After 105 years of waiting, stories of Hong Kong Island’s favourite mode of transport finally take centre stage in this one-man play. Inspired by Chen Chuen’s eponymous novella, director Wu Hoi-fai displays his abiding affection for our trams by chronicling a tram driver’s regular working day, a role performed by long-term collaborator Chiu Kin-tong.

 

The pair have been working with each other since 2005, when Wu first approached Chiu after being impressed by his mime act. And now with A Day, their third play together, the two are again aiming to capture their audience’s imagination through using the simplest of props: four chairs and a string, to be precise. Chiu explains: “In the play, I’ll use a flexible string to symbolise my character’s wife, whom he met on a tram. When I twist my fingers to pull or twitch the string, the audience can imagine it as the swelled-up belly of my pregnant wife.”

 

A Day also goes above and beyond the typical concern for the city’s age-old antiques, awakening long-forgotten emotional attachments to the Hong Kong of old. “The steel tracks were built parallel to the island’s original shoreline before reclamation,” Wu recalls. “It’s always a pleasant experience to feel the gentle breeze from the sea rushing in through open windows.”

 

And that, naturally, is exactly what Wu and Chiu go on to do after our interview, as the two – with an actual tram driver in their company – set off for a tram ride into the night in search of further inspiration.