Gaggle 雁鸣 is a documentary theatre play that aims to present Chinese international students’ voices and stories about their lives in the US.

Words have it...

"Overall, China has the largest share of students at U.S. colleges of any country, comprising 34.6% of the total international student population in the U.S. in 2019-2020."

-U.S. News, 2020

“…although many second-language researchers equated CISs’ silence with lack of communicative competence, silence itself might be embedded in Chinese traditional culture and CIS identity.”

-Zhu, Y. & Bresnahan, M., 2018

In 2020, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, we initiated this documentary theatre project as a way to confront stereotypes, to explore culture and identity, and to amplify the voices of the Chinese international student community.

This play, therefore, was structured completely from the transcribed interviews that we conducted with 19 Chinese students living in New York City. The interviews were conducted from April 2020 to June 2020. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the interviews were all conducted through online platforms, and the play is meant to be performed online.

“The individuals inside are frequently fighting that their individual voices be heard, while the walls of the place, which are the mask, and the perception, are reluctant to give over to the voices of the individuals."

-Fires in the Mirror (p. xxxviii), by Anna Deavere Smith

Documentary theatre is an umbrella term for the theatre forms that are based on non-fictional stories and words from real people, instead of fictional writings by playwrights. In other words, when we script, we create and play around only with interviewee’s actual words instead of writing fictional plots and words. The characters embodied by the actors in a documentary theatre play are usually based on participants who agreed to be interviewed about the topics of the play.

In documentary theatre, the Brechtian alienation effect is emphasized. By employing a series of techniques, such as projections, one actor playing multiple roles, cross identity casting, we attempt to connect to the audience through critical thinking. Often times, documentary theatre provides theatre practitioners with effective tools to reenact, recognize, and reflect on social issues.

The specific form we used for creating Gaggle, ethnodrama, spotlights certain groups' culture. Being both arts based research and research based art, ethnodrama opens space for both researchers and artists to find more possibilities in discovering people and society, as well as in making meaning of the world.