going off script; postcolonial style.

escaping the structures imposed upon ourselves by escaping abstract theatre space. a meandering story in three acts.

i. memorize.

london is a busy place, busier than my weak country-raised constitution can handle, but it is home to the more interesting projects out there so the sleepy pilgrimage by coach or by train occurs every other month. i let most of the journey pass me by because sleeping comes easier on a rocking vehicle than in my own bed. eventually, i've made it¹ to the bush theatre where show number one would take place- “elephant”, written and performed by anoushka lucas.

the stage at the bush theatre is small, one of the smallest i’ve been in. it’s a rectangular shape, longer on one side so theres more space between the circular divot in the center and the feet of the crowd in the front row. we happen to sit- one, two, three, on the side that has a miniscule amount of distance. anyone walking in between us could easily trip on my legs if i stretched it too far.

in the middle rests a piano, an upright danemann piano. i don’t know if it’s just my failing eyesight but i read it as “daneman” [sic]. when you look up danemann pianos, the images that come up are nigh identical to the one in the show. brown, mottled in places like a moth wing, but shining with an aged glaze. it looks familiar. what you’d picture a piano to look like when it sits in someone’s house instead of on a stage. there’s a gumtree ad for this piano in south yorkshire, long deleted and sold², leaving behind the file artefact of a similar looking instrument in the archives.

behind it is a staircase bookcase with homey memorabilia and the floor is covered in patterned rugs. half performance space, half living room.

it’s an electrifying experience to look into lucas’ eyes and see that she means every word of what she says. she tells her stories with the confidence of someone who’s lived it, and not just lived it but learned it, and reflected on it. mitski’s music often sounds like this. a scratch that has bled and scabbed over, occasionally picked at. it will bleed again. but it has also half-healed, revealing pink skin underneath; all shiny and too smooth. collagen knitting itself together, saying, “no, please, no. can’t you see i’m healed now?” lucas takes off the front of the piano, revealing its own anatomical cage of hammers and strings. shiny. smooth.

as the play goes on, lylah (the character lucas is playing) and lucas blend together. ages and time periods blend together. the elephants tusk and the piano blend together.

what does it meant to be in the inbetween spaces? the fleshy part that holds the most valuable pieces of you?

by the time lucas is interrupted, mid-song, by the intrusive, disembodied voices that have been looming over the play; and she says resolutely, messily, uneloquently, “no,” without fanfare. and the house lights go off.

a split second before applause erupts.

they let you stay in the theatre for 15 minutes if you need time, as told to me by projected text on the ground. they’re on the shorter sides of the stage.

i shiver, and walk out.

ii. recite.

an evening spent in a friend’s childhood home, accompanied by roderick usher, frenetic and resigned, explaining how his children died to c. auguste dupin. followed by a failed attempt to eat thai food, giving up and going to a burger joint nearby.

i sat alone, pressed up against two white guys, both inexplicably holding a plastic cup filled with beer. i kept being startled that our shoulders brushed and tried making myself smaller, leaning forward on the metal bars. i didn’t remember it being painted black.

we saw an ad for “untitled f*ck miss saigon play” by kimber lee on instagram. by we, i mean i saw it over my partner’s shoulder as we lay huddled inbetween blankets together. i was immediately intrigued. miss saigon, a hopeless adaptation of madama butterfly, which was based off of madame butterfly, which was based off of madame chrysanthème. a asian³ orientalism matryoshka.

how funny! a play that cusses it out title first. what could it possibly be about, i thought.

i bought a ticket within a week.

kim (as played by the charmingly exasperated mei mac), is forced to relive the tragic love story of an asian woman being left behind by a white lover, called away by military duty. she dies at the end. she always dies. musical interludes blast on the speakers as stagehands reconfigure the trapezoid pieces that make up the set into a new shape. same size, same shape.⁴ same story. same beats. same people. the actors change outfits and the sets change from vaguely japanese to south pacific to korea to vietnam, to vietnam, to vietnam to vietnamtovietna^{mto vietnam} to the modern day.

“f*ck miss saigon” is an angry play. it is full of shouting, abject fury explosive, without much direction. it just all comes out. it’s messy. i felt myself leaning over the edge of the railing and barking out a laugh, clutching my head when a well timed quip hit, but also scrunch into myself when a sequence would go on for just too long for me. it felt like watching barbie (2023) again:

i know! i know that feeling! i understand it! must i be told? must we be told? i thought we were past this already!

i didn’t know if my discomfort came from these issues that i felt deeply being laid bare or if the monologues really did go on for too long. was i just hit so hard that i shut down or was the catharsis even real? did it earn those moments? my heart did drop every time kim was forced to point the gun/knife/pills at herself. why do i feel so complicated about this?

…

“f*ck miss saigon” was funny. it had the capacity to make a room laugh. it felt like a standup show at times, a character striding around the room in a tell-all fashion with a microphone. a scene with rosie (as played by lourdes faberes) in the modern day sequence comes to mind. she speaks as a put-upon asian mother who just wants to be grateful for what they have and never ask for more, because they had to fight so much to begin with. it was a familiar refrain. i’d heard all of this from my family. from my parents. line deliveries were strong, and always full of energy; witty.

the stage direction and sets were so beautiful. the repurposing of elements and blocking were dreamy and well-considered. the lighting was incredibly gorgeous. expected all of that from a production that has roy alexander weise’s name attached to it.

so why did i feel so strange? why was it off? i shuffle uncomfortably inbetween the people sitting next to me, trying not to touch their shoulders. i should’ve loved this story. and i liked it.

but.

iii. improvise.

i rock back and forth on my heels after the play. my friend and partner sat on the other side of the theatre due to a ticket mishap so i wait for their faces to pop up in the crowd of unrecognizables pass by. as i reflect on “f*ck miss saigon”, i think of “the prince” by abigail thorn.

unglamorous bullet list of similarities that come to mind:

• reliving media that has thematic or actual relation to lived experiences.

• characters who find each other in the “real world” as a finale, they save each other, they’ve always had each other.

• a spoooooky light that the main characters run into to escape the (rebecca bunch⁵ voice) abstract theatre space.

• both have sequences that go on a little longer than their peak.

i like the idea of putting them side by side. in “the prince”, it’s a direct allusion to the matrix by way of queer (centering transfemme) readings of shakespeare. its breaking out of programming. in “f*ck miss saigon”, its making literal the reusing of racist tropes. the characters monologues are directed at us, the audience, calling us out for our complicity. why have you let this happen? why won’t you help us?

whenever a glitch occurs in the story, the characters are terrified. they see us. staring at them. waiting for their next move so we can continue to judge them.

and when the characters have their low points, their anger is at us. when they get to leave, the play ends. there is nothing more to see. we are not privy to their story anymore. we get to imagine a future beyond, with them, but without our voyueristic gaze.

what’s terribly interesting here, is in the differences.

one of these stories has an active narrator. to circle back around to “elephant”, lylah is pushed around by narratives told to her by her family, her boyfriend leo, the music producers and record label owners. but at the end of the day she is telling her story, to us. she reclaims the narrative⁶ and gets the first and last word. we will never know what the characters in the story felt because this is not about them. like lylah says, sometimes she feels like her art is no longer hers when she has to collaborate. its her story.

…

anyone who’s seen “f*ck miss saigon” would have noticed that i didn’t mention the narrator (the inimitable rochelle rose is delightful in this role, her voice is so full of flavor). she watches and sings the old song (and she’s going to sing it again) with a sharp sense of humor. eventually, kim confronts her when the narrator steps into a scene as “brenda”, asking the same questions kim asked to the audience before. why her? why this? she remembers all of it. its painful to watch mei mac break down the way she does.

and the narrator/brenda, offers her the modern world. 2023 as it is. why not stay? she has it all, even if her husband cheated on her and her mother wants her to conform to a box. she’s successful. she has a classy apartment in new york. stay, the narrator/brenda pleads. this is all there is. she’s already out.

kim, cries back, this can’t be it! how could this be the best for her? and when she gets the opportunity, she leaves.

princess tutu would be proud.

iv. epilogue

we head home. the coach leaves london at 10:30PM and we get back close to 1:00AM. i spend the journey back in and out of consciousness, staring at the buildings that make way for roads that make way for stretches of fields. i can’t see anything. i wonder about lylah. and kim. i wonder if they can see a future for themselves now.

the road ahead is dark, lit only by flickering fluorescent streetlamps.

1. i would be remiss to say that the orienting (ha ha.) was done all by myself. a beloved friend led the way using google maps and lived experience.

2. https://www.gumtree.com/p/pianos/danemann-upright-school-oak-piano/1363015577. it’s gone now.

3. and i say “asian”. because the geographical reach of these stories is quite astounding for the way it’s essentially… the same tropes over and over again. lets boil down the SEA and east asian and pacific islander experience! they’re just about the same, i’m sure! who are central asians? i don’t know, we’ll never get anything about them! south asians? lump em in! (i say this shaking my head profusely)

4. naturally, my ears perked up when i heard “1953, the setting of M*A*S*H”, and well. it was a short lived sequence but i appreciated the mention, considering i may have been the only one in the room who nodded my head and said yes, yes, they did that particularly badly in the show sometimes. while also understanding that it isn’t a pro-war pro-military show (most of the time. sigh). more on that another time.

5. of crazy ex-girlfriend fame. please do watch that show, it is incredible that it exists at all.

6. another mess of thoughts for another time because boy. do i kind of hate the phrasing of “reframing” or “reclaiming”. what if we just committed arson.