Featured Artists - Interview with Featured Artist, Diana Tso, Toronto, January, 2017

Article Information

Creative Arts Educ Ther (2017) 3(1):69–78DOI: 10.15212/CAET/2017/17/7

Featured Artists – Interview with Featured Artist, Diana Tso, Toronto, January, 2017

专访艺术家 Diana

Stephen K. Levine

The European Graduate School, Switzerland

Abstract

Diana Tso is a Chinese-Canadian writer, actor and storyteller, who recently produced her play, Comfort, in Toronto, Canada. Comfort deals with the situations of Chinese women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during World War Two. The horrific story of these women’s experience is held by the play’s beautiful music and song, based on the Chinese opera Butterfly Lovers and sung in Chinese, and by the expressive movement of the actors. When I saw the play in December 2016, I was moved not only by the story but also by the aesthetic power of the presentation. To my mind, it gave a partial answer to the question of how we can make art out of trauma.

After the performance, I went up to Diana and asked if she would be willing to talk about the play for the readers of this journal. The following dialogue is an edited version of our conversation, held in Toronto in January, 2017.

Diana Tso 是一位加拿大华裔作家，演员和故事讲述者，最近在加拿大多伦多出品了她的演奏“慰安”。作品关于在二战期间被日本军队强迫性奴役的中国女性的情况。这些女性经历的可怕故事源自中国歌剧“梁祝”这一中国乐曲演员表演舞蹈，以戏剧美秒的音乐和歌曲为主。当我在2016年12月看到该戏剧时，我不仅受到故事的影响，还受到演讲的审美力量的影响。在我看来，这部分回答了我们如何通过艺术摆脱创伤的问题。

演出结束后，我找到黛安娜，问她是否愿意为这本期刊的读者讲述这个戏。以下对话是我们在2017年1月在多伦多进行的对话的编辑版本。