Before we announce the winners of our 2024 Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series.

 

One of our most-nominated productions of the year was Silk Bath Collective’s beautiful and personal Woking Phoenix, produced at Theatre Passe Muraille. We spoke with Silk Bath’s founding trio Aaron Jan, Bessie Cheng, and Gloria Mok (莫嘉詠) about the show they created, directed, and produced together. Woking Phoenix is nominated for Outstanding New Work, Leading Performance, Supporting Performance, and Outstanding Production.

 

How did the company form? What’s your principal mandate?

Aaron: We were part of Fu-Gen Asian Canadian Theatre’s first collective creation unit, where the three of us, alongside Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster wrote a play together.

 

Gloria: We were tasked with constantly rewriting each other’s monologues and scenes, so we developed an ego-less way of working and a huge sense of trust.

 

Aaron: That’s where we learned to develop a story spine together, write and edit collectively.

 

Bessie: In 2016 we won a slot in the Toronto Fringe’s Culturally Diverse Artist Project (CDAP), which encouraged people from diverse ethno-cultural backgrounds to apply. We wrote a play together called Silk Bath that did pretty well. We then took it to the Next Stage Festival in 2017, kept working together, and the rest is history.

 

Aaron: I’m not sure we really have a mandate per say, but I think we’ve always existed to tell stories driven by our own upbringings and different experiences as members of the Chinese diaspora.

 

Gloria: Bessie is first-generation, I’m second generation, and Aaron is third generation Chinese-Canadian. Bessie speaks Mandarin, I speak Cantonese, and Aaron speaks neither language, so our different perspectives have always helped enrich the storytelling in a way that none of us could have achieved alone.

 

Where did the idea for Woking Phoenix come from?

Aaron: We all saw The Farewell – that Awkwafina movie – in 2019 and were really inspired to write an epic play about a large Chinese family with complex interpersonal dynamics. Each of us relate to one of the three siblings (take a guess at which one!), and we’ve taken bits and pieces of our experiences with our immigrant parents distilled into the character of Ma.

 

On top of this, for me I think that a lot of inspiration for writing Woking Phoenix came from my own family history of running a restaurant called The Bluebird Tavern in Levack, Ontario, a mining town north of Sudbury. I’ve never been to The Bluebird, but growing up I was told so many stories of my mom and her many siblings working there – receiving vegetable orders in the morning, dealing with lunch and dinner rushes, and unspoken estrangements among family members.

 

Woking Phoenix has three authors. Tell us about your collaborative process and some of the rewards and challenges of working as a team.

Aaron: One of the gifts of working with Bessie and Gloria for so long is that we’ve gotten to a point of being ego-less about our writing. We’ll try everyone’s work and are really okay with knowing something’s not working and letting it go. We have an idea for a scene – each do a pass of it and then collectively edit the scenes together into one – keeping what works and throwing away what doesn’t.

 

Bessie: We’ve been writing together for 10 years and in this time we’ve really fine-tuned what works for each of us as writers and as a collective. We welcome the sometimes chaos of the different ideas we bring (we have a 300+ page Woking Phoenix “graveyard script” of scenes that we didn’t use for the production). This can feel challenging at times to really sift through the volume of work that we create, but we always try to operate in an egoless state when editing knowing that we are all working towards the same vision.

 

We’ve found that the method that works best for us is to create a spine of the show together, then we all take passes at each scene and choose the strongest bits. Throughout the years, a huge reward has been seeing the three of us branch out and specialize in different areas of creation, which I believe becomes an asset for us in being more knowledgeable and well-rounded as a collective.

 

Gloria: We all bring different strengths. Aaron is a director and amazing grant writer – because of him, we have a pretty good track record of getting the grants we need to develop our work. Bessie is an actor for Film and TV and also works in hospitality, which has been helpful for a play about working at a restaurant. And I bring behind-the-scenes knowledge and experience from working in theatre production, design, and producing over the past decade. The three of us sometimes fight and disagree much like siblings do, but we know it’s out of love for each other and because we’re passionate about the project we’re creating

 

Bessie, you’re nominated as both a writer and a performer. Did you write the role with the intention of performing? How did being on both ends of the creative process influence your work?

I originally intended to go through this process as a writer and director much like Aaron and Gloria, and not as an actor. We have been developing the show for 5 years, and 4/5 years of doing so I was only on the other side of the table. Right before production began, we had some shifts in our team and I jumped into the role of Charlie. I have performed in shows that we’ve created before, so it’s not necessarily a new dynamic.

 

I feel like I had an intrinsic understanding of the character because I’ve written in her voice for so long, so there was a bit of a short-hand when it comes to bringing her to life. There were parts of Charlie that were based on my own experiences, but there were also equally parts of her that came from Aaron and Gloria. So I wanted to honour that and to be open and try new ideas in the room that may be different from how I imagined the character. I’m really pleased with where we landed with Charlie!

 

Phoebe Hu is also nominated for her performance in Woking Phoenix. Tell us about finding her for the role and what she brought to the production.

Gloria: I had worked with Phoebe once before where she also played the mom for a staged reading of one of my plays as part of  fu-GEN’s Kitchen Playwriting unit. I really enjoyed working with her then because she had such great instincts, insight, and maturity as an actor. We put out an open call, and when Phoebe auditioned for us, she brought so much depth, nuance, care, and sincerity to the character that felt like the perfect interpretation of Ma. She also had the language ability (Phoebe grew up in Taiwan and is fluent in Mandarin) as well as the movement capability (Phoebe’s an amazing dancer) to bring the character to life, so she was the perfect fit.

 

You all directed collaboratively. What was that process like? Do you divide and conquer or is everything a joint effort?

Gloria: It was definitely a collaborative effort to ensure each aspect of the process was tended to.

 

Aaron: I think we kind of figured it out as we went along! We each have specific skillsets that allowed us to divide the labour, especially during tech week. It did help that we had a lot of the same cast and creative team for earlier workshops, so they were really familiar with the material and we developed a shorthand. While the show was directed by the three of us, sometimes we’d open discussions to everyone in the room and we’d try things. I think something we’re really good at is building trust within our collaborators, so we’re able to try things out and honestly assess if they’re working.

 

Bessie: Being a performer, much of the input I had in direction happened in the various workshops we’ve had leading up the show and in the pre-block prior to rehearsals for production. I have immense trust in Aaron and Gloria when we’re in the room together, so there was a natural handoff.

 

What were you hoping audiences would take away from the production?

Aaron: Call your mom. Tell her you love her.

 

Bessie: I really hope that our audience can relate and see themselves in our characters, even their flawed, sometimes cruel ways. This show is about love in many ways, and I hope that our audience can leave the theatre wanting to connect/reconnect with loved ones.

 

Gloria: Food and family are so central to this show and Chinese culture as a whole. I hope audiences will leave the show wanting to call their mom, or share a meal with a loved one.

 

What are some of the most memorable responses you received?

Aaron: Someone wrote a song inspired by the play. A lot of tears from the audience.

 

Gloria: It’s honestly so fulfilling when someone tells you that they see themselves or their mom or their family reflected onstage, especially when we never really had that type of representation when we were growing up.

 

Bessie: as a queer kid growing up in suburbia, it felt very alienating and I often felt very misunderstood. It was so lovely to have folks come up to me after the show and tell me how much they resonated with Charlie’s story.

 

What are you working on now/next? Anything to plug?

Aaron: I’m assistant directing The Winter Tale at Stratford this season and continue working as a casting associate with the festival (feel free to send all of your complaints to me, Kelly). I’m also writing/directing a physical theatre show about table tennis and am the bookwriter on a large scale rock musical that will have a showing this fall.

 

Gloria: I’m the Production Dramaturg of The Wolf in the Voice playing at Tarragon Theatre until February 26th, and the Sound Designer for Blind Dates playing at Theatre Passe Muraille until March 9th. I’m currently preparing for two tours at the end of March: the first is my solo show, Long Distance Relationships for Mythical Times to Whitehorse, Yukon, designed for an intimate audience around a dinner table; the second is These Are The Songs That I Sing When I’m Sad, a piano storytelling concert travelling to St. John’s, Newfoundland.

 

Bessie: I just finished co-directing the theatre creation program at The Artist Mentorship Youth Project after their 2 year hiatus. With the support of the OAC, I’m also currently working on a year long mentorship with esteemed screenwriter Nathalie Younglai as I pivot into learning more about TV writing.

 

Is there anything you’d like to add?

Gloria: We’re so honoured to have won the Jon Kaplan Audience Choice Dora Award last year for Woking Phoenix. It’s a sign that audiences love and believe in our work, and it’s encouraging to know that the show resonated with them so deeply.

 

Aaron: Thanks so much for these nominations!