Emily of Emerald Hill

Emily of Emerald Hill Background to Emily Prepared by Mr. Kevin Cheng

Some facts about Emily… • Emily of Emerald Hill is a one-woman play about a Nonya matriarch who dominates her family, yet in the end finds that she loses what she loves most. • The play won the First Prize in the National Play-Writing Competition 1983.

More stuff about Emily… • Since then it has been presented more than a hundred times, • by eight different performers, • in Singapore, Malaysia, Hawaii and Edinburgh. • It has been translated into Chinese and Japanese and broadcast over Radio Iceland. • A film version is under negotiation.

Who has played Emily? • Leow Puay Tin 17 Nov 1984 • Margaret Chan 4-5 Sept 1985 • Claire Wong June 1989 • Pearlly Chua 13-18 March 1990 • Jalyn Han Practice Theatre Ensemble (Mandarin) 6 Jan 1991 • Aileen Lau Geuk Lin 16-18 March 1991 • Neo Swee Lin 15-17 Aug 1996 • Ivan Heng Oct 1999

Emily in a Nutshell… by Krishen Jit • In the play, Emily is a Chinese Peranakan, who by dint of her native wit and cunning, emerges as the matriarch of a large and distinguished household, but only at the expense of her son’s suicide and her estrangement from her husband.

Emily in a Nutshell… by Krishen Jit • The end of the play sees her alone in a much reduced mansion. She is old, and wistful, and the remnants of her family have moved to the suburbs while she is surrounded by the urgent hammering and pounding of an expanding inner-city construction.

Emily in a Nutshell… by Krishen Jit • The assuredness of a rooted past, springing from her Peranakan heritage, lends depth to Emily, easily the most convincing character who has so far appeared in Singapore English theatre.

Ivan Heng as Emily

Ivan Heng as Himself

IVAN HENG AS EMILY: CROSS-DRESSING AND PERANAKAN THEATRE (WAYANG PERANAKAN) • Peranakan is a name given to the earliest Chinese settlers of the Malayan peninsula and a unique culture influenced by Chinese, Malay and colonial ways. Peranakan men are known as Babas and their womenfolk, Nyonyas.

IVAN HENG AS EMILY: CROSS-DRESSING AND PERANAKAN THEATRE (WAYANG PERANAKAN) • Before World War 2 it was a necessity to have males playing female roles in the Wayang Peranakan as Baba Peranakan society frowned upon the very thought of Nyonyas appearing on stage. • These men faithfully portrayed roles such as the domineering matriarch, the fragile heroine and the Cantonese domestic help. Although attitudes toward Nyonyas on stage and in society have changed, to this day no play is complete without a female impersonator.

IVAN HENG AS EMILY: CROSS-DRESSING AND PERANAKAN THEATRE (WAYANG PERANAKAN) • Cross-dressing makes visible what contemporary culture has made invisible: the 'accomplishment' of gender. As the first male actor to play Emily, Heng offers a version of performed femininity that adds new depth to Emily's struggle. Under these circumstances, it's impossible to forget that women's 'roles' are male creations. Given the play's feminist slant, the inversion is provocative and powerful.

Excerpts of Interview with Ivan Heng • Int: Everybody's searching for a Singapore identity. We don't know what we are all about… • Ivan: and here's a woman who's Chinese, wears Malay clothes, speaks English, studies French, listens to Dizzy Gillespie and dances to Fred Astaire, sends her son to England where he goes to plays, plays polo. Sure she's from a very privileged class of people, but really, Emily's a citizen of the world. In that glamorous decadent world of the 1950s, identity, who we are, was never really a problem. Its only now when the world is becoming so… globalized, and at the same time homogenized…

Excerpts of Interview with Ivan Heng • Int:Everyone finds something familiar in Emily… • Ivan: Times may have changed, life may have become more complex but I'll tell you this - Emily lives today. After watching the play people say, " oh that's my mother!", or " that's my sister, my aunty, my grand-aunty", nobody dares to say " Oh that's me!".

Excerpts of Interview with Ivan Heng • Int: There are many dimensions to her character… • Ivan: On another level it's about the woman, and all the parts of her. As a woman of her time she was assigned to her roles in that big patriarchal system and what were her roles; good daughter-in-law, wife, mother, ambitious for her husband like a modern Lady Macbeth, uh, y'know, good grandmother, what do all these roles mean? Jilted housewife, just what do all these roles mean? She was a veritable CEO!

Excerpts of Interview with Ivan Heng • Int:Yes, I wanted to ask you about that. What sort of qualities do you think you being a man in a woman's role, has imparted to the character? Do you think it has given it a new edge or somehow made the character appear stronger?

Excerpts of Interview with Ivan Heng • Ivan: I think that just because it's a man, you, kind of make visible all… because, it is a man performing mother, performing jilted housewife, performing, performing, the point is that performing is something we all do as human beings, everyday of our lives. We perform the good son, the good daughter. With Emily sometimes you see the real person beneath all these masks. This mask that we all put on, it's about survival!

Excerpts of Interview with Ivan Heng • Int: I don't know. You can't put a finger on it. There's some spiciness to their character. • Ivan: Spicy Huh? Lemak (rich as in, rich in coconut milk) huh? I think that that's it because they're so confident, y'know. The men may have the money but who actually wears the trousers? They held the fort while their men were taken away or taken out by the war. They politicized the kitchen and the bedroom and the living room.

Interesting Links • W!ld Rice Home http://www.wildrice.com.sg/productions/shows/emily.htm • Interview with Ivan Heng http://www.happening.com.sg/livehtml/features/0107emily.html • Stella Kon’s Notes on the Play http://www.emilyofemeraldhill.com/EEH%20play/Emily%20Text%20Notes.html • Reviews http://inkpot.com/theatre/emily.htmlhttp://www.stageleft.com.au/2002/emily.html

Emily of Emerald Hill