Emily of Emerald Hill

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Emily of Emerald Hill

• Background to
• Emily

Prepared by Mr. Kevin Cheng
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Some facts about Emily

• Emily of Emerald Hill is a one-woman play about a
  Nonya matriarch who dominates her family, yet in
  the end finds that she loses what she loves
  most. 
• The play won the First Prize in the National
  Play-Writing Competition 1983.

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More stuff about Emily

• Since then it has been presented more than a
  hundred times,
• by eight different performers,
• in Singapore, Malaysia, Hawaii and Edinburgh.
• It has been translated into Chinese and Japanese
  and broadcast over Radio Iceland.
• A film version is under negotiation.

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Who has played Emily?

• Leow Puay Tin 17 Nov 1984
• Margaret Chan 4-5 Sept 1985
• Claire Wong June 1989
• Pearlly Chua 13-18 March 1990
• Jalyn Han Practice Theatre Ensemble (Mandarin) 6
  Jan 1991
• Aileen Lau Geuk Lin 16-18 March 1991
• Neo Swee Lin 15-17 Aug 1996
• Ivan Heng Oct 1999

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Emily in a Nutshell by Krishen Jit 1/3

• In the play, Emily is a Chinese Peranakan, who by
  dint of her native wit and cunning, emerges as
  the matriarch of a large and distinguished
  household, but only at the expense of her sons
  suicide and her estrangement from her husband.

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Emily in a Nutshell by Krishen Jit 2/3

• The end of the play sees her alone in a much
  reduced mansion. She is old, and wistful, and the
  remnants of her family have moved to the suburbs
  while she is surrounded by the urgent hammering
  and pounding of an expanding inner-city
  construction.

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Emily in a Nutshell by Krishen Jit 3/3

• The assuredness of a rooted past, springing from
  her Peranakan heritage, lends depth to Emily,
  easily the most convincing character who has so
  far appeared in Singapore English theatre.

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Ivan Heng as Emily
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Ivan Heng as Emily
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Ivan Heng as Emily
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Ivan Heng as Himself
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IVAN HENG AS EMILY CROSS-DRESSING AND PERANAKAN
THEATRE (WAYANG PERANAKAN) 1/3

• Peranakan is a name given to the earliest Chinese
  settlers of the Malayan peninsula and a unique
  culture influenced by Chinese, Malay and colonial
  ways. Peranakan men are known as Babas and their
  womenfolk, Nyonyas.

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IVAN HENG AS EMILY CROSS-DRESSING AND PERANAKAN
THEATRE (WAYANG PERANAKAN) 2/3

• Before World War 2 it was a necessity to have
  males playing female roles in the Wayang
  Peranakan as Baba Peranakan society frowned upon
  the very thought of Nyonyas appearing on stage.
• These men faithfully portrayed roles such as the
  domineering matriarch, the fragile heroine and
  the Cantonese domestic help. Although attitudes
  toward Nyonyas on stage and in society have
  changed, to this day no play is complete without
  a female impersonator.

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IVAN HENG AS EMILY CROSS-DRESSING AND PERANAKAN
THEATRE (WAYANG PERANAKAN) 3/3

• Cross-dressing makes visible what contemporary
  culture has made invisible the 'accomplishment'
  of gender. As the first male actor to play Emily,
  Heng offers a version of performed femininity
  that adds new depth to Emily's struggle. Under
  these circumstances, it's impossible to forget
  that women's 'roles' are male creations. Given
  the play's feminist slant, the inversion is
  provocative and powerful.

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Excerpts of Interview with Ivan Heng

• Int Everybody's searching for a Singapore
  identity. We don't know what we are all about
• Ivan and here's a woman who's Chinese, wears
  Malay clothes, speaks English, studies French,
  listens to Dizzy Gillespie and dances to Fred
  Astaire, sends her son to England where he goes
  to plays, plays polo. Sure she's from a very
  privileged class of people, but really, Emily's a
  citizen of the world. In that glamorous decadent
  world of the 1950s, identity, who we are, was
  never really a problem. Its only now when the
  world is becoming so globalized, and at the same
  time homogenized

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Excerpts of Interview with Ivan Heng

• Int Everyone finds something familiar in Emily
• Ivan Times may have changed, life may have
  become more complex but I'll tell you this -
  Emily lives today. After watching the play people
  say, " oh that's my mother!", or " that's my
  sister, my aunty, my grand-aunty", nobody dares
  to say " Oh that's me!".

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Excerpts of Interview with Ivan Heng

• Int There are many dimensions to her character
• Ivan On another level it's about the woman, and
  all the parts of her. As a woman of her time she
  was assigned to her roles in that big patriarchal
  system and what were her roles good
  daughter-in-law, wife, mother, ambitious for her
  husband like a modern Lady Macbeth, uh, y'know,
  good grandmother, what do all these roles mean?
  Jilted housewife, just what do all these roles
  mean? She was a veritable CEO!

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Excerpts of Interview with Ivan Heng

• IntYes, I wanted to ask you about that. What
  sort of qualities do you think you being a man in
  a woman's role, has imparted to the character? Do
  you think it has given it a new edge or somehow
  made the character appear stronger?

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Excerpts of Interview with Ivan Heng

• Ivan I think that just because it's a man, you,
  kind of make visible all because, it is a man
  performing mother, performing jilted housewife,
  performing, performing, the point is that
  performing is something we all do as human
  beings, everyday of our lives. We perform the
  good son, the good daughter. With Emily sometimes
  you see the real person beneath all these masks.
  This mask that we all put on, it's about
  survival!

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Excerpts of Interview with Ivan Heng

• Int I don't know. You can't put a finger on it.
  There's some spiciness to their character.
• Ivan Spicy Huh? Lemak (rich as in, rich in
  coconut milk) huh? I think that that's it because
  they're so confident, y'know. The men may have
  the money but who actually wears the trousers?
  They held the fort while their men were taken
  away or taken out by the war. They politicized
  the kitchen and the bedroom and the living room.

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Interesting Links

• W!ld Rice Home http//www.wildrice.com.sg/producti
  ons/shows/emily.htm
• Interview with Ivan Heng http//www.happening.com.
  sg/livehtml/features/0107emily.html
• Stella Kons Notes on the Play http//www.emilyofe
  meraldhill.com/EEH20play/Emily20Text20Notes.htm
  l
• Reviews http//inkpot.com/theatre/emily.html
  http//www.stageleft.com.au/2002/emily.html