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Iris |
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Iris is a solo show, both written and performed by Jen Yip. Ms. Yip
developed her play through a workshop at innovative Pan Asian Repertory
Theater, and first performed it as a reading in January 2008. In her
later staged productions, audiences reacted with strong enthusiasm and
emotions to her engaging and often heartbreaking work. |
Iris Chang was a highly acclaimed journalist and author whose highly
accaimed book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World
War II, brought to public conscience for the first
time one of the worst atrocities of World War II, committed by the
Japanese Imperial Army against the China’s capital city of Nanking. As
fame thrust Iris in the spotlight, she kept her outward cool and welcomed
the role of political activist, confronting a top Japanese official on
national television and demanding an apology from Japan to China for
atrocities committed during World War II. She approached marriage and
motherhood with the same passion and zeal, inducing both admiration and
envy from those left to eat her dust.
Beautiful, engaging, outspoken, and exasperating: to many her life was a
larger-than-life story, which even after her nervous collapse and death at
age thirty six, is still not over, or resolved. Was she a perfectionist or
a polar depressive? Was it a suicide or yet another conspiracy of murder?
Iris offers a look at the public and personal struggles of a brave,
complicated woman and gives voice to her unique and often overlooked
cultural influences.
Many thanks to Ernest Abuba and Tisa Chang of
Pan Asian Repertory Theatre for their support and guidance in the development of
this work, and to
author Paula Kamen for her generous research support and for writing
³Remembering Iris Chang². Excerpts from Finding Iris Chang (Da Capo,
2007), by Paula Kamen, used with permission of the author.
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Iris at La MaMa ETC, October 20, 2008 |
Iris at Pan Asian Repertory Theatre 2+3 Nights March,
2008
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Iris at Pan Asian Repertory Theatre New Works March, 2010 |
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