Home is where the heart is, right? Kasen Tsui’s incredibly moving A Funeral for My Friend Who is Still Alive reminds the audience that things aren’t quite this simple. This powerful one-woman show reflects on notions of belonging amidst the displacement of the Hong Kong social movement.
The show is structured around a funeral our protagonist Kasen decides to host for her friend, who, from the play’s beginning and title, we are emphatically told is still alive. With her cheeky charisma, Kasen has us questioning the motivations behind this ploy. With every vignette, she throws around glimpses into the context of her friendship but evades disclosing the tragedy of their current situation until the play’s end. Kasen poignantly conveys that losing a friend through emigration and being forced to cut ties with them for safety and survival results in the same outcome as their death would. This sort of loss, however, lacks certainty.
Accordingly, A Funeral for My Friend Who is Still Alive traffics in liminalities, feelings of indecisiveness, and the fluctuating identities of those uprooted from their home – something Kasen stresses is not only physical but social.
These uncertain shifts are captured beautifully in Kasen’s movement, underscored by Cathy Lam’s direction. She traverses the whole stage and beyond with ease, enjoying hyperbolic mime motions, and yet still captures our attention wholly when sitting still, conveying emotion with subtle facial expressions. One of my favourite scenes consisted of Kasen listening patiently to government messages and a hilarious track of hummed music whilst on hold. The simultaneous comedy and vulnerability of this moment relied solely on her eager, captivated face, which sold throughout.
Whilst A Funeral at times felt so disjunctive that it was difficult to follow, Kasen’s consistently compelling performance held the piece together. It is astounding that this is her first performance in English.
A Funeral for My Friend Who is Still Alive balances sensitivity and humour exquisitely, forming a beautiful rollercoaster ride that not only kept the audience on their feet but conjured depth in Kasen’s character reminiscent of a person inflicted with trauma and battling with her relation to her home, Hong Kong.
