By Justin Fung
09/02/2024
Non-profit Hong Kong arts group Fire Makes Us Human is going into a hiatus as founder Alex Tong released a statement on the organisation’s social media on Tuesday.
The two stage plays that were originally planned to take place on 2 Feb to 4 Feb at the Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity, turned into fiasco after the Education Bureau pressured the school to terminate the lease of the venue.
Both plays are non-politically related according to Tong. ‘Saam Fan Zung Bank 三分鐘銀行’ is to ponder on the purpose of life when the staff of a bank, customers and robbers were locked in the premise with a ticking bomb. Whereas “Art Gallery Poor? 窮一生藝術館’ asks the question whether one can understand the essence of art.
Tong was told by the Kowloon City District School Development Section that they have received a complaint with a screenshot of inappropriate comments made on social media by one of the members. The decision to withdraw the contract was to follow the guidelines of National Security: Specific Measures for Schools and to ‘create a safe and organized environment for study within the school’ according to a written reply sent to the Hong Kong Arts Development Council member Dr. Au Wing Tung.
In fact, Tong contacted the Kowloon City District School Development Section in an attempt to explain himself and to see if there is any misunderstanding, but finds what they said ambiguous and the conversation “very unidirectional”.
“It was basically what I heard from Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity. I wasn’t even shown the screenshot that the complaint was based on. I was only told by the Education Bureau that they have their own mechanism to gather evidence,” Tong said.
Tong also slammed the obscurity of the decision-making process of the bureau, not understanding why the bureau would decide to shut down the performances when preliminary evidence was not proven to be factual.
“The bureau assumes that I am guilty when the investigation is still ongoing. Whatever reason [the bureau based their decision on], I wouldn’t know what it is. I wouldn’t know who made the complaint, it could be someone within the industry, it could be a random person, or it could be someone from the bureau who is in charge of monitoring,” Tong explained with a wry laugh.
Break a leg to breaking apart
Fire Makes Us Human was founded in 2017 to provide a platform for teenagers to turn their aspirations into reality as stated in a statement from the troupe. Majority of the cast of the cancelled plays are 17 to 23-year-olds with about half being first-timers. They are a part of a program by Fire Makes Us Human, where they spent 20 lessons worth of time to learn the fundamentals of acting and hone their skills, and 3 months on top of that to rehearse the plays.
“It is not about me. I was mostly concerned about my students and their mental health. Some are preparing for the HKDSE, while some are university students, they are still teenagers. Having to experience something like this, I am mostly concerned about the impact on their feelings,” Tong said.
Adele Lee, who is part of the program, is saddened by the news as all her time and effort goes down the drain.
“Since we are not full-time performers or stage workers, the time used for practice came from sacrificing personal time, including family, study, and rest. Resources for us, such as rehearsal venues, were limited. I [find] it depressing,” Lee said.
“Performing arts are about expressing oneself and reacting to society. The actions of the authorities hindering cultural development in Hong Kong are disrespectful to performers and art workers.”
The project was in the works since April last year. Including wages for design, production, script writing, booking venues for rehearsals, purchasing costumes and props, it placed the self-funded troupe under immense financial pressure. Tong tried to “make it happen as we always say the show must go on, but resignedly had to end it here”.
“Whichever venue I book, the same will occur again. I discussed with my team, if we were not allowed to perform at one school, we would risk being cancelled again at other venues. We could not bear the financial burden that it brings. We had to refund the tickets sold, and taking the sunk cost into account, we have already lost at least 100k HKD for this project,” Tong explained.
“It is pitiful and I am indignant, but I am left with no options.”
View this post on Instagram
Official statement from Fire Makes Us Human (Source: @fmhuman on Instagram)
Shrinking creative space
What the group experienced was not a one-off event, but rather a paradigm of the diminishing artistic freedom.
The Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts announced on their website this Monday the play ‘Accidental Death of an Anarchist’ by Dario Fo in the graduation show scheduled from mid-February to early March “has been cancelled due to changes in the Academy’s production plan”, “taking into account professional advice concerning the possible legal risks that our students and staff members could face if the play were publicly performed”.
Members of the production team said on social media they were shocked to hear the news and left “speechless”. They kept asking “what they had done wrong”, but “deep down the answer is obvious”.
It is not the first time the play is being performed in Hong Kong and Mainland China. The play is set to be performed by another troupe in Hangzhou late February this year.
Back in January, the Hong Kong Arts Development Council axed the sponsorship for the yearly Hong Kong Drama Awards ceremony, quoting that they had received “a lot of opinions” last year saying that the content and arrangements of the award ceremony were “inappropriate”.
It is allegedly due to the invitation of local political cartoonist Wong Kee Kwan (Zun Zi) and journalist Bao Choy to host the prize ceremony. Zunzi’s comic strips published on Ming Pao were suspended after the police department claimed that his work would “damage the Forces’ image”. Bao Choy was convicted in 2019 of making false statements to obtain vehicle registration records for a documentary about the pro-democracy protesters being assaulted in 2019.
The government visualises Hong Kong to be the “Hub for Arts and Cultural Exchanges between China and the rest of the World” in complementation to the National 14th Five-Year Plan, yet Tong questions their stance.
“What Fire Makes Us Human has been doing and this program especially is a form of education. You can question my means of education, but you can’t just take away their opportunity to showcase what they have learnt over the past few months,” Tong said.
“They took away the opportunity from me to express myself. You could say I am in despair over the future of arts development in Hong Kong. With the government saying that stage play production is one of the focuses to develop, while the Bureau is running at cross-purposes, how could I be positive about the future?”
Reported by Justin Fung
Edited by Rachel Ng and Crystal Tsang