Jane Hutcheon’s mother never spoke much about the trauma and upheaval of her past. She preferred to remain quietly stoic about her heartbreaking childhood, set against the fading opulence of Shanghai in the roaring ’20s and pre-WWII British colonial Hong Kong.

But once her mother began to slide towards dementia, Hutcheon’s journalistic pedigree demanded she turn her skills towards the one story that would ultimately make sense of her own history and identity.

Written and performed by Hutcheon against a backdrop of enthralling family images, the journalist and author has constructed a compelling narrative focussed on her mother’s life. The first half of the piece traces the turbulent heritage of Bea Greaves, documenting a Eurasian girl’s survival despite being orphaned and forced to endure a childhood marred by serial displacements, alienation, and war.

Born during Shanghai’s economic prime following the end of the Great War, Bea lived surrounded by affluence. While British colonists in Shanghai enjoyed immense wealth and prestige, as a child of Eurasian parents, Bea’s heritage was stigmatised as an unwanted by-product of colonialism.

At four, her mother died, and her father shipped her off to live with an uncle who had overcome the prevailing anti-Eurasian prejudice to make an enormous fortune. Yet despite this wealth, as a girl of mixed Chinese and Anglo descent, Bea was consigned to a life of invisibility and vulnerability.

At age nine, Bea’s father again uprooted her, shipping her to another branch of the family in Hong Kong. While struggling to find her place in a new family and city, the news reached her of her father’s death.

Forced to flee to Macau during WWII to escape internment by the Japanese, who classified Eurasian people as enemies of the Empire, she eventually returned to Hong Kong and became a journalist. This brought her into contact with Robin Hutcheon, an Australian newspaperman, coincidentally also born in Shanghai. They married and started a family in Hong Kong.

Catalysed by her birth in bustling Hong Kong at the end of its history as a British colony, Hutcheon’s narrative turns to follow her own childhood as the offspring of two newspaper journalists. While always retaining her relationship with her mother as the story’s touchstone, this section follows Hutcheon’s burgeoning journalism career as she travels the world reporting on the events shaping global politics.

Hutcheon’s credentials as a veteran journalist shine as she guides the audience through her complex ancestry, always carefully placing the personal against the background of world events, allowing the historical context to illuminate and deepen understanding of the family narrative. It’s a poignant tale, the music providing a gorgeously subtle counterpoint. Composed and performed by Dr Terumi Narushima, the addition of sound from a startling variety of percussion and traditional stringed instruments generates both atmosphere and an emotional landscape beneath the narrative.

Simply staged, Hutcheon unfolds her impressive monologue against an enthralling backdrop of images collected from family archives and curated by renowned photographer and visual storyteller William Yang. Working as part of the theatrical company, Contemporary Asian Australian Performance, Yang co-directs with Tasnim Hossain, and together they have worked magic, blending their joint experience with stories of diaspora and identity to create this captivating theatrical narrative.

Hutcheon brings her four-generation family epic full circle with her research during her mother’s final years, giving voice to the women from whom she’s descended – strong, stoic women who were silenced by racism and the tradition of allowing history to be told by men. This is a powerful story of survival in the face of personal and political upheaval, captivatingly illustrated and beautifully told.

Lost in Shanghai is playing at the Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, from Oct 20-22 as part of the 2022 OzAsia Festival.

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