Human Acts: A Staged Reading of a New Bilingual Play by Irene Yi

I grew up in Wuhan, and during the first months of 2020 I witnessed the lockdown from a deeply personal angle. While abroad later, I experienced the dissonance of reading about my hometown in international media, filtered through layers of translation, censorship, and distance. This play is my attempt to hold both perspectives, including the lived memory of Wuhan and the estranged gaze of the outside world.

Choosing theatre was deliberate: only the stage can embody silence, repetition, and disappearance in real time, with the audience physically present to witness. Theatre allows us to stage forgetting itself - the danger that memories slip away even as we sit together.

Human Acts continues a line of inquiry from my earlier play Space Unknown, which examined state-sanctioned euthanasia and identity erasure. Both works ask how systemic violence infiltrates the body and how individual memory resists collective silence.

我出生并成长于武汉，2020年初亲历了封城，也在此后身处海外，从遥远的距离中读到关于家乡的报道。这种经历始终带着双重性：既是切身的记忆，又是被翻译、被过滤、被审查的“他者视角”。《Human Acts》试图承载这种张力，既是见证，也是异乡凝视。

我选择戏剧作为表达方式，因为唯有舞台能让沉默、重复、消失在当下发生，让观众成为共时的见证者。舞台能够直接呈现遗忘的过程，记忆在观众坐在场内的同时滑落。

这部剧延续了我在《Space Unknown》中提出的核心问题：体制如何渗入身体，如何通过“合法”与“程序化”的方式抹除个体存在。两部作品都在追问：在暴力与遗忘的夹缝中，记忆如何坚持。

It is an absolute honour to collaborate with Irene on this project. The title Human Acts itself already suggests the mode of expression of this work—placing “action” at its very core. Whenever we attempt to portray a specific event or a collective memory on stage, I often worry whether theatricality alone can truly carry such a weighty responsibility. Theatre does not operate with any pre-constructed subject. Each time the lights fade out and rise again, we assume that no statement on stage will ever be proven true, and any meaning we wish to attach is diminished by the very conditionality of performance—for nothing uttered on stage can exist independently outside its dramatic context. So how do we re-enact and reshape social actions on stage while simultaneously generating meaning? To me, the answer is clear: by engaging the audience’s senses. I especially hope that the language of theatre can contain narratives that are complex, dangerous, sprawling, branching, and always contradictory. For me, the heart of this experiment lies in allowing each audience member, through their sensory responses, to construct their own “reality.”

In terms of stage design, we imagined wooden pallets as the living spaces for the characters: on the one hand symbolizing isolation, and on the other creating a liminal, transitional space—an uncertain zone where people are forced to live, always on the verge of being overturned. Each “room” is grounded on wooden pallets, with steel bars growing upward around it like a cage—both a metaphor for quarantine and for the confinements of concrete walls. As our poster illustrates. Of course, due to budget limitations, this reading will not be able to realize that vision. But we look forward to bringing it to life in the future.

I would like to thank our actors—Bika, Emma, Blair, Lu, Antong, and “Salmon” Simon—as well as our stage manager, Jeannie, and my colleague, Daisy. It is their dedication, passion for theatre, and love for art that allowed us to create this staged reading with design and surtitles in just 21 hours. Above all, I want to thank you, our audience, for joining us and becoming part of this dialogue. Whether you leave with many reflections or only a few, we look forward to hearing your voice. Please feel free to reach out to us: info@yutheatre.com.

首先绝对的荣幸能够和Irene有本次合作。《Human Acts》这个名字本身就预示着作品的表现方式——以“行动”为核心。当我们在舞台上试图描绘具体事件或社会记忆时，我常常担心专属戏剧的叙述无法胜任这样重要的使命。戏剧在任何表现维度上都没有一个预先建构好的主体。每次灯光暗下再次亮起时，我们假定戏剧中的任何陈述都不会被证明为真实，任何你想要附加的意义都会被舞台的假定性贬值——因为聚光灯下似乎一切观点都无法脱离戏剧情境独自存在。那我们如何在舞台上去重现、重塑某种社会行动并且同时创造意义呢？我相信答案非常明显，那就是调动观众的感官。我尤其期待戏剧的语言能够容纳一些复杂、危险、庞大多分枝而且向来自相矛盾的叙述，由不同观众的感官去回应每一个情节并且创造出属于每个人的”现实”，我想这正是我们这次实践的核心。

在舞台设计上，我们使用木制托盘来表现角色的生存空间：一方面象征隔离（isolation），另一方面则营造一种阈限的过渡空间（liminal space）——人们被迫在其中生活，处于不确定与随时可被颠覆的状态。每个“房间”以木托盘为地基，四周钢筋如牢笼般从地面生长，象征隔离，也是城市大密度人口生存空间的“禁锢”：正如海报上描绘的那样。当然因为成本原因这次读剧会无法实现。我们期待下一次。

我想在这里感谢我们的演员比卡、Emma、Blair、Lu、Antong、以及三文鱼Simon，还有舞台监督Jeannie，我的同事Daisy 。是大家的敬业和对戏剧的热情、对艺术的挚爱，让我们在21小时内创作除了这部带舞台效果和字幕的读剧分享会。更要感谢今天作为观众的你们，加入并参与这场对话。无论观演后你是否有许多感想，我们都期待听到你的声音。欢迎与我们联系：info@yutheatre.com。

Nick Fangzheng Wang

Director, Designer, and Workshop Facilitator

Nick Fangzheng Wang

Nick is a Chinese theatre artist based in Toronto. He holds a BAH in Drama (Queen’s University) and an MFA in Theatre Directing (University of Calgary), and is beginning a second Master’s at the University of Ottawa on the depoliticization and hyperpoliticization of contemporary Chinese theatre.

Directing credits include Salesman in China (Stratford Festival, Assistant Director & NPU), They Must Have Smoked (Calgary Fringe), The Bystander Game and The Storm: Festival (Kingston), The Bus Stop and The Zoo Story (UCalgary SCPA), and Rhinoceros in Love (Queen’s). He was a 2021–22 CanStage RBC Emerging Artist and 2022–23 Associate Artist at Lunchbox Theatre.

Nick is the co-founder of Yu Theatre, a former Queen’s University student drama club now transforming into an independent professional theatre company. His Chinese-language play Bedsores (褥疮) will be published soon.

Online: fangzhengwang.com IG: @nickw_096

Stage Manager

Jeannie Nie

Jeannie Nie is a Stage Manager. She takes various backstage roles in different theatre productions. Selected credits include Sleep No More, Matilda, Fortune World and The Insanity.

Actor, as Brother Li and Oscar

Blair 布莱尔

Blair is a humble actor who splits his time between the corporate grind and the theatre stage. His stage credits include one-act plays The Fool, A Desperate Man, The Seducer, and the ensemble production Hello, Madman. He has also appeared in several local indie films. By day he’s a 9-to-5 banker, by night a 5-to-9 actor—he insists this is what “work-life balance” looks like.

Actor, as The Telephone Booth Lady

Emma Liu

Emma Liu is a risk management professional on Bay Street who, outside her 9-to-5, turns to acting as a source of peace and healing. She believes in the transformative power of performance, where stories serve as a bridge between people and cultures. Fluent in Mandarin and English, she brings a unique cross-cultural perspective to the stage and screen. Her recent performances include “UnMute” at the 2024 Toronto Fringe Festival, the 2025 Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, and a short film. IG: @eminloveoflife

Actor, as The Middle-aged Woman

比卡 Ziqi Liu

比卡 Ziqi Liu is an actor and theatre organizer. She has created and led a theatre collective, producing community-based performances and events. As an actor, she has appeared in numerous stage productions, continually developing her craft through performance and collaboration. Her work often explores bilingual and cross-cultural storytelling, connecting audiences across languages and traditions.

Actor, as Margaret

Lu

Lu (小鹿) is a Toronto-based actor and co-founder of 4Xi Drama Club. Her notable works include the Toronto Fringe Festival production Unmute, stage plays such as The Insanity, Thunderstorm, and The Old Villa, as well as short films such as Predator and Wuchang. Passionate about acting, she performs in both Mandarin and English, bringing energy and authenticity to her roles. She is dedicated to creating theatre that is both culturally resonant and intellectually engaging, inviting audiences to reflect on the intricacies of the human mind and emotions.

Actor, as Young Man

Antong Xu

Antong Xu (he/him) is a settler, born and raised in Qinhuangdao, China, now based in Tkaronto. Sometimes he performs, sometimes he writes.

His plays have been developed at Tarragon Theatre’s Young Playwright Unit, First Born Theatre’s Playwriting Roundtable and fu-GEN’s Kitchen Potluck.

我上次写 bio 时许愿，下次写 bio 时已经找到了新工作。哟吼我找到了！希望我下次写 bio 的时候，我的剧本已经有点儿真正的水花儿了 : )

Actor, as Eric

Simon Yu 三文鱼

He has been engaged in performance for over a decade, beginning with stand-up comedy and later expanding into storytelling, stage acting, and improvisational theatre. This broad foundation has shaped his approach to character and presence on stage, bringing depth, spontaneity, and authenticity to every role.