Date of Interview: 24 July 2025
Interviewer: Caleb Lee
Interviewee: David Lee Jones
CALEB LEE
Hi, David, thank you very much for joining me for this interview. As a start, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got first involved with New Earth Theatre?
DAVID LEE JONES
So I’m an actor. I graduated from my training in 2005, and I was vaguely aware of New Earth, Yellow Earth as it was then at that time, I invited David Tse to my graduation show, and he was kind enough to come.
He doesn’t remember this now, but, I think my mum, who’s the Chinese half of me, exchanged nods with him in the foyer. And then I suppose I’m really hazy on the dates, but I think 2006 was the RSC complete works, and the company was doing King Lear, and I think a lot of us auditioned or did this preliminary audition, big group thing down in Clapham at the RSC rehearsal rooms.
And I think that sort of the first time I was aware of, like, how many of us there were. By us, I mean obviously BESEAs and that was good fun. I remember, you know, reading sonnets with whoever was the voice person at the RSC at that time. And then I think I did a one on one audition for David and presumably for Jonathan, for Edmund or Edgar, whichever it was.
And then, you know, obviously that didn’t come to anything, but I made a point of seeing the show. So I sort of had, I went off and did other things. It’s not sort of too controversial to say there weren’t a lot of opportunities at that time for actors with East Asian heritage. I managed to do a couple of fringe things in my first year.
Then I went, I did a children’s tour in France and had something outdoors that summer, and little bits and pieces, generally in non race specific roles. And then in 2007 I began my association with the Festival Players Theatre Company, which is a touring outdoor Shakespeare company which I worked with for four seasons in total. So I was sort of trying to build my career away from the East Asian world, such as it was, because it didn’t really exist.
But then, you know, there were things happening like the East Initiative. And, you know, I’d come and sort of meet people. And then I was in a show called Burning Maps in 2007, which had a couple of East Asian actors in it. And I was playing East Asian in that one, but also playing a dual role. So I was playing a sort of posh English NGO official, corrupt NGO official. Which is the sort of role I came back to later as well. So that was kind of a nice one to be able to kind of play, use my duality and have that kind of role. And in 2008, I really got more involved with the company because there was a Typhoon that whatever it was, 2008, whether it’s the, I think it must’ve been in the autumn.
And I was in two readings for Typhoon at Soho Theater. I was in Dreams of Red Pavilions, and I was in Wave. And of course, those became significant shows for the company insofar as the Wave became a touring show the next year, which I wasn’t available for, to audition for, unfortunately. And then (Dreams of) Red Pavilions, I ultimately directed a version of, as a rehearsed reading again at the Bush Theatre just after Orphan of Zhao time.
CALEB LEE
I just wanted to kind of follow up. Was there anything in particular about Yellow Earth Theatre back then that kind of drew you to join the company? Well, not join per se, but to be involved in the kind of work they did. That or do you think, you know, very frankly, there wasn’t enough work out there back then, and it was just anything that you could grab.
DAVID LEE JONES
I think I was always mindful that I didn’t want to be pigeonholed, and I felt a sort of anxiety or not anxiety, but I felt some misgivings about being mixed race and not having any proper East Asian sort of cultural personal history, really, or language skills. And so when those roles came up where they wanted me to put on an accent or they wanted to put me, you know, in a robe and a hat, I was slightly resistant to doing that sort of thing.
And honestly, like my whole trajectory as an actor, I hadn’t really imagined, maybe naively, that it was going to be a major factor. I’d done a lot at university as a student actor, and then at drama school. And, you know, all of those were colorblind casting. It just wasn’t a factor. And it was only really when I came out into the business where it’s only, oh okay, this is actually a major issue. This is a major factor.
Should I have, should I be playing this up more? Should I be working on this? And you know, conversations at the time I had with, you know, agents that I was meeting with, sometimes they would say, well, you could play lots of different things, you know, obviously very different times from now. But, you know, they imagined I could play various ethnic heritages, which perhaps possibly was true at the time. I don’t think that would pass muster now.
So it was exciting to know that there was an established company that was doing work, and that it sort of created a kind of thing for the community to cluster around. I try to have I sort of came into this trying to avoid using the word community, but I can remember very distinctly that week in 2008, those Typhoon readings and going every night and seeing these wonderful shows and these wonderful actors and sort of, you know, getting to know people. I mean, many of whom are still good friends of mine.
So that was, that was really significant. And then we were all on kind of similar trajectories. And then having made those connections, sort of to know those people and then running into the auditions inevitably, and seeing the same faces and sort of having a sense of, okay, you know, there’s other people out there who are a bit like me, but also, and by that I also mean Eurasian. I mean people who very much grew up in a British cultural context, but had that, just that difference that was going to make them distinct as a casting type. And that’s I mean, that’s a really brutal way to put it, so.
CALEB LEE
Just to kind of pick up on that. So do you think New Earth Theatre or Yellow Earth Theatre then, has kind of influenced or shaped your personal and professional journey as an actor, or just as your own kind of personal growth as well?
DAVID LEE JONES
It certainly helped me feel like there’s a continuum of sort of a responsibility to people coming through. And I think one feels that more distinctly, if one has a sense of identity or a shared identity. So it’s thinking about, battling all those years to sort of work at how it was going to work with the Academy, with finding the kids who were going to be, who were going to do this. And sort of being aware of some of the cultural baggage where their parents were not necessarily going to encourage them into that field.
And sort of thinking about, okay, how do we normalise this, how do we sort of get these, you know, make an opportunity and create enough visibility in the culture that it becomes a viable option because it also that I think affects the caliber of people, ultimately, you know, there are more good people and there are different kinds of people and that all helps.
Because everyone wants, what everyone always wants is they want to be able to be there on their own merits. But yeah, I can think of sort of times when I’d, you know, gone off and done my stuff, doing the Shakespeare and learned a lot and not very specific things about stagecraft that I was able to sort of utilise and bring back.
So, I mean, there’s a bit in Ye Shen where there is like a very there sort of party scene, and then there’s a bit where Anna Brophy had to get changed very quickly. And I remember sort of working on this bit of script with Kumiko and Vicki thinking about the timings of it, and I knew exactly how long it would take, because it’s exactly the same sort of problem that I dealt with many times on the Shakespeare tours, with Festival Players, you know, very far away from Yellow Earth.
But exactly those things of having a small cast, of having, you know, people doing, doubling, having the availability of musical instruments to help cover the little things. And sort of I do remember being quite like, please, okay, that’s something that is a skill of mine that I’ve learned that I can bring to bear here, and we can elevate that.
And then there’s all these people who bring in their own knowledge. And that’s certainly the case with that show where we, you know, with Vicki’s skill and with Raymond, bringing the puppets and everything. And it certainly when there were fallow times for my career and I think with perspective, I can see I took a step away from the business really between 2012 and 2020 maybe, with the exception of doing a couple of shows, small shows at Park Theatre, one of which for Stone Crabs, so kind of tangential. But it it certainly was the case that, you know, doing doing the Typhoon readings and also Winds of Change related and doing readings and doing, you know, the playwrights group readings and development things that really helped to get my skills sharp as a reader and as a performer and get used to being in front of an audience with kind of less preparation. And I’m really proud of a lot of those readings and of the boldness of what we try to do and, you know, particularly there are things like the readings of Purple Cloud and, you know, a couple of others where we really tried to put on a full staging of it and put a very high bar on ourselves to make the same work as a real show.
And that’s good pressure, that’s good to learn, that’s extremely pleasing to do. And obviously it’s a low risk for an audience when they can come and see a show and it doesn’t cost 50, 60 quid. And they get to see people who may be who look like them. So yeah, I think the sort of knowing that we weren’t alone was always very important.
CALEB LEE
How and in what ways do you think the company has evolved or changed over the years? Right? You mentioned Yellow Earth Theatre, and now it’s New Earth Theatre. And I mean, you have obviously been with the company for quite a long time with different projects at different points in your life, just from your perspective.
DAVID LEE JONES
Well, I don’t, I mean, I haven’t been absolutely central to the company. And I really, really it was only when in Kumiko’s time that she sort of came to me a bit more and we sort of talked more about what she was doing. And I’ve never actually been in a Yellow Earth production or New Earth production as an actor. Which is really, I know, kind of surprising to people, but it just never came up.
Obviously I’ve been in a lot of the readings. And I directed like I said, (Dreams of) Red Pavilions at readings and something else. There were lots of Dim Sum Nights and then the dim sum, the second Dim Sum Nights tour. I did about half of that because they were sort of short plays. But it seems to me that things are flourishing, you know, it’s the nature of theatre, and maybe that’s the nature of theatre companies to change, that things are ephemeral.
I certainly feel that in the early years, when I was aware of the company, that it felt like there was a pressure on the company to represent, to be a lot of things to everybody or to be whatever they want, they needed it to be because it was the only outlet. And that’s a really hard pressure. And without having other funded companies, I think that’s a really difficult situation.
So the fact the company survived that, and we got to a point where it’s not sort of firstly, not the only company in the sector, but also that there are far more opportunities out there in the wider theatre ecology for creatives. I think that’s really pleasing, and I’m sure that I’m not the only person to say that it helped us to cut our teeth, it helped us develop ourselves.
But yeah, it’s you know, whenever it’s, every time there’s a new show and a newish initiative, it’s exciting and I feel positive about it and it’s good to see sort of some of the, you know, some sort of names emerging, of people who were like, okay, this is this is exciting. We’ve got really good people who are doing things.
I mean, this morning, this video game came out. I don’t know if you’re aware of this though, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. Yeah. And I was, I thought I looked at the cast list. Have you seen it? And it’s like wow this is great. So all these people, it’s like, okay, I know, I know, most of these people and most of them are people who are like, you know, who’ve done stuff with New Earth.
I mean, wow, what couldn’t you do with a cast like that? That was exciting to see. Like these are people, who actually, have a utility who are, you know, to the industry or the industries. You know, that it’s actually an example. It’s not just theatre. Yeah. You know, those of us who go off and do bits and pieces on the screen and, and in TV and film and, and radio, and video games. Yeah. It all feeds back and yeah, I mean, I’ve had lots of experiences like that all the time. I mean, I went back to Totoro last week, you know, it’s, you know, what’s, what’s not to be happy about.
CALEB LEE
As you might know, it’s New Earth’s 30th anniversary. Just as a kind of a final question, just to wrap up the interview, what are your hopes for the next generation of ESEA or BESEA artists and for New Earth’s future?
DAVID LEE JONES
I do think there’s a continued need for this company. I think years ago, David did an interview where he said, like the ideal was that you don’t need the company to exist anymore. And I sort of think maybe that’s a bit of a provocation from him because I don’t actually agree with that. I think there are topics and areas of interest that the company can do work about that you wouldn’t get anywhere else.
And I think we can’t sort of be scared of exploring and celebrating our identity just because identity politics has got a bad name from some quarters. So I think there are, you know, it’s not, I don’t think you’re going to run out of things to do because there’s still things to question and to agitate, and there’s still, you know, talent to nurture.
And I think that you can look to other sectors and equivalent sort of situations in other countries and sort of and sort of see, okay, well, there may be though, down there further down the right than we are. And say, okay, there’s absolutely a need for this. There’s absolutely a point to this. And I think that’s important. I mean, it kind of came back to that word.
It’s important that you could have something that can be a community, can locate itself around all that, you know is a focal point in a community.