The Bigness of Us

“The Bigness of Us” (previously “Shidaiqu”) is a new musical set in a blend of modern day San Francisco and 1920s Shanghai. The show follows Xiao, a peasant from the countryside who travels to Shanghai to play piano and ends up falling in with a jazz combo and activist group co-op, ultimately culminating in the Shanghai Massacre of 1927 and the fallout and rebuilding that occurred after. “The Bigness of Us” explores themes of art and activism, the many reasons that people “buy-in” to a movement or not, and the societal moments where we win or lose the agency to build our world. In this historical period, Shanghai was an incubation space for a new genre of jazz music called “shídàiqǔ,” which was a blend of Chinese folk melodies with big band jazz harmonies and orchestrations. It was also the site of the early conflict between the ruling party of China, the GMD, and the budding progressive party, the CCP, which at the time was a small group of artists, students, and dissidents. Shanghai also had one of the largest wealth disparities of any city in history, owing to its exploitation by colonial powers in the late 1800s. In some ways, these economic and political dynamics have parallels to San Francisco today, another city by a bay with an active leftist movement and wealth disparity. “The Bigness of Us” uses these parallels to create a blended world that portrays the historical as current, and portrays the present as part of a longer and larger story. “The Bigness of Us” uses both diegetic jazz and non-diegetic song, and in moments of diegetic jazz when the characters are playing instruments, the actors use a combination of mimed instrument playing and dance to portray the story of the music. Many of the songs in the show are meant to be improvised by a 4-piece jazz combo (piano, drums, horn, bass). Many aspects of the show are based on my experiences with leftist anarchist activist communities in San Francisco – the protests are based on protesting, the mutual aid group from the show, “Gōngkuài,” named after the word for a shared set of chopsticks used in a communal dinner, is based on SF Food Not Bombs, and the communal living co-op is based on my experiences living in a Haight Street Commons co-op.