I have spent much of my life working outside of standard systems and seeking out the weird and the wonderful. I left my hometown and home country early on and spent many years abroad, living, listening, and learning — first as a perpetual expat, later as a repat, often on the outside looking in. This led me to pay close attention to what people say and do, and to search for patterns that reveal deeper meaning. I studied Japanese, Korean, and then Chinese, fascinated by the patterns and relationships between them — another way of trying to understand how meaning travels across cultures.

When I became a Chinese teacher for ChinesePod, I was able to use this outsider perspective to help learners advance. Conversely, my later work on the radio was geared towards explaining Western culture to a Chinese audience, forcing me to look at my own background as a stranger would. Ultimately, I found myself in standup comedy, hosting my own show in Shanghai — Ryan King’s The King of Comedy. This show stood out from others on the market in that it was aimed at foreign comedians performing in Chinese, and local comedians performing in English, effectively bridging two comedy cultures. Despite the jokes and irreverence, it became another way of refining my storytelling instincts. My comedy caught the attention of people in the Hong Kong theatre world, which set the stage for my next transition.

In 2018, I was offered the chance to star in a performance of Lauren Gunderson’s Silent Sky. This was an eye-opener for me. The play tells the story of Henrietta Swan Leavitt, an astronomer whose work paved the way for Edwin Hubble’s discovery that the universe contains many galaxies. Leavitt is someone who, until quite recently, was largely forgotten. Gunderson chose to present a semi-fictionalised version of this story on stage — deeply entertaining, rather than as a blog article or YouTube video. This was deeply inspiring: it showed me that theatre could carry serious, little-known truths in a form that was both rigorous and entertaining.