Playwright gives voice to New Zealand Chinese

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

Lynda Chanwai-Earle presents her one-woman "Ka Shue," which she first staged in 1996, this weekend at Windward Community College. The performer is also a poet and TV journalist. 'Ka Shue' A one-woman play by Lynda Chanwai-Earle 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday Paliku Theatre, Windward Community College Free 235-7433

For many in New Zealand's Chinese community, ka shue ("home book" in Cantonese) have come to represent the breadth and depth of the immigrant experience.

"They symbolize homesickness, love, alienation and loss," said fifth-generation Chinese New Zealander Lynda Chanwai-Earle. "They each tell a family's story."

"Ka Shue" (pronounced ga soo) is also the name of Chanwai-Earle's one-woman play, which she will perform this weekend at Paliku Theatre.

Originally staged in 1996, "Ka Shue" is being called the first mainstream theatrical work to explore the Chinese immigrant experience in New Zealand, and the signature work of a prolific playwright, poet and writer known for pushing the boundaries with wit and insight.

"My play explores the interface between two cultures," said Chanwai-Earle. "A lot of the immigrants were Cantonese, just like in Hawai'i, so my story should have a lot of resonance with the experiences of people here."

The semi-autobiographical play follows three generations of women in a Chinese New Zealand family, spanning an immigrant woman's earliest experiences in an unwelcoming foreign land, her daughter's struggle for independence and eventual marriage to a pakeha (white

European), and a granddaughter's quest to rediscover her Chinese roots — a quest that ultimately finds her at Tiananmen Square during the quashed student revolution of 1989.

"In a way, it's an homage to my grandparents," Chanwai-Earle said. "But it also looks at my mother's struggle for independence and her struggle against a claustrophobic community.

"When it first came out, a few people were angry with the swearing and how fiery some of the content was," she said. "But I didn't want it to be all rosy.

I wanted it to be as real as possible."

"Ka Shue," which has been published in "Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing" and two other journals, also touches on New Zealand's old "poll tax," one of several discriminatory laws enacted in the late 1800s to discourage Chinese immigration. Under the Chinese Immigrants Act of 1881, Chinese were required to pay a 100-pound tax (equivalent to about $300,000 today) to enter the country. The law stood until 1944.

"It's part of a buried history that many people are only now learning about," Chanwai-Earle said.

Aside from her research and the stories she gleaned from her mother and other community elders, Chanwai-Earle didn't have much to draw on for her groundbreaking play.

"There weren't any other plays like this," she says. "There were no Chinese directors. I had to do this as a solo performance because in 1996 there were very few Chinese actors around (in New Zealand)."

Born in London and raised in Papua New Guinea, Chanwai-Earle earned a fine arts degree from Elam School of Fine Arts and did graduate work in drama at Auckland University.

She first gained attention with her 1994 book of poetry "Honeypants," which drew on her experiences as a teenager "growing up in a fairly parochial landscape where there was a lot of xenophobia, racism and sexism."

Chanwai-Earle, who describes her work as "narrative-based jazz and performance-style" poetry, says her background in visual arts and her explorations in poetry were both instrumental in her later theatrical work.

"I love sculpture and I love language," she said. "Between the two, I felt there was an empty space to fill.

"The thing I love about theater is that it's ephemeral. It's a once-only relationship between the audience and the performer, and then it's gone."

Chanwai-Earle has proved to be talented in a number of media. She has written two other plays ("Foh-Sarn" and "Mercy"), co-written two films ("Chinese Whispers" and "After"), and staged numerous multimedia performances. She has two other plays waiting for her when she returns to New Zealand, as well as a historical novel that she expects to complete some time this year.

Chanwai-Earle recently ended a four-year stint as a full-time TV journalist to devote more time to her creative projects.

This weekend's free performances mark a long-awaited return to the stage for Chanwai-Earle. She hasn't performed "Ka Shue" in four years.