★★★
They say write what you know, and Diana Feng certainly writes from the heart and lived experience in her one woman show Don’t Call Me China Doll, where she tackles belonging and identity in the acting industry as an East Asian actress in the West.
It is no new conception that female actors are often so far penned into their typecast they hit a point of no return professionally. This is true of women of all backgrounds, but even more true when you add the intersectional struggle of women of colour.
Anna May Wong was the first Asian-American actress to rise to fame in the mid 20th century, a public figure Feng uses as a stimulus for her piece. As she prepares to play Wong in a new biopic in the present day, she directly compares herself to her as an actress in today’s climate, finding herself still confounded and limited by racial stereotypes that have come to shape her career.
Feng is presented as a flawed character, as she openly discusses being stuck between wanting to honour her heritage in her work whilst not perpetuating harmful stereotypes further. There is a lovely intimacy and humanity to the piece as Feng passes through a plethora of human emotion, highlighting the complexity of the representation.
There is a great deal of underlying humour as she conversationally delivers stories about her tiresome experiences at auditions, where, as an East Asian actress she is limited to playing familiar archetypes we have all seen on TV such as the assassin, the exotic sex-worker or the dragon lady- which she does with a tickling accuracy. She does well to involve the audience as she enlists the help of two members, asking them to come up onto the stage read from a script where she is auditioning to play yet another binary, soulless stereotype.
Although told with a bitter-sweet humour, the underlying core of the piece is that the acting industry is still as inherently racist as in the 20th century.
The set is a little too simple, made up of thrown together washing machines drawn onto boxes and although she successfully transforms herself into the other characters she slips in and out of, the story and exactly where she is, is a little hard to follow and a slightly slicker structure and a more polished set would certainly help to contextualise and help us focus on the important themes being discussed.
Despite this, Diana Feng is an experienced, intelligent and engaging performer who commands the space and her audience well. Overall, she has created a show that is packed with integrity, education and has opened up a vital conversation about representation. Don’t Call Me China Doll deserves a larger audience.
Don’t Call Me China Doll is playing at Underbelly, Bristo Square until 26 August as a part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2024.
Words by Abbie James
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