Black Tree Bridge is a full length play that uses a biracial identity whirlpool to explore how we might reconcile the binaries of myth, culture and reality to find meaning in our lives.

I’m a Chinese-Pakeha woman, multi-ethnic or mixed race. Finding one’s cultural (non white) roots has become its own legend among the Asian diaspora, a holy grail, pushing us towards finding importance and meaning in our cultural identity. But what happens if your family and culture are disconnected? Which myths do you use to find meaning?

In Black Tree Bridge, Chrys, a young biracial Chinese-Pakeha (New Zealand White/European) woman, spirals in a post-grad panic. When she meets firecracker Leo, she finds a welcome gateway to her Chinese side. But when he disappears, she must reconcile the myths she’s created around ‘Chineseness’, duality and identity itself.

The image of the fictional village called ‘Black Tree Bridge’ is her symbolic yearning to feeling whole in her Chinese identity – a literal ancestral home but also a bridge between the fractured identity of being biracial. But it’s a red herring. In the end the reflection in the water beneath the bridge becomes a portal that opens, a circle, a new symbol of wholeness to break the illusion of binaries within anything.

Putting a play in the context of an exhibition piece for a gallery is unique to my work so far
(which is mostly producing theatre with my company Proudly Asian Theatre in New Zealand). I’ve finished a draft of the full-length piece, utilising the artistic talents of students from Institute of Creativity and Innovation 淦馨悦 Xinyue Gan, 曹欣然 Xinran Cao, 袁梓超 Zichao Yuan and 夏季 Ji Xia to test some set concepts as well as an animation piece from incredible Xiamen based artists 张峥 Zhazha and陈溢 Yi Chen. We open with a performed reading of a 25 min super cut of the play; what remains will be the exhibition for the next 4 weeks. I can’t thank the team, and all the artists I’ve connected with here, enough for their incredible work and rich ideas that I’ll be unpacking for a long time to come.

As the work was conceived as early as 2014, the process became very meta. The idea for the play was sparked by the fantastical imagination of my family village in China, before I ever set foot there. Living in Xiamen with the actual village and
my family only an hour’s drive away, mid-residency I pushed the fiction further
as my own sense of future-nostalgia became an even more beautiful reality in real time.

The character’s journey is a historical document for a lost and floundering age
when I wanted the world to reach out and give me a sign. It’s tongue in cheek,
using tropes and known myths. It asks: who are the gatekeepers of culture and
meaning? Can we find meaning in culture without mythology? Can culture exist
without mythology? Without lineage? Is it inevitable for lineage to become myth?

Something a new friend told me in my first month here was to just go with the flow.
I feel like this ‘Xiamen attitude’ is a better summary of the moral of the story;
there are no answers anywhere, only beautiful duality, multiplicity and eternal
shape shifting.

Gallery