What happens when you combine queer romantic comedy with crime saga, and throw in elements of a cosmic fever dream? You get 'Enlightenment’.
Perth artist Joe Paradise Lui gives a story from his childhood new imagination – by switching the roles of prince Siddharta and the magical monkey from 'Journey To The West' into young women in contemporary Australia.
Sid lives a pretty perfect life. . . But it's also utterly empty. Meanwhile, Sage is a hustler, doing everything she can to avoid encroaching poverty and desperation. Eventually, the two meet and fall in love, and things get epic.
This will be 'Enlightenment''s hometown premiere after a successful opening in Melbourne.
We speak to Joe about the dark, funny, and moving world of 'Enlightenment'.
What's this story about?
'Enlightenment' is a contemporary re-telling of one of the early chapters of 'Journey To The West', where the Monkey King goes to heaven seeking immortality and causes mischief. In the original novel the Monkey King gets trapped by Buddha under a mountain for 500 years. It is also about the circumstances that make people misbehave, about whether or not selfish and petty crime can also be heroic acts of rebellion, and about the absurdity of the state's monopoly on power. It is above all how privilege is systemic – about how the machinations of power function on levels that overpower even our best and most noble moments and sentiments. It's ALSO about being on Tinder and banging a lot of people.
What inspired you to write it?
One of the things I'm most proud of with the play is how much I've folded so many of the things I’m interested in on to themselves, and managed to weave this dense cloth of what I see to be intersecting issues around sex, power, and privilege. The story of Buddha, as told to me as a son in a Buddhist family growing up, has always struck me as being one of a saviour enabled by extreme privilege; I’ve always wanted to articulate that reading of it, and this was a perfect place to do so. The many and unending stories of state-sanctioned violence was another key inspiration, both in the media that we are exposed to in Australia, but also the kind that permeates my home country of Singapore and my ancestral land of China. Finally – 'Journey To The West', the original inspiration, has been with me since almost before I was born. It's like a part of our DNA, and I am proud to have joined the ten thousand artists that have bent the erstwhile monkey to their own ends.
There’s a queer love story at the heart of ‘Enlightenment’. Tell us about that.
There. . . Is. . . One. . . And I think that's that. I want to see more stories where the lovers exist outside heteronormativity, almost alongside the work, rather than as core components of the work's meaning. 'Queer work', like all identity work, is supremely important. But just like it's such a relief to see PoC representation in works that aren't overtly about PoC-ness, I felt in writing this that the characters just seemed more. . . Right, both being femme. Of course just like with all marginalised identities, their existence as queer is political and meaningful in its own way. But I enjoyed that meaning existing alongside the rest of the play, and not be completely central to it.
Why do you think this was important to include in the work?
I am very interested in this thesis that queer people – specifically non-male queer people, in relationships with other such people – are able to create spaces completely separate from the patriarchy inside of their romantic relationships. I don't really know if this is completely true or whatever and have no interest in debating it, but the idea is kinda tantalising to me. And I really wanted such a space to exist for the lovers in the play outside of the hyper-masculinised world that they (we) live in.
And who do you think will be able to relate to/connect with this most and why?
Obviously as the playwright my great hope will always be that different people connect to this for different reasons and in different ways. I hope PoC people connect with re-interpreting or re-contextualising their cultural myths and stories for the modern age. I hope Chinese people and the Chinese Diaspora sees some of their concerns as migrants reflected to them. I hope people that care about marginalised communities see something that they relate to that's relevant to the conversation around what it is to resist oppression.
‘Enlightenment’ also features elements of a story from your childhood. Why were you inspired to create theatre from this?
It's a story from an overwhelming number of Chinese childhoods. I wanted to create art from this because I have very conflicted feelings about what it means to 'celebrate culture'. To me, a healthy celebration of one's culture involves being able to challenge orthodoxy and being able to critique its sacred values that you perhaps disagree with or feel conflicted with. I feel like at this point in the Australian cultural landscape, we haven’t yet quite reached this point – we have been so backward at staging and celebrating all the different ways there are to be 'Australian' that this sense of critiquing 'our' non-white cultures hasn’t yet truly had an opportunity to be fully appreciated. White Australian theatre is full of re-imaginings of its ancient and sacred text in service of moving conversations forward. And I wanted to do the same from my own ancient culture, with its own set of sacred yokes that hold people down. Also, the story is cool.
Talk a bit about the illustrations in the performance by artist and activist Badiucao.
They're so great! Badiucao is obviously such a wonderful and powerful artist and having his contribution to the project was such a privilege. They are in his inimitable style and I think add a layer to the work that might not otherwise be there.
Joe Paradise Lui - Image © Simon Pynt
What was a challenge and a reward of putting this together?
I think when I had first written it a lot of people didn't really seem to 'get' what it was trying to do, or didn’t really know what to do with it. I tried to get it produced in Perth. I wanted it to exist in a space bigger than the Blue Room. But I think maybe in Perth there is still a reluctance to put on a non-white work that isn't a migrant or identity story. And I get the sense that perhaps people here were not yet ready to mount a work that is a PoC story that is highly critical of its own home culture and circumstances? Or that they perhaps didn’t truly understand the deep connections that many people have to the source material in 'Journey To The West' to see it as relevant. The reward was that when Marcel and Elbow Room read it and wanted it, it just felt so, so right. And it hasn't felt anything less than a perfect fit since. The wait was long and sometimes depressing. But now that it's happened/happening I can say without reservation that it was worth it.
This premiered in Melbourne. How did that go?!
This went really, really well. I am so proud and so lucky to have had the work happen there. The team was absolutely brilliant. I’ve made many works, and been a part of many more, this is one of the special ones that made me feel like this is why I do what I do.
What are you most looking forward to about playing it in Perth?
I can’t wait for my friends in Perth to see this thing that I am so proud of and been working so hard on for so long. For so many people it's this weird thing that I’ve been talking about for ages that no one has seen anything about other than me posting sappy long-winded things on social media about it. I don’t often write 'plays'. More often I make experimental or post-dramatic work. I am quite excited to be presenting a work that maybe will be a bit more accessible, albeit still shot through with my iconoclastic bullsh.t.
Tell us about the cast and what some of them are bringing to the performance.
The cast is all rock stars, all the time. I love them all so intensely and individually.
Emily Tomlins – absolute gangster. Arm fell out of her socket opening night. FINISHED THE SHOW. LED THE CAST OUT ON CURTAIN CALL. Just so F...ING GOOD on stage and in the rehearsal room, so ABSOLUTELY KIND AND GENUINE outside of it. Let's just say she's the head. The cast forms like Voltron and she just so happens to be the head.
Merlynn Tong – the much more talented, and attractive, and in all ways better version of me. Somehow she likes me and thinks I'm cool and wants to make more work with me. I'm going to ride that train until it runs out because I am so BEYOND LUCKY.
Alice Qin – if she wasn’t so damn good at being an actor she would be running some kind of international criminal cartel and I would never have gotten to meet her which would be the biggest tragedy. She took me to hot pot and it was the best. She took me to kebabs and it was the best. She took me to Pacific Rim Restaurant for char siu and she was the best. She is to other actors what Pacific Rim char siu is to your regular char siu.
John Marc Desengano – when he gets off his motorbike and takes off his helmet it's like the world goes into slow motion and for a moment you can pause to truly contemplate how wonderful it is that we as human beings get to experience the concept of beauty. Then somehow he's so funny and brings so much joy and some people get to have it all I guess it's not fair and the rest of us should feel bad.
Conor Gallacher – the best way to describe his performance prowess is that he's the bestest coolest raddest kindest funniest dude in the world and then I watch the show and still feel all the threat and the ick and gross. The play needed someone with a heart as noble as Conor's to portray the ugliest parts of ourselves. Apparently he will be bringing his Nintendo to Perth so if you want to Mario Kart you should hit him up.
I also want to shout out Marcel Dorney, the Director, who mostly feels like an extension of my psyche and my extreme nerd tendencies, but much, much, much cooler and more knowledgeable about theatre.
And of course Ish Marrington. My art soul mate. without her I'm nothing.
What do you love about the theatre?
I love most that it dies. I love that you work and work and work and people come together to build this thing and to love intensely and to dream collaboratively to do this thing that will immediately die on closing night, that will, in truth, die every night. There is something so beautifully poetic about that, about what is joyful about the human condition in that. It is a reflection of the meaninglessness of it all, and simultaneously a reflection of the giddiness and power we can feel in doing it all anyway. I love that it is an experience that lives beyond the borders of a screen. I love that it is smells and annoyances and looking up at the lights and feeling slightly outside of it. I love that it is an experience that is of the body.
Describe the show in three words.
If I could...
Joe Paradise Lui.
'Enlightenment' plays Studio Underground, State Theatre Centre Of WA from 14-17 December.
