DATE or HATE

Date or Hate is a solo black comedy/storytelling about modern dating, professional ego death, and the isolation of the immigrant experience. Vivian, a fiercely independent, award-winning Hong Kong actress, abandons her theatrical kingdom for freedom in Canada. But instead of finding a new ensemble, she finds a society determined to put her in a box. To the men in Western countries, she is either a submissive fetish or a hole. To the local casting directors, she is a quiet nail technician. She is forced into a brutal binary: Date, or Hate. “Finally, an Asian immigrant story that doesn’t use dim sum or hot pot as a metaphor for trauma! It was so incredibly refreshing to see a protagonist who is unapologetically confident, highly trained, and genuinely pissed off about the ‘polite invisibility’ of moving to a new country. The part about having to choose between being seen for your geography or your art broke me. I laughed until I choked, and then I cried on the way to the SkyTrain.” – Gemini Pro, after reading the first draft