Xiqu Centre Free Space Micro Theatre | WestK Reading Club: Golden Blood and Platform to Santiago Dream

Description

Readings of plays in development by exciting contemporary Asian voices

The inaugural WestK Reading Club presents new scripts from young Asian playwrights in their rawest form – a few chairs, minimal lighting and nothing but the text and the actors’ voices. The series offers audiences a first glimpse of works in development, and a closer look at how plays are written, translated and adapted.

The first presentations showcase two contemporary Asian voices whose works cross languages and borders.

Golden Blood – an adaptation of Singaporean-Australian playwright Merlynn Tong’s award-winning two-hander by emerging Hong Kong playwright Alastor Chow – transposes a story about the culture, folklore and life experiences of two young Chinese siblings in 1990s Singapore to 1990s Hong Kong. The reading offers a first look at the new script, and a glimpse into how Chow, winner of the 2024 World Sinophone Drama Competition for Young Playwrights, reworked Tong’s story for his home city.

Tree Kwok’s Platform to Santiago Dream travels in the opposite direction. Originally written in Cantonese threaded with English and German – the languages of a life lived in and out of Hong Kong – the work is presented here in English. Constructed around short, looping scenes in which a single encounter repeats with slight variations, the play explores what shifts, and what stubbornly stays the same, between one mysterious repetition and the next. Platform to Santiago Dream is the first of Kwok’s works to be translated.

The performances on 27 September (Sunday) and 2 October (Friday) include a presentation by the artistic team on the process behind the work – from writing and adaptation to translation and development.

Synopsis

Golden Blood
In 1990s Hong Kong, a mother’s death leaves a 12-year-old girl in the care of her estranged 19-year-old brother – a fledgling triad member she barely knows. Over time, the siblings form a makeshift family bond based on loyalty, superstition and the boy’s ever-grander schemes to get rich. That is, until they are forced to confront their mother’s ghost and the real reason the boy took his sister in.

Platform to Santiago Dream
On the platform of a train station, a man repeatedly meets a woman as she is about to step onto the tracks. He intervenes in time to save her, and the two strike up a conversation that gradually draws them into a surreal journey through time and space. With every passing train, their exchanges build layer upon layer, as fragmented memories and images of “home” slowly surface – piecing together a strange, surreal world haunted by the longing and trauma buried deep within them.

Golden Blood 
Original Story: Merlynn Tong 
Script Adaptation: Alastor Chow^ 
Director: Chu Kai-hin 
Dramaturg: Loui Yuen 
Performers: Christy Ng, Yuen On-ting, Chung Yik-chun^

Platform to Santiago Dream 
Playwright: Tree Kwok 
Director: Santayana Li 
English Translation and Translation Consultant: Gloria Furness 
Dramaturg: Loui Yuen 
Dramaturg Assistant: Ho Hei-lam# 
Performers: Christopher Ying, Samantha Tse, Ellie Law, Sunny Lai Yat-ching, Yuen Che-hung (Uncle Hung)

Manager, Technical and Productions: Simon Lam* 
Programme Coordinator: Lavinia Fu* 
Producer: Meredith Wong* 
Curator: Bobo Lee*

*Staff of WestK Performing Arts  
^With kind permission of Theatre Formula  
#With kind permission of The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts