Marie Yan, France
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Marie Yan (1990) is a multilingual writer raised by painters in a suburb of Paris. She mostly writes in French and English, reading German, learning Cantonese. In worlds that range from near-documentary to speculative fiction, she has written stories about peripheries, encounters at a border, societal collapse and transformation. She has lived and worked as a playwright and a dramaturge in the performing arts scene in France, the U.K., Germany and Hong Kong.
She made her writing debut on stage in the U.K. with The Fog (Mary Leishman Theatre Award 2015) followed by A Quick Decision Can Be Made: A Story of the Detained Fast-Track (Refugee Festival 2015). In 2016, she moved to Berlin to work in the independent scene as a dramaturge, with an emphasis in her research on postcolonial and queer-feminist perspectives. There, she collaborated with the Ballhaus Naunynstraße theatre and the dance collective Grupo Oito. A regular contributor to Theater o.N.’s FRATZ International Symposium, since 2019 she co-curates events reflecting on the responsibility of the artist when making art for the very young. She has also written a Progressive glossary of intersections and thoughts on race, class and gender in the performing arts. |
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In 2020 Marie Yan was awarded the New Earth Theatre Seed Commission (U.K.) for the dystopian play on rising waters A Tidal Home which premiered in Hong Kong the following year. The same year, her first French production took place: La Théorie by Compagnie Lou Pantail (Festival Impatience 2021).
She is currently working on two very intimate projects: an essay reflecting on mixed-race identity and political agency after her stay in Hong Kong in 2021, which was granted the Crossing Borders scholarship (Germany); and a novel called Été(s) / Summers, a slut-shaming and coming-of-age story.
Marie Yan holds a Master in French Literatures (Sorbonne University, France), a Master in Playwriting and Dramaturgy (Glasgow University, U.K.) and a Diploma in Physical Theatre Practice (Fife College, U.K.)
L'AiR Arts Residency Project
Atelier 11, November - December 2022
Open Studio - December 15
Hong Kong: About a struggling home [temporary title]
If one can inherit an emptiness, mine was Hong Kong, where my father grew up, but that I knew so little about. For a very long time, I wished to live there for a while. A few months at least. A year if I could. And as this emptiness grew with me, the need grew stronger. Being perceived as mixed-race Asian in France and everywhere else was an endless insidious confusion. I wanted to throw some questions to the city and hope it would answer back. In 2021 I could finally spend nine months in Hong Kong.
During the residency at L’AiR Arts, I can start disentangling the chaotic echos I brought back with me and write them up for my essay project Hong Kong: About a struggling home. As 2021 saw many new measures come into force, shaking the foundations of Hong Kong’s society: how to digest what it meant creating bonds with a city when the core of it was itself under threat? I hope to write most of the first part of the essay, which revisits memories that I believe shaped what I associated with being mixed-race, Chinese, Asian; and sort out the archives of my stay.
Marie will presenting the reading of work-in-progress excerpts and a few pieces of archives during the Open Studio event in December 2022.
She is currently working on two very intimate projects: an essay reflecting on mixed-race identity and political agency after her stay in Hong Kong in 2021, which was granted the Crossing Borders scholarship (Germany); and a novel called Été(s) / Summers, a slut-shaming and coming-of-age story.
Marie Yan holds a Master in French Literatures (Sorbonne University, France), a Master in Playwriting and Dramaturgy (Glasgow University, U.K.) and a Diploma in Physical Theatre Practice (Fife College, U.K.)
L'AiR Arts Residency Project
Atelier 11, November - December 2022
Open Studio - December 15
Hong Kong: About a struggling home [temporary title]
If one can inherit an emptiness, mine was Hong Kong, where my father grew up, but that I knew so little about. For a very long time, I wished to live there for a while. A few months at least. A year if I could. And as this emptiness grew with me, the need grew stronger. Being perceived as mixed-race Asian in France and everywhere else was an endless insidious confusion. I wanted to throw some questions to the city and hope it would answer back. In 2021 I could finally spend nine months in Hong Kong.
During the residency at L’AiR Arts, I can start disentangling the chaotic echos I brought back with me and write them up for my essay project Hong Kong: About a struggling home. As 2021 saw many new measures come into force, shaking the foundations of Hong Kong’s society: how to digest what it meant creating bonds with a city when the core of it was itself under threat? I hope to write most of the first part of the essay, which revisits memories that I believe shaped what I associated with being mixed-race, Chinese, Asian; and sort out the archives of my stay.
Marie will presenting the reading of work-in-progress excerpts and a few pieces of archives during the Open Studio event in December 2022.