Anybody who has gone into a Dunedin fish and chip shop will recognise the characters in Two Fish 'n' a Scoop. Charmian Smith talks to the Fortune Theatre team staging the play that looks at an integral part of Kiwi culture and its darker side.
When Hweiling Ow and Chris Parker went to get fish and chips recently, they were astounded that many of the customers waiting for their orders were similar to the characters they play in Two Fish 'n' a Scoop, which opens at the Fortune Theatre on Saturday.
"You get a sense of the variety you get in those places and the variety of New Zealanders with different ages and cultures and ethnicities, from a 4-year-old to an older Maori man who never seems to get his food," Parker says.
The Chinese fish and chip shop is part of our mythology and our culture, according to Patrick Davies, who is directing the play by New Zealand writer Carl Nixon.
The play is a love story in which the owners' daughter Rhea and the new employee, polytech student Jason, fall in love. Problems follow due to racial divides and pressure from family and friends.
The play deals with prejudice, although there is no outright racism in the text, according to Parker, who has recently graduated from Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School.
"I think the play really hits its note when Hweiling's character asks my character what colour he imagines his children to be. It's not saying that you never considered them to be yellow, therefore you are racist. It's just saying what we are used to, what we have grown up with. I've just always seen my kids white like me, and that's not to say I'm a racist. That's just how it is."
Ow adds: "It's the most important question in the whole play, and what the answer may be. We don't hear the answer but people are asking themselves those questions and answering them in their head."
Ow was born and grew up in Malaysia, but a few years in England as a young child left her with an English accent. That meant that when she came to New Zealand for university she was fluent in English, but was not familiar with the culture, which confused people and she felt they treated her differently, she says.
"It wasn't in your face, but it's there, like an elephant in the room, but that was a long time ago and it's changed. In Auckland, where I'm based, I think everyone is confused because there are so many different people and they just can't deal with it, so the bottom line is business and if you can make money who cares where you are from - to be honest," she says.
That said, most of the characters she is asked to audition for in film and television are Asian ex-prostitutes. That's just the way people seem to write, she says.
In Two Fish 'n' a Scoop she plays both Rhea and her father, the Chinese fish and chip shop owner.
The 16 characters in the play, played by just the two actors, range in their attitudes, from Tug, one of Jason's rougher friends who won't mix with any other culture, to Rhea's father.
"Culturally, he's Chinese and he's from China and the work ethic's different. The way they are shrewd and cut corners is different, as well," Ow says.
He is stubborn and closed-minded, has a five or 10-year plan and tries to manage any threats to this. Rhea is to study law so she can help with the chain of fish and chip stores he is planning, and he disapproves of her dating, as it will distract her from her studies.
"His priorities are above morals - morals come second, because there are some calls he makes that I think are not morally the right thing.
"He's sold her the dream about lots of money and she goes along with it. She's doing it because she's used to having decisions made for her, and it's quite good in this play she actually makes some decisions for herself."
Playing many characters, sometimes several at the same time, is a challenge for the actors but each character has a little quirk or spark, so when they come in contact with another character with another quirk, comedy arises, Parker says.
Actors know that within 20 seconds of walking on stage the audience will have made up its mind about the character they are playing, according to Davies.
As artists, they have to discover things about the characters and capture those in appearance, voice, movement and mannerisms.
"When you meet Sylvia Chan, the mother, you make a certain amount of calls based on what you view. In the same way, when you see Jason and see how he's dressed, you make up ideas about how he's viewed. That's what drama does. It holds a mirror up to say 'do you really think you know what these people are?'," he says.
"It's easy to play one character over the arc of a show because there's so much history involved in presenting that character. Each scene has a different idea behind it, but when you see cameos of characters, it's technically different, because within a short amount of time you have to present an entire character and give an idea of their background, otherwise they are just cardboard cutouts.
"These guys have been working extremely hard to populate this play, but also it's a technically difficult play to make look easy. It will look easy and it will flow in a wonderful way, but the technique behind it has to be invisible."
Parker explains: "It's problem-solving. There's a scene with four characters in the fish and chip shop, all in different places in the room, so we look at the scene and figure out how we can make them all seem alive and in the room at the same time, and different, and how to to get there - spinning, roly -poly, or shifting the entire set to the left."
Davies adds: "It's like a gym excursion. You come off not sweating and panting and heaving, but going `I really worked my artistic muscles, not only providing emotion in a great story but also being technically precise'.
"It's like upper-echelon tennis. It looks fluid and beautiful but it takes hours of practice to get to that level."
See it: Two Fish 'n' a Scoop by Carl Nixon, directed by Patrick Davies and featuring Hweiling Ow and Chris Parker, opens at the Fortune Theatre, Dunedin, on Saturday and runs until June 9.
Following the Dunedin season, the production will tour Otago and Southland playing in: Invercargill (at the SIT Centrestage Theatre, on June 13 and 14), Te Anau (at Real Journeys Fiordland Centre on June 15), Alexandra (Memorial Hall on June 18), Cromwell (Memorial Hall on June 19), Queenstown (Memorial Hall on June 20), Ranfurly (Ranfurly Town Hall on June 23), and Oamaru (Opera House on June 24).
