Tell me a little more about your show and what audiences can expect?
English Ako tells us a story about a boy who looks for his big brother who ran away from home, and as he eventually looks for him, he discovers and explores what parts of him are English and what it means to be Asian. It is a coming-of-age story where you can expect a rollercoaster of emotions and potentially (a healthy amount of) existential questioning of belonging and what gives us the ownership to say ‘we are who we are’. Ultimately, expect leaving the theatre with a warm light in your stomach, maybe after having cried, but mostly laughed and needing another beer to celebrate!
Where do you draw inspiration from for your work, both in terms of creation and performance?
Firstly as a writer, it was of course, [Fleabag‘s] Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s influence on the solo structure and mixing humour with the depth to make us empathise and understand the complexities of the main character. I then drew a lot of inspiration from Ocean Vuong [author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous], and Shane Meadows’ This is England, finding the nuance of language and lexicon coming from the Midlands while also finding the poetry in articulating the experience of my diaspora. Hoping to find the words to make people feel the experience rather than educate. Which oftentimes becomes the framework of writing from an ethnic background.
When it came to performance, I found a lot of inspiration from solo performances as a craft, from the likes Arinze Kene, Micaela Cole, Andrew Scott in Sea Wall and the performers from Roy Williams’ ‘Death of England’, particularly Paapa Essiedu. It felt like I had to learn how to act again and discover the skill that it takes to stand up alone and perform a play. You have to have such a tender relationship with the audience and listen so carefully to them and the atmosphere while having to be so open to any reaction that may come from them and knowing how to use it or not. All while having to remember your next line.
Why is this an important story to tell?
I think it is important to remind us that the search for belongingness is a universal story. It is a story that is more common than we think and it isn’t explicit to immigrants. In fact, it can be as simple as moving from one small town to a bigger city or from England to Scotland or indeed from one part of the world to another. Particularly in my context, many of the Filipino communities have not had the opportunity or indeed, (if I may) the privilege to express through language the beauty and struggle of, as Ocean Vuong would say, ‘the creative act’ of immigration. The pain of sacrifice can often leave us speechless and lean on action-led communication; the shedding of our identities to assimilate, the pain of leaving loved ones, forgetting to say ‘I love you’ and instead feeding you with a sandwich from work because they are too tired to think of another way or too hardened to utter the words.
Ultimately, to move your life to another country is to give everything that you are to it. That is a huge part of the Filipino story in the UK and most of the time it has been invisible. So for me, it is important to start putting into words our story so that we may remember the conversations and to further the narrative of Filipinos living in the UK, to make us visible.
The show explores identity and belonging with both laughter and grit – what’s one moment in the play that feels especially personal to you every time you perform it?
One moment that particularly surprised me when writing was the effect of being discriminated against and how much it can intoxicate your imagination to then become violent and aggressive in response to that. The character experiences being jumped and robbed and he associates that with being seen as a ‘weak asian’. A complicated, yet big mistake. This changes our protagonist from an innocent boy into one that carries a weapon.
This leads on to a scene that always feels visceral to me as I didn’t realise just how much energy it takes to carry so much anger but also being reminded that it can come from a singular moment. It introduces the character to the notion of survival in working-class England, and that to be English (to him) means to fight for a place to belong.
Why are arts festivals such as the Fringe so important for international exchange?
Arts festivals remind us to come together for the sake of art and creativity, which knows no boundaries. It is fundamental to the human experience of sharing the nuances of both our similarities and differences. It brings us together to find reasons to celebrate, discover, and explore each other’s creative culture through our work and how we see the world. It brings us back to a primitive connection almost, to tell stories from our perspectives and laugh, cry, drink, sing, and dance (what else?!) together.
What’s next for you and how are you feeling about the future in general?
I hope to champion British East & South East Asian artists, particularly the Filipino community here in the UK. To be more involved in big projects that have a cultural significance and that spark meaningful conversations! I’ve always dreamed of that. So with that in mind, the first step, I think, is to do what’s next for this show: bring it to a bigger venue with a longer run, with the support and backing it deserves. It can exist in those spaces and I know it can burn bright, celebrating two cultures in one show. Being both British and Asian.
English Ako, theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall, 1-23 Aug (not Sun & Mon), 9pm