Edward Lam (林奕華) questions everything. From democracy to the media, the fiercely independent thinker has made a career out of exploring the contradictions that he sees pervade all facets of society. But in person, Lam is far from bombastic or confrontational. Instead, he prefers to vent his displeasure in the newspaper articles he writes or the plays he directs.
"In terms of my personality, I am quite soft, but I can feel my anger from the things that I see, especially living in Hong Kong," Lam said in a recent interview.
He started writing at the age of 14 and has worked variously since the late 1970s in radio, TV and film and created the Edward Lam Dance Theater, which he founded while working and studying in Europe, in 1991.
Lam is pessimistic about Asian audiences' appreciation of theater. "Theater is very much treated like yogurt from a supermarket. You need it because you need it," he said. "It's not like you need it because you think it will stimulate you and you are not just consuming it."
A long-time collaborator of Mathias Woo from Hong Kong's Zuni Icosahedron, Lam has written and directed numerous plays that question, and are often critical of Hong Kongers' sensibilities and attitudes. Among them are Les Parents Terrible, Ideal School and the popular East Wing West Wing series. He is currently in Taipei directing the sold-out What Is Man? at the National Theater.
When Lam returned to Asia from Europe in the mid-1990s, he hit the theater scene with a number of productions that explored issues of sexual identity. In 1996, he used the word tongzhi (同志) — a term coined by Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) meaning 'comrade' — to refer to gays in Taiwan with the aim of fostering awareness of homosexual issues and solidarity. The issue of sexuality led him into a broader investigation of heterosexuality and its influence on the gay world.
"It was in '97 I had the feeling that I should not keep on doing gay-oriented theater because all the sufferings that the gays are sharing are based on [the ideology] of [heterosexuals]," he said. "Gay men are looking for men who are strong, who are masculine, who are wealthy, who are powerful. They are still looking for something very hetero in their lives."
If his earlier work takes homosexuality as the starting point, he now considers it important to address heterosexual culture because of its influence on gay culture. Lam says that because heterosexual culture is male-generated and thus male-oriented, it is imperative that gay artists investigate what it means to be homosexual in a culture largely dominated by heterosexual ideologies.
"We have everything from the center of man and we have to follow the rules laid by man. That is why you wouldn't have TV programs [or] newspapers that are based on gay culture. That is why I would take hetero as a center, rather than gay as a center. Every time you ask the question, who these man are, and if I am one of them, am I different, or if I am not, then why."
For Lam, one way of answering this question is to trace elements of identity back to classical Chinese literature, which he believes exerted a tremendous influence on ideas of masculinity in contemporary Chinese popular culture. "If you understand the ideology of [a] particular tribe or country, you will naturally understand what that culture is; because ideology is how they see things, how they value things, and what they think of what value is."
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