Date of Interview: 22 July 2025
Interviewer: Joanne Leung
Interviewee: Jeremy Tiang
JOANNE LEUNG
How did your journey with New Earth begin? We will start from the start.
JEREMY TIANG
So I moved from Singapore to London in 2004, and I had previously been in the UK for university. But this was me coming back consciously to work in theater, and I was there for the next few years, and during that time I very naturally gravitated towards New Earth or Yellow Earth, as it was called then. Because it was at the time, one of the few companies that actually seemed to have space for East and Southeast Asian theatre artists.
I think the very first encounter I had was interviewing Philippe Cherbonnier who was at the time the literary manager for an arts magazine in Singapore. And kind of getting to know what New Earth did through that interview, and then sort of slipping in a, “and how could I get involved” type question.
At that time, I was primarily an actor, and I auditioned for a couple of things with New Earth, didn’t get cast. And I went to drama school and New Earth gave me one of my first jobs out of drama school, which was a kind of theatre in education thing at the British Museum, because they had an exhibition for the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang.
I was playing a palace guard, I think, and I had to sort through some coins with the kids and kind of explain the monetary system in 200 BC in China. And, you know, it’s great to be part of this company that was sharing Chinese culture with British schoolchildren and the British public. So that gave me a good insight into what New Earth was doing.
No actually, before that, I had gotten involved with New Earth as a playwright, and I was just dipping my toes into playwriting at the time. But New Earth had a writing group, also run by Philippe that was a safe space where I could just explore writing my first plays. I had a script that had a few readings that was developed through New Earth, and it was just a really supportive group of other emerging East and Southeast Asian theatre artists.
As all of us were coming into playwriting from an acting background. And so it was a great place to explore and a place where I felt I didn’t need to, you know, explain where I was coming from or have my culture not understood. I could just come in and just write what I wanted without having to justify myself.
JOANNE LEUNG
Can you tell us about a production you were involved in with New Earth that was particularly meaningful to you, and what was your role in that production and what made it stand out?
JEREMY TIANG
Well, Yellow Earth gave a full production to one of my plays, The Last Days of Limehouse. So my role was the playwright, and that was particularly meaningful because I had left the UK by that point. I’d moved to New York. And so in 2014, when this play got a staging, you know, to be commissioned by New Earth after I’d already left, and then to be able to come back to London to witness this production made me feel still connected to the UK, even though I was gone, and is still part of this community, which I still feel to this day. Like it was a great way to stay in touch and to continue working with a lot of theatre artists, including Kumiko, including Gaby, who is in the cast. And to feel that even though I’d physically left London, I could still be a part of that community.
The Last Days of Limehouse is a play about the East End Chinatown that ceased to exist at some point in the 1950s and 1960s, having been the first Chinatown in London and a very vibrant community that, to us, essentially wiped away the name of urban renewal, to the point that when you walk around Limehouse today, you cannot really see any traces, that there was once a thriving Chinese community there.
Like we went walking round the streets and there were like one or two traces, like a signboard here, a mural there, like just very faint, a very faint imprint. So the play was an attempt to bring that community back to life. And it’s important to us that we did it there. So we had a site specific performance at Limehouse Town Hall.
This was really special. One of the former residents of that Limehouse Chinatown actually attended. She must have been in her 70s or 80s by then, but she was there as she came in and witnessed it, which was great, because one of the resources that I had was a trove of oral histories that had been collected by a researcher some years before I started writing, and her oral history was one of those stories.
So to have her actually able to attend brought it home that we weren’t just, you know, telling a story for outsiders, we were telling a story involving members of that community in the place where it happened.
JOANNE LEUNG
Were there any surprising moments during the rehearsal or performance process?
JEREMY TIANG
I guess there’s two answers to this. I have a positive and negative memory. So the negative memory is like a year or two before we did a workshop. And initially our plan was to go on a walking tour around Limehouse Town Hall, you know, do the show, take the audience for a walk around Limehouse and come back to the town hall.
And it quickly became apparent that trying to do any kind of processional theater through Limehouse would get abuse shouted at us in the streets. So that was a lot, and made us decide to have it in the theatre. It was a reminder that what we are doing isn’t always welcome. So I think it did temper our understanding of where we were in the community, not in a negative way necessarily, but in a, okay there’s still work to be done.
We can’t just assume we’ve moved past all of this history and there’s no more discrimination. It’s an ongoing struggle. So that was an issue. But then it was resolved. The actual production took place entirely within the town hall, and that was fine. No problems at all. And the positive memory is that I wasn’t actually able to attend rehearsals because I was waiting for my green card, and I couldn’t leave the country till I got my green card and the timing happened so that I was waiting for it all through rehearsals and kind of going well, I missed the first couple of previews. And then it arrived in that post and I was able to get to London to see it.
So you asked about surprising moments, and the whole thing was a surprise to me because, you know, I had some phone conversations and we had, because it was 2014 and no one knew what Zoom was but we had some Skype conversations. So I had a little bit of a sense, but I don’t know if you’ve seen the pictures, they’re on the New Earth website. They transformed the town hall, and I was just able to walk into this amazing environment that I had not seen, and I think it just had such an impact. Like if I’d been around during the development and rehearsal process, that wouldn’t have been so surprising to me.
But I think I truly got to experience it as an audience member. And there’s something quite special about handing over your script and then just walking into this magical experience. I would have liked to have attended rehearsals, but actually I really enjoyed just coming into this completely fresh.
JOANNE LEUNG
How would you describe New Earth’s approach to storytelling and representation? And feel free to just talk, especially with The Last Days of Limehouse.
JEREMY TIANG
I feel like New Earth has always had a community centered approach to representation. Meaning New Earth doesn’t decide in advance what BESEA representation looks like and then just does that, but rather listens to the community and provides a platform where each of us can express our identities differently. Which I really appreciated because as an immigrant from Singapore coming to London, I’m going to have a different idea of what a BESEA identity might look like than someone who had grown up in the UK, or someone who had come from another place.
So I did feel like there was room within New Earth for me to say, well, this is what BESEA identity looks like to me. You know, I would like to present work that has elements of non-English language. The Last Days of Limehouse contained both Mandarin and Cantonese, and it was just great that at no point was I told, you can’t do that, you know, no one tried to make me do it all in English.
It never felt like I was being forced to assume a British identity. It’s like I was always a Singaporean theatre artist who had lived in London for some years, but I didn’t have to come under a British East Asian umbrella, and there was still a space for me within the company.
So I would say in one word, it’s capacious.
JOANNE LEUNG
Well, what do you think sets New Earth apart from other theatre companies? I think you mentioned it, but I wonder whether you have something else to add.
JEREMY TIANG
Other than what I’ve already said. I would say it’s history. That it’s been around for so long, and that you can see both a continuous thread of New Earth’s work, but also an evolution in the company. I mean, you know, including the change of name. Yellow Earth is no longer an appropriate name for the company. And going, “okay, we will shift it.”
And along the way, New Earth has made many changes that I think acknowledge that we are moving through time, that identity is not static, that the British theatre landscape and cultural landscape is shifting and just moving in tandem with that. So it’s a company that has moved with the times whilst maintaining its link to its own history.
JOANNE LEUNG
And how has New Earth contributed to the visibility of British East and Southeast Asian artist’s stories in that respect?
JEREMY TIANG
I mean, I have to give a historical answer to this. You know, I left the UK more than 12 years ago. So during the time I was there in the aughts and early teens, I would say it provided a platform where there was none before. And I know even before that, when the company was first set up, there really was very little in the landscape.
You know, at university, I first came to the UK in the 90s for uni, my experience was just going to see shows at the National Theatre, just going like, the whole cast is white, what’s happening? There was just no, but not no, but there was very little inclusive casting. There wasn’t really a sense that we should be telling the stories of everyone in this country, and not just the white people. I shouldn’t say there wasn’t, but there wasn’t enough.
And I just had to really hunt to find anything different. So it was, I think, a very bleak landscape that has shifted in great part thanks to New Earth and other theatre artists who’ve done a lot, both in terms of making theater that tells different stories and shows there are other British experiences, and also in the sense of activism, knowing when to stand up and say, “no, we deserve a space too.”
JOANNE LEUNG
Have you witnessed a shift in the industry in that time when you were still in the UK, you felt? Because of the work of New Earth?
JEREMY TIANG
Well, I would say that there are many more theatre artists from a BESEA background, many more theater companies. So the biggest shift is that New Earth no longer has to be this company that has to represent everyone, but can be one of many. When I first moved to the UK, I did not ever think I would see something like My Neighbor Totoro on the West End to do as well as it has.
And yet there it is. Like the representation in My Neighbor Totoro is a world away. One of the first productions I saw on the West End was Miss Saigon, and I was going, “What? What is this? What is happening?” I thought I would be happy to see Asian people on stage, and this is, no.
So I feel like we’ve moved on a lot. Like I thought that the story that was told in My Neighbor Totoro was overwhelmingly positive. You know, like real attentiveness, like it was great here, Japanese being sung. Like, I loved all of that. And I would say that there has been this great shift like nowadays if I go to see a play in London, there’s a BESEA person in the cast, sometimes more than one.
It’s no longer this moment of, “Oh my god, this is amazing.” It’s like, “Yes, this is as it should be.” But earlier on during my time in the UK, it really was, “there is one East Asian person in a play, let’s make sure we all go and see it,” and we’ve moved on from that. And it’s great.
JOANNE LEUNG
And personally, for you, what challenges have you faced as a British East and South Asian artist in the UK theatre landscape, and how have New Earth supported or responded to those challenges with you?
JEREMY TIANG
Well, you know, as an actor, I wasn’t really getting cast in a lot of things, and New Earth was one of the few places where I did feel like, okay, there are actually roles I can play here. I eventually moved out of acting and more to writing because my whole CV was just like playing Japanese businessmen in corporate videos.
I don’t know, I think it’s a challenging landscape for everyone. And New Earth was one of the few places where I felt like I was part of the conversation. With a lot of other companies you’re just auditioning and then waiting to hear back, or you’re sending in your script and waiting to hear back. And New Earth, I felt like I was part of the process.
I was being included in conversations and told, okay, these are the concerns we have about budget, this is what our programming looks like. Like there’s a sense that the community is being included in decision making and being shown behind the scenes, and it wasn’t just waiting to be included.
JOANNE LEUNG
And now hopes for the future. What does it mean to you to be part of New Earth’s 30 year legacy?
JEREMY TIANG
For me personally, it means having a stake in the UK and the BESEA community even all this time after I’ve left. I do come back to the UK fairly regularly and you know, I go to see whatever plays happen to be on and I still feel like I’m a part of that and just having that sense of involvement, even at a distance, even after all this time is very meaningful to me.
And that wouldn’t have happened, I think, if not for New Earth, if I just spent all those years in the UK just auditioning and doing shows here and there and not really being part of the company, I don’t know if I would still feel the same sense of belonging.
JOANNE LEUNG
What do you hope audiences take away from the work of New Earth?
JEREMY TIANG
You know for me, it’s always been about BESEA audiences seeing ourselves in our stories represented on stage and that’s always been the aspect that really matters. Like, I know that is this whole other thing of teaching British audiences our culture. And sure, that’s important too, sharing our culture and broadening the landscape is important too. But I think, most importantly, we’re making work for our own communities.
Having the space to do that is really valuable. So what I hope BESEA audiences take from this is that I can tell my own stories without having to compromise. Like that it’s a space where I can just be fully myself.
JOANNE LEUNG
And what are your hopes for the next generation of British, East and Southeast Asian artists, and for New Earth’s future?
JEREMY TIANG
Just that both the community and New Earth continue to grow and can expand to reach heights that my generation would never have thought possible. To just keep dreaming bigger and spreading wider.
JOANNE LEUNG
Yeah. Thank you so much, Jeremy. I think this concludes pretty much the chat we have so far. Now, I do have, an ask from them to us, which is if you can find a photo, a costume, a prop from a show, that host particularly significant for you, feel free to share it with us.
JEREMY TIANG
So in The Last Days of Limehouse, you find out late in the show that the title is also the title of a book that one of the characters has written. And imagine my delight coming to see The Last Days of Limehouse and discovering that the props team has actually made the book. This is a fake book, it doesn’t exist.
It’s exactly how I would have imagined it, because she’s a university professor in the show and it’s like, yes, this looks like the sort of book an academic would write. It’s like got the right kind of cover, just, you know, so thoughtfully put together.
And so at the end of the run, I was like, can I please keep this? I think when I get back to New York with me. So I kind of have this on my bookshelf and every time I see it, it makes me so happy.
JOANNE LEUNG
And is there a line or memorable moment from a new production that has stayed with you?
JEREMY TIANG
I was trying to think of this and honestly, there are so many, but I would say there used to be this great festival of East and Southeast Asian plays called Typhoon, and they are just play readings and you just go and every night for six nights there would be these readings and the whole community would come. And one year it was in Greenwich Theatre, and Yellow Earth had arranged for it. I can’t remember if it was pre-show, or post show, but there were performances in the lobby. There was like stand-up, there was music. And I just remember looking in the foyer of the theater and just seeing a sea of BESEA theatre makers. Typhoon was always very community facing. It was mostly the fellow theater makers who attended, and there were just so many of us.
And so I just thought, this is the community. This is the community that New Earth has built.