An engaging mix of historical fact and narrative fiction, set against the backdrop of the Australian Goldrush of 1857, Yong brings Chinese-Australian history to life as part of a Victorian tour beginning at the Arts Centre Melbourne from July 30- August 4.

Launched in Ballarat at the start of 2022, and later winning the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Production for Children in 2023, based on Janeen Brian’s teen novel Yong: The Journey of an Unworthy Son, Yong is a sprawling, timeless, coming-of-age story, about a 13-year-old boy from provincial China, who’s life trajectory is changed forever when his father forces him to travel with him to western Victoria’s goldfields in the hope of securing the family’s fortune.

In 2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic, writer Jenevieve Chang was approached by Australia's premier theatre company for young audiences, Monkey Baa, to adapt Brian’s book.

The result is a dynamic, contemporary and poignant play that’s fully accessible for today’s teens.

“I was presented with quite a challenge in adapting the book, because the parameters were that we were going to be writing the play to be performed by the one actor,” Chang tells EducationHQ.

“But it’s always such a fantastic creative challenge to find a new way into an existing story that really extrapolates the big, deep ideas - which is what you need to do for a live audience.

“I was fortunate to have one of Monkey Baa's founding directors, Darren Yap, start the process with me in terms of ideation and conceptualising what it could be like in terms of its initial adaptation methodology.”

Chang says when it comes to Chinese-Australian history, cultural stories are most often presented almost as museum objects or historical artefacts, which ultimately flattens the culture, and so she was keen for a different entryway into this story.

“Chinese culture is about honour or about wisdom, which is a trope that I was encountering a lot in Chinese stories for Western audiences,” she shares.

“We live in such a diverse, pluralistic society now and I wanted that same sense of audiences being able to know this voice, like he was your classmate at school. I wanted that sense.

“And I wanted to play with language as well. I didn't want the language to be fusty, or overly formal. I wanted the voice of this character to feel like he's a boy of today, really relatable, and really accessible.”

“I think something really universal is having to take on responsibility before you feel like you're ready to, which I think a lot of young people have to face today. It's a timeless dilemma,” writer Jenevieve Chang says. PHOTO: Sally Flegg

Chang says Yong is a universally resonant story about a young boy who must learn to step out of the shadow of other people’s expectations in order to find himself.

“It’s about what it means to be a son, what it takes to be a parent, and the push and pull of community,” she says.

“Most of all, it shines a light on Australia’s history, bringing focus to sacrifices and contributions which have helped build the resilient nation we are today.”

Born in Taiwan and having lived and worked in China, the UK and Australia in roles with the ABC, Screen Australia and NIDA, to name a few, Chang’s own life story was depicted in her multi-generational memoir, The Good Girl of Chinatown.

She knows firsthand the ups and downs of migrant life and family expectations, and says it’s a strong theme of the play.

“It’s something really universal, having to take on responsibility before you feel like you're ready to, and I think a lot of young people have to face that today. It's a timeless dilemma,” she says.

“Yong is given this very specific cultural lens at a very specific point in time, but it also speaks to bigger political ideas, such as migration and the hostility that one can encounter coming to a new land.

“It's also about what Australians' idea is of their own nationality and their own sense of identity. And I think that's something that we grapple with today as well.”

In the 1850s, roughly one in five of the male population in Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Beechworth and Ararat were Chinese.

Tens of thousands flocked to our country, including doctors, gardeners, artisans and business people, yet Chinese history, particularly in places like Ballarat, was largely eradicated prior to the 60s. It was either hidden, demolished or forgotten.

“It’s a rich part of our history and a rich contribution of a particular group to the building of this country to who we are today, and not having that reflected in our stories, even on our screens in our media today, it’s erasure,” Chang says.

“It's a wilful turning your back to people and communities that have made their homes here, who have contributed a lot.”

Chang says Yong is intentionally widely applicable across the curriculum.

“If you teach drama, it's a very strong, exciting and propulsive story that really utilises theatre in all of its potential and capacity,” she says.

“If you teach English, it's a very full text, in terms of storytelling and in terms of language device, in being able to write in many characters' voices through one performative monologue in the voice of one actor.

“If you teach history, it's an incredibly strong insight into a forgotten and erased part of our national identity.”

On top of that, Chang enthuses, it is theatre!

“So it's bringing your students along to communally share in the remembrance of our past and also the ability to imagine who we are and who we could be.”


Assisted by Playing Australia through Creative Australia and Ed Federman and The Show Room, Yong is playing the Arts Centre Melbourne July 30-August 4, Her Majesty’s Theatre, Ballarat August 7-8, Riverlinks, Shepparton August 12, Bunjil Place, Narre Warren August 18-19, The Round, Nunawading August 20-21, Clocktower Centre, Moonee Ponds August 23 and Ulumbarra Theatre, Bendigo August 26. Click here for Arts Centre tickets and information.