Previously, on…

About The Sold-out Show

I’m Sorry I’m Not Lucy Liu is the first solo show I’ve written and performed – a sci-fi choose-your-own-adventure that asks an audience-community to make life-alternating decisions on my behalf.

The ‘Eden’ I play in the show has been compared to the famous actor Lucy Liu most of her life. Facing an uncertain future, she enters an experiment to go on a darkly funny, fast-paced, and sometimes heartbreaking adventure through alternative pasts, presents, and futures, as she attempts to rewrite and reclaim her story as a superstar in her own right.

But, beware:
Life is not a game.
Every choice has a consequence.
No two shows will be the same.

Her life is in your hands…

I’m so grateful to the team who made this show a twice-sold-out, thrilling immersive experience: Director Francesca Hsieh, Producer Iona Bremner, Lighting and Video Virginie Taylor, and Sound Designer Munotida Chinyanga. I learned so much about making theatre while collaborating with these innovative theatre-makers.

The show was commissioned by Camden People’s Theatre. In addition to the generous support towards the making of the show from CPT, Arts Council England, and Kakilang , I’m so grateful to curator and arts producer (and Kakilang’s Arts and Community Producer) Katrina Man, who facilitated our Affinity Night event.

Affinity Night

The pre-show community event and panel discussion spotlighted the British East and Southeast Asian (BESEA) experience in the UK, among like-minded ESEA theatre-goers and activists. After a food and drinks reception in the CPT basement, Katrina facilitated a discussion with powerhouse panelists from organisations that support BESEA communities through creative and social activism.

We were joined by co-founders of ESEA Unseen, Sue Man (a multi-disciplinary artist and craft-maker) and Kim Chin (an Artist-Designer-Curator-Producer), who are also members of ESEA Sisters. Julia Hirata (Mental Health & Wellbeing Specialist and Community Organiser and Outreach Officer at On Your Side) also joined us, alongside Lara Baclig, Writer, Producer and Curator, and Community Producer at the Museum of the Home. Our artist-panelists spoke about their advocacy and activism informed by their creative practices and intersectional identities, and how we could all use our creative voices to support each other.

When I performed the show that night, I felt the significance of sharing the show with an ESEA audience-community. I felt more of a serious and focused energy in the room compared to the previous nights, maybe because the show was supposed to land differently with people with lived experience of otherness. Was the satire too on the nose? Not nuanced enough? Are the jokes landing as intended? It was both unnerving and exciting, like seeing the crest of a wave coming over the horizon and trying to work out how to surf it. As the wave approached and we pushed off on our surfboards, each hushed moment felt as charged as each cackle of recognition, ripple of belly laughs, and gasp of outrage. Each time I felt a change in the air, I didn’t have time to wonder what was happening except to register that something was, and respond organically to the natural forces driving me through the barrel of the wave.

Here are some highlights from the work-in-progress run in June and the final run in November:

“Fiercely funny, scathingly satirical and even a bit scary, a brilliantly conceived sci-fi identity quest that lets the audience choose the story.” Daniel York Loh

“I’m Sorry I’m Not Lucy Liu is great fun, but also yields insights into representation and the perception of ESEAs from a White gaze.” Jennifer Lim

“This new play tackles important political issues of race and identity, boldly and playfully.” On Your Side

More from audience members…

“Innovative, heartfelt and really sweet… the performance was energetic and truthful”

“Interactive, profound, funny and relatable”

“The active participation of the audience brings excitement and enthusiasm to the uncertainty of choices and consequences of decisions.”

Previously on I’m Sorry I’m Not Lucy Liu…

I’m Sorry I’m Not Lucy Liu had its first outing in 2022 as part of Camden People’s Theatre Starting Blocks showcase, directed by Masha Kevinovna Maroutitch:

We Have A Dream Director!

I’m delighted to introduce the director of I’m Sorry I’m Not Lucy Liu, the amazingly multi-skilled Francesca Hsieh! She came onboard after exploring the show’s past and future with me during an R&D week at New Diorama Broadgate in July. (More on process in the next post, once I’ve reflected on the copious collection of notes!)

I had invited three trusted talents into the room to find collaborators, and it was fantastic to find a like-hearted and playful collaborator in Francesca – or Chessie, as she’s also known (ask her about that story). As we take the next steps to making the show hilarious and hard-hitting, I’m very thankful for her enthusiasm and kind yet keen understanding of what I would love to create for audiences with diverse experiences.

Meet Francesca

Francesca Hsieh (she/her) is an Asian-American director and theatre maker based in London. She has her MA in Theatre Directing from Royal Holloway, University of London where she studied with director Katie Mitchell and worked with theatre company Complicité. Prior to this, she completed her BFA in Musical Theatre Performance at the University of Utah. Recent work includes Tosca (Director Observer – English National Opera), Shakespearean Support Group (Director, Standby for Places – podcast production), Cocaine Triptych (Director-Adaptor, Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival – winner of Outstanding Live Production) and Mary Stuart (Assistant Director – Pioneer Theatre Company). An advocate for equity and anti-racism in the arts, her work has been featured in Classical Singer Magazine, American Theatre Magazine, and The Salt Lake Tribune.

Follow Francesca: @chessie_hsieh

After the WIP

What an exhilarating (and somewhat terrifying) time! I’m so thankful that I got to be a commissioned artist at Camden People’s Theatre, on Starting Blocks 2022. It’s still 2022, right? Phew. I keep dreaming time had sped up after that… What? Oh. It’s almost August. So, obviously the perfect time to post about what happened in March! (Cue trombone: ‘WAH-WAH-WAH’.)

I’m happy to share some photos from my show, I’m Sorry I’m Not Lucy Liu: a playful and political choose-your-own-adventure story that wants to be the show you want it to be. Your decisions can shape not just my show but my identity, and my future.

Photography: Matthew Thomas Photo, courtesy of Camden People’s Theatre

The process of writing and performing my own work was both enlightening and exposing (practice makes… Practice, as it turns out):

Working autobiographical elements* into a fictional narrative
Working out the time-travel element and the choose-your-own-adventure story branches (two unambitious ideas!?)
Exploring audience interactions
Devising with Masha, my director
Sourcing materials (including a life-size cardboard cutout of Lucy Liu and a DIY shrine)
Writing a song and performing it live
… Keeping my cool (just kidding. That never happened).

* The audience’s assumption is that it’s entirely autobiographical, which will be fun to explore further in the hour-long show.

After my performance, I was pulsing with adrenaline and over-excitement for the rest of the night. My mentor Sabrina Mahfouz, who had introduced me to Masha, had come to see it: a big deal in itself, surpassed when she told me she loved it. I was buzzing for my fellow Starting Blocks artists who each performed the most inventive, laugh-out-loud funny and moving show. I’m looking forward to watching theirs develop (go see them!).

The evening’s elation definitely took a while to sink in, especially as I got Covid the following week (not from the evening at the theatre), and even with the amazing photos and the video from the evening’s performance (helpful to know what I did well and what I could work on – as tempting as it is to just nitpick at my own seeming awkwardness), it’s hard to believe that I actually did it. Well, we did it.

The most humbling thing about it all was how much help and support I actually needed to make a solo show happen. Brian, Emma, Harriet, and Nicola at CPT were brilliant from the start at organising and supporting us as artists and makers. Amy and George made the technical magic happen on the night; not to mention the Front-of-house staff who served and managed the audience throughout the evening.

Masha (writer, director, creative producer and Artistic Director of OPIA Collective, with her own WIP of Babel at CPT under her belt) was fantastic at leading me in shaping the show from my ideas and words, to write and perform a better show than I had imagined was possible.

Since then, almost exactly five months ago, I have done an R&D (research and development), thanks to New Diorama Broadgate, and invited three talented artists to be in the room with me. I’m happy to say that I now have a director, who I’ll be thrilled to introduce very soon. We’re aiming for an hour-long WIP in the autumn, building to a run in Spring 2022 (while preparing for any restrictions related to variants, as is standard practice now). It feels really good to have a plan to work with.

I have a long way to go for it to become a full show, but I feel fortunate to be figuring it all out with cracking collaborators! (Ask me tomorrow and I might feel like it’s never going to happen and I should retrain in cyber, but, for the moment, any amount of hard work feels worth it if it means I never find myself lost in cyber-space.)

Jumping off Starting Blocks!

I’m thrilled to be part of Starting Blocks 2022 at Camden People’s Theatre! I’ll be developing my solo show I’m Sorry I’m Not Lucy Liu (working title) on the excellent artist development scheme. Here’s more from CPT’s website:

The first of the artist support schemes is Starting Blocks which runs from January to March, allowing time for participants to develop works-in-progress to be shown in the Spring SPRINT festival. Over the 10 weeks, Starting Blocks artists meet weekly to share practice, ideas and their developing works. Today, the theatre also announces the 2022 recipients of this scheme. The artists are Meg Hodgson (Moonface), Eden Jun (I’m Sorry I’m Not Lucy Liu), Jonny Khan (Our First Daytimer), Jack Boal (The Children are Leaving), Chris Yarnell (Perpetuity) and Louisa Doyle (Cassiopeia).

Starting Blocks has previously supported Rachel Mars and her hit show The Way You Tell Them, Louise Orwin’s Pretty Ugly, Haley McGee’s The Ex Boyfriend Yard Sale and 2018 Underbelly Untapped Award-winner Queens of Sheba by Nouveau Riche all of which have gone on to national and international tours, critical acclaim and extended runs at CPT and beyond.

https://cptheatre.co.uk/news/Starting-Blocks-2022-Finalists

https://www.cptheatre.co.uk/blog/paul-hamlyn-funding-announcement/

My pitch for the show:

My character, Imogen Grant, has been commissioned to create a new show for CPT. She decides to create an interactive comedy show about the process of creating a show, which involves work-in-progress performances with her audience. As she and her audience try to put the show together based on scenes, music, and live art elements she has created, a mysterious call keeps interrupting. Immy ignores it… Until she can’t. What the audience discovers about her past and present may break down the trust built between them and threaten the life of the show.

How much of Imogen’s story do we really want to know?

Can she be honest with her audience if she can’t be honest with herself?

Does she choose to comply with the authorities or to fight back?

Imogen asks: ‘Who do you want me to be?’

There will be songs, multiple disguises, a treasure hunt, and a shrine to Lucy Liu… Most importantly, however, the audience’s dilemmas and decisions will determine whether Imogen’s fate – and therefore the show’s conclusion – ends in comedy or tragedy.

Young East Asian woman standing on a bricked pavement between two brutalist buildings. — *Standing between two brutalist buildings must be a metaphor for something.*

East Asian woman standing with arms akimbo, looking at an angle into the distance.

Eden Jun

Writer | Performer

Linked photo of Return To The Dallergut Dream Department Store, captioned by 'Audiobook Narrator'. — Audiobook Narrator