EVERYONE
IS HAVING
MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCES
EXCEPT YOU
Our first reading of the year, and our first podcast recorded Radio-play for Fresh off the Page, Black Tree Bridge is also Chye-Ling Huang’s first play, ever.
Developed through Silo’s working titles programme in 2013, Chye-Ling is dusting off the script and battling old demons in a magic-realist tale of a young woman searching for validation and direction.
Chrys, a young directionless woman caught between her parents' vastly different cultural upbringings, and in between uni and the real world, latches onto Chinese manic pixie dream boy Leo for some direction and purpose. When he dies a week later, she is forced to look inward at the stories that drive her.
We chat to Chye-Ling about the process so far - catch the reading online soon!
What inspired you to write this play?
Black Tree Bridge was developed through Silo’s Working Titles Programme in 2013. I was inspired by Malaysia - the mythical world I had encountered in my childhood, jumbled with the stories, real and imagined, passed down from my Chinese family. This idea split into two plays - Black Tree Bridge and Call of the Sparrows, which was produced in 2016. I’m interested in who owns stories - culturally, who is ‘allowed’ to lay claim to what, and how we figure out what is meaningful or not in them? There was a lot of interpretation and re-telling of my own family stories - which centered around the village where my Kong Kong lived, called Black Tree Bridge in Xiamen, China. Black Tree Bridge became a myth on its own, and the play speaks to the attempt to untangle it.
What were the challenges you faced during the process?
Rewriting a play developed in 2013 is a challenge for a few reasons - I was given some great time and space at the Sargeson Centre, having been lucky enough to be awarded the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship last year. I thought a little edit here and there and I’d be good to go - but my biggest challenge was making it relevant for where the world is at now, while being compassionate to the version of myself I was writing for at the time. It’s a multi layered beast, a tangled web - clarity and strong decisions are hard with something that’s been reworked a bunch of times!
What do you think makes a good story?
A strong heart, clear intentions, humanity and illumination, a lens into a way of seeing we might not be familiar with. I love stories with multiple lenses, characters and worlds.
How do you want people to feel at the end of your play?
Moved to see the ordinary as extraordinary, and vise versa. And to want to call their mums and say hi.
‘Who’ did you write your play for?
For my 19 year old self, who had no idea what to do with her life and was looking for answers in some pretty lateral places. A lot of Asian diaspora feel like they should have an inherent connection to their culture, but what that connection is and how it manifests is so ephemeral and elusive it can be hard to feel satisfied or validated, which might resonate.
What character was the most difficult/easiest to write? Why?
The lead, Chrys. Black Tree Bridge was the first play I wrote, and Silo’s workshop revealed a very simple truth, that your work is you, it comes from the need to say something, and whether the circumstances are autobiographical, imagined or researched it is ultimately your story. Leaning into that was difficult a few years on, and required a re-framing - to make the character someone that made sense for the story I’m trying to tell now, and not then.
Can you explain any ‘theatrical’ ideas/concepts utilized in the play?
Black Tree Bridge is full of magic realism; the world of the play is heightened but still operates within the rules of its own world and is something that follows a logic we can still understand. The world through the lens of a character constantly searching for mystic symbols is rife with them, and everyone and thing seems to be telling its own story. Clarity and realism becomes the oasis. I’m still fired up on work by The Finger Players in Singapore, it’s extremely freeing and allows for a lot of visual elements.