What is Chinese? What is being Chinese? What is not Chinese?

What is Chinese?
What is being Chinese?
What is not Chinese?

Media Release: For immediate Release

A Hundred Stories Combine for Compelling Documentary Theatre

Q Theatre’s 2017 MATCHBOX Season and White_mess present
OTHER [chinese]
Created and directed by Alice Canton

What is Chinese? What is being Chinese? What is not Chinese?

Maverick writer and director Alice Canton seeks to unravel these questions as part of Q Theatre’s MATCHBOX creative development programme to present OTHER [chinese] from 6th-16th September. This utterly unique piece of theatre is created through conversations with hundreds of New Zealanders and invites up to 100 Chinese voices into every performance, to cross-examine the vast multiplicity of Chinese identity in NZ and challenge the notion of a singular way to be Chinese.

This piece of documentary theatre is made up entirely of Chinese storytellers from the community; from a new mum to a spoken word artist, to a women’s refuge worker, to a grandparent, and everything in between, the performers in this show are real people reflecting on their real personal experiences, not actors putting on a character for a night. Alice Canton developed OTHER (chinese) following her solo show WHITE/OTHER, which started this conversation about race from Alice’s own perspective.

“We want to open up conversations in order to create meaningful change in the world, and challenge the many forms of cultural mis-representation, discrimination and invisibility that exists around Chinese identity.”
- Creator and director Alice Canton

OTHER [chinese] interrupts the accepted and acceptable dialogue around Chinese-ness in Aotearoa New Zealand with courageous honesty, seeking to put audiences in the mind of the ‘other’ and shine a light on race relations in our country from an entirely new perspective.
Praise for Alice Canton’s 2016 show WHITE/OTHER:

“A powerfully contradictory message that will get under your skin." (Nathan Joe, Theatrescenes review of WHITE/OTHER)

"surreal, open, surprising and - yet again - clever." (Janet McAllister, NZHerald review of WHITE/OTHER)

Alice Canton is an award-winning performer and theatre artist whose work facilitates the production of diverse performance projects and collaborations. Alice has worked with Red Leap, Barbarian Productions and as a director for Auckland Theatre Company. Alice’s provocative solo work WHITE/OTHER in 2016 was the highly successful springboard for this year’s event.

Producer Julie Zhu has drawn on her activist and political background in collaboration with Alice to bring this stunning vision to life and this election year is running for the Green Party in Botany.

OTHER [chinese] plays:

6th – 16th September, Q Theatre Loft, Auckland CBD, at 7pm
Tickets from Q Theatre. For bookings visit www.qtheatre.co.nz or phone 09 309 9771

OTHER [chinese] is presented as part of MATCHBOX, the Q Theatre creative development programme.

Q Theatre is an independently owned and operated performing arts venue in Auckland’s CBD, committed to the sustainability and success of arts and culture. Every year Q co-presents a season of shows through its creative development programme, MATCHBOX. MATCHBOX enables the best emerging and professional New Zealand performing artists to bring their ideas to life on stage. Through a three-step selection process Q curates a MATCHBOX Season that pushes boundaries, showcases Q’s transformative venue, and delivers unique experiences for audiences.

To find out more about Q Theatre and MATCHBOX visit www.qtheatre.co.nz/matchbox

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