Vee Leong

Vee Leong is a writer-director in text-based and intermedia art making since 2010. Dedicated to the research and practice of contemporary form and politics of text-based theatre, she has also developed an interest in sound-based and durational performances, investigating socially charged topics and interdisciplinary dramaturgy in an independent spirit and from a feminist perspective.

An active member in cross-cultural collaboration, Vee has appeared in Hong Kong Arts Festival, New Vision Arts Festival, Taipei Arts Festival and Manchester International Festival in recent years. She works closely with such artists as orleanlaiproject, Performosa Theatre, Against Again Troupe, Betty Chen, as well as On & On Theatre Workshop where she was Resident Director from 2013-2018. She teaches Dramaturgy at Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

A creative partner of orleanlaiproject in intermedia performance making, she conceived site-specific sound walk, Birds Sing Louder in the City ( 2019 ); and Claustrophobia ( 2017 ), a multi-channel performance of parallel narratives and intersensory perception. Zoo as Metaphor ( 2014, 2018 ) explores the notion of disappearance using the forms of immersive performance and experience design in the white-cube environment at the pristine heritage site, Oil Street Arts Space.

An award-winning writer-director, Vee is presented by On&On Theatre Workshop to stage such original works as The Plot ( 2018 ), a black comedy that musicalises a conference of voices in face of the precarity of modern existence--from global terrorism to the all-too-frequent metro standoffs; Fragments of Stones and Gold ( 2015 ) explores the rhetoric of “survival and success” in a neoliberal society through a monologue of a woman security guard and an ensemble of six actors and a musician. Reviewed as the best local work of 2015, its vigorous formal experiment is widely recognized. She also directed translated new writings Kassandra, oder Die Welt als Ende der Vorstellung ( by Kevin Rittberger, 2017 ), Martin Crimp's The City ( 2014 ), and Caryl Churchill's Far Away ( 2010 ).

Her breakthrough work, Who Killed the Elephant ( 2012, 2021 ) enjoyed wide critical acclaim over a good ten years. The latest edition scooped IATC ( HK ) Critics Award 2021 with nominations in all categories, winning Performance of the Year, Script/Playwright of the Year and Scenography of the Year. Its Taiwan premiere in 2012 was also awarded Performance of the Year by Guling St. Theatre in Taipei. Toured in mainland China, it later received an English and Mandarin remount in Cardiff and Taipei respectively. The work attempts to rethink such concepts as discipline, mass, identity, state surveillance and development in relations to the colonial past and (neo-)colonial present of Hong Kong. It draws inspirations from an essay by George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant ( 1936 ) about a British colonial policeman in Burma.

Vee was co-curator and participating artist in the two editions of Hong Kong Women Theatre Festival (2001, 2003); joining also Taiwan Women Theatre Festival in 2012. Her research on Hong Kong women theatre practices was published in 2011 by IATC ( HK ).

A graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Vee holds a degree in Journalism and Communication, MPhil in Communication, and also a MA in Performance and Culture from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She received a grant by Hong Kong Arts Development Council to participate in Odin Theatre Week in Denmark in 2013. In 2015, she was selected to the masterclass of Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment ( UK ).

Source: No Discipline Limited
The House of Hong Kong Literature