The Ah Kua Show

'The Ah Kua Show was a one-woman play, first performed in August 2009, based on the life of transwoman Leona Lo,then a 34-year-old public relations consultant.

It highlighted the struggles she had to overcome, including being taunted throughout her school days and the discrimination she faced.

=Premiere=

Tickets to the three-night run of Singapore's first one-woman transgender play were sold out. It premiered at the The Substation's Guiness Theatre on Friday, 7 August 2009. Extra chairs had to be added extra chairs to cope with the overwhelming demand. In fact, a special matinee on Saturday afternoon, 8 August 2016, was added to accommodate the demands of the crowd.

The play was directed by Emeric Lau.

=New York performance=

In August 2010, Lo travelled to New York to present the play. She wanted to draw international attention to the fact that the life of a transexual in Asia was limited to sexual work - her searing viewpoint. It was performed as a collage of experiences on the difficulties of being a transsexual person in places like Malaysia, Hong Kong or Bangkok.

The show, on stage at the "La Mama" alternative theater in Manhattan's East Village, was one of 197 events that are part of the XIV New York Fringe Festival. The plays were staged on 18 small and experimental theaters, and were a far cry from the glitzy, big-budget Broadway productions.

"The idea is to open up the eyes of the world and to apply a bit of pressure on these countries to grant these women official recognition," Leona told AFP after a recent presentation.

Leona, formerly known as Leonard, Lo was born in 1975 to a middle-class family of Chinese descent living in Singapore. Her difficult teenage years, mandatory military service, school in England, and finally the sex change in Thailand were the subject her autobiography entitled, "From Leonard to Leona, A Singapore Transsexual's Journey to Womanhood", published by Select Books in 2003.

Transsexuals had different experiences across Asia, and the show, which included song and dance numbers, attempted to portray this variety. The "Ah Kua Show" covered a broad range, from 'ladyboys' in Thailand to transgender women in Malaysia. Islamic clerics often turned the Malaysian transgenders in for counseling, "and they can only have jobs as sex workers," said Lo. In Thailand, transgenders "can only be show girls" because they were discriminated against and could not find regular jobs. In Hong Kong, transsexual men who had not undergone an operation were in high demand.

However, in Singapore "we are ahead of a lot of Asian countries," said Lo. "I can marry a guy and I have a passport." Nevertheless, "there is a lot of silent discrimination for being a transsexual."

In 2009, Lo became involved in the Asia Pacific Transgender Network, the first group of its kind in the region. "HIV is a huge problem among transgender women in Cambodia and Pakistan," said Lo. "Forty percent of all Pakistani transgenders have HIV/AIDS." In Malaysia and Indonesia "they have a huge problem with religion, preventing them from living as women. In Hong Kong we have a case right now where a woman is struggling to get married and we are supporting her."

Also, the group "just helped a transgender woman to escape from Mongolia and she has a refugee status in a European country right now."

The show's name, Ah Kua, were words in local Chinese dialect describing an effeminate or transsexual man.

The show also mentioned frustrated encounters with white western "heroes" who promised eternal love and a ticket out of the world of prostitution and cabarets. Sadly, this dream often ended up being a nightmare.

"There are lots of so called foreign guys who are looking for a transgender woman to bring back to the country and to abuse them," said Lo. "Until I met my present boyfriend, I was in and out of several unhealthy relationships because I also had an illusion of getting the ideal boyfriend and everything else in my life would change." Her advice was, "Be happy with yourself, be happy where you are, but do something constructive with your life."

=See also=
 * Leona Lo
 * Transgender people in Singapore

=References=
 * Charlene Chua, "THE Ah Kua Show? Oh, you mean the Aqua Show", The New Paper, 6 September 2010.
 * AFP, "Singapore native acts out the lives of Asian transsexuals", Asia One, 26 August 2010.
 * Thomas Peter, "FringeNYC 2010 Season Will Feature Nearly 200 Theatre Companies", Playbill, 5 June 2010.
 * Felicia Low, "The Ah Kua show sold out", Razor TV, The Straits Times, 11 August 2009.

=Acknowledgements=

This article was written by Roy Tan.