Trapped in the Flash
Chinese Americans are facing a dilemma: they are either forgotten by history and collective memory, or they are remembered but limited to a single narrative.
The experimental play “Trapped in the Flash” directed by NYU Tisch students, Annora (Jiyun) Dong and Sophia (Jiening) Zhu dissected and explored this dilemma. The real history of Chinese Americans serves as the inspiration and foundation of this production: the Chinese railroad workers who built the transcontinental railroad, the renowned Chinese-American Hollywood actress Anna May Wong, and the Chinese-American photographer Corky Lee. Among them, some were silenced, some were the objects of documentation, while others were documentarians and creators, wielding the power to influence history...
Experimentally, this drama combines the stories of these three Chinese Americans from different eras through choreography and other visual designs, allowing these individuals, who never met but share similar experiences, to influence and collide with each other, rethinking and reconstructing their cultural identities.
