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Mimi Lau

One minute she was laughing off study stress; the next  the 11-year-old was in tears as she spoke about her broken family - and the beatings.
The grief spilled out as she recalled being unfairly punished for her step-brother's slipping grades.
Speaking between the acts of a dress rehearsal for an English musical at a northern Tin Shui Wai  primary school, the girl, who asked not to be named, said she had never met her real mother.
'But drama can be a refuge for me to leave the studying stress and family sorrows behind, even for just a while,' she said.
When performing, she lit up, part of a 95-member  cast preparing to put on  the English musical  Annie.
It will be performed at Yuen Long Theatre next weekend.
The musical is a HK$200,000 production backed by the board of the Christian Alliance SY Yeh Memorial Primary School.
This is the third time William Yip Shun-him,  artistic director of Theatre Noir,  has led the school's drama students  in a challenging project, during which pupils' fears of expressing themselves in English are repeatedly confronted.
Yip said he felt he was on a social educational mission  to lift the young spirits of those living in an area dubbed a 'city of sadness'.
'I saw a man jump to his death 200 metres from me. It happened the first day I set foot here,' he said. 'Last year one of my students in the musical was on the run with his parents because they were being chased by loan sharks,' he added, recalling some of the  complicated family stories he comes across in Tin Shui Wai.
Opportunities for performing arts were hard to come by.
'The students are full of potential; what they need are the opportunities and vision from the schools to guide them,' Yip said.
The isolated town is notorious for its family tragedies and social problems.
Census and Statistics Department  data for 2006 shows Yuen Long district tops many of the indicators traditionally used to reflect social problems.
With a population close to 540,000 in 2006, half of the district's population lives in Tin Shui Wai. The median household income was HK$14,300 a month,  compared with Hong Kong's average of HK$17,250.
It has Hong Kong's highest concentration of people under 15 and the highest number of single-parent families, unemployment rate, child abuse cases and juvenile delinquents aged between 10 and 20.  The list goes on.
As at the end of last year, there were nearly 30,000 welfare recipients in the district, half of them living in Tin Shui Wai.
With such a community background, the 11-year-old girl's story becomes less surprising. There are many others with similar stories.
The town has received a lot of attention from policymakers, businesses and society after a series of shocking murder-suicides.
Policymakers and social workers have vowed to try to put a stop to Tin Shui Wai's catalogue of woe.
Although the area is gradually getting more job opportunities and community facilities, there is still something missing.
The artistic director of Chung Ying Theatre Co,  Ko Tin-lung,  said Tin Shui Wai was not only economically underprivileged, it was also culturally poor because of its geographical isolation.
For  Ko, drama and the chance for creative expression  are the answers.
'Hong Kong's cultural development has been heavily focusing on the so-called golden-triangle, that is Tsim Sha Tsui, Wan Chai and Central,' said Ko, who began sending drama teachers to the area last July.
He said students were underexposed to arts and cultural events as expensive tickets and transportation costs to major cultural venues served as two major  deterrents.
Ko said tickets to artistic events would cost at least HK$100 and a round trip to the urban area could cost up to HK$50. As Yuen Long district councillor Chow Wing-kan  put it, HK$150 would be enough to feed a family of four for three days in Tin Shui Wai.
Ko said Hong Kong  needed to cultivate diversified sources of performers and audiences to support the development of the west Kowloon cultural hub, 'otherwise, art will remain another luxurious privilege for those who can afford to pay'.
Facing all the negative criticism from outsiders about Tin Shui Wai, the students at the Christian Alliance SY Yeh Memorial Primary School said they were disappointed to see  it labelled  the 'city of sadness'.
'It's not like other tragedies are not happening in other parts of Hong Kong; why are they only pinpointing us? It's not fair,' said Esther Leung Ho-yan, 11,  who is playing Miss Hannigan  in Annie.
'I feel they are looking down on us because we have more new immigrants from the mainland than others,' said Cheryl Yip Hiu-yan,  also 11.  She is playing Annie.
To them, Tin Shui Wai is a town with fresh air and no flooding during typhoons, and they adore its down-to-earth community atmosphere.
They all agreed that the only thing setting them apart from students at elite schools was their command of English.
Principal Zoe Cheung Siu-ha said Tin Shui Wai students needed a more vivid approach to learn English. 'Learning support provided by parents to their children is somewhat limited due to the relatively lower socio-economic status here,' Ms Cheung said.
Hiring a private tutor or relying on their parents to help them with English are not things Tin Shui Wai students could take for granted. In order to encourage them to learn more English while developing the confidence to use it, the school is investing heavily to provide the children with performing arts opportunities.
'With English musicals you can really see the children are progressing with their spoken English,' Ms Cheung said, adding that the children were also becoming more prepared for the challenging tasks ahead.
This is the school's third English musical.  It  successfully staged Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat   at Lingnan University  last year.
With an even bigger production this year, Annie is set to be one of the greatest challenges  the children will face in school.
Originally a comic strip, Annie became a popular Broadway musical in the 1970s. The story is set in 1930s New York City and  tells the story of Annie,  an orphan  who leads  other orphans to find love and happiness  in their miserable lives.
Director Yip  said the show was perfect for the children.
'I think the theme of the play is really good for this area because it's full of hope. Annie is tough, she won't give up easily and is constantly looking ahead for a better tomorrow,' Yip said.
'Upholding this idea while thinking the best is yet to come is the kind of message we are trying to send out in the community.'
Some may think it is too much to ask primary school children to perform a large-scale English musical.
With a shortened script in English still over 40 pages long, 10  English songs and dance steps to rehearse repeatedly for the past eight months, it has been a  demanding process.
As their big performances   begin in a  week, the students are feeling the heat.
During one of the  dress rehearsals, about 100 of the young performers were running around in their oversized, dirty orphan costumes trying to make their entrance to the scenes on time.
'Don't  underestimate the potential of the students,' the director said. 'They can do much more than you think.  Producing a Broadway musical  in  English is not impossible, if you give them enough time and opportunities.'
Yip  said it was important to  introduce English drama training at an early age.
'For students, it's good that we start drama training in primary schools because they are not self-conscious,' he said.  'They aren't afraid to express themselves in English on the stage so they are easier to work with.'
Mr Yip said it was an effective way to teach them English as students could pick up new  vocabulary, pronunciation and the courage to express the lines out loud in front of  an audience.
'They are not only reciting but also asked to understand the content of the script, too,' he said. 'It's a subtle but very efficient way to learn.'
There were blank moments during the rehearsal when the students  forgot their lines but things would come together soon, he said.  'The feeling of achieving something after a  painstaking process is something that I really hope the students will remember for the rest of their  lives.'
Tickets for three performances at Yuen Long Theatre on May 10 and 11 are gone. About 180 free tickets will be available from Monday for an extra show on May 11 at 11.30am. Call 3152 2973.



All the world's a stage