Date of Interview: 30 August 2025
Interviewer: Robin Khor
Interviewee: Mark Wu
ROBIN KHOR
How did your journey with New Earth Theatre begin?
MARK WU
It’s not that I came across them, you know, as part of the industry, as a professional. I actually saw one of their initial plays, Behind the Chinese Takeaway. So I was a student back then. I must have graduated at that point, but I saw them. There were many people in my generation that were involved with the Chinese takeaway lifestyle, that kind of thing. So hearing that sort of title behind the Chinese takeaway and kind of seeing it as a theatre production, and that was a bit unusual. So I first had the introduction to Yellow Earth. I am a visual designer, a digital designer, interior designer by trade, or a graphic designer, is how I started the industry. And when you go to something like this, right, there’s an element of culture in design, I guess a semi-professional interest. You kind of watch this. You think this is great because it’s personal, it’s very relevant. But also, I can’t believe that this is out there being performed in the British public.
So I knew them as Yellow Earth Theatre. I graduated and started a company. And I think it was around 2002 that I got in touch with. I think it was David at the time and said, hey, I’m a designer, I have this company, it’s a small company. It’s about five of us. And I just got in touch, got vetted by David and Kumiko, went to meet them in their Great Portland Street offices, and it was kind of like, nice to have met the people behind the show, but also we started talking about, you know, potentially doing the promotional materials for the show. So we agreed to work on the first show, and the first one we did was Butcher’s Skin. So basically it’s all the leaflet, program. We actually did the photo shoot for the show as well, mostly from about 2002 to about 2008, and worked on about six shows. I worked on the promotional materials for the shows, sometimes involved with the initial visual creative. So obviously not to do with the theatre production itself, but a lot with the promotional materials. And also did the website and CD-ROM at that stage as well.
ROBIN KHOR
So when you first saw Yellow Earth production in your school time, you said, what do you think distinctively shaped or differentiated Yellow Earth Theatre from the rest of the theatre you’ve ever seen in the country?
MARK WU
It was very personal and seeing people that weren’t just East Asian, but also British Chinese, Chinese performers with a British accent. And also I think there are elements of physicality that I liked as well. So I think that was the main difference for me, seeing that we kind of look at the cultural side in design as well. I was very aware of the lack of visibility. So at this sort of stage a while ago, you’re drawn to this personally, right? You see a slice of British society within the performance of topics like, you know, behind the Chinese takeaway, it’s not just the topic itself, right? But it’s the way that it was performed. The people that are involved, you’re seeing that distinction. But also there are some slight parallels, but also very distinctive where you see other ethnic minorities. They were also sort of struggling in different parts of society. It wasn’t just theatre performance, right, but racism, that kind of thing. So when you’re aware of things like that, I saw that in part of the work as well. So it wasn’t just themes where I see theatre performances or musicals like Lion King, whereas obviously to do with yes, there were underlying themes, but it was very populist nature. This was a very nice slice of life that I don’t normally see. I really like the fact that this was public, you know, for other people to see as well. And I had a sense that this was a way that it could bring people together of the same community, because otherwise, back in those days, if you were within, you know, the Chinese takeaway community, the idea is that you thrive by having your own catchment area. Right? So everything was really dispersed. So I was very aware about the differences between, say, the Chinese culture and, say, the South Asian or like the Hindu culture, where they have very specific communities, they get together and they socialise a lot more. So I see a lot of differences with the work that they did in that sense.
ROBIN KHOR
And then you decided that you wanted to be part of it after seeing a couple of their shows?
MARK WU
Yeah, it was a lot of that, a lot of personal issues. Right? A lot of the themes that I saw, a lot of commonality. Also, because it was a creative company, like a creative industry, a creative part of society. I was just really interested in being involved, right. It wasn’t just thinking, oh, I’ve got a strategy or I’ve got a long, long term plan. I just thought that I had the means. Because we started this company. We had some profitable clients, and we could do some work where it could be a bit more creative, but also not be so demanding on things like budget. That’s a big part of the biggest challenge with a lot of different industries. So I thought, great, if I can get involved. Obviously the first thing is, you know, you’re networking, getting in touch. And I just thought, why not get in touch and see what happens. Rather than having a preconceived idea about what it could turn out to be, really. So yeah, I just want to get in touch. I think a part of it is kind of seeing the passion involved as well, right? So initially those, when you see the work, you don’t know if it’s a one off. You see it’s just a one play and there’s a lot of depth to it, a lot, a lot of connection that I could see. It wasn’t just a company looking at a surface level what a Chinese takeaway is like, right? They went into a lot of themes of identity that I recognised and saw as well. But actually, as I kind of gradually got to meet David, you know, because it could have been a company, right. It could be one of those things where you meet a company and then you actually find out they’re not the kind of people you really want to gel with as much, or it wasn’t what you were expecting. But I found that having that initial visibility, getting in touch, I saw a lot of passion and also the creativity involved, and that manifested itself over the course of several productions that I was able to see. So I really wanted to get involved with that, because you can see that there was something happening. You kind of sense it.
ROBIN KHOR
Can you tell us one in particular, you said that you have worked with them for a couple of years, right? Was it from 2003 to 2006 or 7?
MARK WU
So I initially got in touch around 2001, 2002. And I think the last production I worked on with them was King Lear. I think by 2008, 2009, that was when I was starting to wind down a company, you know, completely separate issue.
ROBIN KHOR
Can you tell us one of the most memorable productions that you had?
MARK WU
They all had something slightly different to them. Right. So The Butcher’s Skin was something where we had a photo shoot, and it was quite nice because Tom, Kwong and Veronica was there as well, and they were the main actors, but it was memorable in a sense that, you know, we spent the day together, right, in a photo studio with a photographer that photographs quite a lot of famous people, right? So it’s a portrait photographer, and I convinced him to do this thing, and I think it was in the studio in Camden or something, but I spent some time with Tom, Kwong and Veronica there. They were joking around quite a lot. Tom was a little bit more serious and he was always asking for directions. I don’t know if you’ve seen the materials for The Butcher’s Skin, but he had to convey a violent personality, but also a personality that was very soft. That is his conflict. It was funny because you have Tom and you go on to see the work that he’s done now, and I can’t believe I was telling him, do this, do that. Being careful with his finger to show this like little detail in the photo. Kwong and Veronica, they were like a tag team, right? Joking around and having a go at each other and then Kwong walking around. There was one part where he was pretending to be pregnant, so he stuffed a pillow under his thing, and he was kind of getting ready for one of the photos or something, but it was memorable, I think. It was. It was funny, really. You know, a very personal moment. But also it’s less about the work and more about those personalities behind the scenes. In contrast to that, we did a photo shoot for 58. They’re a little more serious. The location was some industrial thing, a place full of all these trucks. And the manager at the time, the general manager Monica Yam, found this place and we basically turned up. The four of us and the photographer, into this gritty industrial wasteland where there was probably wasn’t that great, right? And we turned up with some guy who let us in, like a high vis jacket. It was like, you know, gruff. And we asked, can you open up one of these lorries? And then we just basically did this photo shoot, but it was just like, memorable in a different way if that makes sense.
ROBIN KHOR
How has working with Yellow Earth Theatre shaped your career as a designer?
MARK WU
When we started the company, we started it with the dot com boom that followed with the dot com bust quite quickly for the first year, year and a half, you know, I just graduated, I started this company with two other guys, they were both been working for ten years, right? So I was like the young creative person, right? So initially you come out with a lot of hope and aspiration for I really go and change the world, that kind of thing. Did groundbreaking design, set up a company, and I was able to do the thing that a lot of designers at the time wanted to do, which was a lot of people thought you had to go out to work for a while and, you know, sacrifice your soul doing lots of corporate work. And then eventually when you got enough recognition or funds or budget, you start a company up and you’d work on cool client work. And that people used to say MTV, that kind of thing.
But because I managed to start this company straight away. Sounds good on paper, but actually it was really difficult and I was way too inexperienced. But what I found with my professional growth was, despite all of this, the admin, the winning the work of corporate clients and having the benefit of some clients that my other my two partners brought along, they indulged in the idea that I could do some creative work, and what I found was that working with Yellow Earth was was a very personal draw for me, so I could satisfy the part of my professional career where I thought that I wouldn’t have to just do sort of cold corporate work, but actually do some work that I really enjoyed.
They gave me a lot of creative freedom as well. They weren’t particularly strict about, you know, you’ve got to do it this way or that way. It was very much a dialogue. So sometimes they have ideas about what they want to see. But also they’d ask me, what do you think about this? Right? How should the visual style be? Who should we have for the photos or who’s available? So it’s very much all hands on deck. On a very high level, the work that I did with Yellow Earth was able to satisfy a lot of what I wanted to do creatively as well. And it wasn’t just in print materials, but also the website, the CD-ROM as well. It was far more interactive than just like clicking and pointing and seeing some information. It’s very playful and incorporates a lot of the video work they did. So I think it’s in general, it’s a very nice way for me to work with people. They’re also demanding, but also very open to things. So I felt like it wasn’t just a client that let me do what I wanted, right. But they were very conscious that also I’m, you know, British, East Asian as well. And I’m a designer and I wanted to make things happen, you know, I wanted to create what they want to do as well. They’re also making sure that their vision was manifested through the work that we agreed on, you know? So a lot of what I could do was shown through the work. We’ve got artifacts to show for it. You know, there are leaflets and the programmes and a lot of the visual material that came from that.
ROBIN KHOR
So early on, you mentioned back in those days it wasn’t as many and things like that. And have you seen a shift because of the existence of Yellow Earth Theatre?
MARK WU
Yeah, I think so. It’s hard to say whether Yellow Earth is alone. Right? I think part of it is Yellow Earth, New Earth. They’ve been around for a long time, thirty years. Crazy. I remember working on a logo for ten years for the ten year anniversary, and I can’t believe we’re up thirty years already. So I think being there all this time, whilst I can’t say, oh, I think Yellow Earth, New Earth did this, so that happened, right? It’s hard to imagine no impact for a company that’s been around for so long, especially when it comes to theatre and acting. Right? Because when I think about the work that they do at Yellow Academy, I mean, that’s great, right? Because that’s about giving opportunities to actors in training, right? So there must be an impact or I see a lot of the less about theatre productions going out there and kind of doing this sort of major work or a few pieces per year. But a lot of the education and outreach work that they did as well, I thought was a really strong part of the company.
So I think there has been a ripple through the industry. You’ve got people that may have come through Yellow Earth, right? Whether they were a part of this or whether they were helped by it. I kind of see it all as part of the same kind of movement, right? So where they’re about to be some individual efforts, the fact that Yellow Earth has always been there, I think is a bonus.
I think an aspect of this is also less about the obvious oh, it’s a theatre company. There can be actors going through this, but more of that around this period of time, 2000 to 2008, there were other things happening within the community that also was a part of. There was a political side called the BESEA project, right, the British Chinese Project, and that has a bit of a history on its own. Not for this, but that was much more about getting British East Asians into politics, right? So there was a group, there was a particular lawyer involved and access to houses of parliament, that kind of thing. There were also things like the Pearl Awards, some awards thing some guy created, and it got quite a lot of people involved, a lot of the aspects of community. Again, another slice of history. So that was more philanthropical, is that what do you call it, a movement that started to become commercialised and it was also a magazine. Very corny I have to say, right. But it was called Chinatown, the magazine. And I kind of mentioned these things because amidst all of these, the rise of these kind of groups and movements, they’ve all faded out to nothing now. But it also, it always felt like Yellow Earth, New Earth. They were like a cultural foil to these. So where you kind of sense that. Yeah. Politics. Yeah. Where is this going? You know, and this kind of, you know, having a magazine and seeing these award ceremonies, it felt like, uh, Yellow Earth was much more of a creative, more honest part of the culture, if that makes sense. Didn’t feel like there was any pretext to what they were doing. It felt like they just wanted to do work, good work and show it. So I think it was like a cultural foil to everything that was going on at the time. And then from 2008, 2009, I had less awareness of what’s going on. So I think the growth of the development of the industry, I think Yellow Earth had a solid part to play in that.
ROBIN KHOR
Did you design the logo of Yellow Earth?
MARK WU
They had the Chinese logo to begin with, right? That was way before my time, but I did evolve it a little bit, cleaned it up a little bit. We changed the context of it. Easy things to do. Like we changed the typeface. There were practical elements to it as well as stylistic, but I can’t claim credit for the very initial thing. But we did try a few things and it was a very strong identity back then. It’s very ethnic, right? And it said what it needed to do.
ROBIN KHOR
Did you have a conscious, like design strategy?
MARK WU
I think through all of this it was understanding what we were trying to do.
So there was something that was unique to all the productions or like the Typhoon work, for instance, everything in that, all the visuals of that were work that I did. I also had people within my company that helped out as well.
So whilst you know that the application design work is very much about understanding what the brief is, but because this is like a body of work, the same company, the same kind of movement, there was an effort to be genuine and transparent as well. So it was trying to show the content of what we’re doing, but also try to show elements of the origin, the background behind everything we’re trying to do. Trying to stay away from cliches as well. One thing that might be obvious is, if you want to say it’s British Chinese or British East Asian or whatever, let’s just throw some Oriental characters in there, you know, some script or whatever it is, or use those typical typefaces. So I think it was a very conscious effort to move away from that.
So trying to develop something which wasn’t very cliché because that’s definitely not what we want to do. So I’m not trying to attract non-east Asian audiences by using cliches, but trying to be a lot more genuine, trying to show more about the culture itself, to attract a mixture of people, people that were curious, but also to try to connect with people with a British East Asian background.
ROBIN KHOR
So before we end, what does it mean to you to be part of New Earth’s thirty years legacy?
MARK WU
It feels really special to me because it feels like I was involved at a formation time, right? You know, I knew the five founding members, you know, Veronica, rest in peace. There were moments that we spoke before, just as a course of things. We’d go to an event and then afterwards she’d offer me a lift home. These little things, right. So it feels like a really special thing for me. Not just because I worked professionally. I mean, it didn’t really feel like professional work. It was. Yeah, there was an element of sending an invoice, right. There’s a lot of, hey, we’ve got a new production, but it was very much a great let’s what can we do next?
So it was really special for me that I was able to work with the five founding members as well. They’ve gone on to do their own things, but it’s really nice to have seen that to be involved. Maybe something to tell the kids one day. O I tell the kids every time Tom comes up on the screen, right? Thousand eyes, that one special that, that Marco Polo special that is all about him, right? I point him out to the kids and say, hey, I know that guy. It’s really nice to have had this connection, this bit of history, because I think it’s personal. But also it wasn’t just, oh, I know these people, but, you know, I worked with them and we went out for dim sum as well back in those days, right? Like every once in a while. So it was just really special, but not sure how much influence or contribution I made. But it does feel like I was part of that movement. But of course most of the work was other people, those guys doing the theatre. So yeah, just really, just really special.