Yellowface sequence from Anna May Wong Must Die!

The Yellowface sequence from Anna Chen's solo show, Anna May Wong Must Die! (2009).

Hollywood legends we have loved getting silly with the oriental make-up.

There are many contenders who could have been added to this slideshow. Luise Rainer was cast as the wife in the MGM movie of Pearl S Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning blockbuster, The Good Earth, depriving Anna May Wong of the major role for which she was so perfect. It could have broken the bamboo ceiling and allowed her to be recognised as a stellar actress. There's Beatrice Lillie in Thoroughly Modern Millie; a weird Christopher Walken (isn't he always) as Feng in Balls of Fire; David Carradine in the Kung Fu television series; Jonathan Pryce in the stage version of Miss Saigon; just about everyone in Cloud Atlas.

More here

http://www.annachen.co.uk

Poetry, songs and chat at China In Britain, Westminster University

Here's a video of me at the China In Britain series of events at Westminster University in London this year.

Charles Shaar Murray played guitar and I sang Anna May Wong Must Die!, Yellowface and The Camellia and the Poppy (from The Steampunk Opium Wars).

Organised by Dr Anne Witchard and Dr Diana Yeh. Recorded 18th July 2012.

Thanks to Paul Anderson for camera duties.

VIDEO Anna Chen sings at The Steampunk Opium Wars

I'm keeping them coming. Here's another video from the show at the National Maritime Museum on the 16th February, this time of me singing Anna May Wong Must Die! at The Steampunk Opium Wars.

With Charles Shaar Murray on Guitar and Marc Jefferies on bass. Jeff Willis took the video. www.annachen.co.uk

The Steampunk Opium Wars pages here.

Anna May Wong Must Die! great pix by Jan Jefferies

We played the final show last night at the New Diorama Theatre (Saturday 12th November 2011) in front of a lively audience.

There was a quantum improvement from Thursday with most tec glitches sorted, the lads louder and rockier now that the awe of the theeayter had abated somewhat. Confidence was up all round and we are looking at ways to take the show further.

Produced by True Heart Theatre as part of the In The Mirror season at the New Diorama Theatre, London NW1, and directed by Wing Hong Li. With legendary music writer Charles Shaar Murray and The Plague’s Marc Jefferies. Jan Jefferies looked after us and took the pix on Anna’s Lumix TZ20.

Some more pix here.

Photo copyright Anna Chen

First night Anna May Wong Must Die! pix

First night done.

Tec hitches aplenty but all performed with great gusto and fun by myself and the wonderful Charles Shaar Murray and The Plague's Marc Jefferies, rockin' the show on guitar and bass.

I'm still making last minute changes to the script which is now at the stage where I can start cutting like a surgeon on speed. Plus the emergence of Tinglan Hong — Hugh Grant's squeeze and mother of Bamboo, or "Happy Accident", as "Ting Ting" mischievously claims is the baby's Chinese name — now doubles the number of Chinese women who can be named by audiences. (The other being a certain custard-pie kung-fu minder for geriatric billionaires.)

I'll be pleased when I'm off-script. But, for now, my baby's growing. Just like Bamboo.

One more show tomorrow then the great uphill task of memorising all 70 minutes of it. Wish I could plug in and upload in my sleep.

ANNA MAY WONG MUST DIE!
Written and performed by Anna Chen
Live music from Charles Shaar Murray and Marc Jefferies
Saturday 12th November 20:30
£8.50/£6.50
There will be a Q&A after the Saturday performance
Presented by Wing Hong Li for True Heart Theatre at the New Diorama Theatre, NW1
More info here

Anna May Wong Must Die! opens tomorrow: satire, crudity and politics

OK, this is it, guys and gals. Anna May Wong Must Die! gets its first London theatrical outing tomorrow night (Thursday 10th) at the New Diorama Theatre, followed by another on Saturday.

Legendary cultural writer Charles Shaar Murray and The Plague's Marc Jefferies will be providing live music.

I'm performing the show as a "work-in-progress" at the New Diorama Theatre as part of True Heart's In The Mirror season. Also performing during the week: Lucy Sheen and Veronica Needa. (Details on the webpage.)

I'll be on-script as it's still early days in the life of this piece (so no press), but I hope to come out of the week with the play nailed. I look forward to to hearing some solid feedback, especially from the Saturday Q&A session where the three of us will be chatting to the audience.

It's unusual, maybe even unique, to get three Chinese diaspora writers and performers together like this in one venue in one week so please do try to make it as we might never get this chance again.

ANNA MAY WONG MUST DIE!
Written and performed by Anna Chen
Live music accompaniment from Charles Shaar Murray and Marc Jefferies
Thursday 10th November 19:30
Saturday 12th November 20:30
£8.50/£6.50
(There will be a Q&A after the Saturday performance)
Presented by True Heart Theatre at the New Diorama Theatre, NW1
More info here

REVIEWS AND MEDIA FOR ANNA CHEN

"Charming, witty and sophisticated ... I am entranced, won over."
The Sunday Times

"Hard hitting and often hilarious ... arresting ... engrossing and provoking."
The Scotsman

"... sensitive, intelligent ... insistent and illuminating."
The Herald

"It's the stuff of brilliant satire ... riveting."
The List

"Very witty."
Graham Norton

"I'm taking you shoplifting."
Jenny Eclair

“Cutting edge …”
Stewart Lee

More press here

Anna May Wong Must Die! first draft complete

Last night I finally finished off the first draft of Anna May Wong Must Die!.

I've been thinking about this even before 2008, when I made a BBC Radio 4 programme on one of my heroines, A Celestial Star In Piccadilly, about Hollywood's first Chinese screen legend, Anna May Wong (broadcast January 2009). I'd originally tried to time the show for 2005, her birth centenary, but it took two goes to get the commission.

Rather that tell a straight story about her life, as I did on radio, I decided to take a different approach. You can read all about Anna May in at least two fine biographies: The Laundryman's Daughter by Graham Russell Gao Hodges, and Perpetually Cool by Anthony Chan.

I wanted to show her as refracted through my own experience, of someone in the here and now of the Chinese diaspora, and I came up with Anna May Wong Must Die!: a personal journey through the life and crimes of Hollywood's first Chinese superstar.

It's especially pertinent in an age where, unlike in America, you hardly ever see an Asian face depicted as a normal participant in British society. You'd never know that there were up to 500,000 Chinese (including native-born descendants) in the UK.

We still play Spot The (East) Asian, but mostly all we get are fiendish criminals (Sherlock: The Blind Banker — BBC); Will Self (who ought to know better, much better) dismissing Chinese as "antlike"; trendy progressive theatres laying on yellowface plays where white actors depict the "essence" of the Orient (More Light and The Golden Dragon at the Arcola and Traverse); government and media accusing the filthy Chinese of starting the major disease outbreak of Foot & Mouth when Labour's handling of it went tits-up in 2001 (for which we won an apology from the government, but not the press); London Mayor Boris Johnson claiming that the Chinese are "incapable of original thought" (isn't that unoriginally nicked from Mark Twain, Boris?); Morrissey working out of the Dr Mengele handbook and declaring the Chinese to be a "sub-species"; China used as a hysterical diversion during the Copenhagen Climate Change summit in 2009 when news was about to break that the wealthy nations were stitching up the rest of the world with the "Danish text", and Ed Milliband playing his own part in the Copenhagen cover-up — but at least Ed admitted in February this year that he'd been wrong and acknowledged the resources being chucked at the problem, not to mention that a third of China's emissions are produced through making stuff for us.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't criticise China for getting things wrong. As part of the global community, and a force that may lead us out of the recession, China should listen to valid, productive comment, just as Western nations should. But using Chinese people to bash the new economic rival and mask racism with politics is, by any civilised standards, dirty pool.

We know — post-Macpherson — that institutional racism has to be identified and called out for what it is. So it is astonishing to see practically no Chinese in fiction or news. I break out the cava whenever I see our one ubiquitous telly face, Gok Wan, or rare sightings of James Wong, ethnobotanist, and other fabled mixes (Alexa and the BBC newsreader woman). Then there are the enlightened BBC Radio 4 commissioners who occasionally allow me to make programmes for them. But these few swallows do not a summer make — and I prefer to spit.

The rest of it is effectively a nasty bit of social engineering: dehumanising us, excluding us from our own society and our culture, rendering us invisible, unknown and a bloody big target for when a collective scapegoat might be needed. And, with some major unpleasantness coming down the pipeline as a result of bankers' greed and world recession, that situation had better be reversed, toot sweet. When you create a vacuum like this, you allow all sorts of horrors to fill up the space — the sleep of reason produces monsters. Bit by bit, we're chipping away at the cultural coalface but, in a way, our work is done. China is set to be the world's biggest and richest superpower and no-one, not the media, and especially not the advertisers, will be able to pretend for much longer that we aren't here.



You can see me try out Anna May Wong Must Die! as a work-in-progess (I'll be on-script) next month.

Anna May Wong Must Die!
A work-in-progress
Written and performed by Anna Chen
New Diorama Theatre
15 - 16 Triton Street,
Regents Place,
London, NW1 3BF
7.30pm Thursday 10th & 8.30pm Saturday 12th November 2011 (plus Q&A session afterwards)
Tickets £8.50
Part of the short "In The Mirror" season of Chinese one-woman shows.

Anna May Wong Must Die! and Yellowface acoustic videos: Anna Chen at the St Ives Arts Festival

It's been unbelievably sunny and warm down here in Kernow for the St Ives Arts Festival while London shakes itself out like a drowned rat aprés le deluge.

Here are a couple of videos from the lunchtime sessions in Norway Square. I'm trying out Yellowface, one of the raps from Anna May Wong Must Die!, playing this coming Sunday at the St Ives Arts Club.

And there's also an acoustic version of the Anna May Wong Must Die rap, both accompanied by Charles Shaar Murray on slide guitar and Buffalo Bill Smith on harmonica.

Having a fab time. Wish you were here.

YELLOWFACE

ANNA MAY WONG MUST DIE!

Anna May Wong Must Die! at the St Ives Arts Festival

One mo' time ...

Anna performs Anna May Wong Must Die! at the St Ives Arts Cub, Westcotts Quay, St Ives, Cornwall, TR26, 7pm, Sunday 20th September, as part of the St Ives Arts Festival. Tickets: £6.00 More Info: 01736 797122

Anna May Wong Must Die! is Anna Chen's one-woman show about Hollywood's first Chinese movie star. This personal journey through the life and crimes of Anna May Wong grew from a half-hour programme about the actress, A Celestial Star In Piccadilly, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2009, written and presented by Anna.

Part comedy, part social critique, this funny, fascinating look at the movie icon dismantles Chinese stereotypes and reveals the human side of the dragon lady of dragon ladies.

Venue: St Ives Arts Club, Westcotts Quay
Date: Sunday 20th September 2009
Time: 7pm
Tickets: £6 from the Guildhall festival box-office
Info: 01736 797122 or steve.mcintosh@onestives.co.uk

More info here

NEW DATE ADDED TO ST IVES FESTIVAL.
Anna Chen reads from her novel-in-progress, Coolie, her story about the Chinese workers on the transcontinental railroad who went on strike in the 1860s.

In a scintillating double-bill, she appears with Charles Shaar Murray who will be reading from his novel, The Hellhound Sample, a spooky tale about three generations of a black American music dynasty and an English guitar hero, about to be published by Headpress.

Venue: The Salthouse Gallery, St Ives
Date: Wednesday 23rd September 2009
Time: 6:30pm
Details to be confirmed

Photo of Anna by Sukey Parnell

Anna May Wong Must Die! website now live

After much joy, tears and heartache, you can now visit the Anna May Wong Must Die! website here.

It has all the info about my latest one-woman show, a multimedia-illustrated journey through the life and crimes of Anna May Wong, Hollywood's first Chinese movie star. Anna May challenged prejudice and the racism enshrined in American law to become the most famous Chinese woman in the world in the 1920s and 30s. She wasn't allowed to kiss a leading man if he was white, even if he was in yellowface and playing a Chinese character, and she lost plum roles to white actors who the studios claimed could portray the inner humanity of the Chinese better than the Chinese themselves. She died in 1961 aged only 56, falling into obscurity for nearly half a century.

Now, if that's not asking for a satirical look at where we are in terms of the Chinese diaspora, I don't know what is. I hope the show goes some way towards reclaiming Anna May Wong for all of us through comedy, music and some pertinent observations.

You'll be able to find dates, news, press, pictures, music, videos and articles on the show. As it's early days yet, some of the pages still don't have their content, but this'll change soon.

I've also knocked up the poster above which I hope everyone finds eye-catching and effective.

And, yes, it IS a lampshade. Why do you ask?

Anna May Wong Must Die! show highlights video

I finally got an extract of Anna May Wong Must Die! on YouTube. Recorded Tuesday 26th May 2009 at the Roxy Bar & Screen, South London.

Still writing and putting the finishing touches to it. And, alas, no remote control of the Powerpoint/Keynote presentation due to my Mac iBook having no infra-red receiver, something I only found out the other month.

Anna May Wong Must Die! rap video from the Roxy

Anna Chen performs Anna May Wong Must Die! rap at the Roxy Bar & Screen, London, 26th May 2009, from an extract of her show as part of an Anna May Wong themed evening which included a screening of Piccadilly.

Anna May Wong Must Die! is a multimedia personal journey through the life and crimes of the Hollywood screen legend, a development of Anna Chen's recent programme for BBC Radio 4, Celestial Star of Piccadilly, broadcast 13th January 2009.

UPDATE: Well, that was loads of fun. The Roxy is an amazing little venue tucked away in south London, all velvet plush, mismatched chairs and extremely comfy leather sofas, reminiscent of old jazz clubs and torch singers. Everything worked. Not one lost sound file or missing image. The audience was perfect; warm and friendly and they laughed at all my gags. We all found Anna May Wong to be a fascinating subject. It's a mystery how she could have disappeared all these years.

Next job is to line up a string of gigs. Unfortunately, I've missed the big festivals this year but I'll be doing one-offs and 2010 looks promising.

Music and lyrics by Anna Chen

Thanks to Jasper Sharp, Michelle Thomas and Charles Shaar Murray.

Special thanks to the Anna May Wong Society for use of their images.

Harpy's been quick off the mark and has reviewed it here

Anna Chen previews Anna May Wong Must Die!

I finally got to preview my multimedia presentation, Anna May Wong Must Die!, a personal journey through the life and crimes of Anna May Wong, at the Salthouse Gallery on Friday 8th May 2009 as part of the St Ives Literary Festival.

Developing my radio programme, A Celestial Star In Piccadilly, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January, this hour-long educational show gives me the chance to expand on my social criticism and include material which had to be left out due to time constraints.

It had poetry, music, sex and technical glitches galore. There was no cable to link up my Mac to the projector or the big speakers, so Alban saved the day by transferring the entire file onto his PC and I controlled it from there. Dramatic sounds, transitions and fonts were lost, and I was plunged into a crepuscular gloom in the absence of lighting, but it was a laid-back affair and a great time was had by all.

Next outing is an extract at the Roxy Bar & Screen in South London, Tuesday 26th May, introduced by film historian Jasper Sharp. This is a themed night with a screening of Piccadilly (1929) which Anna May Wong made in Britain, re-released by BFI in 2005 with a new musical score to mark the centenary of her birth. Shanghai sounds from Resonance FM Lucky Cat DJ, Zoe Baxter.

Radio show, A Celestial Star In Piccadilly, produced by Chris Eldon-Lee and Mukti Jain Campion for Culture Wise


UPDATE: Anna May Wong Must Die! pages now live

Anna May Wong Must Die! premieres Friday, St Ives

Anna May Wong Must Die!, a personal journey through the life and crimes of the Hollywood screen legend, has its debut performance at The Salthouse Gallery, St Ives in Cornwall this Friday 8th May at 7pm. £6

I've composed music for it, poetry, everything except fireworks and fully-catered Chinese dinners.

Anna May Wong Must Die! premieres Friday, St Ives

Anna May Wong Must Die!, a personal journey through the life and crimes of the Hollywood screen legend, has its debut performance at The Salthouse Gallery, St Ives in Cornwall this Friday 8th May at 7pm. £6

I've composed music for it, poetry, everything except fireworks and fully-catered Chinese dinners.