On an unseasonably warm Autumn day, I visited Factory Theatre to meet with David Yee and Nina Lee Aquino. The duo, who are celebrating 15 years of ‘artistic marriage’, dove into their lengthy relationship as playwright and director, their desire to create and develop Asian-Canadian theatre, and their new play acquiesce, premiering this weekend at Factory Theatre.
Aquino and Yee both recall the moment they met nearly 16 years ago while smoking outside of a reading of a new work by Jovanni Sy, though they disagree on a few of the details. What they do both remember vividly is accidentally getting locked out of the theatre during that smoke break, providing what would turn out to be the kick-start to an amazing partnership. It was on that day that Aquino first told Yee about her theatre company fu-GEN, and where she was invited by Yee to read an early draft of acquiesce.
Since that day, Aquino has had the opportunity to direct every premier of Yee’s work, from her first, filial, which premiered at Summerworks in 2003 to this year’s acquiesce. I wanted to learn more about this exclusive relationship, and how it has grown over the production of numerous plays, including paper SERIES and lady in the red dress.
“When it’s time for us to get together again and collaborate, it’s time for a growth spurt for both of us.” Aquino explained. “It’s him, as a writer, pushing his own artistic envelope. And it’s time for me as a director – it’s going to be at a level where I know that I need to grow. So, it’s all benefits for the both of us.”
Yee, who is also acting in this work, often is present during the production of his plays, but that doesn’t bother Aquino at all.
“He’s probably the only playwright that I really have in the room from beginning to end. Sometimes it can be hard to have the playwright there, even the presence, for both the actors and the director, to not be able to talk about the script freely. But, I guess because of this relationship, there is a comfort,” she said.
acquiesce, Yee’s latest work, follows the story of a novelist whose estranged father dies, and travels from Toronto to Hong Kong to bury him. The play explores the transition between the stages of discovery to acceptance, and is a Buddhist meditation on the cycle of violence, they explained.
“Structurally, the play starts in the middle and it moves forward in Hong Kong and in Toronto it moves backwards so you arrive at the end and the beginning at the same time,” Yee said. “It was a structural thing that I wanted to play with and it ended up being the thing that drove the play.”
After 15 years since Aquino read an early draft of the play, I asked why it had been left to the side for such a long time.
“I couldn’t write it before. It was beyond me, what I was trying to do – I didn’t have the technique. I had bitten off more than I could chew,” Yee shared.
That challenge was made even greater, given that the heavy and difficult topics that acquiesce discusses are often not talked about within the Asian-Canadian community, they said.
“In the Chinese community, we tend to not speak about domestic violence and we don’t speak about mental health. There’s a lot of things that are very present within the community and our part of the culture that we don’t speak of. It was a story that I wanted to bring to reclaim,” Yee said.
Finally, before we closed our conversation, Aquino noted what has been making her time directing the play so challenging, but rewarding.
“David’s unique heritage of being Scottish and Chinese, the duality of that and the mix and where those intersect in the play of who he is, there’s something masterful that he’s done here with this work. That’s why it’s kicking my ass as a director. It’s a window into how one deals with grief in a world that doesn’t really allow you to.”
acquiesce is a production produced by Factory Theatre and fu-GEN and is playing at Factory Theatre until November 27, 2016.
Written by Andrew Sturrock Photos by Dahlia Katz
