Telling Tales from Asian Women

This production by the Women of Asia Company has a long collaborative history. The eight female performers together represent a kaleidoscope of Asian female experience, their own racial origins as varied as the material they present.

There is an interesting contrast between the liberated performers themselves and the female predicaments they depict in their monologues. There are moments when it seems as though Asian women, stereotyped as "small, sexy and subservient", are hopelessly trapped in social practices that make pitiful victims of them.

But some of the characters on stage find they can exercise power in even the most subservient of roles. The prime minister's wife, for example, although privately ignored and long since sexually replaced, discovers that her public role as the exemplary support of the leader of an emerging country can actually reverse the power relationship with her husband.

No such luck for some of the other women, however. The two Japanese children sold into prostitution by their parents, in Virgin Sale justifiably claim "the stilts of our parent's house are borne of our bones". The retired prostitute in a later monologue has an illusion of power that is soon tragically exploded.

Equally heart-rending is The Dowry, a story of an Indian arranged marriage suffered by the young wife at the hands of her mother-in-law. This monologue, and the two about prostitution, highlight one of the show's most significant themes. This is the part played by other women in the enslavement of girls, often to brutal male sexual fantasies.

It is not all grim, however. There is one funny episode of a multi-racial culinary clash: Arrivederci Tokyo. Told by the Italian wife of a Japanese man, it describes her frustration at facing what seems to her a starvation diet of fish and rice. The same kind of struggle goes on between a Japanese wife and her Australian husband in Prisoner of Soy Sauce, but here the feisty woman is clearly winning the battle.

The show ends with Japanese Medea, a tragic tale of the sacrifice of two children and the failure of a loveless arranged marriage.

This is altogether engaging, beautifully performed and thought-provoking work.