On October 28, Maki Yi wowed the audience at Pacific Theatre with her quirky yet honest and universal portrayal of immigration.
In what started out as a series of short, 10 minute standalone plays, Suitcase Stories — now a 90-minute cohesive compilation of those vignettes — centres around a South Korean woman named Maki Yi and her arduous immigration journey to Canada. But at the heart of the play’s conflict is Maki’s fervent search for belonging.
The play begins with the archetypal story of an Asian immigrant — a hardworking person in pursuit of a better life leaves behind their family, their social network and the cultural society they grew up with in the hopes of upward social mobility, freedom of values and above all, a new beginning.
What makes Suitcase Stories stand out though is Maki herself. As a self-described “failure” in a society with patriarchal expectations for women, Maki is unmarried and immigrates alone, solely for her own benefit rather than to support a family. She doesn’t take on the jobs that are typical for many immigrants such as the service industry. Instead, Maki chooses an artistic route — a route that, for people under circumstances comparable to Maki’s, requires a tremendous leap of faith. It explores the darker corners of the realities of immigration that remain more or less unspoken. Yi is also open about not only the racist attitudes she experienced from being an Asian woman in the arts, but also the ones she perpetuated towards Indigenous peoples upon her arrival to Canada, as before then, her only exposure to them was from John Wayne Westerns.
Suitcase Stories, with its bare-bones, one-woman show style void of any accompanying music, ornate sets or elaborate lighting, took some getting used to. Yi’s performance is the sole driving force of the play, which poses both a challenge and an advantage to captivating the audience, as the focus on the performer is so much more intensified. Yi fills these empty spaces with objects from her bottomless, Mary Poppins-esque suitcase — chalk scrawlings indicative of locations, boundaries and even her own voice, as she frequently belts out various Korean pop hits with a vulnerability that’ll break your heart.
The bareness of the stage felt appropriate to the setting of the play, which largely took place in Regina, Saskatchewan. “I have never seen such a wide sky,” said Yi to the audience, and describes her horror of being in a place so void of things or people. As the setting oscillates between the various corners of the stage marked as different cities and countries, this bareness works to deepen the audience’s understanding of Maki’s disorientation — both from culture shock and the frenzy she gets caught in from applying for visas in a convoluted immigration system.
The only true supporting character is Maki’s suitcase. At first, it was quite startling to hear the sanguine tone of Yi’s speech suddenly shift to a high-pitched, sardonic snarl that was meant to signify the vocalization of her suitcase’s thoughts. But as the plot progressed and the character of the Devil’s Advocate-suitcase became firmly established, the sudden voice shifts felt natural and wholly distinct from Maki — effectively demonstrating the split of Maki’s cultural identity.
Maki Yi, who plays herself, increasingly wins over the hearts of the audience members with her boundless ambition in pursuing the love of her life — theatre. Her struggles hit home with those who are immigrants themselves, having been through similar frustrations in dealing with the ineptness of Canada’s immigration process — but more so from Yi’s uncanny ability to convey the loss of both one’s native culture and the one an immigrant works so tirelessly to assimilate into. At the end of the play, Yi was met with a standing ovation from the audience.
While Maki’s story is distinctly unique, it also has a universal aspect to it that resonates throughout all immigrants. Maki Yi’s raw and heartbreaking portrayal of the tough realities of immigration provides non-immigrants with an excellent opportunity to understand and appreciate their privileges of being Canadian. Suitcase Stories is an empowering play for immigrants and non-immigrants alike, and definitely deserving of a viewing.