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Hfoeg Kjcegs On e Womaim Vicki Ooi This new play is the first o f a trilogy o f plays in preparation, recounting th e life storie s of women in Southeast Asia before the relative emancipation that came with the spread of more Westernized an d individualistic attitude s and the introduction o f a certain degree of gende r equality i n parts o f the region. The first on e presents th e stor y o f a former singe r fro m Shanghai, who came to Hong Kong to find work and ended up becoming the mistress of a tycoon. Naturall y astut e an d capable , sh e excels a t whatever sh e does, whether singing , socializing or managing the Old Man's financial affairs . The play constitutes a retrospective in which the now eccentric old lady's life is replayed to the audience, enabling her to reflect on her experiences and choices with ironic insight but without self-pity or bitterness. The play is based on the lives of real 'kept' women, and includes observations and insights culled from the author's real-life encounters with such women. However, rather than representing the life story of a particular one, it blends and merges the real with the fictitious, and thereby achieves a fictional veracit y an d artistic authenticity tha t is paradoxically tme r than detailed drama documentary could ever be. A woman who was once the most popular singer in Southeast Asia reminisces on her life of the past seventy years. She gave up her singing career to become the mistress of a rich tycoon. When he loses interest in her, she realizes that she has lost her private life as well as her career. But her greatest loss is her loss of emotional authenticit y an d her identity a s a woman. She tries to forget the adoration drooled upon her by the sycophants who sunounded her and to look for the mild pleasures to be found i n the obscurity that other women enjoy . However, the straggle between the false life of the past and the real life sh e aspires to lead cannot be resolved without a harsh self-examination, leading to a painful awareness of the price she has paid for becoming a 'kept' woman . The play revolves around the notion that this eccentric lady is sitting out the celebratory dinner given by the Old Man (her 'keeper') that is taking place in the adjoining banquet room. She is playing on an old-fashioned pinball machine seemingly unconnected with the laughter and sounds of festivity emanating from the offstage banquet. Having lost to the pinball machine three times in a row, she begins to muse on what has brought her to this place. The audience can thus eavesdrop on her workings of her conscious mind as she mentally replays the events of her life. We are like a visitor who, instead of entering the banquet room, has remaine d consumed by curiosity in some dark comer of the ante-room out of sight and privy to her most intimate personal thoughts — an intensely piquant theatrical situation. 'Having a golden voice and a beautiful figur e I thought would guarantee a golden life. It didn't. It only guaranteed a golden cage.' This is tme self-knowledge, but ironically the awareness comes too late to make any change to the woman's status. Not officially recognize d as the Old Man's de facto wif e for such a long time, she has refused to accept belated recognition and wifely status following the death of his wife. Despite virtually mnning his business for many years, she has existed in something akin to a twilight zone for so long that it has become her default mode of survival and preservation of sanity. 266 Losin g Identity While Hong Kongers may speculate on the identity of the real-life tycoon and kept woman depicted in this short play, and perhaps even claim to recognize the original, the exercise is ultimately pointless. The woman in this piece speaks for all those who felt obliged to sunender their souls for the sake of material gain in the 'subtl e whoring' o f the world of the rich and famous, a world that all of us recognize as being a part of Hong Kong's past and present, even if it only exists in the collective imagination of the majority o f...

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