Interview with Daniel York, Actor, Writer, and Director and Anna Chen, Writer, Performer, and Broadcaster

Abstract

In the second of the two commissioned interviews for this Special Issue, we discuss the experience and politics of casting from the perspective of ethnic minority actors. Although there were a number of individuals and organisations who could have been approached, here we talk to Daniel York, who initially drove the debates after he was auditioned for, but not cast in, The Orphan of Zhao, and to Anna Chen, who spearheaded the media campaign against the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Both are also founding members of British East Asian Artists, a lobbying and production group that was formed during the RSC controversy to promote East Asian representation on stage and screen.

Notes

1. Lalayn Baluch, ‘British East Asian Artists Lambast “racist” British Theatre for Lack of Acting Roles’, Stage, 9 June 2009, <http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2009/06/british-east-asian-artists-lambast-racist-british-theatre-for-lack-of-acting-roles/> [accessed 28 February 2014]. Please note that the title of this article does not refer to the organisation ‘British East Asian Artists’; rather, it was relaying the opinions of a number of BEA practitioners.

2. Daniel York is of mixed Singapore and British heritage and grew up in the UK. As an actor he has appeared at the Royal Court, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, and most recently at the National Theatre (2013) in The World Of Extreme Happiness, as well as extensively in Singapore where he won the 2012 Life! Theatre Best Supporting Actor award for his performance in Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice. He was recently awarded an Arts Council grant to produce his first full-length play The Fu Manchu Complex at the Ovalhouse (2013), directed by Justin Audibert, and his short play Song Of Four Seasons was performed at Tamasha’s Music & Migration Scratch Night. He is currently a member of the Royal Court’s Studio group as well as the Orange Tree Writers’ Collective. His short play, Muddy Water, was recently performed at the Orange Tree. He is currently Chair of the Equity Minority Ethnic Members’ Committee.

3. Anna Chen is a writer, performer, poet, and broadcaster. She writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio 4 as a freelancer (including A Celestial Star in Piccadilly: Anna May Wong [2009], Chopsticks At Dawn [2010], and Madam Mao’s Golden Oldies [2012]) and presents her series, Madam Miaow’s Culture Lounge, at Resonance 104.4 FM. Her blog, Madam Miaow Says, was shortlisted in the 2010 Orwell Prize for blogs, and longlisted in 2012. She was the first British Chinese writer and performer to take a show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and was the first to appear on British television, in Stewart Lee and Richard Herring’s show, Fist of Fun (BBC2), in 1995. She is the author of I, Imelda (1998), Anna May Wong Must Die! (2009, 2011), and The Steampunk Opium Wars (2012).

4. Kwame Kwei-Armah, quoted in Tim Adams, ‘Kwame Kwei-Armah: “I was constantly moaning in London”’, Guardian, 2 February 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/feb/02/kwame-kwei-armah-center-stage> [accessed 28 February 2014].

5. Ayanna Thompson, Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race and Contemporary America (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 80.

6. Amanda Rogers (Swansea University) and Ashley Thorpe (Royal Holloway, University of London) conducted this interview on 3 February 2014 at the National Theatre, London. As interviewers, we should highlight that we are both also members of British East Asian Artists.

7. David T. Wellman, Portraits of White Racism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

8. Mulan Theatre Company, Suzy Wrong – Human Cannon, written and dir. by Anna Chen, Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh, first performed 11 August 1994.

9. Michael White and Nicholas Watt, ‘Smuggled Meat Blamed’, Guardian, 27 March 2001 <http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/mar/27/footandmouth5> [accessed 30 June 2014]; see also BBC, ‘Farm Disease Linked to Smuggled Meat’, BBC News, 27 March 2001 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1245131.stm> [accessed 30 June 2014]; Unknown author, ‘Sheep and Sow Source’, Daily Mirror, 28 March 2001, p. 1. This last reference was a front-page headline with an image of a Chinese dinner on the cover. For a full discussion see the comments thread at British Chinese Online, 27 March–17 October 2001 <http://www.britishchineseonline.com/forum/showthread.php?t=409> [accessed 20 June 2014].

10. Articles removed from the Independent Online. See also Peter Hitchens, ‘Brown’s Chinese Restaurant Lie’, Daily Mail, 15 April 2001 <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-124925/Browns-Chinese-restaurant-lie.html> [accessed 30 June 2014].

11. Chris Rock, Never Scared, dir. by Joel Gallen (HBO, 2004). The full joke that York refers to is: ‘I don’t think I should get accepted to a school over a white person if I get a lower mark on a test. But if there’s a tie? Fuck him! Shit, you had a 400-year head start, motherfucker!’

12. David Henry Hwang wrote: ‘The Orphan of Zhao casting controversy says less about Britain’s Asian acting community, than it does about the RSC’s laziness and lack of artistic integrity. Early in my career, when I wrote Asian characters, production teams in America often had to expend extra effort to find Asian actors to play them. Yet they did so, both to maintain artistic authenticity and to provide opportunities for actors who are virtually never allowed to even audition for “white” roles. By producing The Orphan of Zhao, the RSC seeks to exploit the public’s growing interest in China; through its casting choices, the company reveals that its commitment to Asia is only skin-deep.’ See: Madam Miaow, ‘The Orphan of Zhao: RSC Casts Asians as Dogs and Maid in Chinese Classic’, Madam Miaow Says, 17 October 2012, <http://madammiaow.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-orphan-of-zhao-rsc-casts-asians-as.html> [accessed 26 June 2014]; Madam Miaow, ‘American Actors Call for Action Over RSC in New York’, Madam Miaow Says, 23 October 2012 <http://madammiaow.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/american-actors-call-for-action-over.html> [accessed 16 July 2014].

13. The King’s Speech, dir. by Tom Hooper (Momentum Pictures, 2010).

14. The episode referred to here involved Sherlock Holmes and Watson tracing a series of ‘mysterious’ Chinese symbols. As they find individuals linked to these messages, they discover them dead at every turn. Eventually, Sherlock decodes the symbols and uncovers a Chinese smuggling ring. This gang is looking for a piece of missing treasure and is taking revenge on the people they believe stole from them. After antics involving tea ceremonies, a Chinese circus, and a kidnapping, Sherlock finds the treasure and the gang’s leader is killed. However, the episode is notable for its complete lack of irony (in contrast to all other episodes) and simply reproduces stereotypes of Chinese exoticism and otherness, including beautiful women who must die, gangsters, opium dens, torture, circus acrobatics, and the use of cod accents. ‘The Blind Banker’, Sherlock, BBC, Series 1, Episode 2, (2010).

15. The Wrong Mans, series dir. Jim Field Smith (BBC, 2013).

16. Anna Chen, ‘Now is the Winter of our Discontent’, South China Morning Post Magazine, 7 January 2013 <http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1104357/city-scope-now-winter-our-discontent> [accessed 26 June 2014].