Actor Mei Mac: ‘We are pointing at stereotypes and going: isn’t this

ridiculous?’ The ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ star’s new show challenges a century
of anti-Asian racism in the theatre Sarah Hemming JUNE 23 2023 3
In a rehearsal room in Manchester, the actor Mei Mac is recalling an audition she had some years
ago.

“A casting director asked me if I could use an Asian accent,” says Mac, who was recently nominated
for an Olivier award for her outstanding performance as Mei in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s My
Neighbour Totoro. “I was so taken aback — Asia is such a huge continent. I said, ‘Do you mean a
Cantonese accent or a Bengali accent?’ And they said, ‘What’s your native accent?’ I said,
‘Birmingham.’”

She laughs about it now, but it’s precisely that sort of problem that her new project sets out to
tackle. Mac plays the lead in Kimber Lee’s untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play, a blazingly satirical drama
about the prejudice and casual stereotyping that so many British east Asian and south-east Asian
(BESEA) actors have encountered. Winner of the inaugural Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting,
International Award, it has its premiere (directed by Roy Alexander Weise) at the Manchester
International Festival this month, before heading to London’s Young Vic in September.

Lee’s play speeds through a century of drama, beginning in 1906 and repeating the same scene over
and over: handsome American soldier sleeps with beautiful local woman, abandons her, returns to
take their child, she kills herself. Though the title clearly echoes the 1989 musical Miss Saigon, the
parody also scoops up references to Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly, the Rodgers & Hammerstein
musical South Pacific and television series M*A*S*H in passing.

That’s why representation matters. You can’t be what you can’t see’ The playwright, who was born in
South Korea and is now based in New York, has said she was moved to write the drama after
watching a 2017 production of Miss Saigon. It’s clearly fuelled by rage, but the weapons it deploys
are exuberant theatricality and withering satire.

“This play is incredibly powerful and spicy and funny,” says Mac, whose character Kim keeps finding
herself stuck in yet another narrative of exploitation and self-sacrifice. “The story is of Kim trying to
break through a century of objectification, misogyny and racism — through those bamboo ceilings.
But it uses humour as a tool to do so. It’s completely unapologetic.” She adds that while Miss Saigon
might be the spur, the play’s remit is much broader. “We are pointing at stereotypes and going, ‘Isn’t
this ridiculous?’,” Mac says. “It is not about singular shows or singular productions or individuals. We
have to look at society and go, ‘How is it that we are in a world where these narratives can even
exist?’”

Mei Mac, photographed in rehearsals for the theatre © Ella Mayamothi Strikingly, the play’s
premiere will coincide with a revival of Miss Saigon at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre, which prompted
BESEA company New Earth to withdraw a show at the same venue and Sheffield Theatres to publish
its reasons for staging it. The situation has raised again the question of whether controversial texts
should be revived or consigned to history. For some, they are too inherently problematic to solve; for
others, it’s important to stage them and interrogate them. Mac takes a nuanced view.

“I’m not interested in attacking the Sheffield production of Miss Saigon — I know a lot of people who
are working on it,” she says. “I think the show itself perpetuates harm. I would never ever want
someone to feel like they couldn’t do something . . . But the people who make it have to be the ones
who are most affected.” It is the systems and structures that produce these works that need to be
addressed, she suggests: the new play’s repetitive structure aims to show how stereotypes are
perpetuated and embedded.

There’s something really powerful about seeing a character who’s experienced a century of
oppression finding her resilience’ Mac, 30, grew up in Birmingham, the daughter of working-class
parents from Hong Kong, and had not considered working in theatre until she encountered the
touring company Yellow Earth (now New Earth). “I thought, ‘Wow, if they can do that, then maybe I
can do that.’” It’s why representation matters, she says: “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

She made her way through fringe and repertory theatre, and in 2022 received widespread praise for
her funny, truthful portrayal of four-year-old Mei in Totoro, Phelim McDermott’s stage adaptation of
the Studio Ghibli film. Her performance was partly inspired by Iris-Mia, the small daughter of a
colleague on the show, whom she describes as “powerful, sassy, very quick-witted and not afraid of
anything”.

But her early career often brought her face to face with stereotypes and assumptions: “The number
of times I was called in to read a sex worker. I would absolutely do a show in which a sex worker was
complicated and nuanced; I have no problem playing a sex worker. But most of the time I was simply
there to be a sexy object. That is also how people view east Asian women.

“I think things have changed a lot. [But] we still have a hell of a way to go. Even at the Oliviers, I was
the first ever east Asian actor to be nominated for best actress in a play.”

During the pandemic, Mac co-founded Rising Waves, a mentoring scheme to support BESEA artists,
sustain diversity and halt a mid-career talent exodus as artists struggle to maintain a living. “It’s also
why we see such a drain of working-class artists,” she says. “The programme was about pairing
emerging artists with established artists: the aim was to get those early career artists firmly into their
mid-career, supported through a scheme of practical skill sharing.”

Scarcity can create a sense of competition, she says: the scheme aimed to foster a sense of mutual
support. That positivity is important for Mac. It’s also one of the qualities in untitled f*ck m*ss
s**gon play that appeals to her. Over the course of the drama, her character’s awareness gradually
increases and she begins to fight back against the narrative in which she’s trapped.

“There’s something really powerful about seeing a character who has experienced a century of
oppression finding her resilience,” she says. “After the fourth cycle of the same old shit, you’d forgive
her for giving up. But she doesn’t. My really dear friend Don [Le], who works in human rights, says
that in the east and south-east Asian community we talk a lot about intergenerational trauma. But
what we forget to talk about is the other side of the coin: intergenerational resilience.

“Art can mirror life, and life can mirror art, and sometimes you have an opportunity to change what
that looks like through art. You have to show something different.”

‘untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play’ runs at Royal Exchange theatre, Manchester, June 24-July 22,
royalexchange.co.uk, then at the Young Vic, London, September 18-November 4, youngvic.org