About
Welcome to New Earth Theatre’s digital archive. New Earth Theatre has been making work for over 30 years, and our full physical archive — stored at the Victoria and Albert (V&A) East Storehouse — holds over 15,000 pieces of material spanning our past productions, festivals, exhibitions, education projects, commissions, and oral history interviews.
This website offers three things: a selection of 100 items from that physical archive, a “living archive” oral history project conducted in our 30th anniversary year, and a database of BESEA plays collected by the company. Together, they provide a window into the history and evolution of the UK’s longest-running British East and Southeast Asian (BESEA) theatre company — accessible from anywhere with your device.
To explore the full archive in person, please visit the V&A East Storehouse.
New Earth Theatre has played a crucial role in the UK’s cultural landscape through its dedication to the BESEA communities. It was founded in 1995 and, since then, has delivered nuanced storytelling for, by, with and about BESEA people. This spirit of centring communities has been inherited even after the company’s major change: renaming from ‘Yellow Earth Theatre’ to the current ‘New Earth Theatre’. It was in 2020 that this major change was brought to emphasise ‘Earth’ more, which connects to the soil, nurturing and growing new BESEA stories and artists through inheritance and innovation, together with the communities. In 2025, it marked its 30th anniversary, and it was then that this archive project started to preserve our work for BESEA communities and beyond for the past 30 years and more to come.
Please also contact admin@newearththeatre.org.uk if you have any archives you would like to donate.
Last but not least, we would like to show our enormous appreciation to our funders, Arts Council England and Heritage Lottery Fund, along with all the collaborators, for making this project happen.
Diana Feng – Project Manager
Diana Feng is a Taiwanese-Canadian multidisciplinary theatre maker. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, researching culturally specific performance practices and British East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) representation in collaboration with New Earth Theatre, funded by LAPH. Her work explores the barriers ESEA performers face in the UK theatre industry and ways to expand audiences for ESEA-majority productions.
Dr Caleb Lee – Project Manager
Caleb Lee is a creative producer, lecturer and theatre critic originally from Singapore. He is currently a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Exeter and Co-Artistic Director of Five Stones Theatre. With extensive international experience as a festival manager and producer, Caleb has worked on projects across the subsidised and commercial sectors, spanning from Singapore to the UK, and everywhere in between. Recent projects include: New Earth Theatre 30th Anniversary Living Archive, Sinatra: The Musical, Don’t Call Me China Doll, For the Love of Spam, For the Love of Jollibee, Not That Asian, Play On!, Wanted, Wonka’s Circus (R&D), Singapore Spotlight @ EdFringe.
Vinna Law – Archive Assistant & Audio Engineer
Vinna Law is a Malaysian actor and interdisciplinary artist currently based in London. Vinna creates and performs in multiple languages across a variety of performance mediums, with work spanning the UK, Malaysia, South Korea and Spain.
Xiaonan Wang – Archive Assistant
Xiaonan(霄楠) is a UK-based actor and theatre-maker, originally from China. Her practice is shaped by sustained training in contemporary visual and physical theatre. She is drawn to the interplay between language, environment, and time, and often gives voice to what is overlooked or forgotten. Alongside her artistic practice, she engages with cultural organisations and advocates for feminist perspectives in the arts.
She is an alum of New Earth Writers Academy (2022).
Glenda Cao – Archive Assistant
Glenda comes from a background in film, TV & media art and social anthropology. She has worked across documentary film production, theatre marketing, research, and cultural projects in both China and the UK. She was part of New Earth Theatre’s Living Archive Project, supporting oral history collection and the anniversary exhibition. As an archive assistant, she worked on cataloguing, scanning, and digitising New Earth’s 30-year archive. She is particularly interested in how stories are shaped, recorded, and shared across different cultural contexts, with a focus on migration, diaspora, and underrepresented communities.
Hikaru Morimoto – Archive Assistant
Hikaru Morimoto is a performance practitioner, dramaturg, educator, researcher and writer both in the UK and Japan. Their work is situated at the intersection of multiple practices and fields: butoh-informed practice and other physical theatre practices, devising, queer of colour performance and theories of Postcolonial Studies, Queer Theories, and British Chinese Studies. They recently contributed to installation artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s film as a performance coach. They also have taught in multiple conservatoires, including the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama where they undertake their doctoral research, focusing on East and Southeast Asian racialised sexuality and queer performance.
https://www.hikaru-morimoto.com/
Project Volunteers
Johan Amatsakio, Glenda Cao, Serena Coady, Shirley Jamil, Robin Khor, Joanne Leung, Tiurlan Sitompul, Rimi Solloway, Mia Sumida, Bessie Wang
Graphic Designers
Celeste Hsin Hsin Tsai, Diana Feng and Angela Wang
Website Designer
Celeste Hsin Hsin Tsai
Mentors and Special Thanks
Dr. Kate Dorney (University of Manchester), Erin Lee & Rianne Simons (The National Theatre), Simon Sladen & Sabrina Offord (V&A)
TK Hay, and Sophie Perkins from the National Lottery Heritage Fund
New Earth Staff
Artistic Director and Co-CEO: Ailin Conant
Executive Director and Co-CEO: Lian Wilkinson
Associate Producer: Tammie Rhee
Creative Producer: Clarissa Widya
Creative Engagement Associate: Kelsey Yuhara
Academies Development Producer: Lauren Yvonne Townsend
Social Media Marketing Manager: Natalia Knowlton Vásquez
New Earth Board
Kai-Chuan Chao
Grace Ng
Richard Shannon
Leo Wan
Wai Mun Yoon