Theory

By Norman Yeung

Is there a limit to free speech? Who gets to decide? 

Isabelle’s film theory students are stunned that she would open an unmoderated online discussion group to complement a controversial syllabus. Her intention was for them to learn from each other, but when an anonymous student starts to post racist comments and offensive videos on the forum and others challenge Isabelle’s methods, she is forced to decide whether to intervene or to let the social experiment play out. But the posts soon turn abusive and threatening to Isabelle’s relationship with her wife, Lee, causing her to take matters into her own hands. 

In this thrilling exploration of the intersections and divisions within liberalism, a young tenure-track professor finds herself in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse that has her questioning her beliefs and fighting back for her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Feb 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9780369101631

Norman Yeung

Norman Yeung is a writer, actor, and visual artist. His play Theory won the Voaden Prize and was nominated for the Carol Bolt Award. Pu-Erh received four Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations, including Outstanding New Play, and was a finalist for the Voaden Prize. Other plays and performance pieces include The Zoonotic Story (Stratford Festival/National Arts Centre), I Know I’m Supposed to Love You (Touchstone Theatre), Deirdre Dear (LaBute New Theater Festival, St. Louis), In this moment. (Scotiabank Nuit Blanche), and Black Blood (Tapestry New Opera Showcase, with composer Christiaan Venter). Theory and Ms. Desjardins were recorded as podcasts for PlayME from CBC Podcasts. Norman was a playwright in residence at Outside the March, and has been a member of playwright/creator units at the Stratford Festival, Tarragon Theatre, fu-GEN Theatre Company, Tapestry Opera, and Canadian Stage. As an actor he has worked with the Stratford Festival, the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Canadian Stage, Theatre Calgary, the Citadel Theatre, Thousand Islands Playhouse, LA Opera, Theatre Conspiracy, Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, Firehall Arts Centre, Gateway Theatre, and many more. Among his many roles in film and TV, favourites include Resident Evil: Afterlife and Todd and the Book of Pure Evil. He holds an Honours B.F.A. in Film from Ryerson University and a B.F.A. in Acting/Theatre from the University of British Columbia. Norman was born in Guangzhou and divides his time between Los Angeles, Toronto, and his hometown of East Vancouver, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

Book preview

Two text messages appear against a cream background, one above the other. The top message reads 'Theory' in black text against a red message bubble that is dipping with blood. The bottom message reads 'Norman Yeung' in cream text against a black message bubble.

Theory

Norman

Yeung

Playwrights Canada Press

Toronto

Theory © Copyright

2021

by Norman Yeung

First edition: February

2021

Cover design by David Gee

Author photo © Matt Kallish

Playwrights Canada Press

202

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269

Richmond St. W., Toronto, ON M

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416

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0013 |

[e-mail] | www.playwrightscanada.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, or used in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review or by a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca.

For professional or amateur production rights, please contact:

Playwrights Guild of Canada

St. Matthew’s Clubhouse,

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ON M4K 2N1

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Theory / Norman Yeung.

Names: Yeung, Norman, author.

Description: A play.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print)

20200386832

| Canadiana (ebook)

20200386859

|

ISBN 9780369101617

(softcover) |

ISBN 9780369101624

(

PDF

) |

ISBN 9780369101631

(

HTML

) |

ISBN 9780369101648

(Kindle)

Classification:

LCC PS8647

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E96

T54

2020

|

DDC C812

/.

6

—dc

23

Playwrights Canada Press operates on Mississaugas of the Credit, Wendat, Anishinaabe, Métis, and Haudenosaunee land. It always was and always will be Indigenous land.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts — which last year invested $

153

million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country — the Ontario Arts Council (

OAC

), Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada for our publishing activities.

A stylized, illustrated blue tree sits to the left of the words 'Canada Council for the Arts / Counseil des arts du Canada.''The word Canada is written out with a Canadian flag—a red maple leaf flanked by two vertical red stripes—situated above the final A.An orange O is bisected by a green and purple C, situated to the left of the words 'Ontario Creates | Ontario Créatif.''A large red A is bisected by an angled blue C, with a green O balanced between the two letters on the left. To the right of the OAC logo are the words 'Ontario Arts Council / Counseil des arts de l'Ontario' over a red line with the words 'An Ontario Government Agency / un organisme du gouvernement de l'Ontario' below the line.

I dedicate my first book to my family.

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Class Is in Session by April Sizemore-Barber

Playwright’s Notes

Production History

Characters

Notes

Theory

Afterword by Esther Jun

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Landmarks

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Table of Contents

Class Is in Session by April Sizemore-Barber

Playwright’s Notes

Production History

Characters

Notes

Theory

Afterword by Esther Jun

Acknowledgements

About the Author

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Class Is in Session

April Sizemore-Barber

Save for a few detours into virtual and domestic space, the majority of Theory’s action occurs beneath the fluorescent lights of a college lecture hall. For those of us who teach, this bland backdrop serves as an electric and unpredictable staging space: part creative crucible, part political powder keg. As one of the few realms where people from vastly different backgrounds enter into discussion, the classroom — at least, in theory — contains unlimited democratic potential. Yet, as Norman Yeung’s taut technothriller powerfully demonstrates, questions of identity, power, and representation are rarely theoretical. Debates that begin as dispassionate inquiry in classrooms can spiral out into public spaces and they come with unforeseen consequences.

Our protagonist, Isabelle, is a young film professor who strongly believes that the classroom should be a place for multiple viewpoints, where no subject is out of bounds and academic hierarchies are made to be dismantled. On the first day of the semester, she dramatically enacts this philosophy, ripping up the mandated Film Theory syllabus and inviting her students to push back against canons and take charge of their education. Overriding student trepidation, she encourages them to post anonymously on the course’s online message board. The anonymity, she explains, will allow them to have difficult, honest conversations without judgment or fear of surveillance.

Yet the Internet has proven to be a double-edged sword. Where Isabelle idealistically views technology as a catalyst for the free circulation of ideas, her digital-native students experience it as an unpredictable den of trolls. Isabelle’s film classes, which encourage undergraduates to critically engage with controversial films such as The Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will, do not sit well with her multicultural student body. To them, being asked to view films notorious for serving as recruitment tools for the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Germany, whatever their importance to film history, is itself a form of violence. These images, they argue, cannot be dissociated from their contemporary circulation on social media by newly emboldened neo-fascists and white supremacists. Where Isabelle seeks to offer her students autonomy, they crave her guidance rather than provocation. The unmoderated message board devolves into a microcosm of the larger cultural climate, fuelled by personal attacks, bigoted vitriol, and explicit imagery. When an anonymous student with an axe to grind weaponizes the board to undermine Isabelle in the classroom and, disturbingly, encroach upon her personal life, she is forced to reconsider her methods. By this point, however, it may be too late. Pandora’s (in)Box has been opened.

As a gender studies professor teaching in the same hair-trigger, polarized climate of the play, I had a visceral response