgeous Greek theater etchings on the wall and then Tony came over and informed me that they were early works by Picasso. Well, the play was something about a Vietnam vet written and starring Jeff Weiss. I was in the last scene with Jeff, playing a Vietnamese woman encouraging him to eat pig's balls. Apparently, I knocked the scene out of the park, since he invited me to be part of his new project HOT KEYS.
I still think what a genius idea this piece was. It was another iteration of Jeff's serial theater pieces with a different "episode" every week. We got the script for the scene(s) we were in on Monday or Tuesday, rehearsed on Wednesday and Thursday, and performed the episode on Friday and Saturday. Repeat the following week. The only constants were that each "episode" began with the Rodgers and Hart song Where or When, and somewhere in the middle of the episode one character would sing the gorgeous ballad Please Let Love Pass Me By, written by Jeff's partner, Carlos Martinez. The perverse and sprawling storyline was something about various murderers who go on the lam and end up in Disneyland.
Jeff wrote the part of Mary Lois for me. At least I think he did. I was 18 and I had a slight reputation after living in TNC's cages. In HOT KEYS, I played a wild teenage party girl from South Jersey who murders the milkman. Or maybe it was the postman. My mother was played by the amazing Kristen Johnston, whom some of you might know from 3rd Rock to the Sun. And my boyfriend Wesley was played by Neil Pepe who later became Artistic Director of the Atlantic Theatre. Here's the first page of my first scene with Wes.
I turned down a part in a regional production of M BUTTERFLY that would've gotten me an Equity card to be in HOT KEYS. Sometimes I think maybe that was a bad career move, but I was 18 and it seemed like a helluva lot more fun and interesting to be in HOT KEYS. And in a way, I was right. I met some amazing people and I was part of an Obie Award winning production. But I did learn a hard lesson about the pitfalls of being poor.
There was a peculiar rich/poor or uptown/downtown divide in HOT KEYS. I think Jeff knowingly set it all up, being the mischievious imp that he is. Almost all of the actors came from four theaters: Naked Angels, Atlantic Theatre, La Mama and TNC. For those of you who are unfamiliar with NYC's theater landscape, Naked Angels and Atlantic are tonier theaters in Chelsea with more experienced actors. But Jeff gave the juicier roles to people from the scruffy East Village theaters La Mama and TNC. The actors from Naked Angels and Atlantic mostly played talkative cops. This made for a rather tense environment but I think Jeff liked it that way.
At that time, I was a teenage runaway and homeless. By the time I was in HOT KEYS, I was no longer living in TNC's basement, but I was drifting around various SROs in New York. For those of you who don't know, SRO stands for Single Room Occupancy and they were teeny tiny cheap hotel rooms for single people set up after World War 2 mostly for returning vets. If you were poor, SROs were a great option since they were about $100 a week. They were usually segregated by sex and in the 1980s and 1990s, the best ones for women were the Allerton and Martha Washington. But I also stayed at skeevier places like the Kensington and the Lincoln, which to my consternation turned out to be a whore hotel. The Lincoln was later knocked down and it's now the Baruch Performing Arts Center.
Well, being poor, things happen like you suddenly can't pay for your phone service. I turned up at Naked Angels one Wednesday for rehearsal as usual and to my shock, I discovered that I'd been replaced. It seems the stage manager had tried to call me and wigged out that I couldn't be reached even though I had been attending every week for like three months. The East Village folk understood how you could have your phone shut off and they were livid. For a moment, it seemed the rich/poor divide in HOT KEYS would implode. But I didn't want any part of it. I left the production and never saw Jeff again.
Shortly after HOT KEYS, Carlos became ill and Jeff took him home to Allentown, PA to take care of him. Sometimes I think about Carlos' beautiful ballad Please Let Love Pass Me By. I wish I remembered more of the lyrics. There was recently a 3-night retrospective of Jeff's work at The Kitchen. Don Shewey's blog has a lovely review of the event (scroll down). And Jim Moore of Vaudevisuals posted a video of one of the songs sung in HOT KEYS. It seems I can't embed it, but the link is here.
Here's the flyer for HOT KEYS by Jeff Weiss, a serial soap opera that won an Obie Citation. (Click to see it enlarged.)
 |
| Jeff Weiss ala Humphrey Bogart. |
 |
| "...until Jeff has had enough..." |
I met Jeff through Tony Nunziata, also known as Tony Fish, who was part of the gay musical trio Hot Peaches. Sometimes I think how funny it was that all the people who looked out for me when I was a snotty teen were all gay men. But then, if you grew up in a downtown NYC theater in the 1980s and 1990s, everyone you knew happened to be a gay man. I didn't know Tony very well but he asked me to be part of a reading. It was at that big building on 10th Street and Broadway across from Grace Church. The apartment was fabulous, one of my first instances of seeing a place decorated with incredible taste. I stared in awe at some gorgeous Greek theater etchings on the wall and then Tony came over and informed me that they were early works by Picasso. Well, the play was something about a Vietnam vet written and starring Jeff Weiss. I was in the last scene with Jeff, playing a Vietnamese woman encouraging him to eat pig's balls. Apparently, I knocked the scene out of the park, since he invited me to be part of his new project HOT KEYS.
I still think what a genius idea this piece was. It was another iteration of Jeff's serial theater pieces with a different "episode" every week. We got the script for the scene(s) we were in on Monday or Tuesday, rehearsed on Wednesday and Thursday, and performed the episode on Friday and Saturday. Repeat the following week. The only constants were that each "episode" began with the Rodgers and Hart song Where or When, and somewhere in the middle of the episode one character would sing the gorgeous ballad Please Let Love Pass Me By, written by Jeff's partner, Carlos Martinez. The perverse and sprawling storyline was something about various murderers who go on the lam and end up in Disneyland.
Jeff wrote the part of Mary Lois for me. At least I think he did. I was 18 and I had a slight reputation after living in TNC's cages. In HOT KEYS, I played a wild teenage party girl from South Jersey who murders the milkman. Or maybe it was the postman. My mother was played by the amazing Kristen Johnston, whom some of you might know from 3rd Rock to the Sun. And my boyfriend Wesley was played by Neil Pepe who later became Artistic Director of the Atlantic Theatre. Here's the first page of my first scene with Wes.
 |
| From the sexy & perverse imagination of Jeff Weiss. |
I turned down a part in a regional production of M BUTTERFLY that would've gotten me an Equity card to be in HOT KEYS. Sometimes I think maybe that was a bad career move, but I was 18 and it seemed like a helluva lot more fun and interesting to be in HOT KEYS. And in a way, I was right. I met some amazing people and I was part of an Obie Award winning production. But I did learn a hard lesson about the pitfalls of being poor.
There was a peculiar rich/poor or uptown/downtown divide in HOT KEYS. I think Jeff knowingly set it all up, being the mischievious imp that he is. Almost all of the actors came from four theaters: Naked Angels, Atlantic Theatre, La Mama and TNC. For those of you who are unfamiliar with NYC's theater landscape, Naked Angels and Atlantic are tonier theaters in Chelsea with more experienced actors. But Jeff gave the juicier roles to people from the scruffy East Village theaters La Mama and TNC. The actors from Naked Angels and Atlantic mostly played talkative cops. This made for a rather tense environment but I think Jeff liked it that way.
At that time, I was a teenage runaway and homeless. By the time I was in HOT KEYS, I was no longer living in TNC's basement, but I was drifting around various SROs in New York. For those of you who don't know, SRO stands for Single Room Occupancy and they were teeny tiny cheap hotel rooms for single people set up after World War 2 mostly for returning vets. If you were poor, SROs were a great option since they were about $100 a week. They were usually segregated by sex and in the 1980s and 1990s, the best ones for women were the Allerton and Martha Washington. But I also stayed at skeevier places like the Kensington and the Lincoln, which to my consternation turned out to be a whore hotel. The Lincoln was later knocked down and it's now the Baruch Performing Arts Center.
Well, being poor, things happen like you suddenly can't pay for your phone service. I turned up at Naked Angels one Wednesday for rehearsal as usual and to my shock, I discovered that I'd been replaced. It seems the stage manager had tried to call me and wigged out that I couldn't be reached even though I had been attending every week for like three months. The East Village folk understood how you could have your phone shut off and they were livid. For a moment, it seemed the rich/poor divide in HOT KEYS would implode. But I didn't want any part of it. I left the production and never saw Jeff again.
Shortly after HOT KEYS, Carlos became ill and Jeff took him home to Allentown, PA to take care of him. Sometimes I think about Carlos' beautiful ballad Please Let Love Pass Me By. I wish I remembered more of the lyrics. There was recently a 3-night retrospective of Jeff's work at The Kitchen. Don Shewey's blog has a lovely review of the event (scroll down). And Jim Moore of Vaudevisuals posted a video of one of the songs sung in HOT KEYS. It seems I can't embed it, but the link is here.
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Goodbye Old Life
Decluttering has become something of a trend lately, with promises of a simpler more fulfilling life once you’re free of all your junk. But I’m not purging my things because I need
more space. I have no space. I’m letting go of an entire lifetime of things
because I have to.
Yesterday, I tossed 20 years of files on theater work that I’ve done since I was a teenager. Flyers from shows at LaMama and Theater for the New City and Synchronicity Space and Ensemble StudioTheater. Contact sheets from a 10-hour anti-war festival I organized back during the first Gulf War with phone numbers for Allen Ginsberg and Patti Smith. All the scripts and playbills and research for the 30-odd staged readings and short film screenings I produced for my company Direct Arts. Hard copies of grant applications, rejection letters and a few acceptances. Each file was a milestone in my life, a small symbol of accomplishment. The only file I kept was the one for my old friend James Purdy.
Today, I’ll be selling nearly 500 books. Most people know that I didn’t finish high school and I never went to college. My parents never once spent an evening working on homework with me; they can barely read English. These books were my education. Here are the books that taught me about literature, art, design, film, mythology, global politics and history. It's because of these books that I speak and think and write the way I do. The only real difference between me and immigrants working low-end kitchen jobs are these 500 books.
There are also about 5 boxes of clothes, mostly vintage and tattered. This is another way that I’ve been able to set myself apart from my immigrant roots. For better or worse, I was born with a mutant aberration that gave me a sense of style. But without any money, I’ve always had to scrounge around to realize any kind of look. So all these torn and wrinkled dresses and jackets from the 1940s and 1950s represent mild triumphs for me. A way for me to thumb my nose at consumer culture and homogeny and economic class all at once.
At times the ghoulish part of me thinks that this would be a great time for me to die or commit suicide. No one will need to clean up after me. Everything I have is gone. But sheesh, that’s depressing. (And no, I'm not that ready to end things.)
I know that these papers and books and dresses are valuable to no one but me. And they're only valuable because they inform who I am. If all the evidence from my theater history is gone, you can't take it away from me, but how can I prove it to anyone else? But then again, why do I need to prove it anyway? I’ve always loved that random pieces of paper in an archive is called “ephemera.” Like a theater production, everything we have is ephemeral. The curtain closes and the next moment, something else is on stage. So what’s next now? The stage is swept and empty. I'm jonesing for opening night.
Yesterday, I tossed 20 years of files on theater work that I’ve done since I was a teenager. Flyers from shows at LaMama and Theater for the New City and Synchronicity Space and Ensemble StudioTheater. Contact sheets from a 10-hour anti-war festival I organized back during the first Gulf War with phone numbers for Allen Ginsberg and Patti Smith. All the scripts and playbills and research for the 30-odd staged readings and short film screenings I produced for my company Direct Arts. Hard copies of grant applications, rejection letters and a few acceptances. Each file was a milestone in my life, a small symbol of accomplishment. The only file I kept was the one for my old friend James Purdy.
Today, I’ll be selling nearly 500 books. Most people know that I didn’t finish high school and I never went to college. My parents never once spent an evening working on homework with me; they can barely read English. These books were my education. Here are the books that taught me about literature, art, design, film, mythology, global politics and history. It's because of these books that I speak and think and write the way I do. The only real difference between me and immigrants working low-end kitchen jobs are these 500 books.
There are also about 5 boxes of clothes, mostly vintage and tattered. This is another way that I’ve been able to set myself apart from my immigrant roots. For better or worse, I was born with a mutant aberration that gave me a sense of style. But without any money, I’ve always had to scrounge around to realize any kind of look. So all these torn and wrinkled dresses and jackets from the 1940s and 1950s represent mild triumphs for me. A way for me to thumb my nose at consumer culture and homogeny and economic class all at once.
At times the ghoulish part of me thinks that this would be a great time for me to die or commit suicide. No one will need to clean up after me. Everything I have is gone. But sheesh, that’s depressing. (And no, I'm not that ready to end things.)
I know that these papers and books and dresses are valuable to no one but me. And they're only valuable because they inform who I am. If all the evidence from my theater history is gone, you can't take it away from me, but how can I prove it to anyone else? But then again, why do I need to prove it anyway? I’ve always loved that random pieces of paper in an archive is called “ephemera.” Like a theater production, everything we have is ephemeral. The curtain closes and the next moment, something else is on stage. So what’s next now? The stage is swept and empty. I'm jonesing for opening night.
Friday, March 4, 2016
Rambling Notes on Being Nuyorasian in Berlin
My facebook feed is full of friends in America proclaiming #BlackLivesMatter and #Justice4Liang and most recently, the whole debacle of #OscarsSoWhite. I’m following the stories but here in Berlin, the battle for racial justice is in a galaxy far far away.
Yes, the refugee crisis is everywhere and racism is definitely part of the problem. But refugees are newcomers fleeing from war or famine or extreme poverty; they’re not citizens battling for justice and equity within entrenched systems. In Europe, the race issue is over having enough pieces of cake to give out, while in America, the bakers are wondering why they just get crumbs.
Yes, the refugee crisis is everywhere and racism is definitely part of the problem. But refugees are newcomers fleeing from war or famine or extreme poverty; they’re not citizens battling for justice and equity within entrenched systems. In Europe, the race issue is over having enough pieces of cake to give out, while in America, the bakers are wondering why they just get crumbs.
Obviously, I don’t face the discrimination that refugees confront here. People don’t think I’m dirty or looking for a handout. But being Asian-American has its own weirdness in Berlin. I think this has a lot to do with how few Asians there are. People from the Middle East are the only sizeable minority and they’re only 9% of the 3.5 million people in the city. Asians are just 3% of the population. There is no Chinatown. And Germany never had an Asian colony so there isn’t a history with all its inherent baggage.
On the one hand, this is rather liberating. There isn’t really any fetishization of Asian women here. Germans don’t look at me and see a geisha sex kitten, ready to dispense koan-like wisdom and a tea ceremony. And my added American-ness just confuses them. It seems no one knows what to make of me; an Asian-looking woman with some kind of vintage style who speaks perfect English. I definitely don’t look like I work in a nail salon. I also don’t look much like a student. “I’m so surprised,” a rather drunk friend of a friend kept repeating after every sentence I said. I’ve seen a room full of lonely guys check out every girl in the room but their eyes pass right over me like I’m a table or a chair. It’s definitely not the States, where a recent study of 25 million OKCupid members showed that Asian women are the most desired race of women in online dating. Because, you know, geisha sex kitten.
At times, I rather miss being fetishized. Well, it’s not all that pleasant being looked at from the ass-end of a telescope, but at least you’re looked at. In New York, I often found myself in an intense political conversation and then caught the guy beaming at me with a paternal look that seemed to say, “Aww, it’s so cute. It’s even talking.” Here, the look is more one of utter consternation, “Ack, it’s talking?!! In English??? What is it?!” I wonder which is worse. Or how this compares with Asia, where the general reaction is skepticism tinged with disapproval.
But while there isn’t much of a fetish for Asian women, that’s not to say there aren’t Asian stereotypes in Berlin. I danced at a Chinatown-themed party on New Year’s Eve. All the white bartenders dressed in cheongsams with chopsticks in their hair. I had an interesting conversation with a white guy trying to ignore that he was all done up like Madame Butterfly with a kimono, white face, and slanty-eyed makeup. I think I must have been the only one to notice or care that the only Asian music at the so-called Chinatown party was J-pop.
My feelings about cultural (mis)appropriation are very very mixed. I’m not always offended. It’s the other way around too: I see Asians all the time trying really damn hard to be Americans through some token surface means. They bleach their hair blond, wear blue contact lenses, get a nose job. Or they wear baseball caps backwards and low-hanging pants. For Asians, it does seem to come from some kind of inferiority, as if by dyeing their hair or wearing that hat, they can assume a power they wish they had.
For Europeans aping Asians, it’s definitely the other way around. Here are white people, with all their privileges, trying to find a way to be “other.” They wear Native American feathered bonnets and get all tribal or they put on blackface like this lady attempting to bring attention to those poor African tribes. It's a misplaced magnanimity, thinking they can embrace another culture by adopting traditional dress or other surface representations. The line here is kind of fuzzy. Painting your face another color and taping your eyes in a slant and dancing around a teepee: no no no. But antique kimonos are beautiful and I'm glad some other people appreciate them as long as they're not bowing and shuffling like they're Princess Yum Yum in the Town of Titipu. It's interesting to me; this desire to be the “other.” Most people who come from marginalized communities will basically agree that it sucks and if there was a way to erase all the marks of being "other" and still be true to yourself, then YES PLEASE.
I guess this is what I find hardest to relate to: Germans are not underdogs. I’m generalizing very much of course -- and things were different fifty years ago for half of the country -- but at this particular moment in time, Germans don’t know what it means to live with limited opportunities. It’s rather enviable, actually. There isn’t an entrenched class system here like in England, so they don’t know what it means to be on the bottom even in an economic structure. And women are not considered the low end of the social heap here. Germans can choose to identify with the poor or with outcasts of various sorts, but it’s a choice. They can drop that shitty end of the stick anytime they want. This is part of why I think Germans can't sing the blues.
Sadly, my opportunities are a lot more limited. Yes, having good English and being articulate does give me a freedom that some immigrant Asian-Americans may envy, but being Asian and a woman is definitely a handicap if you want to be taken seriously as a writer or director. It's nearly impossible to get past the gatekeepers. You’re constantly fighting cultural stereotypes that relegate you to a tiny dusty unobtrusive corner of the playing field.
What’s interesting is realizing how much I am defined by this, like a painting created from negative space. My whole life, I’ve resisted stereotypes about my gender and ethnicity: I’m not a math whiz or a model minority or an immigrant or subservient or kawaii. But without these expectations to oppose, I have much less of a defining edge. I know what I’m not, but I’m not sure what I am.
It’s also interesting that I find myself a bit on the opposite end of my stance in America. Back in New York, the great majority of Asian-Americans in the arts are second generation and college educated. Most of them have only been in Asia a few times. Most of them barely speak the language. I’m different in that I do have language skills and my mother is a barely educated immigrant from a rural area. So in New York, I’m often bringing attention to working-class immigrant Asian-America. But here in Berlin, the general stereotype is that Asians work in restaurants and nail salons and speak very bad German and no English. Being Little Miss Mary, I find myself reminding everyone that the model minority is real and I’m (sort of) it.
But in Berlin, "second generation" and "model minority" are really foreign concepts. Am I Asian? Am I American? How can I be both? I suppose maybe liminality is what this rambling article is ultimately about. Not to toss a high-faluting five syllable word around, but liminality is such an interesting idea in terms of mixed ethnicities and diasporas.
The idea was first applied by an anthropologist in the early 1900s to the middle state of rituals. Now it’s also applied to societies and history and individuals. It’s the state of being between things. It’s the moment when something is being dissolved and something else is being created. The anthropologist Victor Turner argues that liminality is a state of great tension that can’t remain for too long. That might be obvious but it’s an important thought. Another interesting thought is the liminal being, a creature between two different states. In fiction, that would include shape shifters, tricksters, and cyborgs. And in reality? Teenagers, transsexuals, people of mixed cultures.
But in Berlin, "second generation" and "model minority" are really foreign concepts. Am I Asian? Am I American? How can I be both? I suppose maybe liminality is what this rambling article is ultimately about. Not to toss a high-faluting five syllable word around, but liminality is such an interesting idea in terms of mixed ethnicities and diasporas.
The idea was first applied by an anthropologist in the early 1900s to the middle state of rituals. Now it’s also applied to societies and history and individuals. It’s the state of being between things. It’s the moment when something is being dissolved and something else is being created. The anthropologist Victor Turner argues that liminality is a state of great tension that can’t remain for too long. That might be obvious but it’s an important thought. Another interesting thought is the liminal being, a creature between two different states. In fiction, that would include shape shifters, tricksters, and cyborgs. And in reality? Teenagers, transsexuals, people of mixed cultures.
We’re the people at the threshold. We are the future. Everyone else just has to get used to it. All that racist hostility in America? Howls of a dying beast. It's inevitable that one day, everyone will be of mixed cultures and race will be totally moot. Until then, my mutant powers of invisibility seem to have developed a weird and interesting tangent here in Berlin. I wonder if there's any use for it.
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