Boca del Lupo's Sherry J. Yoon joins Canadian theatre forces to Stop Asian Hate
Spurred by rising reports of anti-Asian acts here and elsewhere, the Vancouver artist acted quickly to take a stand
The campaign poster that launched today.
Sherry J. Yoon
BOCA DEL Lupo theatre artist Sherry J. Yoon has rallied a Canada-wide movement called Stop Asian Hate.
The initiative, which launched today, joins together more than 100 Asian performing artists and administrators to stand against anti-Asian hate crimes—which are up a reported 700 percent in Vancouver itself. The group’s message to Asian community members: “You are not alone.”
“It’s just knowing that there’s an entity now that’s come together,” Yoon tells Stir. “It’s the first Asian arts-focused entity in Canada. That’s really powerful.
“I remember one of the artists, a managing director, said to me, ‘People are asking, “Who is this for?”’ And I said, ‘This is for our audiences, hopefully preaching to the converted, but it’s an ability for people to feel hopeful and unified, Asian or not,’” she adds. “And this is for me: when I see this, it’s changed me. I don’t feel so alone.”
The movement is the fruition of two months of work by Yoon, who took action after being shaken by the March 21 shooting of eight people in Atlanta, most of them Asian women. “It was also hearing on the news what was happening to Asian people in Canada, and specifically the elderly and a lot of young women,” Yoon adds.
Within a week she had arranged a virtual meeting of Asian Canadian leaders within the theatre sector, and within an hour they had joined together behind the idea, with the goal of launching a campaign during Asian Heritage Month. (It joins such other artist-driven anti-Asian hate initiatives this year as Elimin8hate.)
For years, Yoon had looked for a way to galvanize the Asian theatre community in this country. And though she’s sorry that it took a rise in hateful acts for that to happen, she’s happy that something good might come out of negativity. “If the legacy of this time is about doing something positive and being part of something that is hopeful—what a great legacy,” she tells Stir.
Boca was able to kick in its own resources for this first campaign, with David Yee from Fugen Theatre in Toronto and Stafford Arima working with Yoon. But Yoon says the group will grow into its own, apart from Boca del Lupo.
“Stop Asian Hate” and “You are not alone” are meant as a strong condemnation of anti-Asian hate from Canada’s artistic leaders, and as a clear sign of standing together and offering support to the Asian community. The long list of names on the poster is a strong reminder of the Asian voices that play key roles in the stage scene across the country. Prominent signees include Nina Lee Aquino, artistic director at Toronto’s Factory Theatre; GVPTA executive director Kenji Maeda; multidisciplinary artist June Fukumura; Why Not Theatre co-artistic director and founder Ravi Jain; designer and animator Cindy Mochizuki; playwright and performer Tetsuro Shigematsu; Stafford Arima, artistic director of Theatre Calgary; and many, many more. The campaign is inviting other Asian Canadian performing artists, leaders, practitioners, or administrators, to join its movement here.
“I said I think people need a straight-ahead message that everyone could get behind,” Yoon says. “It brought us together and it’s really powerful.
“Having experienced racism at a young age I think I have the ability to combat it and look at it and tackle it head on,” Yoon adds. “Everyone has a different relationship to it. That’s what makes this initiative so special. During this dark time having the ability to be united by our differences and our Asian ness is an incredible thing during these times.”
The urgency of that message has been building since the onset of the pandemic, with the most recent reminder a damning Bloomberg article about Vancouver headlined “This Is the Anti-Asian Hate Crime Capital of North America” on May 7. “With almost 1 out of every 2 residents of Asian descent in British Columbia experiencing a hate incident in the past year, the region is confronting an undercurrent of racism that runs as long and deep as the historical links stretching across the Pacific,” the article reads.
“We live in a city where being Asian is commonplace…and to know that it has become a divisive and hateful thing in our city is challenging. It’s a very difficult fact to live with. It’s hard,” Yoon says with emotion. “To have an American newspaper reporting that really hurts.”
The Stop Asian Hate campaign is just the beginning for the coalition; future projects could even play out on stage, Yoon suggests, whether that’s through directly addressing the issue of racism or just in representation.
For now, she hopes the act of joining together also serves as an encouragement to other Asian artists.
“It’s important for an individual coming on board for leadership to see that there is a group of us,” she says. “I think this could take all shapes and forms and I think everyone is excited about what it means. I said I’m game to take this first action on, and once that happens, and the first action is out of the gate, that will always be that first thing that defines us.”
This is only the latest initiative by Yoon in the realm of diversity. She’s been working on a wider movement to boost women from diverse backgrounds in the theatre industry here and across the country. The 3.7% Initiative, named for the low percentage of key creative roles in Canadian theatre held by ethnically diverse women, was launched by Boca del Lupo to help develop that demographic’s career opportunities in the field.
It’s part of a larger shift professionally and artistically for Yoon, who has always been keenly interested in diversity and remains one of only a few female women of colour who has a role presenting theatre in the city.
“Last year, in March, we [Boca del Lupo] went into some really deep thinking about, What is this time looking like?" she reflects. "The big questions as artists are, 'Who are we right now in this time? And who am I gonna be as an artist at this time?” The answers, it is apparent, could play out for long past the pandemic, and take on a scope far beyond Vancouver.
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