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Three Children in China, comprised six performers, two trained at the Yale School of Drama, three trained at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, and another based in New York, performing the play in Hong Kong and Shanghai. In embodying Three Children - a tale of Two Sisters and A Brother who make a metaphorical journey to their childhood home in Kappan Road, Malacca, Malaysia; they bring to life, Ms Leow Puay Tin's much loved and oft-traveled characters; who re-live and re-enact those childhood experiences and stories that they had lived through and heard, when they were growing up. The performers take to the stage in English and Chinese, respectively; in a highly theatrical story-telling style that creates those places and faces that exist in the fragments of the Children's memories. The dramaturgical form this play takes after is the Hokkien (Fujian) folk opera. However, the textual tradition it hews most strictly to is the non-linear fragmented Western literary form. Three Children was written by Ms Leow Puay Tin, one of Malaysia's foremost playwrights, in 1984. By then she had obtained a Masterate in Fine Arts in Drama and Theatre at the University of Hawaii on an East-West Centre Scholarship. She went on to graduate from the Central Academy of Speech and Drama, London, on a British High Commissioner's Scholarship. My association with Three Children began in 2003, when as a final year Directing student at the Yale School of Drama, I proposed the staging of a work written by this Chinese playwright, who had been born and bred in Malaysia, as part of my course work. This play, a story about the three youngest siblings of a spreading Chinese diaspora; when unleashed on its unsuspecting American audience, took the school by storm. Students streamed into our dressing rooms telling the creative team that it was the most moving theatrical event that they had seen in a while. Two wrote glowing testimonials of what they saw and felt. (Camille's Letter and Steve's Letter) Two years later in 2005, I received a note saying that a new performing platform in New York, calling itself the "Unofficial New York Yale Cabaret", was inviting submissions for exciting and cutting edge theatrical projects. I sent them those 'glowing testimonials' and the play was slected for its Inaugural Season. Three Children was staged for the first time in New York in November that year and again, it took the audience and critics by surprise. Last year, I was invited to submit a proposal for the Inaugural Shanghai Fringe Festival to be staged in November this year, and of course, I recommended Three Children. It was accepted. In addition, I managed to convince the prestigious Shanghai Theatre Academy to collaborate with me on a Chinese-language production of the play. They agreed. So, in November 2006, two groups of young talented actors, performed the same play about the Chinese diaspora, in two languages, Mandarin and English, on consecutive weekends, in two different cities in China - Hong Kong and Shanghai. This was something quite, quite exciting. Those six actors who hailed from two different Acting Schools of Thought, with vastly differing Performance Technique Foundations (The Shanghai actors were trained in Chinese Opera while the American actors were grounded in the Western Stanislasvskian Technique.) had been rehearsing with one director (I am bilingual.) and eventually performed in those two cities, apart but joined. Audiences there were captivated. I was excited by what this might have said and meant - creative co-existence while keeping individual linguistic and cultural characteristics intact, in a collaborative environment , perhaps? We were excited that our efforts had lead us to new encounters with new audiences, in yet another part of the world! Now, we take a well deserved rest. But, should someone out there request the materialisation of the Three Children, we will pick up from where we left off and re-tell their tales again. For now, the curtain falls. Alec Tok Director, Three Children. 
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