It was meant to be a non-white version of Sex and the
City. And it was. Until playwright Michele Lee started
digging a little deeper into the idea she’d brought
to Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre – an idea that
ultimately became Going Down, a play about a young
writer (sort of based on Michele) who attempts to
compensate for the lukewarm reception of her first
book, a sexually explicit memoir, with an even more
sexually explicit memoir.“Something was gnawing at her,” Michele recalls
of the play’s protagonist, Natalie – who, in the early
stages of development, was mostly preoccupied with
an unresolved relationship with a dude. The real story,
Michele discovered, was about Natalie connecting with
her mum, a Hmong (aka south-east Asian) immigrant
living in Canberra. “One actor, who I probably dismissed
because he was a white man, kept saying, ‘Why doesn’t
she want to go back to Canberra? What’s she running
from?’ I realised that, like me, Natalie was wrestling
with how to be intersectional, and how not to be in
conflict with herself.”
Exploring being Asian and the related sense of
‘otherness’ wasn’t something Michele had originally
set out to do in her writing, but with the passing of
years, it’s become increasingly important. “Of course,
it was something that was really present in my day-
to-day experience,” she says, “but I didn’t really have
a need to write about it. Maybe it’s a maturity thing.
I kept things under wraps and wanted to assimilate
and fit in, but somewhere in my 20s I went, ‘I’m more
interested in my roots.’”
Going Down is also a chuckle-fest, filled with cringy
parodies of Melbourne culture (there’s even a
sugar-induced hallucination that sends Natalie on
a shoplifting spree through Marimekko). But it’s not a
template for Michele’s work. As she says, there’s no
“formula” to her approach – which probably explains
why her output is as diverse as Talon Salon, in which
participants had their nails done while listening to an
mp3 of a radio play, and Security, a forthcoming drama
about female security guards who cover up their male
colleague committing sexual assault.
So, why theatre, as opposed to other storytelling
mediums? (Michele actually took a screenwriting
course, with the expectation it would lead to a career
in film or TV.) “There’s an elevation that happens
when a performance has an audience,” Michele
explains. “You can walk away from podcasts or TV
or a film that’s playing in your house. But in a play,
we’re literally speaking to you.”Photo
Mia Mala McDonald