School of Distance Education

Chimerica 
by Lucy Kirkwood 
Lucy Ann Kirkwood
is a British playwright and 
screenwriter. She was born in Leytonstone and raised in 
east London. She has a degree in English literature from 
the University of Edinburgh. In 2005, she wrote and 
starred in her first play, 
Grady Hot Potato.
The 
following year she took two productions of her second 
play, 
Geronimo.
Her third play 
Guns or Butter
, about 
soldiers being overcome by the horror of war, was 
written for the Terror 2007 Festival .
Tinderbox
, a dark 
comedy set in a fictional 21st-century England, 
premiered at the Bush Theatre in 2008. In 2010, a fresh 
and humorous version of 
Beauty and the Beast
was 
devised by Kirkwood and it premiered at the National 
Theatre in London. Her play 
Chimerica
examines the 
relationship between the US and China since the 
Tiananmen Square protests through the eyes of a former 
activist, and features over forty scene changes and 

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School of Distance Education
English Literature in the 21
st
 century
30 
British-Chinese actors. The play opened at the Almeida 
Theatre in May 2013 and transferred to the West End in 
August 2013. The play's title echoes the portmanteau 
word "Chimerica", invented by economists to define the 
intertwined economies of the US and China.
Inspired by one of the 20th century’s most powerful 
images, 
Chimerica
tracks two decades of complex US-
China relations alongside the personal stories that exist 
beyond the margins of history. At once intimate and 
geopolitical, it is a gripping thriller, a touching romance, 
a cracking comedy and a rich drama. It takes the form of 
a 
quest. 
Joe 
Schofield, 
a 
fictional 
American 
photojournalist who snapped the lone protester 
confronting a tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989, gets a 
tip-off that the man may now be living in the US: this 
leads him on a journey through America’s Chinese 
community, in the course of which he jeopardizes his 
job, his friendships and his affair with a British market 
researcher. In Beijing, meanwhile, Joe’s chief contact, 
Zhang Lin, has problems of his own. Outraged at the 
death of a 59-year-old neighbor through smog poisoning, 
Zhang Lin leaks the story to Joe, only to find himself 
being tortured by the authorities and losing the love of 
his factory-foreman brother. This epic play – told in five 
acts and thirty-nine scenes – has a running time of nearly 
three hours but it engages the audience through the 
sophistication of its writing. At its heart, it is a political 
drama, but it plays out on a personal level – it has 
elements of the thriller, romance and comic genres.

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School of Distance Education
English Literature in the 21
st
 century
31 
Chimerica” was a term coined by economist Niall 
Ferguson and historian Moritz Schularick in 2006 to 
indicate the global dominance of the dual country that is 
China and America. But Kirkwood’s play highlights the 
sharp differences, as well as the similarities, between the 
twin superpowers.
There are over 35 speaking roles in the play along with 
various non-speaking parts. Joe Schofield is the 
protagonist of the play. At the age of 18 he was in a hotel 
room overlooking Tiananmen Square where he was able 
to take the famous ‘Tank Man’ picture. Now in his early 
forties, he is idealistic. Mel Stanwyck is a colleague of 
Joe. He conforms to stereotypical masculine behavior; 
all talk, cynicism and bravado. The
relationship between Joe and Mel is one of good mates. 
Joe and Mel first meet Tessa Kendrick on a flight to 
Beijing. She is English and is established quickly as a 
ballsy character. The relationship between Tessa and Joe 
warms as the play progresses, as they move from their 
initial business interactions to a messy romantic 
entanglement. Zhang Lin is Joe’s main contact in China. 
The audience sees him at two stages of his life – in 1989, 
as a young man, and in 2012, as an English teacher. He 
still grieves for his deceased wife, despite the long 
passage of time and his brother’s best efforts to cheer 
him up. He is haunted by her image; and she ‘appears’ 
from inside his refrigerator – the significance of which 
we find out in a flashback. He makes some reckless 
decisions in his quest to find out the truth about air 

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School of Distance Education
English Literature in the 21
st
 century
32 
pollution which results in him being arrested. He is not 
afraid to speak out against the communist regime.
As the title suggests, the key idea the play explores is the 
relationship between China and America. Zhang Lin 
embodies the dissenting side of the Chinese people and 
we see a broad cross section of the American population 
(from prostitutes to a man being arrested in Harlem). The 
play is effective because it presents a balanced but 
honest picture of these two superpowers. The play also 
questions the ethics of journalism. There is the 
complexity of portraying an event accurately and from 
whose perspective a story is told. Pollution in Beijing is 
referred to throughout the text and most damningly, the 
lack of concern shown by the Communist Party. The fact 
suggests that what is more important is the front that 
everything is ok, when the reality is far from that.

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School of Distance Education
English Literature in the 21
st
 century
33