by Shameera Nair Lin & Tingcong Lin

1.    Tell us more about your work at HKU. 

I’m a full-time lecturer at HKU, so I’m teaching four courses this year, including a capstone course (“Imaginary Geographies: The Art of Writing Place,” “Imagining Asia,” “World Literature” and the MAES Capstone). While I am passionate about teaching – and at the moment it takes up most of my time – I’ve also tried to tie the courses to my own research. For example, I had to develop the “Imagining Asia” module from scratch, so I tried to incorporate my own expertise in Irish literature and discuss “Irish Orientalism”, as well as other cross-cultural theories that I’m interested in. I also try to be an active member of the School. This semester involved leading one of the MAES reading group sessions, participating in the School’s seminar series, and volunteering to oversee postgrads for the COEDA conference next year with Dr. Brandon Chua.

2.    What drew you to Irish literature and, more specifically, Irish plays? 

There were many things that came together for me. I was always a bit of an outsider and was drawn to “minor” subjects or “underdogs”. I majored in English literature at college and came across Samuel Beckett’s plays, only to find out that he wasn’t a British or French writer, but Irish. Up to that point, I didn’t even know that Ireland was Britain’s first colony and that it had a long history of oppression, or that it was still divided into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, after a civil war. I was drawn to its historical similarities with Korea – colonisation by its neighbour, war following independence, division into North/South, rapid modernisation, and so on, as well as the vibrancy of its literature.

As for studying plays, I love theatre’s complexity and the ways it engages the public, actively intervening in societal issues. Irish theatre in particular has a distinct status within Irish literature in fostering an “Irish identity”. Since the founding of Ireland’s national ‘Abbey’ theatre by W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn in 1904, it has played a central role in the Irish Literary Movement, producing playwrights such as J. M. Synge and Sean O’Casey, and continues to shape national discourse and the literary landscape. I also love earlier playwrights such as George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.

But sometimes that personal interest needs a bit of outside help. Your interests can be influenced by the professors you admire and the opportunities that arise for you. Fortunately, I had many supportive mentors who encouraged me to study further and helped me to get the necessary funding. Prof. Hyungseob Lee and Professor Nicholas Grene were crucial in drawing me to Ireland. Prof Grene became my PhD co-supervisor (along with Prof Chris Morash, another expert in Irish theatre), and studying in Ireland allowed me to experience, firsthand, the power of Irish theatre. Beckett is still my favourite playwright and it was wonderful studying at the same university he attended.

3.    Why would you like to focus on space in your reading of these texts? 

Theatre is by definition a spatial medium – it comes from the Greek word meaning “seeing place” – unlike other literary genres. I am always curious about how certain themes are spatialised or experienced in space, and fascinated by the “sharing” of space between the actors-as-characters and the audience. I also think that in the Irish context, there is an acute sense of place coming from the experience of colonisation and the Troubles (I highly recommend Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney’s 1977 essay, “The Sense of Place”). Issues such as borders, centre versus periphery, and diaspora continue to occupy Irish literature, matters that can be explored through spatial analysis. My supervisor Prof Morash had written a book called Mapping Irish Theatre: Theories of Space and Place (Cambridge UP, 2013), so I was also influenced by the work he was doing.

Personally, when I arrived in Ireland to study, I was struck by how central the pub was to Irish culture, and how much it has occupied Irish literary life and imagination. Brendan Behan famously said he was a drinker with a writing problem, not the other way around, or you may know from James Joyce’s Ulysses that you can’t get across Dublin without passing a pub. The pub is a performative space, a place where the private can be performed in public. My master’s thesis was about three different plays set in pubs – one was Tom Murphy’s Conversations on a Homecoming, which is set in a pub called The White House, and the owner looks like John F. Kennedy. The others were Conor McPherson’s The Weir, set in 1990s Sligo, and finally the Northern Irish playwright Owen McCafferty’s A Quiet Place, which deals with the Troubles and ideas of reconciliation. I was fascinated by how this very ordinary, common, everyday space can serve as a kind of antidote or an alternative way of approaching Irish politics and culture, as set against the grand narratives that dominated Irish history and society. Ultimately, because of the pub’s innate theatricality, I argued that staging the pub is significant because it serves as a metatheatrical reflection of theatre.

In my PhD, I wanted to look at many different spaces but with a focus on one writer. Tom Murphy for me was the perfect test case, because his plays are not only set in the pub, but also in dancehalls, clubs, grocery stores, the therapist’s office, gasworks, hotels, and airports, and that helps my aim of re-mapping the topography of Irish theatre. 

4.    You have lived in different places in Asia and Europe. Having now been in Hong Kong for a period of time, how do you feel about the “everyday space” in Hong Kong? 

I think my dataset is pretty limited at the moment in that I’m still very new to Hong Kong. I’ve mostly spent my time going back and forth between my office and home (not too far from HKU) because of the workload of writing lectures. It is certainly busy and crammed just like any metropolitan city, and I’ve noticed A LOT of shopping malls. I find the ferries, old trams, footbridges, outdoor long escalators, and outdoor karaoke particularly interesting! So, some things are obviously similar – the routine of working, commuting, eating, the same global brands (so many 7/11s and Starbucks! Even a Marks & Spencer with produce from Ireland!) – but there are local charms that distinguish Hong Kong’s everyday space, whether that’s old temples or shops, its people, and the stories attached to the places. I did visit Man Mo temple which houses the God of Literature, in hopes that the God might give me extra strength to teach this year, but I have yet to explore many places outside my usual boundaries. In some ways, the city is still strange to me because I don’t speak the language, which means I’ll always have a limited experience of the place. But compared to other places where I’ve lived, it definitely feels like more of a melting pot, with various cultures and peoples coming together.

5.    What are some of your favourite pieces of art, be it textual or otherwise? 

It’s so difficult to pick just a few! I had a great time in Belgium and loved Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and Magritte’s paintings. I love the extraordinariness of the ordinary, or seeing the strangeness of the ordinary. In that regard, I’ve been teaching Shaun Tan’s The Arrival recently (it’s a graphic novel without words), and it’s one of my favourites so far in its depiction of migration. And the illustrations are just so beautiful, beyond words!

6.    What are some activities you enjoy outside work? 

I enjoy playing music – I play piano and flute, very common if you grew up with Korean parents, but haven’t had a chance to practise since moving here. I also love going for walks. I’ve only managed to go for one proper hike so far, but will definitely go out more once I have less work to do. I like reading, of course, but in my free time I often prefer watching films and TV series. I also enjoy minding my plants (I have a few succulents and a Money Tree) and doing laundry (even though it might sound like work) because it gives me a refreshing feeling.