When Sophie Gee saw the play The good ones, by Jean Genet, for the first time, in London, she was immediately fascinated by the work. This play, which depicts maids, who love their mistress, but also hate her to the point of wanting to kill her, linked her to her inner rage. Today, Sophie Gee presents good goodat the Théâtre Aux Écuries, a play inspired by Genet’s classic.
It was once established in Montreal that the Chinese-Canadian director decided to produce an adaptation of her own Good. From the beginning, she worked with performers of Chinese origin, with the idea of staging the rich class of China versus the working class.
“During the writing, I discovered that I wanted to talk about something else, that I wanted to talk about my experience of internalized racism and racism in general, and my desire for revenge,” she said in an interview.
Sophie Gee’s family, who grew up in Alberta, have been in Canada for three generations. However, the author has always fought against the Chinese part of herself to blend in with the Canadian white majority. “The piece is really linked to my personal experiences. I am a character in the show,” she says.
good good features three performers, all of Chinese origin. The character of Sophie offers her friends, respectively Charo Foo Tai Wei and Meilie Ng, her film adaptation of Genet’s play, where her two friends also play the characters of Claire and Solange, Genet’s two maids, while Sophie plays the role of Madame.
Gathered in the kitchen, the three friends are preparing Chinese dishes at the same time. For Sophie Gee, this traditional Chinese food, which we ate at her parents’ house, is symbolic of the feeling of rejection she experienced when she was a child.
“When I was young, people were less used to seeing Chinese food. And when I brought my lunches to school, people said I ate worms,” she says. She then asked her mother to only make her sandwiches.
“What attracts me to the history of Good of Genet is that the maids play Madame. However, we try a lot to assimilate people from diversity to whiteness, ”she says.
It is therefore self-hatred that Sophie Gee has tracked down in the discourse of her protagonists.
“I think I have a rage towards society because when I was young I did a lot of things to fit in with society. It was to survive, you don’t want to be different when you’re children. So, there is still this rage in me because I hid a lot of things, I hid my Chinese origins to better integrate myself,” she adds.
In The good ones de Genet, two servants, Solange and Claire, imitate their boss, Madame, before plotting to assassinate her.
“In my version, I ask the question: is it still necessary to assassinate Madam? continues Sophie Gee.
love like white people
Throughout the play, the three protagonists promote Chinese cultural elements, as if to take revenge for the state of inferiority in which they find themselves. “For once China is more progressive,” says Sophie, about the fact that there is a transgender host in China and none in Quebec. She also notes that in China, we never say: “I love you”. “With my parents, it’s not words I would say,” says Meilie.
“But because you grew up in Canada, you do like white people,” Charo tells Sophie in the room.
” What ? Are you saying I’m internalizing racism? Because I take my son in my arms? Sophie replies.
“Why do we have to love like white people? My parents didn’t say ‘I love you,’” Charo continues.
Growing Chinese Power
As the play unfolds, the characters get more and more excited about their Chinese referents, which eventually makes them feel a real sense of power.
“The power of China is increasing, observes Sophie Gee. The maids discover that the Chinese may become the next “ladies”. So they start dreaming, and it gets scarier and scarier. »
“We don’t need Mr., Mrs., anyone anymore,” say Claire and Solange, in Sophie’s version. In this world, they dream, the yuan would be the international currency, WeChat would take the place of Facebook, Huawei that of Apple, assembly plants would be in New York rather than Shenzhen, and Mandarin would be the first. language taught at school.
As China gains power on the international diplomatic scene, Sophie Gee’s parents have recently experienced more racism, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.
“My parents didn’t experience a lot of direct violence related to anti-Asian racism when I was growing up, but recently during the COVID-19 crisis there were people who yelled at them,” says the director on stage in interview.
However, the situation is improving, she believes. But she points out that the acceptance of Chinese immigrants by Canadians always seems to her “conditional”, never acquired forever.
Audible minorities
For Tamara Nguyen, who is co-author of the play, good good is an opportunity to stage the audible minorities, beyond the visible minorities, which we generally talk about. Already, Sophie Gee, who plays herself, is English-speaking, in addition to being of Asian origin.
“Me and Sophie, we both have a similar experience. We are both of Asian origin, and we have experienced this racism, ”said Tamara Nguyen in an interview.
According to her, people who speak with a strong accent may be considered, in society, as less intelligent. In the introduction to the characters in the play, we can read that Sophie “speaks English, French with many errors and a little Mandarin”. Meilie, for her part, “does not speak any Chinese language, but speaks French and English perfectly”. Charo, on the other hand, “speaks French and English with some errors and speaks Mandarin perfectly”.
About Charo, Tamara Nguyen says: “The time she finds the right words [en français ou en anglais]she feels like people don’t take her seriously.”
With its title, good good, Sophie says she wants to point out how Chinese women are often seen as submissive women, good at doing maids, in a way. ” good good, it’s close to candy, she said. Chinese women are seen as sweet, small, pretty and not very smart,” she says.