Writing My Way Back to Hong Kong

by Lloyd Pace

(November 18, 2007) Hong Kong is a long way from Larchmont; and writing plays is a long way from my day job in a law firm or even my evening duty as a suburban dad. Somehow, though, all my disparate lives and experiences have come together in my new play, Hong Kong, running until December 2 at Blueberry Pond in Ossining.

The play grew out of a business trip I made for my firm to Hong Kong in 2000 in conjunction with Y2K issues. Unexpectedly, due to work delays, I was there for an extra day or so, largely on my own. Hong Kong is a big city, like New York; but it is also an exotic world, and that world is easy to find, and get lost in. I would wander around parts of the city, and as I turned a corner, the air filled with incense. I’d see steps leading to a Buddhist temple, and nearby were shops selling paper offerings, shaped as houses, cars, animals – meant to be burned to accompany the dead into the next life.

What I loved most about Hong Kong was getting lost. There are sections where the streets meander like the smoke coming from the temples. Like the smoke, you feel that you too are wandering in air. I’m Southern, so a sense of place is strong in me; and, being from the South, I tend to romanticize place more than I should. As I walked the streets, and it got later in the evening with the sun disappearing, I would stop people and ask for directions back to the hotel or my company’s office. Between their accent and mine, and their kindness and my politeness, and neither of us understanding or wanting to offend, I’d get more lost. That’s not so unlike working on a play, and when I returned to Larchmont from Hong Kong, I knew that I had the beginnings of one.

Over the next few years, I worked on Hong Kong. Working full time in the city and having two active children, it wasn’t easy to find the time to write. But Hong Kong wouldn’t let go of my imagination. Early in the morning while the rest of the family was sleeping, during the commute back and forth on the train from Larchmont to New York, while waiting in the winter at Hommocks for my son Jack to get out of hockey practice or while waiting in the spring for my daughter Hallie to finish soccer—I would work on the script and be transported from Larchmont back to the world of Hong Kong. Gradually the play started to take form, and I began working with Blueberry Pond Theatre Ensemble in Ossining.

Blueberry Pond is a unique place where playwrights, directors and actors come together to develop and produce new work. I brought the play to Blueberry in its beginning stages, when it was only starting to reveal itself. The characters were speaking, mostly at once, and the lights of the city, the maze of its streets, and the smells from the open-air markets had me dizzy. Blueberry brought some equilibrium.

What is Hong Kong about? It has something to do with loving whom we shouldn’t, finding a place that holds us like no other place, and being absorbed into the lives of others without even noticing it. It’s also about money and ambition and what those things do to us. Finally it’s about the mystery and the magic and the lure of Hong Kong.

Lloyd Pace lives in Larchmont with his wife and two children, both of whom attend Mamaroneck High School and are active in the school’s Performing Arts Curriculum Experience program. He is the training manager in the IT department at Simpson Thacher & Barlett, LLP. His

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