Daniel York Loh’s psychedelic, semi-autobiographical The Dao of Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience is premiering at Soho Theatre this June. This punk, rock and rap riff on what path you choose, which identity politics you embrace, or whether it’s easier to be a butterfly dreaming of being ‘Chinese’ is an original piece of gig theatre exploring race politics, mental health and personal testimony.
Based on Daniel’s own experiences, The Dao of Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience challenges the British Chinese stereotype of ‘model minority’; the quiet, high-achieving, polite and invisible individual. Through a blend of disruptive music, multimedia and a range of performance forms, Daniel and collaborator An-Ting 安婷 take us on a hilarious but touching journey through his struggles with drug addiction and journey into recovery, art and ‘activism’.
Tell us a bit about the show.
It’s a psychedelic punk rock riff on what path you choose, which identity politics you embrace or whether it’s easier to be a butterfly dreaming of being ‘Chinese’. Semi-autobiographical (with the emphasis very much on ‘semi’) it fuses music and theatre to create a cosmological acid trip tone poem of drug addiction, Daoism, crime, recovery, activism, disillusionment and spiritual enlightenment. Dao means ‘path’ or ‘way’. It’s about trying to find your Dao in a world that’s troubled and violent and angry and hungry.
There’s also incredible live music (composed by An-Ting 安婷)in an astonishing range of genres from punk, pop, psychedelia, electronica, rap and blues-rock plus poetry and tripped out video projection, superlative singing (from the two incredible performers – Melody Brown and Aruhan Galieva), dramatic scenes and bundles of comedy.
The basic theme was born out of displacement which I’ve felt throughout my life. And it ties in with the fact that I was writing it around the ten year anniversary of the protest against East & Southeast Asian exclusion from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of the Yuan Dynasty classic The Orphan of Zhao. There’s no doubt in my mind that that protest fundamentally changed British theatre. Very soon after, the Act For Change campaign group started and our stages and screens really have become incrementally more diverse. And the term ‘representation’ became vogue. But then I started realising that I personally could never ‘represent’ without being ‘unrepresentative’. Because I’m mixed race, I didn’t get good grades at school, I wasn’t a ‘model minority’, nice ‘Chinese’ boy/girl. I was a drug addict and a (very) petty criminal then I was an actor but being an actor didn’t ‘save me’ from a life of crime, it very nearly drove me back to it!
So I’ve created something based on my own very precise experience which I think might just paradoxically make it very universal.
Because it is only ‘semi’ autobiographical because it’s mythologised as an epic quest story. A quest first of all for The Definitive British Chinese Story. But then for The Dao…
How does it feel to be bringing this work to Soho Theatre?
I actually can’t believe this has happened to be honest. I actually wrote The Dao of Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience with Soho Theatre in my mind. I’d seen Shedding A Skin by Amanda Wilkin there and the fact that it’s a small theatre that feels ‘big’ seemed to fit the epic cosmology I was trying to write. But I never thought it would happen at Soho Theatre because I had no relationship with them at all and no ‘in’ as far as I was aware. Little did I know that An-Ting (the composer and at that time Artistic Director of Kakilang) had been speaking to them for a while about other projects and she sent them Dao. There were a couple of other theatres we were quite close to producing it in but then Soho got interested and so…
The Soho main house space suits this play so well. It’s a visual sensory feast with video projection and live music so the ‘openness’ of Soho Theatre is perfect for it. Added to that it’s genuinely one of the great new writing theatres in London and one of the great ‘off West End’ spaces. My last major play production was Forgotten 遗忘 at Arcola which is another fantastic small scale London theatre. To have plays at both those theatres is honestly all I could ever wish for.
Lastly, it’s right in Soho which is a place I only read or heard about as a kid growing up in the West Country. I very much associate it with the punk rock and other music that so influences the play. And Soho Theatre feels like so much more than just a ‘theatre’. It’s got that whole madcap ‘cabaret’ vibe. It’s the perfect place to present gig theatre.
What do you want audiences to take away from The Dao of Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience?
That it’s okay not to ‘fit in’. In fact it’s more than okay, it’s beautiful not to fit in. You can be anything you want. Because ‘this butterfly can sing’ to quote one of the lines in the play. In a way the play is about being a damaged butterfly. It’s based on the Ancient Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi, who famously has a dream that he was a butterfly but then wondered if he was in fact a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi dreaming he was a butterfly…
And that’s another big theme in the play: it’s okay to dream.
I can say all this but as a writer I’m more of a questioner than an answerer. Daoism is very much about finding your own way. It’s the polar opposite of definitive. So no one’s telling you you should react to this play. You take what you want and fly in the breeze (another line in the show).
What has been the biggest challenge when working on the project?
On a fun level it’s choosing what to leave out. I have a file full of discarded scenes and songs. It was really tough to sequence it. I feel there’s a whole series of plays there I could easily go on to complete. I’ve lived quite a mad life truth be told and editing all that into a manageable stage play was definitely a challenge.
On a serious and practical level though, money and resources are the biggest challenge to so many of us at the moment. Theatre is getting to the point where it’s just untenable unless you’re actually a millionaire. There’s two performers plus myself in the show so it’s hardly huge but it’s so costly to produce on standstill funding levels. It breaks my heart how difficult theatre’s become. We have this fantastic live theatre reputation, people come from all over the world to experience it, yet we seem intent on killing it.
Maybe this will be the last show I’ll ever do but if we’re going we’re going with an almighty bang!
How have you gone about making music for the show?
An-Ting’s my favourite composer in the world. We did a show together for Kakliang before: every dollar is a soldier/with money you’re a dragon which was a digital experience fusing music, spoken word, dance and gaming. It did really well and won the Arts Council Digital Culture Award (Storytelling). Dao was An-Ting’s idea in many ways. I’d told her the odd story about my life and she suggested I write something based on it. I’d never written anything like this before so it’s genuinely been a magical mystery tour.
I gave An-Ting a whole bunch of music references – a lot of punk rock, psychedelic 60’s stuff, rap, pop – and wrote lyrics and lyrics and she just came up with it. The first one I think was the Virtuosity Rap. It tells the story of how I stole a car when I was 17 then got chased in it down narrow provincial streets that really aren’t built for car chases. It comes at a point where we introduce the Daoist concept of De 德 which is sometimes translated as ‘potency’ but the word I like is ‘virtuosity’. It’s ‘spiritual charisma’. So that was our task – to make a grubby story about a stolen car into something that was ‘virtuosic’ and we do that through the words and the music. It’s very exciting.
What’s next for you as an actor and creative?
By the miracle of modern technology I’ll actually be appearing at the same time as Dao in the Polka Theatre adaptation of Sam Wu is NOT Afraid of Ghosts by Katie and Kevin Tsang adapted by Julie Tsang (no relation). My character appears on video in it so I can be in both shows at the same time. The Sam Wu books are a best-selling children’s series that I did the audio narration for so I’m thrilled to be in the stage adaptation.
Apart from that… I’ve got a few plays knocking around that I’d love to see produced but as I said above: theatre is too hard these days and we all need to make the most while it’s still here.
And we are still here.
I’ll also be out on the streets every Saturday or so protesting against the military onslaught on Gaza. Join us.
For more info – The Dao of Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience – Soho Theatre