acquiesce

By David Yee

Plagued by the success of his first book and haunted by his past, Sin Hwang arrives in Hong Kong with some unusual cargo and a lot of emotional baggage. Featuring a surreal cast of characters, from a foul-mouthed Paddington Bear to a wisecracking Buddhist monk, this sharply comedic and heartbreakingly poignant tale of self, familial, and spiritual discovery reflects the cycles from which we must all break free as we find our way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Nov 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781770918412

David Yee

David Yee is a mixed-race (half-Chinese, half-Scottish) playwright and actor, born and raised in Toronto. He is the co-founding artistic director of fu-GEN Theatre Company, Canada’s premiere professional Asian Canadian theatre company. A Dora Mavor Moore Award–nominated actor and playwright, his work has been produced internationally and at home. He is a two-time Governor General’s Literary Award nominee for his plays lady in the red dress and carried away on the crest of a wave, the latter of which won the award in 2015, along with the Carol Bolt Award in 2013. He has worked extensively in the Asian Canadian community as an artist and an advocate.

Book preview

Also by David Yee

carried away on the crest of a wave

lady in the red dress

paper Series

Acquiesce

By David Yee

Playwrights Canada Press

Toronto

for nina

and for iris

Contents

Also by David Yee

Foreword

Preface

Production History

Characters

Act One

Scene One: Funeral pt. I

Scene Two: Sin

Scene Three: Funeral pt. II

Scene Four: Kai

Scene Five: Nine

Scene Six: Cargo

Scene Seven: Book

Scene Eight: Instructions

Scene Nine: Paddington

Scene Ten: Research

Scene Eleven: Eat Bitterness

Scene Twelve: Funeral pt. III

Scene Thirteen: Scars

Scene Fourteen: Translation

Scene Fifteen: Monk

Act Two

Scene Sixteen: Funeral pt. IV

Scene Seventeen: Doctor

Scene Eighteen: Visitations

Scene Nineteen: Samsara

Scene Twenty: Postcard

Scene Twenty-One: Letter

Scene Twenty-Two: Funeral pt. V

Scene Twenty-Three: Acquiesce

Scene Twenty-Four: Funeral pt. VI

Scene Twenty-Five: Airports

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

Foreword

I love grief. Okay, perhaps that is not entirely accurate. I don’t seek it out, and frankly I’ve experienced enough in recent years. But I do crave theatre that explores grief and loss and the full spectrum of emotions that are roiled up when someone we care about dies and we are left to put that absence into perspective. I’ve made many pieces myself that examine the layers of pain and denial and introspection that grief generates, and the beauty too that deep loss often unexpectedly confronts us with. It is the kaleidoscope of emotions, and the beauty that we usually can’t see in the moment yet sometimes look back upon, or at times see in the journey of loved ones who are grieving, that draws me back to stories that are immersed in loss. Or, to be even more precise, in the aftermath of loss. For it is how individuals address (or not) that absence where, for me, drama is exceptionally potent.

And that is the territory of acquiesce. Ah, even the title is such a beautiful clue to the specific and unusual vantage that David offers in his play. Its central character rejects virtually all the rituals, trappings, and even conventional emotions that surround death. Sin is compelled to take on his father’s death, pushed by Kai and Nine and a cast of remarkable characters who make cameo appearances in Sin’s journey through the aftermath of Tien Wei’s passing. Of course, it is never really those other voices that are pushing Sin forward; he magically and invaluably finds the voices he needs (and oftentimes conjures them himself) to direct him toward the moments—past, present, and future—that he knows deeply that he must confront.

I have a long and satisfying history with David’s moving and wickedly funny play. When I was Company Dramaturg at Factory Theatre from 1998 to 2004, I established the Factory Playwrights Lab. I invited David to participate in the Lab, which was designed to incorporate playwrights into Factory’s building and activities while they were developing new plays. David was young, like many of the writers in the Lab—which in David’s tenure from 2001 to 2003 included emerging talents Hannah Moscovitch, Dawn Dumont, Keira Loughran, Jovanni Sy, Anna Chatterton, Celia McBride, and Adam Cowart alongside experienced writers Drew Hayden Taylor and Michael O’Brien. David’s project was a very early version of acquiesce, and in my notes from the Lab’s first meeting of the 2002/2003 season, I recently discovered that the elements of this play that I loved were the same then as now: the wit and humour hiding and sometimes showcasing immense stress; the snappy dialogue with wonderful characters such as Happy; the moving monologues and the pain that reverberates throughout though often well under the surface and deep in the history that death so often brings up to the air.

I was also curious about the structure that David was exploring to tell the story of Sin’s journeys—literal and emotional—and how this complex timeline was being designed to shape our experience of Sin. And, interestingly, I was intrigued (even more so now) by Sin and Kai’s relationship and how it evolves over the course of the play.

By the time David’s tenure in the Lab ended, we had done a successful reading of a new draft of the play, and its promise and potential was clear and powerful. But perhaps it was best that acquiesce didn’t find a home at Factory at that time, and that David moved on to other plays and projects that have since showcased him as one of Canada’s leading playwrights. Every play and every story has their moment; acquiesce introduced me to a beautiful writer, a special voice, and a smart man. He moved on, and so did I.

Looking back, I’m glad that David’s pathway as a writer led him to other stories. I’m equally delighted that fifteen years later he has returned to Sin and Kai—and to a Factory Theatre now led by his long-time collaborator Nina Lee Aquino. . . who was also part of Factory’s emerging artistic community back in 2002—and a story that he is so clearly now ready and able to fully imagine. Many elements and scenes from those early drafts remain, and as I watched the premiere at Factory in November 2016 I was thrilled to meet new characters and plot lines, and collide with a voice in David’s writing that had matured beautifully, that was now able to marshal the structural challenges of how Sin experiences the weeks following his father’s death, and the wry wisdom of a writer now ready to explore the grief that Sin rejects but must still confront.

Death invariable reminds us of the circular paths that life often seems to take, and watching David’s play not only gave me the pleasure of witnessing a writer step up to a story he had long wanted to tell, it also was lovely to be reminded that the late Iris Turcott, my successor as Factory’s dramaturg, and I both played a part in that process, as we did on so many plays over the years. Thank you, David, for refreshing that memory, and for bringing her and me together once more, as it were.

A final layer of the experience was recognizing the pathway David has taken from an emerging writer in the Factory Lab. David is determined to challenge structure and undermine conventional emotional dramatics as not only a leading playwright, but also as a leader in our creative community. His current role as Artistic Director of fu-GEN Theatre Company is but one platform through which David commands attention and makes change.

Journeys are at the heart of acquiesce: the ones we know we must take; the