LUCY SHEEN

Posted March 2017

A thousand cuts bleeding into a massive whole — inside the experience of marginalisation

A moving, fairly disturbing, collection of poetry from Hong-Kong-born writer and actor Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen, Ungrateful — A Paper Daughter, takes you deep inside the experience of perpetual marginalisation. All the small everyday unthinking acts of callousness that grind you down are laid bare on paper. It begs the question: why do we do this to each other?

There's lot of pain in each of these short poems powered by a strong voice and a clarity of vision that blasts away extraneous matter to reveal the hard, white glittering diamond at the centre.

Each poem grants a glimpse of what it was like to be a Chinese adoptee in Britain in the 1960s onwards, taken on as a baby by a well-meaning but hopelessly out-of-their-depth white family. How must it have felt never having your inner workings seen or responded to with warmth, and an almost entire absence of the most basic human connection: love. A weaker character might have been driven debilitatingly mad but instead, Lucy uses it to fuel her art, to make us see and experience what this existence is like for the person at the heart of it. Together they roll up into a massive punch.

It's not an unrelenting wave of misery, more a series of vignettes, a shutter opening and closing, giving us snapshots of a unique life. In "China Is Not a Good Place to Be a Bird" she finds herself a murmuration of starlings when she longs to be free, "screeching across the air Like the Feral Cockatoos of Hong Kong".

Even in mid life Lucy is still finding out about tradition and habits that might have been second nature had she not been uprooted at birth. She asks, "Why Do Old Chinese People Hoard So Badly?" and sees fear of poverty or worse in:
" ... a jar of fermented baby mouse wine
Empty jars, a precious commodity
Washed out with care
Ready to receive Chinese herbs
For soup
Deer tails
Dried seahorse broth
Empty chocolate tins
Empty tubs ..."

all waiting to be filled with good things, a bit like the poet herself. Is she perpetually balanced on a fulcrum of unease, of displacement, in the moment before toppling into victory or chaos?

The writing is restrained, allowing us to feel the emotion. You don't need hyperbole when the events speak for themselves, the cumulative effect of a thousand cuts bleeding into a massive whole.

Do Chinese count? Lucy has counted and placed politics to the fore in "Chinese Numbers", a chilling page that takes us through cataclysmic events from the Dover 58, the Chinese migrant workers found dead in a lorry, to the estimated 400,000 Chinese killed by Japanese fascists in wartime experiments.

All those colonialist turn-of-the-20th-century yellow peril slanders are still with us, mutated, morphed into manifestations that are deemed acceptable, often hiding in plain sight. Lucy's poems provoke a deep engagement with the questions with which she's grappling. This marginalising dynamic is real and whipping away like a snake and too much of our energy is wasted trying to work around it. Every once in a while it snaps hold and injects its poison. If the author can wake us up to stare it in the eye and call it what it is, then she has done us all a favour.

"Shipped from one culture to another, China’s girl-children bartered as excess commodity, that is story of "Ungrateful - A Paper Daughter" by Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen, whose brilliance exceeds biology. In short, poetry is required for strong emotion, not essays or plays which she also writes, but for poetic phrase this important, this necessary. Adoption is not for the weak, but a transforming trafficking of child, regardless of clan and custom. This sacrifice is not ordinary, not even comprehensible that one country would permit its own daughters be abandoned for a policy. It’s China’s loss. It’s dreadful. Read Lucy’s words to comprehend the consequences."

Posted July 2013

"Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen Sheen's poem Chinese Water Thoughts reminds me of a contemporary Eastern Emily Dickinson. She fabricates her words in a meaningful and enjoyable manner. Every day frugality is seen through wonderful and sensitive eyes."

Graca Guimaraes, Literary Editor Banana Writers 

Posted March 2022

"Lucy is an accomplished actor, playwright and digital artist who recently contributed to the WeRNotVirus production with her piece entitled “I am not a virus.” Lucy is here to talk with us about the dangers of lazy stereotyping, how historical attitudes have shaped this current upsurge in discrimination and what can be done to push the needle when it comes to improving and expanding Asian representation."
TheShortlist
Interview with Johnny Campbell CEO of SocialTalent 

“SocialTalent is the world’s most popular e-learning platform dedicated to hiring and talent management. Our goal is simple – we give teams the skills and knowledge needed to find, hire, onboard and engage great talent. Learn from leading industry experts on an intuitive platform that can be easily tailored to your specific needs. SocialTalent is the solution for hiring excellence.”

Posted Jun 15, 2020 Guardian Lockdown Culture - Theatre

Available online
T en short play s responding to the rise in racist attacks since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak have a cumulative power

• Hottest front-room seats: the best theatre and dance to watch online
  The idea that racism is itself a virus with a toxic global spread has gained traction during the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly since the killing of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. This series by Moongate Productions and Omnibus theatre begins with that premise and focuses specifically on racism exacerbated by Covid-19 and enacted against Britain’s east and south-east Asian communities.

“We are not a virus,” is a repeated refrain in these 10 quick-response dramas made to raise awareness of the 21% rise in reported hate crimes towards these communities, and amounting to two hours of theatre on film that incorporates animation, poetry, music and dance. Directed by Jennifer Tang and Anthony Lau, many of the shows speak of racist cliches hurled on the street or physical attacks in the supermarket, and also of bigots who swerve away on buses or trains for “fear” of sitting next to someone of Chinese origin at this time.

Several works deliver their message in direct address or monologue, the actor sometimes speaking in verse. The titular piece, written by Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen, is the result of a callout in May to east Asian women who each recorded themselves reading out a line from the script and it is the snappiest and most rousing of these direct addresses. Edited by Joseph Brett in the style of a Twitter video, the women make their statements to camera: “I am not a tourist.” “I am not yellow.” “I do not eat raw bat.” “I am not your diversity.” “I am the retail assistant you made fun of.” “I am you.”

Posted Aug 17, 2020

There are many tou ching and special things to come out of this tragic time. This is one of them. Babel was written and cast before the pandemic hit, which resulted in the cast having to travel back to various parts of the world during the rehearsal and filming process. Despite this, these acting students from ArtsEd tackle this powerful and necessary piece with momentum, showing how resilient our industry is in these testing times.

Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen’s script unravels many opinions on race, politics and equality in Britain. The set-up is exciting and engaging, with an opening prologue montage introducing the characters and themes of the piece. The montage of videos lays out a consistent aesthetic, not only engaging with the performativity of the online space, but also with the character’s situational circumstances. These include a Youtube channel, Facetime calls, vlogs and home videos. The prologue includes famous quotes regarding race and diversity, such as: ‘Our lives are all different and yet are all the same’ by Anne Frank, as well as quotes from the UKIP manifesto, Martin Luther King and Confucius. Though the quotes range from decade to decade, it seems they can still all be applied to our contemporary situation. What does it mean to be British? Are you proud to be British? What is our responsibility? These are a few questions we are indirectly and directly presented with, within moments of the piece beginning.

We are introduced to clear and consistent characters, all of which take on different perspectives from three incidents that happen on the same night. As an audience member, we are able to interact with the monologues and duologues, choosing the order of the videos that we watch them in. With inspiration from Grenfell tower, Brexit, terrorist attacks and social media, Lai-Tuen was not afraid to be confrontational about our current affairs in Britain. A special mention to Paddy Goodall, Sam Butters, Grace Bassett and Grace Daly who came across effortlessly, through their footage and characterisation. Goodall’s character in Kai’s Proposal is refreshing amongst the heavier content. His pace and timing are addictive to watch. Butter’s erratic portrayal of a criminal is not only convincing, but elegantly evil. His obsession with twitching, speaking closely to the camera and intense eye contact perfectly fits his character’s intentions and past behaviour. Bassett is a mother, confronted by her own daughter for being supportive of a pro-racist and neoliberal MP. She seamlessly develops in her scene, Robyn Facetimes Mum, from ruthlessly admitting she is attending a controversial meeting instead of seeing her daughter, to showing her more vulnerable side reminiscing about how she once fell in love with a Thai exchange student, who is the father of her daughter. She represents an on-going theme of colliding morals when it comes to the cross-over between politics and love (also present in the character of Kate, played by Freya Crompton). Her emotions in this scene translate just as well through a screen as they would on a stage, which is to be commended. Daly presents a performance to be proud of in her videos, as she is captivating to watch. Her delivery of the script has clearly been dissected thoroughly, and yet her performance is so seamless. Furthermore, all the cast of Babelshould be proud of the outcome of this performance.

This is an important piece of theatre, not only for its conversation on current affairs but also to showcase the talent and commitment of this year’s acting graduates. Babel would have always been a significant piece of theatre, but this couldn’t have come at a more powerful time, with the inequality in Britain currently being highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement. Let this remind us how theatre can be more than just entertainment, and can be used to fuel political movement and inspire change.

Posted 2015

"With her characteristic vérité style, Lucy Sheen pushes the documentary genre to virtuosic heights. Her psychologically acute film Abandoned Adopted Here deal with themes of personal identity and cultural difference, delivering a personal and nuance take on an issue of international importance. We are proud to present Lucy Sheen for this years CinéWomen edition. Lucy, was it important for you to make personal film, something you knew a lot about?
...With it's mix of visual clarity ad elegantly structured storytelling, Abandoned, Adopted, Here imparts unparalleled psychological intensity to the documentary genre.
It would be interesting to compare your films to the cinema of Werner Herzog.
What emerges in front of your camera is the value of multicultural society."

You can read the full interview here and see the full documentary here

Posted March 2017

A thousand cuts bleeding into a massive whole — inside the experience of marginalisation

A moving, fairly disturbing, collection of poetry from Hong-Kong-born writer and actor Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen, Ungrateful — A Paper Daughter, takes you deep inside the experience of perpetual marginalisation. All the small everyday unthinking acts of callousness that grind you down are laid bare on paper. It begs the question: why do we do this to each other?

There's lot of pain in each of these short poems powered by a strong voice and a clarity of vision that blasts away extraneous matter to reveal the hard, white glittering diamond at the centre.

Each poem grants a glimpse of what it was like to be a Chinese adoptee in Britain in the 1960s onwards, taken on as a baby by a well-meaning but hopelessly out-of-their-depth white family. How must it have felt never having your inner workings seen or responded to with warmth, and an almost entire absence of the most basic human connection: love. A weaker character might have been driven debilitatingly mad but instead, Lucy uses it to fuel her art, to make us see and experience what this existence is like for the person at the heart of it. Together they roll up into a massive punch.

It's not an unrelenting wave of misery, more a series of vignettes, a shutter opening and closing, giving us snapshots of a unique life. In "China Is Not a Good Place to Be a Bird" she finds herself a murmuration of starlings when she longs to be free, "screeching across the air Like the Feral Cockatoos of Hong Kong".

Even in mid life Lucy is still finding out about tradition and habits that might have been second nature had she not been uprooted at birth. She asks, "Why Do Old Chinese People Hoard So Badly?" and sees fear of poverty or worse in:
" ... a jar of fermented baby mouse wine
Empty jars, a precious commodity
Washed out with care
Ready to receive Chinese herbs
For soup
Deer tails
Dried seahorse broth
Empty chocolate tins
Empty tubs ..."

all waiting to be filled with good things, a bit like the poet herself. Is she perpetually balanced on a fulcrum of unease, of displacement, in the moment before toppling into victory or chaos?

The writing is restrained, allowing us to feel the emotion. You don't need hyperbole when the events speak for themselves, the cumulative effect of a thousand cuts bleeding into a massive whole.

Do Chinese count? Lucy has counted and placed politics to the fore in "Chinese Numbers", a chilling page that takes us through cataclysmic events from the Dover 58, the Chinese migrant workers found dead in a lorry, to the estimated 400,000 Chinese killed by Japanese fascists in wartime experiments.

All those colonialist turn-of-the-20th-century yellow peril slanders are still with us, mutated, morphed into manifestations that are deemed acceptable, often hiding in plain sight. Lucy's poems provoke a deep engagement with the questions with which she's grappling. This marginalising dynamic is real and whipping away like a snake and too much of our energy is wasted trying to work around it. Every once in a while it snaps hold and injects its poison. If the author can wake us up to stare it in the eye and call it what it is, then she has done us all a favour.

"Shipped from one culture to another, China’s girl-children bartered as excess commodity, that is story of "Ungrateful - A Paper Daughter" by Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen, whose brilliance exceeds biology. In short, poetry is required for strong emotion, not essays or plays which she also writes, but for poetic phrase this important, this necessary. Adoption is not for the weak, but a transforming trafficking of child, regardless of clan and custom. This sacrifice is not ordinary, not even comprehensible that one country would permit its own daughters be abandoned for a policy. It’s China’s loss. It’s dreadful. Read Lucy’s words to comprehend the consequences."

Posted July 2013

"Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen Sheen's poem Chinese Water Thoughts reminds me of a contemporary Eastern Emily Dickinson. She fabricates her words in a meaningful and enjoyable manner. Every day frugality is seen through wonderful and sensitive eyes."

Graca Guimaraes, Literary Editor Banana Writers