The Madness of the Square
Playwright Marjorie Chan's New Play Centers on Tiananmen Square
© Y F Chin
May 3, 2009
The year 2009 is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. For Toronto playwright Marjorie Chan, it was a day she never forgot. As a 15-year-old, she watched televised images of thousands of student protesters taking on the Chinese government from the safety of her suburban living room.
“It has always been a question that I pushed to the back of my mind. I had always wondered - What happened in the square? What brought the students there? Why is it the government responded with force? I don't know that I still yet know the answers.”
Eyewitness Accounts
A few years ago, she wrote a theatre monologue on the 1989 pro-democracy student demonstrations. Then, Chan had a chance encounter which led her on a journey towards developing her new play, The Madness of the Square. “He was not a stranger, but an acquaintance who works as a human rights advocate. I happened to meet him the day that he was carrying the materials from Tiananmen in his car," she says.
There were two boxes of audio tapes, papers and eyewitness accounts as to what happened during the weeks of protests and the eventual government crackdown. Chan said much of the handwriting was quickly scrawled with names, ages and where the students came from: "It was incredibly moving to be able to handle the material. It was not that long ago, only 20 years, but the paper still feels quite fragile.”
Madness of the Square
Chan used the material to help write her latest play, The Madness of the Square, a production of Cahoots Theatre Projects in association with Factory Theatre (www.factorytheatre.ca) in Toronto. Audio tapes and sheets of paper helped her to get inside the story. “It gave me a particular insight into the emotional lives of the characters," says Chan. "I was quite surprised at the generalities of the movement and their innocence. In the West, since we have access to so much information, it is almost inconceivable to us the level of lack of knowledge that the students had. They were extremely sheltered, and hence shocked by the violence. It certainly individualized the suffering for me. The students and workers in their naivety signed their names proudly mere days before the crackdown.”
Even now, Chan said the material is still highly sensitive. “I think that caution is still required, especially for those very active in the movement. The tapes are with a third party.”
Tiananmen Square 1989
Chan’s play captures the idealism and optimism of the students before tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square. And she hopes it can provide some answers as to what happened there in the spring of 1989.
 |
