Gillian Choa, Director Emerita of the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, is on Straight Talk this week, to tell us how Hong Kong can be an East-meets-West cultural hub. In fact, she said Hong Kong, since the inauguration of City Hall in 1962 and the launch of the Hong Kong International Arts Festival in 1971, has always been developing as a center for the arts with popular demand locally and has attracted overseas talents.

Check out the full transcript of TVB’s Straight Talk host Dr Eugene Chan’s interview with Director Emerita Professor Gillian Choa:

Chan: Good evening. This is Eugene Chan. This week on Straight Talk, we are joined by Director Emerita of the Academy for Performing Arts, Professor Gillian Choa. Professor Choa was the first female and first Hong Kong resident to lead the academy, which consistently ranked first in Asia under her leadership. With over 25 years of experience at the academy and a diverse background in theatre design, film, TV and luxury branding, Gillian is indeed a creative force. Let's hear her thoughts on Hong Kong's role as an East-meets-West cultural center. Welcome, Gillian!

Choa: Thank you.

Chan: You had such a diverse, or what we call a fascinating journey from theatre design to heading the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Looking back, what first inspired you to pursue a career in the arts area?

Choa: In television or film.

Chan: Right. So, Gillian, I know we actually went to the same high school, and it's always been the tradition of producing more scientists or more healthcare professionals from our school, being somebody so artsy, so-called. Did you find your school helped in that environment, or did you actually find your way, even in the school, to become an arts person?

Choa: Well, as you know, at our school, music was and is always really very important. We had a very successful senior choir and I was actively participating. At the time, we literally won everything during those years that I was at the school. We actually sang in our own productions of operas etc. So, there was that side of it as a school that we were able to actually find our way in the arts. There were opportunities for us who were interested in humanities and the arts, and even the performing arts, maybe not as a profession at first, but certainly, as a serious hobby.

Chan: Right. I mean, you were the director for the Academy from 2021 to 2024 and being the first female director. What does that mean for you?

Choa: I think when I became the director, I really didn't think much of it. I just thought, okay, I'm someone who's been there for a while, and I was able to win the position. But of course, once I became the Director, everybody else was saying, "Oh, you're the first, you know, the first female." So, I think it is important, because you become kind of a role model that could inspire future female artists, and our female students particularly. In fact, we have sometimes joked that the academy is a girls school.

Chan: Oh really?

Choa: But in fact, if you look at the statistics, we are practically 50/50. There are certain areas that are definitely dominated by females, certainly in the design areas and dance, for instance. So, really, we do have many female students, and to be able to be the first female director of a performing arts academy is telling them that this is something that they could aspire towards.

Chan: Not only being the first female, you're also the first Hong Kong person, or although people don't see you as a Hong Kong person, but I know you're a Hong Kong person. With this impressive career from theatre design to luxury branding, as mentioned earlier. How does this prepare you for this role to lead the Academy? Have you done any sort of new innovation during your term as the director with all this background?

Choa: Well, it is important, because I was freelancing as a designer for 12 or 13 years before I joined the Academy. During that time, I was, of course, very familiar with the industry and how it was developing at the time. I joined the Academy in 1996, so by that time, there was a degree program already, and there were at least talk about the possibility of launching a master's degree at some point. So, for me, having had the background of being in theatre, in film, and the commercial design world, and then joining a performing arts school, which has drama, film, music, dance, and the production arts, actually prepared me well to be a teacher there, transferring my experience in the real world to students I was teaching. To start with, it was really about teaching, about letting everybody know, certainly students, what's out there and how we needed to prepare them for the industry.

Chan: Right. I mean, I also have some background of your work, and you were leading for the first...I mean, the last two, three years, and the Academy has ranked first in Asia for six consecutive years. So, what do you think that sets Hong Kong aside from the other institutions in the region? What makes us rank first?

Choa: Well, we are very honored that we have ranked first for six consecutive years, and we're able to maintain this accolade. I think part of a reason is because, first of all, it's quite unique for an academy to have all the disciplines in performing arts under one roof, that also makes our students and our academic development equally unique; because students have the opportunities to work closely together across disciplines. This allows everyone the chance to engage in a lot of innovative work that crosses disciplines. This is something that most schools in the rest of the world don't have, and certainly in Southeast Asia and the mainland. We can see that, gradually, there are now more schools that are more diverse, but certainly, traditionally, there are drama schools, there are dance schools, there are music schools, and they are quite separate. We are actually producing students who have much broader perspectives, and that's what we have really wanted to do, particularly in the past few years, to prepare them for the industry, but also prepare them for life with a broad education that also focuses on the discipline of their choice. So, the educational part is very important because they're very good at what they do in their chosen disciplines, but at the same time, they are broad-minded and adaptable individuals who are very employable. They're able to move around the industry because of their adaptability.

Chan: Right Gillian, the National 14th Five Year Plan, has expressed clear support for Hong Kong to develop into an East Meets West Centre for International Cultural Exchange. Why do you think Hong Kong is ideal for this, and how are we doing so far? Are we halfway there, or are we already there? What is your view?

Choa: Well, I think we've been there for a while. I think maybe we haven't labeled ourselves as a center so strategically until recent years. I think it takes the government, and the government's incentives to actually tell the world what we are, and position ourselves very clearly that we aspire to be an East-West cultural exchange center or hub. And we certainly have the advantage that our history has given us. We've always been a bit east meets west. I think it's in all of us, our education, everything; particularly in our generation, what we were taught growing up, and even now in schools, English is taught seriously, and Chinese history and European history etc. We have always been exposed to both cultures. We have been living in an environment where Hong Kong is an international city, and we're able to think internationally, and we understand East as well as West in a unique cultural environment.

Chan: So, Professor, I had the privilege of visiting the Academy a few times. I was invited to your APA board, which was a very lavish and nice occasion. And also I've attended some of your operas, music and concerts. How do you see Hong Kong people sort of being exposed to the Academy's good work? I mean, do you see more and more people coming to the academy? Have you seen that trend, sort of over the years?

Choa: Actually, people probably don't know, but we do have a very good audience attendance rate, our various productions are often quite full. We do ticket, of course, at very low prices, but we do have a lot of young people interested in coming to see our students’ work, which are of pretty high standard and diverse. And of course, we do a lot of innovative work as well, particularly in the past few years, certainly in the digital arts and media arts area in performances. For instance, multi-media pop shows and drama and dance productions with 3D mapping and animation, engaging in VR and AR developments etc and now AI. So, we train our students to really be able to walk very comfortably into the industry when they graduate.

Chan: Right, Professor. Let's take a short break now, but viewers stay with us. We will be right back.

Chan: Thank you for staying with us. Director Emeritus of the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, Professor Gillian Choa, has been with us, hearing insights into how Hong Kong can be an ‘East-meets-West’ cultural hub. So, Gillian, in the first half, you did mention that Hong Kong, with our sort of unique history and with a lot of Western people living in Hong Kong, and also not to mention we are part of China, so ‘East-meets-West’ is very natural. So, some people do say Hong Kong is a culture desert or culture desolate, do you agree?

Choa: Absolutely not. I think we were labeled that probably back in the ’70s or something. But as you know, since the early 1962 when City Hall opened, that was probably the milestone, and it was the beginning of bringing much more international arts, performing arts, etc. to Hong Kong. And of course, then the Arts Festival began in 1971, which has become extremely successful over the years. We are able to bring the best international artists into Hong Kong every single year. The festival is starting soon, actually. I think the statistics of last year showed us that the GDP of the creative industry in Hong Kong is about 4.6 percent, which is huge among the existing industries in Hong Kong, and this one industry is actually occupying such a significant percentage of our overall GDP. That is enormous. And how do we get that? Because we have many, many successful arts and cultural events. I was told over 8,000 a year or something like that. So, of course, it is not just performing arts, it is creative industries in general. So, we are talking about visual arts, auctions, digital arts, any kind of arts-related local and international events annually.

Chan: Right, since you mentioned all the strengths of Hong Kong, of being sort of a bridge between East and West culture, do you see any weaknesses in Hong Kong?

Choa: Well, weakness is, I suppose, after the pandemic, we really only had just two years since to build ourselves again. I think the weakness is that we opened a little bit later than others around the world, so we were behind economically; however, it was also a good thing; why, because I think we were able to control the pandemic very well. Some countries actually opened probably too soon, and there were obvious problems associated with that. But because of that, in the last two years, we really had to build our economy again very quickly, and we had to think about how we are going to position ourselves again internationally and regionally, under the new regime, you could say, that is the new era after the pandemic: what opportunities we actually have, and advantages we have right now. And we have to be able to grasp all that and run with it.

Chan: Right. Gillian, another area I am sure many viewers will be wanting to know is, there is often a lot of talk about Hong Kong integrating with the other, to the Greater Bay Area, having our strength. Do you think Hong Kong's strategic location will allow us to still stand out as a cultural hub for ‘East-meets-West’?

Choa: Well, I think it is the biggest opportunity we have now, to be part of this hub, because with all the encouragement of certainly government in developing the GBA area, and GBA is not Chinese mainland, we are very much part of the GBA. There are nine cities within China, and then there is Macao and us. So, the 11 cities make up GBA. And there are so many opportunities in the mainland. We know that Shenzhen and all the other cities are developing very quickly. And for Hong Kong, that is an opportunity because we can freely flow into each other being so close, and we are able to now bring the best young talents into Hong Kong. As we know, our younger population is depleting, primary schools are closing. This is quite a challenge. We need to encourage our young people to have more children to fill those gaps in the future!

Chan: Yes, yes.

Choa: But in the meantime, there is a lot of incentive, of course, to bring talent into Hong Kong, young talent, experts, etc.  This will help build Hong Kong in a different but positive way. And I think the future of Hong Kong is very rosy. Together, there is much that can be achieved.

Chan: Right. Gillian, I think we have touched on a very good sort of an overview of Hong Kong as our advantages of being a cultural hub. And hopefully, we will be there. And hopefully, we will lead Hong Kong. Over the last few years, we had some challenges. We all know that we had the social unrest, we had the COVID. And many tertiary institutions were hijacked. I mean, we all know that on the news, it was some very unpleasant scenes. And being the leader of the academy, what did you do to ensure the safety of the institution, the staff, and the students?

Choa: Well, I wasn't the director at the time, I was the deputy director (Academic) at the time.

Chan: Right.

Choa: We very quickly formed an emergency group, which consisted of the council chairman at the time, the director, myself, and my counterpart in administration, and also the head of student affairs and head of communications and a few key personnel.

Chan: Right.

Choa: So, looking back, we were really working very hard to monitor the situation all the time, particularly because of our location, which was quite vulnerable. So, first, it was to protect the campus, so whenever we hear stories about, or information rather, about anything that might happen in the area, of course we have to close our campus to protect our community. We had to ask staff and students to leave at certain times of the day and stop everything, etc. Our campus is very open, so we really needed to lock up our doors at the time, so crowds couldn't actually come in and take refuge. So, that was controlled very well. Whereas, when it came to the students, of course, there were their sentiments, as the situation was very volatile. I think people underestimate peer pressure. I think at the time, all the students in Hong Kong, particularly at universities, just felt that they had to band together or something for a cause. A lot of them, particularly the younger ones, didn't really understand what they were getting into. So, for us as educators and adults, we simply needed to educate and guide them out of their rut. We took a lot of effort to actually talk to our students and make sure our staff also talked to our students, to make sure they understood what was going wrong and how important it was that they stayed on the right side of the law, basically.

Chan: Would you say the APA has survived this challenge?

Choa: Yes, I think we survived very well because we didn't have anything even painted on the walls, you know. So, I think also our students were generally very hard-working. I remember by the time it was October, we didn't really hear much from them anymore, apart from a very few, because usually October/November were our production months, so everybody was getting into rehearsals and were very busy and focused.

Chan: Right.

Choa: So, I think quite different from other university students who probably had lectures a few times a week, ours often worked from 9 am to 11 pm daily in classes and practice their various disciplines.

Chan: Really? Right, because I think this is a very good opportunity for people to know more about the APA because traditionally some people say that in arts and culture, we sort of encourage idealism and romantic ideas, and giving students more revolutionary aspirations. Do you agree? And have you seen that in Hong Kong?

Choa: No, I think people tend to think that being ‘creative artists’ meant that they would do anything they liked. It is wrong to label all so negatively because of a few. I don't really think so. Of course, since Hong Kong has freedom of speech and rights, and we have the rule of law that we are well protected. People are mostly open-minded, and we want our young people to also be able to think positively and be open-minded, but with the clear understanding that they are within a community. It is not just the community of the Academy I am talking about, but the community of Hong Kong. And I think, as citizens of Hong Kong, we do have a duty towards our own community. So, freedom is not about doing anything you want, freedom is about not causing harm and disruption to others as well. As we see more stability established in recent years, I hope we can now move forward to achieve greater harmony.

Chan: So, Professor, when we come to the last part of the show, we'd like to say, how would you advise Hong Kong in general to the viewers? How can we expand an influence over for ‘East meets West’ sort of culture, which we do treasure a lot? Because this is what Hong Kong is at the end of the day. What would you say to us?

Choa: I think the latest blueprint from CSTB actually gave us the direction we should align ourselves with, which is what we are looking for in cultural development so far, but we are also looking at tourism and sports. The bureau has been established for a few years now. The goals and objectives are to see how we can boost arts and culture, but at the same time, link ourselves with tourism and also sports in some way. You know, there is a lot that culture, sports and tourism can do together, to boost and complement each other. For instance, cultural and also sports tourism are what could clearly be very lucrative. So, this is a direction we should be developing wholehearted, and I hope, to give many more opportunities for our young creative artists and nurture them for a brighter future in the region.

Chan: Right, I think that is all the time we have for now. And thank you, Gillian, for sharing your journey with us. I mean, Professor Choa’s insights highlight how emerging Eastern and Western artistic traditions fosters a dynamic cultural ecosystem to drive Hong Kong's future as an ‘East-meets-West’ center for cultural exchange. Thank you for joining us and have a good evening!

Choa: Good evening!