Yahoo Interview｜NAAC Brings Oral History to the Stage - Seniors Who Learned Literacy to Act: We’re Just Happy to Have an Audience

Yahoo News How will you choose to live your later years? A group of seniors chose to tread the boards, their silver hair shimmering under the stage lights. This month, the Neighborhood Advice-Action Council (NAAC) Hong Ling Theatre will perform a new play entitled “Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo – Love in the Neighbourhood”, which takes the audience back to the era of the Shek Kip Mei Fire. The play navigates the shared bathrooms and pipe closets of the original “Seven-Storey Blocks,” reconstructing the cultural and emotional essence of the old community. Some of the Drama Group’s actors interviewed by Yahoo News had been completely illiterate, but spent years learning to read so they could learn their lines, and the bond between the members is as close as any family. Francis Li Yum-kwok, Elderly Service Director of The Neighbourhood Advice-Action Council, aims to use dramas based on seniors’ oral histories to increase public appreciation for the elderly, and told us that, “Every individual’s story can be captivating.”

Article: Pui Yiu Lo
Photographer: Billy H.C. Kwok

Arranged marriages and experiences of enduring poverty are brought to the stage with touching results

“Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo – Love in the Neighbourhood” is performed by more than 20 older actors, with 89-year-old Wong Cher-heung (Cher-heung) in the role of the mother, narrating her real-life experiences of growing up in the Sham Shui Po neighborhood. A true veteran of the stage, she has been with the Drama Group since it was founded 15 years ago. Having grown up in, Sham Shui Po, Cher-heung’s experiences are intimately connected to the community. Many of her personal stories have been incorporated into the Group’s previous productions, including titles such as“Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo - Neighbourhood in Harmony” and “Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo - The Proudest Handcraft”, which looks back at the era of female factory workers. She began supporting her family at 12, selling peanuts as a street vendor and working in the South Sea Textile Manufacturing Company factory. After starting her own family, she remembers an occasion when she asked her son A-Fai to go out and get some rice for her. “You used to be able to get a bag of rice for a few pennies,” she recalls, gesturing to indicate the size and shape of a bean bag. “Something this size was called a bag. For some reason, the woman who owned the shop next door made fun of him for being poor, so he tried to hide his shame by playing with a couple of bags like they were bean bags and ended up spilling the rice everywhere.” The owner of an adjacent shop saw what was going on and provided him with enough oil and rice to meet their basic needs, allowing him to repay the money in installments. These real-life experiences have been integrated into past productions and highlight the human touch of those days gone by.

The story of Cher-heung’s marriage also appears in“Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo─Savoring The Fragrance”, which tells the life story of three women who grew up in Sham Shui Po. When Cher-heung was young, she met a boy. “I didn't like the boy at first. People told me to tell him to come back in 5 years, thinking that he wouldn’t wait. but he actually did!” Once they got married, however, they got along like a house on fire, but her husband sadly passed away many years ago. When Cher-heung said her final farewell to her husband in “Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo─Savoring The Fragrance”, she recalls that “some of the audience were holding back tears, while people even told me that ‘the director was very cruel!’”

“I couldn’t even write my own name”

Cher-heung never went to school, so she found it very challenging to read the scripts when she first joined the Drama Group. “I couldn’t even write my own name, so some of the girls from the Center took me by the hand and taught me how to write my name.” To this end, she studied hard at the Center’s Chinese classes, as well as converting whole scripts word-by-word into transliterations. It took several years, but she can now read scripts with ease. “I think I did well, and I even have an audience, so I’m really happy.”

Learning lines is the most difficult part of acting for seniors. Lo Hong-yuen (nicknamed “Tang Yuan"), has been with the Group for seven years and is 78 this year. He has always been fascinated by the theater and joined the Group after being introduced by another center. When he first started learning, he struggled to get to grips with scripts as long as 4 or 5 pages, and found that the only way he could familiarize himself with the dialog was to continually copy out the entire text.

Waiter Shum Hing-hay (nicknamed “Daai Sam”), aged 74, has been a member of the drama society for 8 years, and has experienced something of a personal transformation through drama. Before he retired, Daai Sam was a civil servant with a stressful administrative job and a quiet demeanor. “In the old days, I had to be serious, be a good husband and a strict dad.” The Drama Group’s actors all have to attend weekly drama classes at the Center, where they are taught by instructors from the Chung Ying Theater Company. In class, they start out by playing some simple games to let go of their inhibitions. “At first, it’s a little funny and surprising, you wonder why you have to do these things, pretending to be a childish boy or even a sleazy old man. This isn’t part of my personality, right?” With guidance from the instructors and social workers, he tried to be more accepting of new things. “I got a little ‘addicted’ to acting. Having so many roles to try out boosted my confidence and made me more cheerful.”

“They are closer than family”

While the plays might be nostalgic for the human touch of the old days, the old sense of community has by no means vanished within the Drama Group. During our interviews, the actors frequently refer to each other in familiar, familial terms, with Cher-heung being the “mom” of the group. “They are closer than family,” she says, while patting the arms of her fellow actors. “I used to feel very frustrated (stressed), but since I came here, I can chat and joke around with my friends, and will they ‘pull my leg’, as well as encouraging me to keep going and concentrate.” Cher-heung has grown up children and grandchildren, but doesn’t see much of her family, so this group of old friends have become her best companions in her current life. “Whenever I’m at home, it’s always ‘what are you buying with your money,’ but we meet every week and it always puts me in a different frame of mind.”

71-year-old Chan Chi-yuk (Chichi) joined 6 years ago and has also found the “family atmosphere” infectious. Chichi has always been a very active person and often takes hobby classes at the Center. She fell in love with acting the first time that she tried it. “I am a very curious person, and staying at home just looking at the four walls makes me feel quite unsettled.” Chichi confesses that she’s not the communicator, but says that she has found her comfort zone in the Group’s “family”. “I suddenly have an extra ‘mom’ and an extra ‘dad.’ My real dad was too different from me, and the kids don't know how to talk to their grandma, so we can’t create this kind of (family) feeling or have so much fun.”

The NAAC Hong Ling Theatre will perform the new play “Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo – Love in the Neighbourhood”at the Black Box Theater in Kwai Tsing Theatre from the 8th of this month. (Poster: “Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo – Love in the Neighbourhood")

“Every individual’s story can be captivating”

Oral history is a form of historical recording, in which individuals who have personally experienced historical events relate their own experiences and feelings. In 2009, the NAAC initiated the Sham Shui Po Oral History Project and established the Hong Ling Theatre, allowing seniors to share their experiences of growing up in Hong Kong and bringing their stories to the stage through personal performance. They have since become the first senior oral history theater troupe to perform at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre and the Guangzhou Opera House. Francis Li Yum-kwok, Elderly Service Director of The Neighbourhood Advice-Action Council, explains that the Sham Shui Po Oral History Project has its origins in the Leisure and Cultural Services Department’s 2009 senior drama initiative. “After some discussion, we discovered that Sham Shui Po is a very special community where a lot of people grew up and still live, so we decided to do a community oral history project,” he explains. To date, the Group have held over 100 performances, including school and community tours. “People often talk about the ‘Lion Rock Spirit’, which is all about the resilience and mutual support demonstrated by Hong Kong people, but we are showcasing community relationships in another form.”

“People generally feel that they do have stories, but wonder if they are interesting or attention-grabbing enough. They might not think so, but what we want to achieve is to show that every individual’s story can actually be captivating,” Mr. Li explains. For example, the lives of the three women portrayed in “Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo─Savoring The Fragrance” may seem ordinary enough, but the stage performances highlight the importance of women in family relationships. For many years, his favorite play has been “Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo - Neighbourhood in Harmony”, which has also deepened his understanding and attachment to the social work profession. “Going there used to just be about going to a workplace, but after I saw it, whenever I walk into the community it feels like I’m a part of it too. Everything suddenly seems so much more three-dimensional, and I feel deeply connected to every household. It turns out that that sense of connection is very powerful.”

The history shared by the seniors in narrative form during the drama classes is about more than a performance. In 2018, the NAAC published “Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo - The Proudest Handcraft”, a book compiled from the experiences of a group of seniors who had struggled through the industrial era. Mr. Li pointed out that the industrial history of Hong Kong is mostly recorded from the perspective of factory histories, while historical materials that approach the subject from the perspective of family-style light industry are extremely rare. “It turns out that oral history, in addition to being very personal and community-oriented, has a complementary effect in terms of the ‘micro’ aspects of Hong Kong’s history.” Mr. Li hopes that besides enjoying the performances, audiences will also appreciate the elderly in the community. We are always saying that the elderly have made great contributions, and we aim to highlight the various aspects of this,” and continue passing down the resilient spirit of the elderly.

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“Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo – Love in the Neighbourhood” play sponsored by the Neighborhood Advice-Action Council (NAAC), was performed by more than 20 elderly actors, each of which reveals a different face of the 1950s. The actors narrate and act out Hong Kong family stories of that era, taking the audience back in time and giving them a taste of the social aspects Hong Kong’s history and its neighborhood camaraderie, as well as the kindness of Hong Kong’s people.

From the Shek Kip Mei fire to pitching in during the pandemic

“Beautiful Memories in Shamshuipo – Love in the Neighbourhood” is not just a drama, but also a vivid account of Hong Kong’s history and the warmth of its people. The drama, based on real-life experiences, tells the true stories of over 20 senior members of the Hong Ling Theatre over more than six decades of living in Hong Kong. They have personally experienced the changing face of Hong Kong and have combined their own stories into this play. The story begins with the 1953 Shek Kip Mei fire and guides the audience from the water pipe closets, shared bathrooms, and dimly-lit long corridors of the housing estate blocks, all the way up to people helping each other out during the 2020 pandemic, looking back at the different facets of life in Hong Kong over various eras. The genuine note struck by the performances of the elders enables the play to bring to life some wonderful scenes showing how Hong Kong people have supported each other in difficult circumstances over the years, and allows the audience to get a sense of the unique feeling of Hong Kong, as well as the human touch and neighborhood bonds of the community.