Asian Invasion is on for two nights only at Q Theatre’s Vault. It is a four hander currently touring high schools, with a message about culture, acceptance and identity. 

The theatre is sparse and set in traverse. As I arrive, the actors are sitting on chairs at both ends of the stage and greet the audience (out of character) as they come in. The fluorescent lights overhead stay on for the full performance – giving us a real sense of what it is high school kids are seeing on the tour, and stripping the performance back to expose the actors’ talents.  

The show is comprised of ten scenes with multiple characters, book ended by a song about having foreign blood but having lived in New Zealand your whole life. The actors create all aspects of the scenes including sound effects, music and soundscapes. The female actors in particular – Chye-Ling Huang and Nikita Tu-Bryant – must be commended on their musical contribution. Several instruments are used to help transport the audience to a different time and place. Ben Teh, one of the two male actors, also has a scene of his writing featured.

The ten scenes used in Asian Invasion all either feature Asian characters, were written by Asian writers, or speak to issues facing the Asian population. Mayen Meta is an impressive force in the show, showing real talent for accents and physical characterisation. 

This is a show made for high school students and that is evident in some of the material, however as an adult in the theatre I too find it thoroughly enjoyable. There is a song that follows a scene from Krishnan’s Dairy that is a little cringe-worthy, but other than that this jammed-packed fifty five minute show is one I’m pleased students are seeing.

The messages and experiences shared in Ensemble Impact’s Asian Invasion are creating a dialogue with young people in this country that will help to grow more tolerant, kind, and understanding individuals.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Subtitled ‘Ten token tales’, this is a fine compilation of short scenes from ten mostly contemporary plays showing interactions between Asian, Pasifika, Maori and Pakeha New Zealanders. The four young performers of this ensemble are equally energetic, youthful and talented, yet each brings a particular quality to the dynamism of this well-paced short show.

They are a touring company who mostly concentrate on school shows but ‘donated’ this performance to the University of Waikato Theatre Studies Department  and theatre community and it’s a treat to see what some lucky school kids are able to have on offer.

This performance almost didn’t happen, in fact, as the touring van was stolen the day before, along with the props, costumes and musical instruments, then these possessions were dumped in a side street and the was van used to commit a burglary on the Katmandu store here in Hamilton; filled up with sleeping bags, thermal socks and wet weather gear, no doubt! But the Asian Invasion gear was mostly recovered the next morning and the show went on, at full throttle with mention only made of the unfortunate events in the question time. 

The play scenes vary from comical to serious reflective pieces using scripts by well-known writers such as Lynda Chanwai-Earle and Jacob Rajan, as well as less well known voices. There’s even one by one of this company, Benjamin Teh, called Ninja versus Robot which serves as an engaging and entertaining opener to the production, with Teh and Chye-Ling Huang using gaming moves and great sound effects in a nice piece of combat choreography. Probably pitched and placed to grab the attention of the school audiences for whom they mostly cater, its unexpectedness works well with our crowd, too.

The ensemble uses music, especially guitar, but also violin, ukulele, bells and rattles to enhance and punctuate the mood. Nikita Tu Bryant’s guitar playing is versatile and gutsy, giving soundtracks in a range of styles and Mayen Meta’s Bollywood break out is irresistible. Most of the excerpts are two-handers, with sound effects, noises off or music provided by the remaining two players, as in Krishnan’s Dairy, by Jacob Rajan, with the simple but touchingly effective off-stage sounds of the door bell, shop till and flicking of plastic bags, while Mayan Mehta and Chye-Ling Huang as Mr and Mrs Krishnan bicker about their store.

Renee Liang’s First Asian All Black introduces a slow motion ball passing sequence with Chye-Ling as ball puppeteer. The full ensemble scene with a Chinese New Zealander being press-ganged into performing ‘Tu tira mai’ in front of a German class is a total show stopper, both for its comic caricatures as well as the cultural crunch involved. Other themes include youth suicide, teen prejudice, familial pressure and gender expectations; it’s not just a load of laughs. 

It’s fantastic to see how the atmosphere of a story can be conveyed in just 5-10 minutes with a quick change of jacket or posture, and the minimum of props. Voice, movement, gesture, pace, partnership – the core elements of theatre are given centre stage as these wonderful young performers give voice to some of the diverse people who all happen to coincide here, in Aotearoa. Borrow or steal a school uniform to gate crash a performance near you. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

As our nation gets more and more ethnically diverse, how much do we genuinely mix and mingle with each other? How far do we really get beyond stereotyping to mutual understanding and empathy? This show’s certainly entertaining, yet it also throws up some fascinating challenges.

EnsembleImpact as a group of professional actors has been operating since 2009, in devising and touring shows for secondary schools, with each of them centred around some theme and sticking with New Zealand based and written materials. This year’s show features eleven extracts from ten plays involving Asians in New Zealand in one way or another, with an ensemble of four young Asian Kiwis, Nikita Tu-Bryant, Chye-Ling Huang, Benjamin Teh and Mayen Meta. The staging is traverse-style, with just four chairs, and a few bits of costume and props on the floor behind at either end, and a couple of guitars at one end, so it’s quite transportable.

The show starts, as it will finish, with a kind of group rap, accompanied by stamping and clapping, about being here, with ‘foreign blood’ yet part now of the local human reality. (The identification of the plays is pinched from John Smythe’s review.) 

The first sequence has ‘Broken Ninja’ Jackson (Benjamin) facing up to ‘Abused Robot’ Audrey (Chye-Ling), and a spectacular, somewhat ridiculous, fight developing between them, with no blows or karate kicks actually landing. Ninja wins this time, but only just: he’d programmed Robot to exercise free will rather too well. This extract comes from Benjamin Teh’s own play, Ninja vs. Robot.

The second sequence has a well-meaning but bumbling male Maori TV journalist (Mayen) trying to interview a young East Asian (evidently South Korean) woman (Nikita), and making an awkward mess of things. He bumbles into the touchy topic of shame, and increasingly tries to compensate for his own shameful clumsiness. She is politely fending him off. [From Foh Sarn (Fire Mountain), by Lynda Chanwai-Earle.]

In the third, a lone Asian student (Mayen) gets talking in a bus to the (invisible) driver about the preconceptions the locals have about such as himself, instead of seeing him as a person. (He speaks also, briefly, in their own language, to a fellow passenger.) Has he achieved anything thereby, substantially, in promoting understanding? [From Chop/Stick, by Jo Holstead and Michelle Ang.]

In the fourth, a Samoan student at Timaru Boys’ High School (Mayen) is wising up a newly arrived Chinese student (Benjamin) as to how to be ‘cool’ in this environment. Some of the advice is a bit weird, and rough. They get into practicing rugby passing, with Chye-Ling appearing first as a rugby coach and then, weirdly, as an ‘invisible’ ball-mover. The boys end with a resounding rendering of the haka ‘Ka Mate’ (they belong!). [From First-Asian AB, by Renee Laing.]

In the fifth, two Asian women (Nikita and Chye-Ling) engage in fortune-telling with tea-leaf reading, with comforting clichés, not entirely convincing, slipping into more disturbing territory. [From Yellow Brides, by Vincent O’Sullivan.]

The sixth has two workers in a South Auckland supermarket, a Fijian-Indian (Mayen) and a Samoan taro-chopper (Benjamin), acting up for the security cameras, then challenging each other, and the Samoan becoming quite scarily aggressive. Really just in fun, as he later claims? [From Taro King, by Vela Manusaute.]

In the seventh, a Pakeha secondary school girl, Kayla (Chye-Ling), introducing a newly arrived international student to her school, speaks of her male and female Asian fellow-students with one ignorantly patronizing stereotyping and put-down after another. [Also from Chop/Stick.] 

In the eighth, an older and a younger man (Mayen and Benjamin), two melancholy Asian migrants (in fact, Cambodian refugees), at a beach in the evening, talk about dreams, memories, ghosts of the past, the younger man’s failing some kind of exam, waiting for a woman to come, life as a limbo of waiting and loss. [From Neang Neak’s Legacy, by Surita Ken Kossamak.]  

The ninth is recognisably an early scene from Carl Nixon’s Two Fish ‘n’ a Scoop, with Jason (Mayen) trying to get a job in Mr Chan’s fish and chip shop, and overcoming by sheer persistence the reluctance of his daughter Rhea (Chye-Ling) and of Mr Chan himself (Benjamin). Father rather zestfully and graphically warns that if Jason fools around with his daughter, he will slice off his balls, batter them and deep-fry them.

The tenth features a New Zealand Chinese exchange student (Nikita) in a classroom in a school in Germany, being compelled to perform, by singing a song from her country. She does, shyly at first, but rather well, sing a waiata, but is then subjected to cheerful scorn when she is forced to admit that she speaks only English, and not Maori or Chinese. [From The Exchange, by Lauren Jackson.]

The eleventh is recognisably an early scene from Jacob Rajan’s Krishnan’s Dairy, with Krishnan himself (Mayen) desperate to make a success of the dairy, and his wife Zina (Chye-Ling) equally desperate with homesickness for her own family back in India, and unscrupulously driving away the customers. Finally though there’s a song, about ‘working so hard,’ yet with love, and this is followed by the repetition of the opening rap.

The show as a whole is a rich mix, with plenty of vitality, variety, versatility, and smooth transitions from one sequence to another, which are creditable to the director Kerryn Palmer as well as to the actors. Surely, school audiences up and down the country will enjoy it yet also take away stuff to think about.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

I am expecting Wellington’s diverse Asian community to flock to the WCSCC (Wellington Chinese Sport Cultural Centre) in Newtown to celebrate EnsembleImpact’s Asian Invasion: a sampler spread of the range of works by NZ Playwrights who either have Asian heritage or have dramatically captured the Asian/Kiwi experience. I’m looking forward to seeing it in this context. But there are only few Asian faces among the twenty-odd punters who avail themselves of the privilege.

At least we get to see it – in the traverse – in the centre’s cosier, carpeted foyer area rather than the massive multi-court sports hall. And while there is much in the programme that Asians will identify with on all sorts of levels, it is also very salutary for non-Asian Kiwis.

With an apparent ease that belies the research and rehearsal work that must have gone into it, Benjamin Teh, Chye-Ling Huang, Mayen Meta and Nikita Tu-Bryant – directed by Kerryn Palmer – perform 11 excerpts from 10 plays.

Their opening song (uncredited) declares “We’ve got foreign blood flowing through our veins” and “I’ve lived here my whole life” which, as an argument for acceptance, could also seem to support assimilation rather than promote the enriching value of cultural diversity. But I may not have caught all the lyrics.

Ben Teh’s own Robot vs Ninja plays as a metaphor for male-female relationships where, despite having ordered her with the Free Will option, Jackson believes Audrey is his possession to order about. Sure, in his flash Ninja way, he wins – but does he really?

In Lynda Chanwai-Earle’s Foh Sarn (Fire Mountain) a young Korean university student from Hong Kong is subjected to the interview techniques of a TV journalist – an East Coast Māori from Gisborne – who is tasked with digging the dirt on Auckland’s Asian crime scene. The clear gap in cultural understanding suggests he has a huge job ahead of him.

The first of two excerpts from Chop/Stick by Jo Holsted & Michelle Ang captures the typical experience a Chinese person may have if they speak Cantonese to a relative on the bus. His rejoinder to the old fart who ticks him off is priceless.

Later we are treated to Kayla who, while showing an international exchange student around, trots out glib remarks about Asian students and makes us cringe with her “I’m not racist, but…” commentary.

The sequence from Renee Laing’s First Asian AB (FAAB) finds a 4^th Form homestay student of Chinese extraction from Malaysia being coached in how to be ‘cool’ by his Samoan mate. It’s setting up much that is developed in the play proper but his future aspiration to become an All Black is embodied here in their attempting the ‘Ka Mate’ haka.  

Two women take tea in the scene from Yellow Brides by Vincent O’Sullivan. I take it Queenie is the titular bride (of a Kiwi businessman) while her afternoon tea hostess is Pakeha (but I may be wrong). The harmless parlour game of reading tea-leaves takes a disturbing turn when Queenie sees sinister signs in them.

Hard-working Filipo, a Samoan who cuts taro at the Otara Market, is goaded by Fiji Indian Raju in a lively scene from Vela Manusaute’s Taro King. As with other scenarios, we are entertainingly reminded the dynamics of ‘race relations’ are not just about the dominant Pakeha /Palagi culture relating to those from elsewhere (not to mention those who were here before theirs came).

A number of ‘cultural disjunction’ scenes could have been selected from Neang Neak’s Legacy by Sarita Keo Kossamak So but the one they’ve chosen adds a new flavour by capturing the feeling of loss and yearning that so often haunts new immigrants, even when they are refugees from political turmoil.

The ‘shark-infested waters’ that will challenge the tidal pull of young romance are clearly established in an early scene from Carl Nixon’s Two Fish ’n’ A Scoop, when Pakeha lad Jason pops in to Mr Chan’s Fish ’n’ Chip shop to apply for a job that’s been advertised so that daughter Rhea can go to university.

From The Exchange by Lauren Jackson we share the experience of a New Zealand high school student of Chinese heritage, on an Exchange trip to Germany, being expected to sing a Māori song and explain its meaning. Her inability to speak neither Chinese nor Māori bewilders her hosts.

An excerpt from Jacob Rajan’s Krishnan’s Dairy, completes the programme. While Gobi Krishnan is committed to creating a new life for his family in New Zealand, his wife Zina does everything she can to sabotage their Dairy’s viability, let alone success. The play’s song about the power of love puts a fitting ending to the Asian Invasion anthology.

Overall it is an insightful and entertaining evocation and celebration of cultural diversity with implications that resonate well beyond its immediate scenarios. While obviously very suitable for high schools, adults of any age will get value from catching one of the regional community performance I believe are included in the itinerary.

All four actors capture the essences of their characters and their scenes with alacrity. I would just ask that they bring the same vocal clarity to their introductory and closing addresses, especially when saying their own names and introducing the others.

Compared with previous EnsembleImpact compilations  – A Baker’s Dozen (2010); Womanz Work! (2011); In Spite of Himself (2012); She’ll Be Write (2013) – the Asian Invasion show is probably the most cohesive in that the common denominator of Asian heritage brings the disparate stories together. It is certainly a programme to provoke much discussion and further enquiry into all sorts of subject areas in schools.

In and of itself, I feel it has the capacity to make a real difference; to enlighten students – and teachers – whose lack of awareness renders them consciously or unconsciously racist.  I’d also like to think these tasters will inspire people to read the plays in full and even produce them.

This year’s quartet and their director are serving up richly varied fare with great skill and panache.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer