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Culture Stage

Interview: Diana Tso

RED SNOW by Diana Tso, directed by Beatriz Pizano, with Zoé Doyle, Vienna Hehir, Derek Kwan, Janet Lo and Richard Tse. Presented by the Red Snow Collective, Toronto ALPHA and Aluna Theatre at Theatre Passe Muraille (16 Ryerson). Previews from today (Thursday, January 12), opens Saturday (January 14) and runs to January 28, January 19-21 and 23-28 at 7:30 pm, mats January 21, 25 and 28 at 2 pm. $30, Saturday mat pwyc. 416-504-7529. See listing.


When Chinese Canadian theatre artist Diana Tso discovered an unknown page of her own cultural history, the 1937 deaths of hundreds of thousands of Chinese at the hands of Japanese soldiers in Nanking (now Nanjing), anger and passion drove her to write Red Snow.

“I never knew that the hatred between the two nations was so great that it resulted in a holocaust as brutal as the Jewish Holocaust in Europe,” says Tso, who’s been developing the play for over 10 years and premieres it during the massacre’s 75th anniversary.

The piece is about the Canadian-born Isabel, living with her mother, Lily, and her grandfather, Gung Gung, who fled Nanjing after the death of his wife. Nightmares involving her grandmother, Popo, drive Isabel to China in search of Popo’s history, which Gung Gung won’t discuss. When she meets Jason, a Japanese scientist, she unwittingly sets up a conflict between cultures as well as between past and present.

“Though I was born here,” explains Tso, “I’ve always wanted to be in touch with my roots, to reinvent Chinese myths through my own voice, merging East and West.

“One of the elements in the play is the Chinese opera The Peony Pavilion, in which love unites a dead beauty and a scholar. The relationships between Isabel and Jason and between Isabel’s grandparents parallel the opera narrative that 16th-century work offers a chance to speak about an event in the 20th century too long kept quiet, and also to start healing it.”

Download associated audio clip.

Tso’s research began with Nancy Tong and Christine Choy’s documentary In The Name Of The Emperor and continued with Iris Chang’s book The Rape Of Nanking, followed by several trips to Nanjing to interview survivors and visit sites.

Download associated audio clip.

She was repeatedly struck by the fact that poetry was the way to tell her story, relying not only on words but also on the artistic brush strokes of calligraphy.

“The only memory Gung Gung has of Popo is a portrait he painted from memory,” says Tso. “Art was something he, an illiterate fisherman, learned from his wife, a merchant’s daughter. Every letter in Chinese is a painting, and writing is a way of continuing our culture from one generation to the next.

“As a theatre artist, I don’t paint with a brush, but rather with my body, blending words and movement. Red Snow uses the image of the phoenix – it’s both Isabel’s and Popo’s Chinese name – to talk about resurrection and a move toward peace and harmony.”

jonkap@nowtoronto.com

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