‘Curtain Up!’ puts Asian American kids front and center

Written By: Jeremy Lim

“Easier to be scared than happy.” Charlotte Wang says this slumped in her auditorium seat with a beaming smile on her face, waiting to be called on stage. This beautiful mix of emotions, a moment filled with anxiety yet bereft of foresight and experience, is what it means to be a child. 

“Curtain Up!,” a documentary directed by Hui Tong and Kelly Ng, follows the theater club of P.S. 124: Yung Wing School in Chinatown as they rehearse for their next big production, “Frozen Kids.” Through rehearsals and work on the musical, the children of the club open up and showcase not only their creative abilities but also the unique problems they face as children, as performers and as Asian Americans.

Tong and Ng didn’t initially intend for “Curtain Up!” to be a feature-length documentary, but after spending five to six months with these children and their families, they realized they had a story that people needed to see. “We were supposed to do a short for our Master’s program [at Columbia University’s School of Journalism]. We finished our 30 minute short as our thesis, and after that, I said let’s do this as a feature because I thought that we had to. The short cannot do justice to the story, so we spent four, five months after that developing it into a feature,” Tong said.

With Mr. Olsen, the school’s music teacher, and Mr. Kyle and Ms. Hannah, the director and choreographer of their show, P.S. 124 and their theater club are run by strong individuals that truly believe in placing the spotlight on Asian American children, and giving them an opportunity to perform where there was none before. “The teachers really valued the theater club …” Ng said, “I also think the teachers don’t see it as just child’s play. They are really involved in all of the sessions and I noticed that they are very interactive with the kids, not just instructing them but also asking kids for their feedback and taking that feedback to change certain choreography.” The instructors working directly with this particular crop of kids were vital to their growth as people and performers but Tong made sure to give Baayork Lee, the club’s founder, a lot of credit. “… I got to thinking about Baayork Lee. When she started this program, she was super serious. She thought, ‘I’m bringing these kids to the JTF (Junior Theater Festival) in front of thousands of people. We are the only Asian team and we have to make our presence known there.’”

However, even with such a passionate and caring group of adults, make no mistake about it, this documentary is driven by the kids.

The film follows the ups and downs of the production, but, out of the thirty-plus children involved in the musical, Tong and Ng center their film around William Cui (who plays Hans), Jack Lau (who play Kristoff), Charlotte Wang (who plays Elsa), and Alvin Wu (who plays Pabbie). Each of these kids ends up grappling with issues involving identity, family and ultimately, what it means to be an Asian American in the modern world. “We wanted two stars in the show, William and Charlotte, but we also wanted two kids that were more reflective,” Tong said about the cast they decided on. Ng added, “Alvin and Jack also had a lot of highlight moments; we were actually kind of sad that we couldn’t include more clips of them in the film …” 

Kids are said to be tough to work with, but for Hui and Ng, this didn’t seem to matter. “It’s so hard to work with children, but it’s also very exciting. I feel that in a way they got us, they understood what we were doing so well in terms of answering our questions and collaborating …“ However, for the parents, a little more work was needed to get them on their side. “It took us several months to be able to get to know their parents,” Hui said. “… I think that they got the idea that we were serious about it when we actually flew to Atlanta with them [for the Junior Theater Festival] and spent all of this time with them and their kids …“ Ng added.

Whether it’s a more serious conversation like William explaining why he’s proud to be Asian or something with less gravitas, like Charlotte lamenting the hot drinking water in China, the whole documentary oozes a sense of nostalgia for me, having also had many of these conversations before. Ng was caught off-guard by the connections she formed with some of the children. “This whole idea of having to pursue medicine or engineering really resonated with me and I was surprised. I didn’t expect these kids in the states would grapple with similar issues. Even the small things like this whole hot water thing, it really reminded me of what my dad always tells me, even up to now, he’s been telling me for the past three decades that I shouldn’t be drinking ice water.” The problems of the Asian American youth today are no different than those faced by people twenty or thirty years their senior; some things just don’t change. What does change, however, is what comes to light, what people are made aware of, and this is one of those rare instances where these issues are explored.

However, even though first or second generation Asian Americans will feel at home in these conversations and issues, nothing feels forced; it’s all very natural. These kids aren’t shown to the viewers as “others” or “outliers,” they are shown as kids, who also happen to be Asian American. These young children aren’t just feeling the pressure to succeed as Asian Americans, they’re feeling the pressure of growing up. Moments like Charlotte arguing with her brother about the talent of Asian actors and actresses are spliced in with moments of Alvin saying he finds it hard to make friends or Jack thinking he won’t get any role. These aren’t one-sided individuals that can be labelled easily, these are real human beings with real problems, and the duo of Tong-Ng do a wonderful job of highlighting this.

That is the real strength of “Curtain Up!”: the ability to take an honest look at kids, by giving them an outlet to freely express themselves. “Every time we asked them questions … they had lights in their eyes. They wanted to talk about these things,” Tong said. Some of the most memorable scenes of the documentary are moments where these elementary school students have moments of complete clarity and wisdom, followed by something very silly to remind us that, yes, these are in fact children. At one point, William talks about the lack of Asians in his school’s curriculum, and how he finds that ridiculous as a school in the middle of Chinatown. This is a great point and is a conversation that can be talked upon for hours, but instead, William quickly shifts to the fact that he doesn’t like learning Mandarin because he doesn’t like homework. Children are a lot more complex than some adults like to give them credit for and the theater club of P.S. 124 proves that over and over again.

The care for these children and for topics like family and Asian identity are apparent and both Tong and Ng are pushing forward in their careers to continue their vision. For Ng, a new film project has begun, something a little closer to her own home. “It’s more local, based in Singapore. We’re filming a family that’s grappling early onset dementia.” For Tong, the medium changes, but his passion still shines through. Writing about Asian Americans, Chinese Americans, Mainland Chinese, and overseas Chinese students, Tong tackles what it means to be “Chinese” through a historical and personal lens, with his work on this documentary influencing a lot of his thoughts.

For fellow Asian Americans, the film acts as a form of representation, for others an insight into the struggles that immigrants and minorities face every day. For Tong and Ng, however, this documentary is not just any ol’ film.it’s something that will stick with them for a long time. The two directors ended up spending more time with the kids after production was over, attending local screenings of their project and even going to karaoke. Tong now talks to the families of Charlotte and William regularly. “I think they wanted to talk to me. They knew very few young Chinese people. They always send me messages. They want to know my perspective. I feel like I’m a mediator a lot of the time between the children and the parents.” 

Something that started as a school assignment morphed into a pet project which then, finally, evolved into what we see on screen now. Hui Tong and Kelly Ng build a documentary that manages to uplift an oft-forgotten group while also showing us that being a kid is complicated, even if it doesn’t always seem that way.