5 Questions with Margaret Leng Tan
A work that sweeps across the senses, Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep is a sonic portrait of new music icon Margaret Leng Tan – an evocative exploration of memory, time, control and loss.
Photo / Pier Carthew
No.1
What first inspired Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep? And how has your well-documented relationship with the toy piano culminated in this work?
I have been toying with the idea of writing my memoirs for years. I had come up with the title about twenty years ago. I've been told that when you have a great title, you really must write the book!
Over the years I collected anecdotes, observations, reflections, jotted down on scraps of paper that I stuck into a folder and promptly forgot about. With my practicing and touring schedule I found it extremely difficult to focus on writing. I decided it would just be easier to create a sonic theatrical memoir. Instead of writing about my life, I would simply live my life onstage!
Yes, the toy piano and some toys are featured in the production but ever more present is the prepared piano in the exquisitely compelling score by Erik Griswold.
No.2
You have been known for playing unconventional instruments such as teapots, soy sauce dishes and tuna cans—including imitating the cawing of a crow!—in the past, in an established career that’s spanned decades. You’ve called yourself a ‘sit-down comic’ and you’ve said before that ‘concerts are much too serious affairs.’ Where does this subversive sensibility come from, and how do you nurture it?
I have never really thought of myself as subversive, but rather, just doing my own thing. It all stems from my relationship with John Cage who gave me the confidence to be myself. I find that one thing inevitably leads to another and that one is continually in the process of re-inventing oneself. I suppose Dragon Ladies is the culmination of that process.
No.3
What does your creative process look like? How do you think it’s evolved over time?
Having the strength of your convictions is key. If you are going to do something as wacky as challenge Schroeder, the toy pianist in Peanuts, you must do it with utmost integrity and never as a gimmick.
Because I regard the toy piano (or any object that I happen to be playing) as a worthy artistic endeavour, I am simply fulfilling the French Dada artist Marcel Duchamp's statement that "Poor tools require better skills" and Cage's long-standing conviction that one can make music on any object capable of producing sound.
These principles have remained inviolate over the years as I developed my "niche" career which means unconventional, one-of-a-kind, highly specialised, unbound. In fact, 2020 is my 25th anniversary as a serious toy pianist.
No. 4
You were the first woman to graduate with a Doctorate from the Juilliard School in 1971. Of course, a lot has changed since then. Looking back, what does it feel like to be a trailblazer of sorts?
After Cage anything is possible. Experimentalists like myself are the children of Cage. We have cleared the path for the next generation to find its own way.
No.5
What can we expect at Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep?
In Dragon Ladies Don't Weep I am simply fulfilling Cage's staunch belief in the equation, Life = Art = Theatre. As my first fully-fledged foray into theatre it is a no-holds-barred depiction of who I am, foibles and all. I am candid about my omnipresent struggles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and yes, there is light at the end of the tunnel where humour is the ultimate redemption. It's not all gloom and doom.
My life has been a fascinating journey filled with priceless stories, some of which have found their way into Dragon Ladies Don't Weep.
Find out more
Book tickets to Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep,
at Arts Centre 28 February.