under the moondreaming @ BC Magazine

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One woman finds reality acting out her dreams.

Over the years Kearen Pang has built a not-inconsiderable following with her one-woman shows. You could say she has been doing something many of us have given up on – living her dream – and she would be the first to agree with you, which is all about rediscovering lost dreams. is about a young woman’s recollection of a childhood wish to fly, and how she realizes it. Pang tells about the production and how she creates a reality – not only for herself – out of her dreams.

Kearen Pang’s acting career started in small productions, in which she honed her technique and brainstormed ideas for her own plays. 'I had many thoughts about creating my own theatre productions because in theatre groups we often act in plays written by someone else or for someone else in mind, someone other than yourself. I wanted to start writing stories in which I could tailor-make a role for myself and tell me side of stories and experiences,' says Pang. 'I was new to the scene, and not sure whether I could manage to write a good enough play for other fellow actors. Anyway, who would be more appropriate to play a role of personal experiences than myself? Like in music, only a composer himself will know what he wants to convey in his music. This is how I got into writing one-woman shows – I wanted to tell my own stories, directly from me to you, the audience.'

Laugh Me To The Moon is a woman’s journey to realize a childhood dream, even though she is already an adult and has long outgrown the childish fantasy. It is as much a meditation on perceived stupidity as a story about realizing dreams. 'So many people tell me to my face that the adventure of risking everything to take on the unpredictable is stupid. I think though, with the uncertainty whether one will succeed or fail, it takes courage to try something out for oneself, even if you are not gambling everything away,' says Pang. 'I worked with the concept of stupidity for a little bit, and remembered how what we used to believe [as children] tended to be considered stupid. Then in the process of growing up, we learn and experience different things from which we build up defence mechanisms. That makes us wonder whether something good can happen to us for real, because we have seen far too many instances where good things don’t happen to good people. We question, doubt and stop believing and dreaming about positive possibilities out there.'

Pang’s play is not based on any particular thing in her own life, although it is a common experience to fail to achieve what we dearly desire and become dispirited. Then it is easy to lose one’s early driving force. 'I am trying my best to be aware and make sure that my passion doesn’t run out and I start to take things for granted. This is something I explore in Laugh Me to the Moon, as I feel that we need to care more and analyze less. I’m still not sure whether we should care so much [in the beginning], but this is something I want to explore.'

It is not uncommon for people with busy schedules to stop caring about what initially drove them and settle instead for short-term gratification. Their dreams seem to vanish into the back of their minds, or become mementoes tucked away in a box hidden in their closets. With Laugh Me to the Moon, Pang implies that people lose sight of the role time plays in realizing a dream – this is made clearer in the Chinese title of the play, People under the Moon. 'To begin with, we are all under the moon. Secondly, when we look at the moon we always look up, as if we are hoping, dreaming for or anticipating something in the future,' says Pang. 'At different times the moon takes in different shapes. When the moon comes to mind, many people think of the new or crescent moon, but for the full moon to come there is a cycle of phases. This cycle is something we often overlook, a cycle during which we wait for the full moon – the perfect ending – to come back. Then there may be a fair distance between where we stand and the moon, but we are still able to see it. In this instance the moon represents our hopes and dreams. Even though we may be distant from them, if they are big enough we will see them bright and clear no matter how far away.'

From the start Pang found success with her one-woman shows, and says that could have made it easy to take the theatre scene and all the attention for granted. But for her, part of keeping her dream alive is to live on the edge, always viewing the unknown future with excitement and anticipation, and bring a constant curiosity to her work. She sees this in direct opposition to the way so many Hong Kongers live their lives – overworked, overstressed and with little or no room to dream.

'We live in a city where work is everything, so we pack our schedules so tight that we can’t catch our breath [and operate on] the assumption that we don’t do anything impractical such as realizing a dream. Day in, day out, w go to work, eat, sleep and so on. Day after day the routine resumes without variation, allowing little space for us to experience what goes on around us,' she says.

'When we marketed this show, we wondered "What if the audience doesn’t care about dreams, as everyone has their personal take and some frankly could not care less anymore?" For some a dream could be planning the next weekend getaway, for some it is an enjoyable life with no responsibilities. For me, though, dreams do not necessarily equate to materialistic enjoyment. What’s more important is how big we allow our dreams to be, and how badly we want to realize them. In this production of Laugh Me to the Moon, the story of the girl who wants to fly is exactly the beginning of a journey to realize a dream.'

Many people have told her, perhaps with some envy, that she is fortunate to have found her "dream job", but it was almost as if destiny had marked her as a creator of one-woman shows.  As she says, 'I did not write my first one-woman show, it was a solo part given to me when I first started. I looked into the audience, some of them cross-armed staring back at me. I wasn’t sure I knew what to do. Then after several runs, I realized that the essence in mastering performances is always about recognizing the audience’s reactions. When you are the only one on stage, you don’t have a partner you can project your stress on to, you’re on your own. So keeping your cool and staying in character are important.' The lessons she has learnt since that initial appearance have borne fruit in the popularity she has built over the years for her plays. That love from her audience has given her immense satisfaction but has also encouraged her to reciprocate it as best she can.

'It may sound selfish to say that the greatest joy received from production should go to the creator, that is myself, but the audience’s reactions drive me further in my future productions,' she says. And so her shows are not only about fulfilling her own dreams but in some way playing a part in helping audiences to realize theirs.

Laugh Me To The Moon –