The history of Not So Loud

One September Saturday morning in 1990, Tom Hope, Richard Smith and Dave Anderson sat in a Hong Kong bar struggling for a name to put on their Fringe Club submission to perform their as yet unwritten play in the coming January Fringe Club Festival. As their voices and those at the neighbouring table rose, a seriously hungover soul whispered ‘Not so loud, please!’ – and the name was born…

Since then, the Not So Louds have presented (on average) one original English language drama per year in Hong Kong and London, including:

1991 – Home Run

1992 – Serious Loss of Face; Sex'n'Thugs'n'Rock'n'Roll

1993 – Chicken Wing

1994 – Hong Kong Hamlet

1995 – Soap For The Untouchables; Stop Press; The Maclehose Trail

1996 – Slippery Mountain; Amah Drama

1997 – The One Legged Puppet Show

1998 – At Sixes And Sevens

1999 – Tongue Tied

2004 – Part Time Punks

2006 - The A Grade Lads; The Mouse Queen

2007 - Flying Fish In The Sun

2008 – Slippery Mountain; The Making of YK Lee

To celebrate our 18th year, the Hong Kong Fringe Club hosted a series of playreadings of new original language drama plus a retrospective ‘Speed of Sound’ exhibition to run in conjunction with The Making of Mr Lee during June 2008. A follow-up playreading festival in 2009 supported our production of 'Katoey' by Rob McBride, one of the plays read at the 2008 festival.

For 2010, our 20th year, we organized a third ELDORADO(HK)! playreading festival together with a full production of one of the plays read the previous year, SHELTER by Neil Harris, Jaymee Ng & Flickey Lapish. (ELDORADO stands for English Language Drama Offering Radically Alternative & Distinctive Opportunities.)

In association with Hong Kong theatre group Perilous Mouths, earlier in 2010 we also co-produced a TRI-Theatre festival of new work and re-interpreted classics, running 3 plays in repertory over a week at the Shouson Theatre in Hong Kong's Arts Centre. RESPONSIBILITY by Adrian Tilley was one of the three plays featured.

Li Yu's ORDAINED BY HEAVEN, the third of the 2009 play-reading scripts in a new translation by Marty Merz & Jane Pan with further adaptation by Tom Hope, was then performed at the Hong Kong Fringe Club in November 2010.

2010's ELDORADO(HK)! festival featured OTHERHOOD by Rachel Fleishman & Drue Glauber, CAGED by Karen Cheung and BANG BANG by Rob McBride. Each is slated for production in 2011.

2011 marks our 20th anniversary. In special celebration, we plan to publish an anthology of Not So Loud scripts produced over the last two decades, timed to co-incide with this year's ELDORADO(HK)! festival, featuring the following plays: STOP PRESS, AT SIXES AND SEVENS, TONGUE TIED, FLYING FISH IN THE SUN and HONG KONG HAMLET.

If you would like to place an advance order for this anthology, please contact Tom Hope.