Performed by Juniper Lai, Dear A tells the tale of Juniper’s own life experiences through the exploration of who this anonymous “A” can stand for — with mentioned options being “Asian, artist, amour, abandonment, affection, apology, and acceptance”.
Juniper combines the use of a mixed-media performance to display her experiences of Chinese immigration and global diaspora. This is achieved through a repeated routine nine times, in which Juniper collects one of the nine envelopes on the ground addressed to the nameless “A”, reading aloud the spoken word excerpts she has written prior. The audience then holds the ability to resonate with Juniper’s own life experiences, as she ranges through different topics in each letter. Some on the theme of the Asian diaspora; a few discuss the Western dream; one letter on the complexity of the relationship between a mother and daughter; and another on the feeling of helplessness as humans stand aside to witness the genocide in Gaza, Palestine.
Once an envelope has been collected and read aloud, the lights begin to dim, and a short film begins to play. Most are in Chinese, with both English and Chinese subtitles at the bottom, depicting different scenes in correlation with what has been said previously in the letter. It is unsure whether these short film scenes are original and exclusively created for the performance, but I remain impressed by the beauty in each scene and how touching they are – especially as they are shown directly after Juniper’s personal letters.
After, the talented performer sings an original song in the accompaniment of her guitar; there being nine original songs in mostly Chinese that relate to both her letter and the short clip the audience had seen just earlier. I would like to mention that in the first half of the show, I was apprehensive about how the show would be laid out and whether it would fall flat due to the repetitiveness of experiencing the same routine nine times as she opens a different letter, but once I heard Juniper’s voice with the strums of her guitar, my apprehension drifted away. Her voice is simultaneously gentle and strong, as she sings about her experiences in life. Despite having a relative language gap with audiences due to a lack of subtitles when singing, I was still able to feel and sense the emotion radiating from Juniper: my heart even started pounding at certain songs from how touching it was.
Dear A is an incredibly poignant show, which touches upon the necessity of experiencing human emotion, and how we, as humans, are much more alike than we think. Juniper Lai and her team have created an extremely well-done show in terms of storytelling and musicality, in order to touch everyone’s hearts. And Juniper’s beautiful, soft voice will always stay with me.
Image by Chi Wai Cheung, provided to The Student as press.