China’s only female emperor is summoned to stand trial before history. Through the names she was given and the name she chose for herself, ‘Her Name’ asks who gets to define a woman in power, and what history chooses to remember. Aniya He, currently studying for her BA in Film and Drama, speaks with FringeReview’s Dr.Pants about her first solo performance piece. It is on October 24/25 during Colchester Fringe.
NAP: Hello Aniya! Congrats on bringing your first ever show to Colchester Fringe. Please tell us: what it is about?
AH: It’s a story from Chinese history, but it’s not only about Chinese history. At its centre is a very simple question that feels much more personal and universal: “Who are you?” The play keeps returning to that question through the different names and identities Wu Zhao carried throughout her life. For me, names are really a way into questions of power.
Wu Zhao, better known as Wu Zetian, was given different names and identities throughout her life, and those names often reflected what other people expected her to be. Zhao, by contrast, was a character she created and chose for herself. That became the starting point of the play: who has the authority to name a woman, to define what she should be, and to decide how she is remembered?
The performance places Wu Zhao in a trial before history, where she is questioned about her ambition, her rise to power, her relationships and the way she used power. But I’m not interested in simply defending her or deciding whether she was a good or bad ruler. I’m more interested in why women who enter public power are so often understood through their gender, appearance, relationships, family roles and private morality before they are understood through their judgement, political actions or public achievements.
The voices of Princess Taiping and Shangguan Wan’er extend that question beyond Wu Zhao herself. Taiping carries a kind of political and familial inheritance from her mother, while Wan’er, as Wu Zhao’s student, represents another form of continuation through writing, political intelligence and institutional influence. Their voices complicate Wu Zhao’s own account, asking not only what she changed, but what remained unchanged for the women who came after her.
NAP: Why Wu Zhao? What made you want to write about her in the first place?
AH: I’ve been fascinated by Wu Zhao since I was very young. In Chinese culture, there is a long tradition of looking to history as a mirror, learning from the past and almost entering into a conversation with people who lived before us. When I was a child, I even wrote a school essay imagining a conversation with Wu Zhao, so in a way, that dialogue with her started very early for me.
I was deeply inspired by her strength, ambition and the fact that she reached a position no other woman in Chinese history had held in quite the same way. For years, I wanted to make a piece about her, and at different points I imagined telling her story through other forms.
When I was younger, I was first drawn to the sheer drama and legend of her life. But as I grew up, conversations around relationships, marriage and what a woman’s life is supposed to look like became much more present around me, through family, social expectations, media and everyday conversations.
That made me notice more clearly that some of the pressures Wu Zhao faced are not simply historical, and they are not uniquely Chinese either. Similar patterns appear across very different cultures and contexts. Catherine the Great and Elizabeth I both held extraordinary political power, while Hedy Lamarr became famous in a completely different field. Yet in different ways, their public images have also been shaped by questions of gender, relationships, appearance or private life, alongside their achievements.
And I don’t think this only applies to famous historical women. Similar pressures still appear in everyday life, including in the experiences of ordinary women at work, where ability and achievement can still be judged alongside expectations around appearance, relationships, marriage, motherhood or personality.
That was when Wu Zhao stopped feeling to me like only a figure from the past. I became increasingly interested in why someone who held such extraordinary public power could still be remembered so intensely through the private and personal, and why that pattern still feels so familiar now.
In the end, I chose to put her on stage and let her speak for herself. And in a way, that also meant putting myself on stage. For someone who is usually much more comfortable behind the scenes, that felt like the right form for this piece.
NAP: Now Wu Zhao is not the name she is normally known by, which is a central exploration of Her Name. Why do you call her Wu Zhao rather than Wu Zetian?
AH: Most people know her as Wu Zetian, but throughout the play I increasingly call her Wu Zhao. That choice is very deliberate.
Zhao was a name she chose for herself, using a character she created: 曌, the sun and moon upon the sky. For me, that makes it very different from the other names and titles through which she has been remembered.
There’s also something personal in that for me. Aniya is my preferred name, while my legal name, Miao He, is the name I was given. I feel that Aniya represents me more closely, even though it doesn’t carry anything like the same historical or symbolic weight that Zhao does for Wu Zhao.
So once I realised that one of the names most closely connected to her own act of self-definition is not necessarily the first name people use for her, the whole idea of Her Name began to open up. The question stopped being simply “What was she called?” and became “Who had the power to name her?”
NAP: Why did you decide to perform at Colchester Fringe? Why did you choose Colchester for your world premiere of your first solo work?
Last year I was involved with Colchester Fringe as a volunteer technician, and outside the shows I was working on, I tried to see as much of the festival as I could. I was really drawn to the range of work, but also to the sense of community around the Fringe, and I came away with a lot of very happy memories.
I was also very lucky to receive the Spirit of the Fringe award last year, and that gave me a real sense of encouragement. I’m naturally much more comfortable behind the scenes, whether as a technician or a director, so the idea of putting myself on stage felt quite intimidating. But I was really inspired by how inclusive and international Colchester Fringe felt, and by the confidence and openness of the artists and performers I met there, and the way they seemed to completely own the stage when they performed. That atmosphere gave me the courage to start writing and to imagine bringing something of my own to the Fringe.
During the festival last year, I remember thinking that one day I’d love to come back with my own work, even though at that point I hadn’t actually created an original piece yet. So when Her Name started to take shape, one of my first thoughts was that I wanted to apply to Colchester Fringe.
I wanted to take part in the Fringe not just as a technician, but as an artist too, and become more involved in the culture around it. And as a University of Essex student, it feels especially meaningful to make work in the place where I’m studying and to be part of the local theatre community. Her Name will also have its first public performance at Colchester Fringe, so I honestly can’t think of a better place to begin its life on stage.
NAP: Doing a solo work, let alone your first, is no easy feat. What has been the biggest challenges in preparing your work for the stage?
AH: I think there have been three equally big challenges for me in making Her Name: cultural translation, performing, and directing myself.
One of the biggest challenges has definitely been cultural translation. I’m telling a very specific Chinese historical story mainly in English, so I’ve had to keep thinking about how much context an international audience needs, and how to make the story accessible without flattening the history or losing its cultural specificity.
Another big challenge has been performing itself. I used to have a lot of stage experience as a classical pianist, but that feels very different because you’re not really facing the audience in the same way or carrying a character directly in front of them. With Her Name, I have to be much more exposed as a performer. Because the cultural translation is already quite complex, I also need the performance to carry enough emotional and physical clarity that the audience can stay immersed in the character’s journey without having to rely on understanding every line or every historical reference.
And because I’m also directing the piece, there’s a very practical difficulty too: I can’t watch myself while I’m performing. I have to rely a lot on recording rehearsals, watching them back, and then giving myself notes afterwards. It’s much slower than directing someone else, because I can’t make adjustments in real time from the outside.
NAP: The work is quite dense and I think will have lots of interpretation and interest. But what are you hopeful audiences will leave your show feeling or doing?
AH: I hope audiences leave with a little more curiosity about Chinese history and culture, and perhaps with a stronger sense of the world Wu Zhao came from.
More importantly, I hope the play leaves them with questions. Her Name is very interested in naming and writing: who gets to name someone, who gets to write their story, what gets recorded, and what eventually becomes the version of history that survives. I hope audiences come away a little more aware that history is not simply a collection of neutral facts. It is also shaped by who tells the story, what they choose to preserve, and whose voice is allowed to remain.
Wu Zhao’s Wordless Stele at Qianling has often been interpreted as leaving her achievements and failures for later generations to judge. Whether or not that was her intention, I find the image incredibly powerful. Her Name also comes from a different impulse: sometimes, when other people have been defining you for long enough, remaining silent allows those definitions to become your story.
So I don’t want audiences to leave with one fixed conclusion about Wu Zhao. I’d rather they leave thinking, discussing, maybe disagreeing with each other, and asking who gets to tell a person’s story. And perhaps, on a more personal level, I hope the play leaves them with the feeling that your own voice is something worth fighting for.
‘Her Name’ is on Saturday 24 October at 2:30 pm and Sunday 25 October at 1:30 pm during Colchester Fringe. While you’re hear, read our other Colchester Fringe Interviews including a show about true WW2 queer history, A Canadian explaining Eurovision, or FringeReview’s very own Dr.Pants new psychological queer thriller.
