Monica Ogden’s Fringe show is about the toxicity of the Internet. It’s about trolls. It’s about racism. It’s about being of mixed heritage and it’s about the perpetual internal conflict that heritage comes with.
But most of all, “Monica Versus the Internet” is about how much immigrant parents love their children.
In a country where, in 2019, “63% of Canadians want immigration to be limited”, 42% “believe the country accepts too many non-white newcomers,” and 37% believe immigration is a “threat” to white Canadians (source), it’s important to talk about the ridiculous shit that is racism. This is the attitude Monica exudes in her show. She’s had enough of it. She refuses to be gaslit by the systemic racism she experiences in her career, and in her life in general. She’s angry but she’s also able to laugh at her painful experiences. Through the laughter she takes the power away from these memories.
Monica’s story has many threads. The Internet troll thread is of course the funniest. Monica punctuates the show by putting comments by her trolls on her Youtube channel up on the screen. We laugh at the stupidity of these together. Monica shares how what drove her to Youtube in the first place was racism itself. After being asked in an audition for a very white improv group in Vancouver to “explain” racism she grew tired of the very cliquey and racist Vancouver/Vancouver Island/UVic theatre scene and decided to take matters in her own hands via her Youtube channel.
Monica’s storytelling is the star here. She balances humour with the seriousness and urgency required to bring attention to the dangers of white supremacy. She touches on her experience in the world as a person with a disability and as someone who was in abusive relationships. Monica gets the balance just right. She displays great vulnerability on stage and is often on the brink of tears when talking about the sacrifices her mom and grandmother made for her. People who hate on immigrants (clearly because they are so happy in their lives, love themselves, and are getting laid regularly) know little about the risks immigrants take to give their children a better life. That is the primary goal of all immigrants. That’s it! It’s not financial gain or world domination or genocide or what have you (who would do that, right?). It is immigrants’ love for their children and the desire to provide their children with a fighting chance at life that drives them across continents and treacherous oceans. I find when I’m arguing with these people I tend to steer them towards this very important and simple point.
Monica makes this very point with great power. She tells us about the journey her grandmother made from the Philippines to a small town in Ontario in the 60s, pregnant with Monica’s mother. Monica tells us about the struggles her own mother faced when she was bullied for being the only Asian in her town, and through a horrific assault she suffered in the passenger seat of their car while driving on Quadra street in Victoria. She tells us how trauma repeats itself in all three generations of Monica’s family because it is protected and upheld by a system that doesn’t care what happens to black, brown, and indigenous people. The scam is structural, as they say.
Monica’s show reminded me so much of David Chariandy’s novel “Brother” in which you get an absolutely beautiful account of an immigrant parent’s love for their children in the context of Canadian immigration. It makes your soul ache and soar at the same time. Chariandy tells us the story of two brothers and their single mother of Afro-Caribbean descent, growing up in the roughest parts of Scarborough, Ontario. He shows us how a mother works multiple physical jobs well into her retirement years to put food on the table for sons that find themselves being failed by a system that was supposed to be “better”. Chariandy conjures up the beauty of living in immigrant communities. The connections, the intimacy, and the festivities – all ways of coping with the strange difficulties of existing as an other in a foreign land.
Now on to the part of the show that packed the most punch for me: racism in Canadian theatre and especially in Canadian theatre critique. Monica tells us about how she was trolled on the Internet by a vitriolic white female reviewer at the Ottawa Fringe consistently for two whole years, and who ironically, used black vernacular to make her case. Monica takes this story to make some very interesting points about the state of theatre in Canada and the self-serving nature of white feminism. She uses the right language to unpack the source of the Internet hate and harsh critique she constantly receives, from white women in particular. White women seem to always want to label Monica as not white enough or not Asian enough, delegitimizing her opinions about racism in Canada. They are obsessed with classifying her and policing what she says. They act as the gatekeepers of whiteness and decide who’s in and who’s out. 47% of white women voted for 45. Go figure.
Monica emphasizes the importance of having reviewers of colour at shows made by people of colour. I can personally attest to that. We started this very website because we were tired of reading theatre reviews that completely missed the nuances of shows made by people of colour (POC), if they at all gave them the time of day in the first place. If you want to have a chuckle I urge you to read reviews of POC shows on our very own and very white, local arts newspaper, which is getting thinner by the day, as it gets more and more irrelevant, because it refuses to admit that it doesn’t have the expertise on staff to comment on art made by POC. On our team of writers we have these conversations constantly and our white female writers are true allies in every sense because they are integrated in communities with healthy representations of POC.
Monica is also very cognizant of the privilege she possesses as a light skin Asian woman and that her half-whiteness gets her into rooms that many people of colour don’t have access to. She is passionate about wanting to use this privilege for change and exercises this intent through jobs she’s held in the arts industry. There is one point in the show where Monica directly addresses the white audience in the room and calls them out on their inaction and their comfort with letting things stay the same. This goes on for quite a bit. This is when my heart stopped because I had never seen such fearless shit on stage in my life. This is something that I, and most POC, would never be able to do. This is where people of mixed heritage can have the sort of impact that POC can only dream of. People of mixed heritage can speak to white audiences sternly because their white heritage affords them legitimacy or at least gives them a chance to be heard. Monica recognizes this.
Individuals of mixed heritage have almost a superpower. They can truly bridge a gap between two estranged communities. Unfortunately they’re often the objects of distrust from both communities and always have their experiences and opinions invalidated. Ideally they should not have to do any of this. They shouldn’t have to be bridges because they are humans and they should be able to just be. But this is the world we live in where POC have to do all the emotional legwork while descendants of colonisers stay home, light candles, and binge watch Portlandia*. Three shows this year, “Monica Versus the Internet”, “Mx”, and “Dissection of an Indian Aboriginal First Nation Full-Blood Status Non-Status Halfbreed Métis Rez Urban Mixed Heritage Woman” taught me a lot about the experiences of mixed heritage women. There are intricacies here that white people nor POC can truly understand. As POC we have a responsibility to not delegitimize people of mixed heritage, something that our internalized racism might sometimes drive us towards. There is potential for great partnership between the three groups- white allies, people of colour, and mixed peoples. Ironically enough, these three shows were featured in the aforementioned newspaper, which is what drew my attention to them. So they are trying, but not enough to share their power, step aside, and let POC write these features.
On Community Radio last month I listened to a very interesting panel about the collaboration between immigrants of colour and indigenous peoples that could potentially be instrumental in dismantling white supremacy. I wish I had concrete sources and names but all I have now are the strands of memory. One of the experts on this panel said that because indigenous populations in Canada are so low due to our history of indigenous genocide, indigenous people on their own cannot overturn this racist and broken system. Indigenous people on their own cannot bring attention to the disadvantages that their communities are still facing. But if immigrant communities of colour work together with indigenous communities, together they can create numbers that could resist the system and bring about actual change. Because there is an overlap between the experiences of indigenous peoples and of immigrants of colour, this partnership is natural. There has been a renewed vigour in the indigenous rights movement since Black Lives Matter. We are all invested. One movement benefits and feeds off the fire of another. If we’re going to make a change, we’re going to have to work together and mixed heritage folks have a unique position in that partnership.
I learned a lot in Monica’s show. I laughed and I teared up. And I discovered an absolute star in our local theatre community. I didn’t want “Monica Versus the Internet to End”. You have to go see it! I gave a shout out to shows made by mixed heritage creators, but there are also some wonderful shows created and performed by kickass artists of colour: “Josephine”, “Pretty Beast”, “Guards at the Taj”, “Workin’”, “Fake Ghost Tours 2”, “My Name is Sumiko”, and many many more. Vancouver Fringe, thank you for listening to us, and thank you for the “Underrepresented Artist” tag on your website that helps audiences support marginalized artist. This is working. There is fresh blood pumping through the veins of Vancouver theatre now and the quality of our stories and storytelling have finally surpassed the stale status quo. We need to keep doing this. More of this, please!
Get your tickets here!
– Prachi Kamble
*Portlandia is one of my favourite shows.