A chain play is created by a team of writers. Each writer drafts one scene, having read only the scene that directly precedes hers. Obviously, no-one expects the resultant script to be a paragon of textual integrity. Chain plays are a type of theatre game; and therein lies the key word – game.
This Chain Play by Slanted Theatre is a riotous celebration of Asian-Australian theatrical talent. The writing is sharp and funny, and the performances are mischievously exuberant.
Chain Play actually consists of two distinct works, each written according to the chain play methodology.
Where There’s a Will There’s a Way is written by Katrina Trinh, Mason Phoumirath, Julia Faragher, Niranjan Sriganeshwaran, Natasha Pontoh-Supit and Natania McLeod Roberts, and is directed by Katie Ord. It lands in the genre of sit-com, with plenty of great one liners and characters that are the Asian-Australian cousins of those in Commedia.
How Asian are You? written by Matt Bostock, Alan Fang, Grace Hu, Christina Kim, Eezu Tan and Simone Wang, and directed by Sammy Jing, is more conceptual. Each scene digs into assumptions about Asian-Australian identity, and does so in ways that are both hilarious and poignant. (I’d like to see this type of digging continue in the Sydney theatre scene, digging deeper and deeper to see what we might find ……hopefully gold, and not just some gaping big hole.)
And, to conclude, a possibly utterly irrelevant philosophical digression: every play ever written is part of a chain play. We write informed by what is directly before us, sometimes only vaguely conscious of where we fit into the larger arc of history. And what we write then goes on to inform our near contemporaries, contributing to the intellectual and emotional environment to which they respond. Every playwright suffers from an inevitable myopia. Perhaps that’s no great tragedy; after all, if you can see too much further ahead than your audience, you’re not a prophet, you’re just irrelevant.
But a chain play, for all its playful nonsense, reminds us that we not only have to deal with the social environment in which we find ourselves, but we must also leave something for those who follow.
Paul Gilchrist
Chain Play by Slanted Theatre
at Flight Path Theatre as part of the Sydney Fringe until Sept 24
https://sydneyfringe.com/events/chain-play/
Image by Aaron Cornelius
Theatre Red 
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