wild boar

"Wild Boar" tells a lost modern urban fable, leading the audience into the inner world of city dwellers.

A reporter in his prime grapples with his career and love, truth and compromise. Will he choose expediency between ideals and reality? Or will he walk alone in an absurd city? In such a life, in such a city, is there still room for the wild?

"Wild Boar" was a stage play at the 40th Hong Kong Arts Festival, written by Candace Chong and starring Dayo Wong, Liu Kai Chi, and Monica Chan, among others. This book is a novel adapted from the Cantonese play script into Cantonese.

A note from the playwright 

In all these years, I have never rewritten "A note from the playwright" for a revival, mainly because I believe that "A note from the playwright," like the text itself, records the playwright's thoughts at the time. To add any further annotations to past works is, in my opinion, an extremely unromantic thing to do.

However, "Wild Boar" made me make an exception.

"Wild Boar" was written in 2012. Before putting pen to paper, I interviewed many frontline journalists and editors. I gathered some thoughts, believing that the situation for freedom of speech was deteriorating, but I thought Hong Kong would have to go through twenty or thirty years of very wrong turns to reach the scenario described in the play. Therefore, "Wild Boar" was a fable, a warning. However, two years have passed, and many unfortunate events have occurred in society. The threats faced by the media are becoming increasingly real and cruel. Our journalists have to take to the streets and publish blank pages to express their urgency. Watching an absurd play slowly turn into a realistic drama, my sadness and anger are no less than those directly involved. I even think that I wrote too gently, a little unrealistically. I hope that my colleagues can capture a more accurate picture and speak out for these important and much-needed "wild boars," letting their cries spread throughout the city.

I am grateful to the Hong Kong Arts Festival and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. The former commissioned the birth of this text, and the latter allowed this text to reappear. Throughout the process, they never interfered with our creation, and in today's Hong Kong, I feel this particularly needs to be commended.

Candace Chong

Written before the 2014 revival

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