Lucy Sheen: A call for better representation for British East and Southeast Asians
Trigger warning: the interview tells of Lucy’s personal experiences of trauma, but also includes potential triggers such as experiences of racism and graphic references to racist language.
Lucy Sheen is an actor, playwright, poet, a transracial adoptee, and mother. She is one of the founding members of BEATS, which is an organisation that advocates for better representation for British East and South East Asians (BESEAS). In her interview this week, Lucy tells us about her personal experiences and struggles with stigma and discrimination throughout her career.
Can you tell us about BEATS and what led you to create an advocacy organisation for British East and South East Asians?
BEATS want to change British East and South East Asians (BESEAS) representation in Theatre and on-screen (film and TV). The organisation advocates and challenges in order to change the current and historical narratives that have dictated who and how BESEAS are portrayed in our (UK) culture, by increasing the representation of BESEAS onscreen, backstage, and behind the camera. To achieve this representational and narrative change BEATS helps to amplify, promote and nurture BESEA talent. At the same time, BEATS encourages, cajoles, and sometimes “badgers” those who are not quite there yet. BEATS tries to get people to rethink and check their own biases when it comes to BESEA representation and engagement. BEATS lobbies those who have the power to be proactive and action-led. To cast produce and commission BESEA talent, especially the talent that has established itself but has not yet been able to catch the breaks that others have. We want to see narratives that centre the British East and South East Asian life experience, contemporary and historical. BESEAS don’t have that cultural experience, yet. We see storylines, themes, content based on East Asian and South East Asian works. Dramas set against an East Asian backdrop featuring UK BESEA talent. But more often than not, they’re not portraying BESEAS, but East and South East Asians (ESEAS) some representations are better than others. But the norm is very much still a stereotype or a story told through a western lens. Those representations don’t relate to any lived experience that I and many other BESEAS have. Let's be clear I’m not saying we shouldn’t have stories of migration, immigration or Colonialism. That’s where I come from. But as a British person of East and South East Asian heritage (Hong Kong Chinese, Colonial era, and also of Dai heritage) we need to see and hear those narratives as well. And all of this unseen, unheard content needs to be curated and authored by BESEAS. That’s why BEATS came about. Why BEATS continues. Why the work that BEATS has done since it started in 2019 has been so extraordinarily effective. Probably why it has been criticised by some. No one likes having the spotlight turned upon themselves. Especially those who have been marginalised and discriminated against because of their ethnicity. But just because you’re from a marginalised community, have experienced prejudice or racism; doesn’t mean that you don’t have your own racism, prejudices, and unconscious biases. The BESEA community is like any other. There is good bad and indifferent. We are diverse and we are not perfect. BEATS has never been afraid to challenge inequality, internal racism, prejudice, colourism, antiBlackness, nepotism, hypocrisy, or cronyism. That has painted a huge target on BEATS’ back. BEATS has received negative criticism especially regarding The BEATS Test, launched in January of this year at an industry event hosted by The BFI and supported by ITV.
You are a published poet, playwright, and writer - what inspired you to get into writing?
Frustration, the fact that I spent eighteen years (1992-2010) exiled from theatre through no fault of my own. No one was casting me until I caught a break in 2010 (Hungry Ghosts at The Orange Tree Theatre, starring alongside Benedict Wong). The roles that I had been seen for as an actor, the roles that I was being seen for and cast in, the lack of control I had as an artist of colour, was even less than the minimal hold that say an equivalent white actor might have. No agency or investment in these narratives, how these narratives were being curated and represented.
I’m also from a very unique demographic I’m a minority that’s in a minority. I’m of BESEA (Hong-Kong Chinese-Colonial era and part Dai) heritage. I'm also a transracial adoptee. In terms of identity, perception, and representation. It’s a double/triple whammy. Marginalised, discriminated against, the prejudice, racism and hatred are something else. I found growing up that no-one, not the country that I had been exported and adopted into or my birth culture wanted me. I was a nobody, culturally dislocated, isolated, linguistically disenfranchised, existing in a no-man's land. To this day I don’t see myself or people similar to myself represented on stage or on screen. Though since the Orphan of Zhao protest (I was involved) in 2013,
in theatre things have changed and that is heartening. But we’re still not where we should be. How much longer do we have to wait before things really change? And not just for BESEA I might add. TV/Film change is glacial, in spite of the many public protestations, diversity is key. BESEAS still aren’t represented or even included as they should be. It’s all talk and talk is cheap.
Taking up the pen, getting my writing seen, it’s been an uphill struggle. The overall mindset of those who have the power (commissioners, producers, production companies, some literary agents too) has to radically change. BESEA work, well mine, many people “love my writing” but not enough to invest in it or produce it. It’s too niche, not commercial, they want something more relatable for the overall audience demographic. They want BESEA characters that are recognisable. In other words, subtle stereotypes and tropes.
What has been your biggest success so far and why?
Lol, the fact that I am still here. In spite of all the historical, institutional and structural challenges any person of protected characteristics or artist of colour faces. That I have managed somehow, to carve out some semblance of a career never ceases to amaze me.
The main highlights of my career are:
1) Ping Pong landing the female lead in a British feature film.
2) Being published, twice as a playwright. Even though, try as hard as I might, haven’t been able to secure funding to produce either play yet! (I wonder if that tells us anything about arts funding?)
3) Being cast in Tim Luscombe’s play Hungry Ghosts at The Orange Tree Theatre in 2010. Which basically relaunched my acting career.
Lastly, my play BABEL written for ArtsEd and rewritten to be produced and filmed using Zoom during the first lockdown of the pandemic 2020.
What challenges have you faced in order to get to where you are now in your career?
Racism, prejudice, stereotyping, internal racism from some fellow British East and South East Asian creatives. I am not considered by a small minority, to be authentically “Chinese.” I’m not a native speaker of Cantonese, Mandarin or Hakka.
I don’t (not now anyway) look like the typical BESEA female. Or the idea that most white creatives and indeed the wider society have when they think of a female BESEA. More often than not when I am seen for a role it’s because of the colour of the skin, because my facial features are quite obviously East Asian. More times than I care to remember I am asked (yes even now) can you do a “Chinese” accent. There are or course exceptions. Call the Midwife or Casualty, but they are the exception, not the rule. In Call the Midwife on the face of it, Olien Chen was a stereotype. But she isn’t, far from it. She is a fully formed, flawed and nuanced character. Or at least I was able to find the nuance. Oilen was a very relatable character to any grandmother or mother no matter where they come from. Thanks to the beautiful writing of Hedi Thomas.
Chloé Zhao has become the first Chinese woman and the first woman of colour to win an Oscar for best director. What do you think this will mean for aspiring Asian filmmakers?
It’s huge, I’m hopeful that this will lead to more BESEA and ESEA making their way into the spotlight and that that will trickle down to the grassroots. The problem we have, one of the reasons for BEATS is that particularly BESEA aren’t seen as British, period. Even now and one only has to look at the horrific rise in antiAsian hate crimes in the UK since the pandemic, to realise that this discrimination, this historical prejudice, and racism has never fully gone away. That won’t really change in the UK (or for that matter anywhere in the western world) until we redress the structures that make it easy to continue to marginalise, erase and denigrate BESEAS. That means developing the talent that already exists and encouraging new talent. Start casting BESEAS in protagonist roles. Hire BESEAS to write, invest, and commission. At the moment in the UK, we deal with singularities of diversity (a phrase I coined whilst talking with Marcus Ryder on social media) it appears that when it comes to BESEAS you can have only one artist that is successful. You might get one or two BESEAS in a production but more often than not those characters aren't British, they’re immigrants to this country, or they are robustly “othered”. Where are the stories that reflect not just the immigration, migration experience, yes, our history and our roots? But what about the 3rd, 4th, and 5th generations? What of BESEAS like me? Or those who have similar experiences of “being British”? Until we openly see our own diversity on and off-screen and stage, it’s always going to be a challenge to see ourselves included.
Can you tell us about the BEATS fellowship?
The BEATS fellowship was created specifically to try redress the imbalance, the lack of writers of BESEA heritages being hired. To try and give these writers agency, some traction to get their work out there, looked at, to open some of those doors that remain steadfastly closed to BESEA writers.
Film and TV perpetuate racial stereotypes which often shape and reflect common prejudices. It feels like the industry still has a long way to go. What changes would you like to see happen?
How productions are created right from that first seed. If a production is based on BESEA characters or set against the backdrop of an ESEA country. Who has control of these narratives? Are the people in the room the right people to tell those stories? Casting, why can’t a BESEA be cast in non-specific roles? Why can’t I be the CEO, the Grande dame, the matriarch or the protagonist of a storyline without having to be intertwined or the side kick to a white western point of view and protagonist?
Following the recent violent atrocities against the Asian community in America, the hashtag #StopAsianHate began circulating on social media. Have you noticed any changes since the movement started?
I personally encountered the anti-Asian sentiment just before the first UK lockdown back in March of 2020 when I was on my way to work. I was rehearsing for a show at The Bunker (Unburied by Jimn Suh) I was verbally abused by a white passenger on a bus. I was so shocked not because of the verbal abuse, that never went away in over half a century. But it had got less and less. The racism transmuted into micro-aggressions. The racism of over-friendliness and people patronising you. The racism of hyper politeness. But this was like I was suddenly back in the ‘60s- ‘70s England. The most terrifying thing was that the person who verbally abused me, had thought about what they were doing. They whispered it into my ear to minimise the chances of anyone else hearing what he said to me. What does that tell us about the type of abuse, racism, prejudice, and perceptions of BESEAS in the UK? I have seen little change in over half a century. It has affected how and when I venture out. During the pandemic and lockdowns that was easy. When having to travel it was by cab. Even now if I have to travel any distance for personal reasons, finances allowing I’ll order a cab. If I can’t then I have to think twice, three times about whether that journey is absolutely necessary. This is going to be the way of life for a good while yet. I think some groups in the wider society have yet to fully grasp this.
COVID, the pandemic won’t just suddenly end because we’ve been vaccinated. Or the R number goes below 1. Or the sun is shining and we can venture out. In the same way that racism never really goes away. It certainly didn’t if you were a BESEA. Or indeed for any person of colour.
BESEAS for some reason have never been able to shake off the 18th-century vilification and stereotypical and racist tropes of representation. It persists to this day even in these relatively enlightened times. Dismantling the scaffold for these prejudices appears to be almost impossible for BESEAS.
I think that as a “community” British East and South East Asians need to start having some very serious discussions concerning internal racism, colourism, and antiBlackness. I am married to a Black British man and we have a daughter.
I came out very strongly and vocally in support of #BLM, and found myself on the end of some pretty horrendous communications. Interestingly all privately sent, DM, PMs, online anonymised emails via my website. These people knew what they were doing. I received death threats. I was told that I was a race traitor and multiple, awful and disgusting racial slurs regarding my daughter, including your daughter’s a n****r monkey.
BESEAS have yet to collectively acknowledge their own foibles when it comes to race, ethnicity, and identity. Like any other group in UK society, there are those amongst us who are racist and discriminate. We have to stand up and challenge these unacceptable views. In order to stand shoulder to shoulder with others who are discriminated against, we have to deal with our own demons. I’m sure there will be those who will disagree strongly with my opinion. I know there are those who completely deny any assertion that racism or prejudice exists amongst BESEAS, but my personal experience is that sadly, it does.
That’s partly why BESEAS find themselves at the bottom of the ethnic minority pile, I think. We have to start supporting one another much more. Start supporting other minorities and marginalised communities too. Our strength is our own diversity. When we come together under the BESEA umbrella we don’t lose our own unique ethnic identity, we add to it and to our ability to lobby, to be seen, and to be heard. The same goes for supporting others who have similar experiences.
For far too long subconsciously and sometimes consciously we’ve bought into the model minority myth. That’s helped to keep BESEAS downtrodden, marginalised and erased. There is also a view held by some, if you advocate, make a fuss, speak out, you’re doing something wrong. You’re ostracised and ignored. It’s not helpful either when members of your own community turn on each other on social media and also behind the scenes. The truth is no one else cares. We just end up looking like idiots.
We have to be brave. We have to challenge ourselves. Be open, honest, lean in, and embrace those uncomfortable conversations. If we don’t, we’ll always be the outsiders. We will remain the minority within the minorities.
Well, that’s what I think, but then I have always been an outsider, even amongst the minority that I am identified with. Maybe that’s why I think the way that I do?
To find out more about Lucy you can head to her website: www.lucysheen.com
Twitter @LucySheen
Instagram @LucySheen