Characters:

Lena, a Singaporean

Cathy, a Canadian, Lena’s best friend

Pamela, a Singaporean, also Lena’s best friend

Pale, fat, blonde woman in a chartreuse business suit

(may also be played by Pamela)

ACT ONE SCENE ONE

(In a subway station in downtown Toronto, beneath one of those advertising neon signs, between the DWA and the far end of the station.)

Lena: Afterwards, I told everyone that I packed my bags because I was standing in the subway, waiting for a train, when the Metro advertising overhead flashed red: "Live in Toronto!" I thought it spoke to me, as it must have to thousands of other immigrants, beckoning to a land of artistic concrete and pointy towers – pretty much as the majestic rocky mountains and towering spruces must have done to another generation.

Cathy: (laughing) I’ve lived in Toronto all my life – and even I can't remember I was born in Truro, Nova Scotia.

Lena: "Live in Toronto!"

Cathy: “Laive,” not “live,” you silly goose!

Lena: Well, of course, you’re right. "Live in Toronto!!!" The electronic billboard heralded some feel-good guru who was bringing glad tidings of great joy; how to make millions – and live like the rich and famous.

Cathy: It was his one-and-only appearance in Toronto in eight years (you'd be lucky if you saw him again in the next eight) -- so call the Westin Harbour Castle to make your reservations, to pay homage and your fees.

Lena: But, at the time, I didn't make the connection. I thought the clarion call was to relocate:  “Come west, young woman”.

Cathy: You should’ve known better. Remember, the previous item on the electronic billboard was an appeal to prospective stool pigeons to report criminal elements to yet another handy phone number, no questions asked (no rewards offered either).

Lena: But I didn't, and my whole life changed as a result.

Cathy: (laughing) What were you doing in Toronto, anyway?

Lena: I spent three days alternating between a pokey room in a once-genteel hostelry in downtown Toronto, and the glorious subterranean shopping catacombs that yawned from Front to Dundas.  I was actually waiting for David to show.  But he never turned up.

Cathy: (in one breath) Who's David?  Is he someone I haven't met?  Someone I should know?

Lena: David and I stopped in Toronto, as an afterthought, six years ago, on the way from Montreal to the Niagara Falls, and because we were young and mindless and in lust, we swore to meet again in Toronto, come what may.

Quite predictably, we split up, and, in the intervening years, David got married, and I got divorced. (Sighs) In hindsight, equally predictably, only I remembered.

Cathy: You didn't seriously think he'd make the rendezvous?

Lena: Well, Pamela and I had a bet going.

Cathy: Who’s Pamela?

Lena: Pamela and I went to school together – she once dated my older brother – we were also American exchange students one fateful year – when we were seventeen. (morosely).  She was my best friend.

Cathy: And Pamela didn’t think David would show?

Lena: Well, I don't see why not!

Cathy: (soothingly) I know you don’t.

Lena: David and I swore to meet, come hell or high water.

Cathy: And?

Lena: Actually, the rest is lost in a kind of burgundy haze. We drank three bottles of Beaujolais.  Well, David drank most of it, so maybe that explains why I remembered, and he didn't.

Cathy: So what did you do when David didn't show up?

Lena: The first day, I hung out in my hotel room, waiting for the phone to ring. The second day, I wandered up and down Yonge Street, peering into windows stocked with esoteric books, coloured condoms, hiking boots and mountain climbing paraphernalia, computers, VCRs, amplifiers, and orange neon-clad Chinese boys kneading pizza dough.  I came back every couple of hours to check for messages, but of course there weren’t any.  By the third day, I decided that David had definitely reneged on his pledge – you know, I'll probably never see him again.

When I crawled out from the catacombs and looked up at all those steel and glass towers – standing in the shadow of all those bank buildings, I felt I'd come home.

Cathy: Home?

Lena: Yeah. You’d be amazed how alike they look – especially in the light of the setting sun.

ACT ONE SCENE TWO

(Pamela’s plush suite in the Attorney-General's office in Singapore, with its commanding view of the skyline.)

Pamela: You can't go home to a place you were only passing through.

Lena: Wow, eight years in the Attorney-General's office has done you a world of good!

Pamela: Thank you.

Lena: (nodding) Your mind’s been honed razor-sharp by paper work and dulled by attention to interminable detail.

Pamela:  And you? Let me look at you. (She looks Lena up and down).  You haven’t changed a bit.  What’s your secret?

Lena: (with a straight face) A life of artistic freedom and menial labour.

Pamela: (puzzled) You really like it there?

Lena: Surprise! I really like it there.

Pamela: (drily) So what brings you back?

Lena: (defensive) I’m allowed to return.  I haven’t forgotten to file my tax returns.  I haven’t been guilty of evading national service.

Pamela: Be serious.  Only guys can be arrested at the airport for those misdemeanors.

Lena:  Thank God I’m a girl!  I never thought the day would come when being female would work in my favour.

Pamela:  So what brings you back?

Lena: Ohhh this and that.  Plus I wanted to look you up. See how well you’ve done.

Pamela: We haven’t seen each other since you left.  How long has it been?

Lena: (promptly) Ten years.

Pamela: Ten years.  Has it been that long?

Lena:  Have you seen the Toronto skyline?

Pamela:  Of course not.

Lena:  Do you know how it makes me feel?

Pamela: Not really.

Lena:  It makes me feel like home.

Pamela:  I can't see how it can look anything like Singapore.

Lena:  But it does! You’d be surprised.

Pamela: (doubtfully) Even so, a skyline is no reason to emigrate.

Lena: I don't see why not.  A skyline is as good a reason as the crashing of waves against the coastline, or the silhouette of rocky mountains in the dusk.

Pamela:  For you, maybe.  Not for me.

Lena:  No, you’re far too practical. (Long pause)  Though you weren’t always.

Pamela:  Things change.  People grow up.

Lena:  Meaning?

Pamela:  Nothing.

Lena:  Wasn’t it the incomparable Sarah -- another one of our classmates –

who also chose to vote with her feet?

Pamela:  She’s very happy in Australia.

Lena:  A former penal colony.  A country where people speak in an incomprehensible accent, and use words no self-respecting female can condone. All men are “mates,” all women “sheilas’—

Pamela:  What are you getting at?

Lena: A country where people drink and drive, run rampage on the highways, and stone chinos.

Pamela:  Oh, come on, you're trading in stereotypes!

Lena:  Isn’t everyone?

Pamela:  Sarah has two children now, a boy and a girl.  She says that the kids don’t have to learn Mandarin in school there.

Lena:  No, just dingo English.

Pamela:  You're being unfair.

Lena:  I'm sorry. But I resent Sarah.  I resent the triumphant lilt to her voice when she says that Perth is a mere four hours' flight away, and she does sooh lurve her grandmama, who lives in comfy, middle-class Katong – and it would just tear her to shreds if she can't bring the children back to visit.  And anyway they have free education in Australia and (of course) Perth is just sooh much more convenient.

Pamela: Unlike Toronto, which is a mind-numbing 20-hour flight away, not counting various refuelling stopovers – not to mention the frantic circlings occasioned by snowdrifts and high winds, and other vagaries of the weather.

Lena:  (to herself) A land of vast Arctic wastes, a land so hostile and inhospitable that at least one early explorer was abandoned to die.

Pamela:  I know this instinctively, even though I haven't a clue about Canadian history.  In school, even though we were good colonial children with a proper colonial curriculum, we didn't have enough time to circumvent the globe in our adolescent sweep of the British Empire.

Lena:  And the history teacher, who’s been to Disneyland three times, has never felt the spray of the surging Niagara, or walked the Athabasca glacier, or listened to the howling of the coyote on the edge of the wheat fields.

(to herself) In my mind's eye gleamed the aquamarine of sheetglass from Toronto's towers, the sleek submarines cruising the turquoise waters of the West Edmonton Mall’s underwater paradise, and the moss green gables of the Banff Springs Hotel.

After all, it was in the reflected ultramarine of Lake Maligne that a middle-aged Japanese tourist told me that you haven’t experienced anything if you haven’t meditated on the eerie emerald of Lake Louise.

Pamela:  Aren’t you glamorizing all this somewhat?

Lena:  (in disbelief) Glamorizing?

Pamela:  You can tell me the truth, you know. We’re old friends.

Lena:  I am telling you the truth.  I have nothing to hide.

Pamela:  I know things haven’t been that easy.

Lena:  Have they been that easy for you?

Pamela:  (conceding) No, perhaps not. But at least I’m home.

Lena:  Toronto’s my home now.

What about Pasadena?

Lena: What about it?

Pamela:  Remember Pasadena? We were seventeen, we were American exchange students – we discovered California!

Lena:   Pasadena was the kind of heady experience I will never again ride a rollercoaster for.

Pamela: You had this massive crush on a dusky hunk named Adam West.

Lena:  I fought this crush I had on Adam West.  It was easy. He didn't care.

Pamela: You and Adam swore eternal –

Lena:  Adolescent hormones.

Pamela:  No.

Lena:  Remember Hollywood?  Rodeo Drive….That was like the Garden of Eden.  Adolescent paradise.

Pamela:  You know, there are lots of Asians -- Chinese and Japanese – in Silicon Valley.

Lena:  Lots of Hispanics too.

Pamela:  But lots of Asian-Americans. 

Lena:  Yeah, Nobel-prize winning Indians too.  So what's that got to do with the price of eggs?

Pamela:  Look, if you insist on transplanting yourself, shouldn’t you be seeking kindred souls, people who accept you on your own terms?

Lena:  Shouldn’t I?

Pamela:  You’re drawn, like a moth, to the bright lights of a big, cold, lonely city –

Lena:  Lights that –

Pamela:  You imagine to be –

Lena:  Warm and incandescent –

Pamela:  They’re garish and harsh.

Lena:  How do you know?  You haven’t even been there.

Pamela:  Look, I know a lot of people heading west.

Lena:  As if I were merely another misguided, lost soul jumping on the bandwagon.  As if that one year of western education and exposure made me forget where I came from, instead of reinforcing my patriotism and my resolve, as it did yours.

Pamela:  Your cultural underpinnings, after all, are rooted in the shifting sands of the Gobi Desert.  "Never forget," our geography teacher intoned, "that the Chinese built the great wall of China."

Lena:  Or that the man who built that monument to civilization was the same man who consigned thousands of scholarly tomes to the flames.

Pamela:  And now that Singapore is trading with and investing in — not to mention giving advice to — burgeoning free trade zones in China, the clarion call is surely:  Look east, woman.

Lena:  Don’t bet on it.

Pamela:  The west is drowning in debt, and America is losing its ability to lead.

Lena:  Canada is not America.

Pamela:  America, Canada….Schmerica.  Longest undefended border and all that…?

Lena:  But not the same.

Pamela:  Who cares?  The point is – Why do I bother, when you’re oblivious to either the political implications or obligations.

Lena:  Yes, why do you?

Pamela:  Because America is losing its grip on reality, period.

Lena:  Whose sister was it who married a computer programmer out in Silicon Valley?

Pamela:   (blinks) Who?

Lena:  Yeah, you know, the TV junkie, who spends all her time watching reruns of “While the Stomach Turns,” or whatever soap is hot at the moment.  (Pamela looks blank.)  Oh, of course! It’s Cathy's cousin Dale from Vancouver, whose sister Sandra married a Taiwanese computer whiz.

Pamela:  What?

Lena: You’ve never met my friend, Cathy.

(to audience) I met Cathy in the subway. She invited me for coffee, and we became friends.  But you wouldn't understand that.  All our mutual friends were either family friends or friends of friends.  No “strangers.”

Pamela:  Cathy was a complete stranger?

 Lena:  (nodding) Cathy was a complete stranger. (Pamela looks disapproving.)  She got me to join the Business Council.

ACT TWO SCENE ONE

(Business Council Office, Toronto)

Lena:  When I went to register, a pale, fat, blonde woman in a chartreuse business suit looked me up and down, then realized I couldn’t possibly be a Canadian, born and bred.

Blonde:  (kindly) Where are you from?

Lena:  (looking nervously at Cathy, who has accompanied her there)

The Business Council was a government agency, wasn’t it? Was it compiling statistics on errant migrants?  Would this data be used against me?

In this era of global goodwill, might the respective governments of the country I had left, and the country to which I had newly arrived, not co-operate in an effort to colonize some embryonic outpost, by consigning all émigrés to a tour of duty in the outer fringes?  Worse still, perhaps in the not too distant future, might the two governments, and I, find myself being pulled asunder in a tug-of-war of loyalties I had not yet even begun to sort out?

Cathy nodded and smiled reassuringly, as if to say that I would come to no grievous bodily harm even if I should choose to divulge such essential information as district, city, and country.

The pale, fat, blonde woman in the chartreuse business suit continued to smile at me with her best CBC Morning smile, her head cocked like an inquisitive sparrow.

Blonde: (kindly) Where are you from?  I mean, which country?

 Lena: “Sparanoia,” I wanted to blurt. But neither she nor Cathy would have understood, and so I settled for clarity, and accuracy, instead, (apologetically) Singapore. I’m from Singapore.

Now, if she had been American, she would have said “Singapore?” as if it were some unpronounceable foreign phrase, wrinkled her brow, then asked, ever so helpfully, “That’s in China, isn’t it?”  But, because she was Canadian, she said:

Blonde:  Ahhh! (An even broader toothpaste smile replaces her original version.)  My Aunt Edie was out there last summer.  She said it was sooh  clean, sooh  green.  I’ve heard wunn derful things about it.

Lena:  (flashing a megawatt smile)  It’s one of the seven Asian dragons, the emerging economic powerhouses of the Pacific Rim.

Blonde:  It must be a wunn derful place.

Lena:  It’s a fine place.

Blonde:  Pardon?

Lena:  (sniggering) You know, you get fined for spitting.  You get fined for littering.  You even get fined for failing to flush a public toilet.

Blonde:  (eyes wide)  You don’t say.

Lena: And guess what the national bird is?

Blonde:  Give up.

Lena:  The yellow (construction) crane. [A cartoon of a building crane flashes overhead]

Blonde:  You don’t say.  Just like in Toronto.

Lena:  (to Cathy)  What did I tell you?  Twin cities.

Blonde:  Really?

Lena:  Indubitably.

Blonde:  Amazing. Twin cities, eh? (Lena nods)

Isn’t that nice?

Lena:  Yeah, isn’t it nice?  Thank God for Canadians.

Blonde:  (brightly)  Isn’t it?  (shuffling the papers in her hands, and then turning with obvious relief to the task of the paperwork at hand).  Now, you’re going to have to fill these forms.  Don’t worry, they’re already in triplicate….

Lena:  (helplessly)  I’d escaped from one bureaucracy only to run smack dab into another!

Cathy: S o tell me all about Singapore!  I’ve never been farther than Buffalo, New York –

Lena:  Unless you count your annual pilgrimage to Pensacola, Florida, for a week at the end of every January, when you just lay on the beach, soaking up a tan, before flying back to Toronto.

Cathy:  After leaving the Business Council, I took Lena to my favourite outdoor café for lunch.  I ordered Fettucine Alfredo, and she had Teriyaki Chicken. (brightly)  So, what’s Singapore like?

Lena:  Well, it’s a tiny little island republic located just one degree above the equator, and that’s why we have summer all year round.

Cathy:  (almost choking on her fettucine with envy)  Summer all year round!?!  We have four seasons, of course, almost winter, winter, still winter – and, here in Toronto – construction!

Lena:  (grinning)  No, I didn’t know that.

Cathy:  I hate the winter!  Nine whole months of winter and only three months of everything else!  (They chew in silence for a while.)

So how many people are there in Singapore?

Lena:  About as many as in Toronto.  Over three million.

Cathy:  Really?

Lena:  Twins.

Cathy:  Huh?

Lena: They’re almost twins. There are lots of ethnic neighbourhoods in Singapore too.  (In fact, Little India there is almost the spitting image of Little India out on Coxwell and Gerard.)

Cathy:  Wow. You mean you have the Italians and the Portuguese and the Ukrainians and the Polish too?

Lena:  Well, it’s more like the Arabic and the Chinese and the Malay and the Thai.  But of course there are American, Canadian, Swiss, German, French, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian and Indian communities as well.  And, in the last fifteen years, we’ve had a steady influx of Hongkies-

Cathy:  Hongkie? (blinking)  Is that a cookie of some sort?

Lena:  No, it’s what we call people from Hong Kong.

Cathy:  Oh, right.

Lena:  But we don’t have many people from the Caribbean, like you do here.

Cathy:  No? (Pause)  Huh.

Lena:  And most of the population is ethnically Chinese.

Cathy:  Yeah?

Lena:  That’s why we’re so paranoid about the neighbours.  A Chinese island in a Malay sea.  We’re surrounded by ethnic non-Chinese: Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines.

Cathy:  Interesting.  (Pause, her eyes darting to the teriyaki chicken.)  So how’s your chicken?

Lena:  Not bad.  How’s yours?

Cathy:  Great.  (Long pause.)  But what’s Singapore really like?

Lena:  (shrugs)  It’s a big city. Like Toronto.  I kid you not. All the tallest skyscrapers are bank or insurance buildings.

Cathy:  Huh.  (Beat)  Huh.  (Long pause)  So, if they’re so alike, why move?

Lena:  Well, they’re not that much alike.

Cathy:  No?

Lena:  The theatres, the burlesque bars, the night life. I couldn’t walk down College Street and run into Shirley Maclaine or Robin Williams getting in or out of their trailer.  I mean, there are real-life artists with their easels, waiting to paint your portrait outside the Eaton Centre at midnight!  It’s like Montmartre!

Cathy:  (laughs)  I never thought of it quite like that.

Lena:  Of course, it’s a lot safer walking the streets of Singapore, at any time of the dawn or dusk.  And there are no drugs.  Can you believe it?

Cathy:  No drugs??

Lena:  You can walk around the streets with alcohol – you could always walk around the streets with alcohol -- but no drugs.  Drugs carry the death penalty.

Cathy:  Huh. Huh.

Lena:  And if you get hungry at three in the morning, you can always find a hot meal.  You can find food 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  That’s why it’s a gastronomic paradise. You could live there for years and never eat the same thing for months.

Cathy: (winding the last strand of her fettucine round her fork) Wow.  (Pause)  Wow.

Lena:  You know, this cross-border shopping reminds me a lot of -- (she hesitates, laughs) I almost said “home.”  But, you know, I wonder if it would still – I mean, ever be home again.

Cathy:  What d’you mean?

Lena:  Singapore. I mean Singapore.

Cathy:  (sympathetically)  Do you miss home?

Lena:  Well, we’re connected to Johor in Malaysia by a three-quarter-mile causeway, and it used to be that the Malaysians would drive down to Singapore to shop, and we’d drive to Malyasia to fill our tanks, because gas is a lot cheaper there.

Cathy:  Wow, isn’t that wild!

Lena:  (grinning)  I told you.  Like twins.

Cathy:  How big is Singapore?

Lena:  Two hundred and twenty five square miles.  Just a pocket handkerchief.  If you dropped it into Lake Ontario, it would disappear without a trace.

Cathy:  That small, huh?

Lena:  Yup, that’s about the size of the main island, maybe a little bit more after land reclamation.  Of course, there’s a whole bunch of smaller islands.  We even have an island that’s like Centre Island.  It used to be called Pulau Belakang Mati, the Island Where Death Strikes from Behind, because, during the Second World War, the British mounted their cannon facing seaward.  They were expecting a naval attack.  But the Japanese confounded them by sneaking down the Malay peninsula and crossing Johor into Singapore.  Now it’s called Pulau Sentosa, which is a much prettier name, meaning Pleasure Island, and you can take the cable car there, or ride the ferry to this exotic playground where you can golf and swim and watch son et lumiere waterworks in the evenings.

Cathy:  Wow.

Lena:  Yeah.  Wow.

Cathy:  So it was a British colony, just like Hong Kong?

Lena:  You mean just like Canada.  It’s independent now.

Cathy:  (with new-found interest)  Wow, a colony – just like Canada –

Lena:  Except that we didn’t have a prime minister to repatriate the constitution for us.

Cathy:  (puts down her fork)  No?

Lena:  We got thrown out of the constitutional deal that included Malaya and the Straits Settlements, and Sarawak.  But, then, at the eleventh hour, Brunei decided it would go solo as well.

Cathy:  Was there a constitutional referendum?

Lena:  That was in the 60s – not an era of consultation.  Not for developing countries anyway.

And, of course, there was a lot of speculation back then whether a miniscule country with no appreciable resources of any kind could survive, let alone thrive.

Cathy:  Wow.  (Pause)  Wow.

Lena:  It’s funny, back in 1963, the burning question was whether you’d seen that TV footage they ran ad infinitum of when President John F. Kennedy was shot.

Cathy:  Yeah, the question they asked was:  Where were you on Nov 23, 1963?

Lena:  Well, back in our neck of the woods, the burning question was whether you’d seen the prime minister cry on TV, when the country was being shown the door.

ACT TWO SCENE TWO

(Reprise: Pamela’s office, Singapore)

Pamela:  Nobody knows you there, nobody cares.  Is that what you want?

Lena:  Nobody knows me here, either.  Nobody cares.

Pamela:  (reproachfully)  You know that isn’t true.

Lena:  Isn’t it?

Pamela:   It won’t be that easy.  You won’t have gone to their schools, or driven their highways, or grown up reading their books and newspapers –watching their television programmes.

Lena:  Albeit, unwillingly, I recognized Canadian fashion TV, E.N.G., a wildlife documentary or two, and the odd Canadian magazine or movie – we watched and read the same things!

But they were all I had to navigate the pathways to a land that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the forty-ninth parallel to the north pole.  

Pamela:  You’re always going to be an outsider, a second-class citizen in a strange land.

Lena:  Just by being a woman, you spend your entire life as an outsider, a second-class citizen anyway.  So what difference does it make whether I’m a second-class citizen here or there?

Pamela:  (gently)  The difference is that you belong here.

Lena:  I belong anywhere.  (Beat)  I’m a citizen of the world.

Pamela:  You hope.

Lena:  I’ll never find out if I don’t go.

Pamela:  Think of what you’re turning your back on!

Lena:  We’re not seventeen any more. (Lights flicker and dim. Lights come up again.)

Pamela:  So.  (Regarding her once-best friend with a blend of affection and appraisal.)  Are you glad you went?

Lena:  And you.  Are you glad you stayed?

Pamela:  (deliberately)  It’s so nice to see you again.

Lena:  And you.  You look well.

Pamela:  (laughs)  Well, the kids are much older now, so they don’t keep me up as much.  (She picks up photos of the teenagers and hands them to Lena.)

Lena:  Wow, Jimmy’s really grown.  And Adele’s a young lady!

Pamela:  (laughs again)  And I don’t work such long hours as I used to, since I got promoted – I’ve got two new assistants.

Lena:  Well, congratulations!

Pamela:  Thank you.

(Lena surveys the spacious office, with its creamy white walls, the oak-lined shelves full to overflowing with thick, heavy books, and sturdy blinds that obscure the spectacular view of the skyline and harbour from the windows.)

Lena:  Nice office. 

Pamela:  You’ll find there are walls you can’t walk through, he older you get

Lena:  Why do you sound as if you’ve already run smack up against those same walls?  Right here.

Pamela:  So how is Toronto?

Lena:  It’s fabulous. I simply love it.  Come and visit me some time.  I’ll show you around.  And introduce you to my friend Cathy.

Pamela:  (politely) That would be nice.  But we’re going to Europe this year.  Cheong will be addressing a conference in Geneva in June.  And next year, I promised Jimmy we’d go to New Zealand.  But, of course, Adele wants to do the States.

Lena:  (brightly)  It’s just a short hop across the border.

Pamela:  I don’t know if we’ll be able to manage. We only have four short weeks to try and cram everything in, and Adele insists on Disney World – even so, it’s going to be a whirlwind tour.

Lena:  I’ll bet.

Pamela:  But you never know.

Lena:  Somehow, her smile reminded me of that pale, fat, blonde woman in the chartreuse business suit.  All those years ago.  You know the one at the Business Council.

Pamela:  Anything can happen, of course.  But I don’t want to make promises – or raise your hopes.

Lena:  No, of course not.

Pamela:  We’ll see.  Everything might just work out.

(Her eyes fly discreetly to the clock on her desk.)

Lena:  I guess I should go.

Pamela:  Well, it was wonderful to see you again.  (They are about to hug but end up shaking hands, oddly formal.)  And hey, don’t be a stranger.  We should keep in touch more.  Why don’t you give my secretary your e-mail address on your way out.

Lena:  Yeah.

Pamela:  Yes, I’m so glad you dropped by.

(Lena stands up.)

Pamela:  So when do you leave?

Lena:  My flight leaves this Saturday, at midnight. (laughs)  I feel like Cinderella.  Otherwise I might turn into a pumpkin.

Pamela:  So soon?

Lena:  I have to get back.

Pamela:  Of course.

Lena:  I hope you’ll visit Canada some time.

Pamela:  (laughs)  Maybe one day.

Lena:  Somehow, I already know I haven’t succeeded –

Pamela:  Did you actually even intend –

Lena:  Making you change your mind?  (Beat)  Guess not. 

(Pamela walks her to the door. They look awkwardly at each other, unsure whether to hug or shake hands, then Lena waves, Pamela smiles, lights dim.)

THE END

Background Information

Live in Toronto! By Rebecca Chua was workshopped on May 13, 2007, and was performed at the Pilot Tavern, 22 Cumberland Ave on June 17, 2007. Produced by Jennifer Parr, Heather Lacey and Stephen Near of Strolling Players, it was directed by John Wallace, and featured Marilyn Wallis Fraser, Suzanne Courtney and Laura Kim. The play raises the questions: Singapore or Toronto? Home or adventure? and looks at the clash between two friends who make different choices.

Rebecca Chua is an author, poet and playwright. Her first play, Between the Lines, was performed at the Alumnae Theatre’s New Ideas Festival. Her short stories have been broadcast on the BBC and in Singapore and Canada, and published in Canada, Singapore, US, UK, Australia, Japan and Malaysia. She is proud to have participated in the Banff Centre for the Arts’ writing program and the Vermont Writers’ Colony. Rebecca was born in Singapore and now lives in Toronto.