In the back room of a fish and chip shop in Ipswich, Queensland, a young girl practises push-ups and dance routines and imagines herself famous. She wants to be known across the world for her strength, agility and martial arts moves. Years later, after mastering Taekwondo, Hapkido and Shaolin Kung Fu, she’s achieved many of her goals.
Action Star, written and performed by Maria Tran, directed by Kaz Therese and choreographed by Larissa McGowan, is 70 minutes of high-energy storytelling that’s not your average life journey. Gender stereotypes, identity politics and racism are explored through glimpses of Tran’s struggle to be recognised for her skills. Yes, she made it to the movies and TV (as well as her own films, she’s appeared in international blockbusters such as Fist of the Dragon and Death Mist and local TV productions such as Fat Pizza, and has worked in other diverse roles including fight director and guest lecturer), but the battle against the stereotyping of Asian women in films is one she’s still waging.
The staging is simple yet highly effective. A square of white flooring and a matching backdrop serve as blank canvases for lighting effects and projections including movie excerpts, animations and live action. This transformation of the space served the story well, providing clear definition between scenes and creating shifts in context and mood.
Tran begins the performance wearing a plain black tank top and tactical pants (think strategically placed pockets to stash weapons), later adding and removing a black leather jacket, baseball cap and red tunic to switch personas. At the side of the performance space, there is a small, candle-lit shrine. Other props – a pile of cardboard boxes, a sword, nunchucks, stunt knives and guns – are used to bring fight scenes to life.
Action Star is a dramatisation of Tran’s career as an actor, filmmaker and mentor. She gives some background on the history of women in martial arts and shares her inspiration – performers including Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock – who were trailblazers of the action cinema genre in the 1980s and who continue to work in the film industry. Tran’s own career has experienced highs and lows during her search for ‘the freedom to feel, to be, and to create’. She’s endured the humiliation of auditions that ended in rejection or unwanted advances. (long before the #metoo movement). As a filmmaker, she’s created kickass female characters who fend off the baddies and save the blokes, flipping the narrative and owning the power in depictions of ‘heroic bloodshed action’.
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This is a tightly directed and choreographed theatre piece that blends comedy and drama in a way that makes it easy to engage with Tran’s story. We travel with her from a suburban schoolyard to Hong Kong casting calls to Aussie film sets. Sequences showing the direction, blocking and shooting of fight scenes are laugh-out-loud funny as well as informative.
It’s great fun, even if you have no previous knowledge of the action film genre. Maria Tran is a powerful presence on stage and her vision of a life where she can acknowledge her dreams is unconventionally inspirational.
Action Star is being performed at the Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, on Friday 28 October at 8pm and on Saturday 29 October at 3pm and 8pm.
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