Nathan Joe 周润豪 is a Chinese-Kiwi playwright and performance poet. He was born and raised in Ōtautahi, but is currently based in Tāmaki Makaurau. He was the recipient of the 2021 Bruce Mason Playwriting Award and the 2020 National Poetry Slam Champion. His poetry short film, Nathan Joe: Homecoming Poems, commissioned by Going West Writers Festival, premiered internationally at the Toronto Queer Film Festival 2022. His best-known work Scenes from a Yellow Peril premiered at the ASB Waterfront Theatre in 2022. He is also the curator behind DIRTY PASSPORTS, a BIPOC spoken word lineup show.
We spoke to him about his upcoming TinyFest performance, A Short History of Asian New Zealand Theatre.
Tell us about the work..
It’s a work that was developed across this year and that premiered at Basement Theatre in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s a specific genre piece, best described as a performance essay, in the sense that you’re superficially taking a text-based form and breaking it open, and it’s centered on the idea of ‘what is this thing called Asian New Zealand theatre.’
What does it look like to ‘break it open’?
Well, for me as a creator and a theatre maker, I’m interested in breaking the text open in a way that is unexpected so for this, essentially a spoken piece, one of the interventions we use is having the performer seated on a stationary bicycle. So, reading the script, and delivering this kind of lecture, while pedaling the bike, and the bike is connected to the lights so the performer is powering the lights as the deliver the piece, so it’s a kind of providing a parallel momentum. Also, the text invites whoever is performing to put their own personal history into the piece.
So the work changes depending on who’s performing it?
Every performance has a liveness to it that is unique. So, when I’m performing it, I’m not saying the exact same things I said when I first performed it. It has a certain spontaneity to it.
How does performing it in Christchurch change it?
There’ll be organic stuff that comes out. In the work, we ask the performer to remember personal memories and so that section might be adjusted to reflect Christchurch more. For me, being born and raised in Christchurch means there’ll be an inevitable sense of this particular city and what it means to me.
About the bike… how fit do you have to be?
You don’t want to be too fit – because there’s something about watching someone sweat it out live on stage! There’s something about a performance work where the corporeal tangible body is risking something that makes it more compelling. That tension and adrenaline is really exciting to me.
How long are you pedaling for?
Basically, an hour – there’s some built-in short breaks – but it’s basically pedaling the whole time, going at it for a full hour. A performance within a spin class!
Nathan Joe’s A Short History of Asian New Zealand Theatre
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