Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.American and Chinese people need to know each other better in the 21st century, but who would try to bridge the gap in the bold way one young American did — by producing a play in Beijing about Martin Luther King Jr.?
Cáitrín McKiernan's struggle in China to present King's message of nonviolent social change now has an ally in telling her story to Americans — her father, veteran foreign correspondent and documentary filmmaker Kevin McKiernan.
Father and daughter recently spoke at Creighton University in Omaha after a screening of his documentary "Bringing King to China." The film is remarkable, but so was Cáitrín's persistence in producing the play against all odds — she was young, female and a foreigner with no experience in theater.
"I asked a Chinese scholar in Beijing why Cáitrín was able to succeed," Kevin said. "The scholar said it's because she was naive — she didn't know how tall the mountain was or she never would have gotten to the top."
Cáitrín — whose name is Gaelic for Catherine and pronounced "Cah-treen" — is now 31 and recently admitted to the New York Bar, practicing international law. She produced the play in 2007, but the documentary about her ordeal in doing so has only recently been making the rounds of universities and film festivals.
If Cáitrín McKiernan eventually becomes widely known as a diplomat or in some other high office, it won't be surprising. She has lived her life from an international perspective.
Her late grandfather, Eoin (John) McKiernan, founded the Irish American Cultural Institute. Her father's work as a journalist has taken him around the world, from Nicaragua to Iraq, from West Africa to Afghanistan.
When Cáitrín was 9, her father brought her along to Nicaragua, where he covered the national elections — and where she interviewed official observer and former president Jimmy Carter. (A network morning show did a five-minute segment on her as the "littlest reporter" there.)
At 16 she became an exchange student in China and learned to speak Mandarin. At Stanford University she majored in Chinese history, with an interest in African-American studies, and later returned to China as a Fulbright Scholar and teacher.
After hearing much criticism of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, she wanted to show a different side of America. She would produce "Passages of Martin Luther King Jr.," a play written by her former Stanford professor and King scholar Clayborne Carson.
She translated it to Chinese, persuaded the National Theater of China to present five performances, got the government's approval and raised $200,000 to mount the play. She also brought in five U.S. gospel singers, said to be the first time in the history of modern Chinese theater that African-Americans and Chinese performed on the same stage.
Students in China study Martin Luther King, so it's not as though MLK was new to the audiences. But she endured many cross-cultural struggles, including a long contract in Chinese that was difficult to read, and a Chinese co-producer who wanted the play to address a conspiracy theory that one of King's aides was complicit in his assassination.
There were tantrums by an actor (shown in the documentary) and other difficulties. But the play finally was staged and videotaped by the Chinese government for possible future TV showings. (Kevin McKiernan said he doesn't know if it was ever shown on TV there.)
The New York Times devoted a full story in its main news section to Cáitrín's staging the play in Beijing, "a city notably hostile to protests."
Meanwhile the documentary about producing the play became personal, and has been described as a father's "love letter" to his daughter. Kevin learned while interviewing Cáitrín that she earlier had read on a "crawl" at the bottom of the TV screen that an "ABC journalist" had been killed by a suicide bomber in northern Iraq — at a time when she knew he was the only ABC journalist in that part of the country.
A call to New York revealed that the journalist killed actually was from the Australian Broadcasting Corp. But she was deeply affected.
About 125 people watched the documentary at Creighton on Jan. 19 and asked questions afterward. Cáitrín said, yes, Martin Luther King had a dream, but he was more than a dreamer — he was strongly opposed to war and worked actively against socioeconomic inequality.
Cáitrín, who earned her law degree last spring from Cal-Berkeley, has lived about six years in China. "Once a person goes to China," she said, "you kind of get the bug to go back."
The superpower America and the emerging superpower China must learn to understand each other in the decades ahead, as difficult as that sometimes will be. Cáitrín says the legacy of Martin Luther King could at least be a starting point for dialogue.
The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial was unveiled in August in Washington, D.C. The centerpiece "Stone of Hope" statue was carved by a master sculptor, Lei Yixin of China.
His selection as the sculptor caused some controversy. Some think we already buy enough things that are "made in China."
More cooperation between the U.S. and China, though, will be needed as the century unfolds. And who knows? Cáitrín McKiernan could play a role — not in a theater production but perhaps on the world stage.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1132, michael.kelly@owh.com
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