From her LGBT play We Are Gay to self-censoring for the first time, Hong Kong dramatist Candice Chong on keeping calm amid the chaos
- Candice Chong’s dark tale of three gay men in a ménage à trois was set to premiere at the 2022 Hong Kong Arts Festival before the city’s fifth Covid-19 wave hit
- She talks about why she’d tell her kids to leave Hong Kong, her first time self-censoring and her thoughts about retraining as a property agent… maybe
People can become desensitised to bad news when a lot of it comes in quick succession. For Hong Kong’s arts scene, cancellations of live performances began nearly three years ago because of the citywide anti-government protests. Then came Covid-19. It has driven many to despair, but playwright Candace Chong Mui-ngam appears quite blasé over the prospect of her new play We Are Gay never seeing the light of day.
“There is nothing we can do. I was fuming in the early days of theatre shutdowns. But what good does it do if I rant about it? Nothing will change. The only option is to stay calm and tell yourself you are witnessing something really unusual,” she says.
That sense of resignation is not uncommon in Hong Kong. Ever since Beijing’s heavy-handed crackdown on dissent following the 2019 protests, the fear of arrest has meant that concerns about the government’s handling of the pandemic, or its implementation of a new national security law, rarely venture beyond online tirades.
Now, the loss of artistic freedom might force one of the most unflinchingly honest and celebrated Cantonese-language dramatists of her generation to reconsider her life plans. “I think I may retrain as a property agent. I like the idea of finding a home for people,” Chong says early on in the interview.
