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[0:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello and welcome to The Drama Book Show.

[0:20] David Rigano: My name is Mark-Eugene Garcia.

[0:22] Dylan Glick: My name is David Rigano and my name is Dylan Glick.

[0:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And today we get to talk about writing, and it's something I love to do.

[0:29] Dylan Glick: As we all do.

[0:30] David Rigano: Yep.

[0:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We had an event a few weeks ago with Lloyd on his book Once in the Countryside, a collection of plays.

[0:38] David Rigano: And I was in the countryside once.

[0:40] Dylan Glick: Yes.

[0:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I was in the countryside as well.

[0:43] David Rigano: If you call a few blocks uptown at my other job, the countryside.

[0:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I definitely was because I was in World Premier Wisconsin Festival with Lloyd Suh.

[0:55] David Rigano: Yes.

[0:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh no, so I got to do it. I would do a real fun humble brag was that when we did the promos for it, like we had to send videos and the things got put out there. I was between Lauren Gunderson and Lloyd Suh.

[1:12] Dylan Glick: I felt really proud.

[1:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I felt it was funny because like they're doing their work up there, and I'm like, and here's my parody about Stephen Kitt.

[1:24] Dylan Glick: Hey, you guys have been working on it.

[1:26] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it was exciting, but just to be part of that. Similarly to when we were nominated for an award with Sutton Foster.

[1:33] David Rigano: Sutton Foster and Carrie Fisher.

[1:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, it was like I'm just proud to be on the list with these people.

[1:41] Dylan Glick: Yes.

[1:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, just proud to be there.

[1:45] David Rigano: I don't understand that reference. What are you recommending?

[1:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: In 2011, yeah, Mark and I had a show that we wrote called Facing East, had a one-night benefit concert in Chicago.

[1:57] David Rigano: And we were then nominated for a regional Broadway World Award for a special event.

[2:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: For special events, and the other awards were an evening with Sutton.

[2:08] David Rigano: The other nominees were an evening with Sutton Foster, Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking, and a show called Alien Queen.

[2:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Alien Queen won.

[2:17] David Rigano: Damn.

[2:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[2:19] David Rigano: So our show Facing East, an evening with Sutton Foster and Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking all lost the Broadway World Chicago 2012 award for Best Special Theatrical Event.

[2:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we've never been prouder to have lost an award.

[2:32] Dylan Glick: No, it's one of those. Again, I'm just so happy to be nominated.

[2:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: If Orty Leaver was there, perhaps we could have taken out that Alien Queen.

[2:39] Dylan Glick: Yeah, taking out the Alien Queen.

[2:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Cut to six years later.

[2:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I am in Chicago in 2018 with a show I had directed in New York called Wild Women of Planet Wongo. One of the characters of the film is the Queen of Wango and the Alien Planet. We had a four-month contract at the Chopin Theater with the possibility to extend to a six-month contract.

[3:05] David Rigano: And we closed after two months.

[3:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So I guess Chicago had already had enough Alien Queen in 2011 and didn't care for the one that I brought over there.

[3:16] Dylan Glick: That's Showbiz, Kim.

[3:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, in terms of Chicago. Going for just travel, going from Chicago to Wisconsin. Here we are back from the countryside to talk about Once in the Countryside with Lloyd.

[3:31] David Rigano: I also can segue.

[3:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It was that we had like lucked out with these past few events because it was just another event where we came in, where we had actors performing. I designers. God were they so good.

[3:49] David Rigano: I sometimes have to remember how lucky we are to work here because I will be upstairs prepping some of the biggest teams in theater right now who had some of the hottest shows in New York, and they'll go, I'm so nervous. I'm about to do an event at the Drama Bookshop.

[4:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I'm like, it's just us. But it also it is every week. We do this every week.

[4:14] David Rigano: And it is just us, but it's also us, it's also the most jobs.

[4:17] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, but I'm like, you know who you are, right?

[4:20] Dylan Glick: Yeah.

[4:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[4:23] David Rigano: Yeah. And when Bab said that to me, I was like, get it. But yeah, I've had some of Oh, same. Yeah. Most incredible people writing the most exciting work that you can't get a ticket to come here and be like, I'm nervous because this is the Drama Bookshop.

[4:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'm like, you're nervous like I have to introduce you. I have to say places, cheetah. Like, I all of those things where we that the same nerves, I guess. But it it's not something I take for granted, but you forget sometimes that when you're moving chairs and stuff, like, oh yeah, people will come back.

[4:58] David Rigano: You're watching the clock.

[4:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'm keeping an eye on the clock. I'm keeping an eye on your text that everyone here. I gotta go turn off the storm music. I got okay, we gotta come downstairs. Please wait over here. In our heads is all the logistics.

[5:09] Dylan Glick: Yes, exactly.

[5:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Exactly. And it's so funny that it's a show.

[5:14] David Rigano: Yeah, that's the thing I love about this is like we've turned these events into a show. It what it started out with just some little talk backs in the back corner of the store.

[5:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh my god, I've been remembering the back corner. In the middle of the afternoon with whoever happened to be over there might wander over and listen for a little bit.

[5:30] Dylan Glick: Yeah.

[5:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we had to go up to people and say, hey, we're gonna move this couch. So if you want to stay in this area, you have to listen. This author maybe is really famous and maybe you've never heard of.

[5:41] David Rigano: Yeah.

[5:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it's to go from that to people coming in and I'm like, oh yeah, I'm the one who's been emailing you, blah, blah, blah. We're doing this, we're about to build you a theater. So and people showing up before the store closes to be like, I came early because I want to make sure I have a good seat for the reading.

[5:57] Dylan Glick: Yeah.

[5:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'm so happy with what we've created, and then to turn it into this podcast.

[6:02] David Rigano: Yeah, it's just been a really wonderful journey.

[6:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'll also say to any listeners, if and when you're planning a trip to New York, if you're listening not from New York, if you're in New York, get your butt over here and come see an event.

[6:15] Dylan Glick: Yeah.

[6:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But to our listeners who are outside, and part a huge part of the reason this podcast exists was because we were having these amazing people, and we a didn't want these events to disappear into memories.

[6:28] David Rigano: Yeah.

[6:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And B, we wanted them to be accessible to people who weren't in New York to be able to.

[6:33] David Rigano: But if you're planning a trip to New York, take a look at our calendar, see what we've got going on. You can just RSVP to our event and show up.

[6:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And there's people who've done that who have come and they were like, oh, we saw this and we want to be here for this. And this is a good thing. And maybe it'll be a little recently in the people saying.

[6:46] Dylan Glick: Yeah.

[6:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And maybe it'll be like maybe you'll really luck out because it'll be some like amazingly popular playwright or composer or actor. Or it'll be somebody who just connects with you. Maybe you'll luck out because it'll be the next amazing playwright who you've never heard of get their first play published.

[7:08] David Rigano: Yeah.

[7:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Or the day that Miguel Cervantes calls out of Hamilton to do our show.

[7:12] Dylan Glick: Yeah.

[7:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[7:13] David Rigano: Jack Malone as well.

[7:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, I was like, oh, I'm taking the night off or this show to do your show. And I'm just like, oh my god, I cannot remember. I think I've said it on this happy guest before that I was sitting there going because Miguel Cervantes took out his guitar and did a little Hamilton badly.

[7:28] Dylan Glick: Yeah, you can go back and listen to that.

[7:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I was sitting there for that night. That's crazy. I was sitting right here at the info desk going, there are people who paid upwards of $800 or more and are not seeing him sing songs from Hamilton tonight. And I am getting paid to watch him sing songs from Hamilton.

[7:49] David Rigano: Yeah, it was incredible.

[7:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We just we have this great and heaven bless his understudy, who I'm sure is amazing who those people got to see that night.

[8:00] David Rigano: Yeah, no, we've lucked out with this job, but we've also made this job, and that's something that I really take pride in is that this was anything we created it as we went, and I'm really happy with where it is because we get to talk about rhyming. We get to talk about theater and we get to talk with some really cool people.

[8:17] Dylan Glick: Yeah.

[8:17] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I would love to talk about writing, but I also really want to jump right in.

[8:22] David Rigano: Let's do it and let Lloyd talk about writing because he's got I enjoyed every second of this episode watching this whole event happen.

[8:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So let's jump on in.

[8:34] christine mok: Hello, everybody. Happy Lunar New Year.

[8:44] christine mok: And happy Lunar New Year to all of you. Thank you for joining us this evening. Thank you to Mark-Eugene Garcia and the team here at the Drama Bookshop.

[8:56] christine mok: We are thrilled to be here today to celebrate Lloyd Suh's Once in the Countryside, a collection of plays, which came out a little over two months ago from the Methuen Drama Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing.

[9:08] christine mok: My name is christine mok. I'm a dramaturg, designer, and scholar. I'm the co-editor with Joshua Chambers Letzen of Francis Yachu Kaweg's China Trilogy, Three Parables of Global Capital, and the editor of this collection.

[9:21] christine mok: I'm also going to be moderating this evening's events. I'm joined today by Shannon Tyo, an actor, director, and writer based in New York. She had the privilege of appearing in the world premieres of two Lloyd Suh plays, The Chinese Lady and The Far Country.

[9:38] christine mok: For her work as Afang Moy in The Chinese Lady, she garnered a Lortel Award, a Theatre World Award, and a Bessie and Drama Desk nomination. If we give a round of applause to Shannon.

[10:12] christine mok: And of course, Lloyd Suh, who will be joining us shortly. Award-winning internationally produced playwright, his plays, which include The Heart Sellers, The Chinese Lady, The Far Country, Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Bina's Six Apples, Charles Francis Chan Jr.'s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery, Franklin Land, American Huang Gop, and others, have been produced at the Atlantic Theatre Company, Public Theater, Alliance Theater, Huntington Theater, Milwaukee Rep, Denver Center, Magic Theater, Berkeley Rep, Children's Theatre Company, Mayi Theatre Company, and the National Asian American Theater Company, among others.

[10:47] christine mok: Awards include the Steinberg Playwright Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Herb Alpert Award, Horton Foote Prize, and Helen Merrill Award. He served as the Director of Artistic Programs at the LARC from 2011 to 2020. He was elected in 2016 to the Dramatist Guild Council and serves as a professor of practice at Princeton University.

[11:11] christine mok: So for the past decade, Lloyd has dramatized moments of resilience and revolution that have indelibly shaped American history. Through a sustained exploration of over 150 years of Asian and Asian American experiences, his plays, The Chinese Lady, The Far Country, Bina's Six Apples, Charles Francis Chan Jr.'s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery, and The Heart Sellers contest the pastness of the past to reveal the unexpected ways that untold histories reverberate into the present.

[11:43] christine mok: Once in the Countryside brings all these plays together in a single volume, along with introductory essays by Asian American theater and performance scholars, Amy Bi Huang, Jiyun Kim, myself, Elizabeth San, and Lucy Mae Pablo Burns, as well as postscript essays by creative collaborators, Shannon Tyo, Whit K. Lee, Peter Kim, Ji Yoon Gigi Chang, and Mae Adralis. The volume closes with an interview with the playwright himself.

[12:12] christine mok: Now, what better way to usher in the year of the fire horse, last seen in 1966? Fire is a force to be reckoned with, an element of light, energy, transformation. Horse is an emblem of movement, courage, and persistence. May the fire horse ride us into a future of our own making.

[12:33] christine mok: Now, before Lloyd joins us, Shannon and Daniel will read excerpts from the five plays collected in Once in the Countryside, and we're gonna follow the historical chronology. With Lloyd, I have the pleasure of posing some questions to my compatriots before we open up to questions from the audience and then a book signing. So that's gonna be our evening's itinerary.

[12:56] christine mok: So first up, we've got The Chinese Lady. It's a portrait of a nation seen through the eyes of the first Chinese woman in America, Afang Moy, who is put on display as she comes of age in a United States struggling to define itself.

[13:16] Shannon Tyo: My name is Afang Moy. It is the year 1834. I am 14 years old and newly arrived in America. I was born in Guangzhou in 1820. I am one of seven children, the youngest. My family has sold me for two years of service to Mistress Nathaniel and Frederick Carne, traders of Far East Oriental imports to New York. I will be on display here at Peel's Museum for your education and entertainment at the price of 25 cents adults, 10 cents children. Thank you for coming to see me.

[13:58] Shannon Tyo: I am Patang is irrelevant. I am irrelevant. That's what I was going to say. I was going to say I am irrelevant. A Tang has been in service to Misters Nathaniel and Frederick Carn as a manservant and translator of Chinese to English and back again. He is now assigned to me. You do not need to know who I am or where I come from, or how it came to be that I speak both languages with such practical and occasionally poetic fluency. Only that I will assist Afangmoi, the Chinese lady during all exhibition hours. We will be needing A Tang's translation services for the time being, for I am not speaking. It would of course seem that I am speaking as my mouth is moving and my thoughts are becoming articulated through sound, but that is not in fact what is happening.

What is happening is a performance. For my entire life is a performance. These words that you hear are not my own. These clothes that I wear are not my own. This body that I occupy is not my own. This room in which I am seated is intended to be representative of China, just as I am intended to be representative of the Chinese lady. The first woman from the Orient ever to set foot in America. And yet, this room is unlike any room in China, and I am unlike any lady to ever live. And yet, here we are. You and I. And A Tang, who is irrelevant. Seated in this room, in this museum, in this exhibition hall, advertising the Chinese lady. I shall assume that you have paid your 25 cents, 10 cents for children, because you are curious about China.

Curious about what a Chinese lady might look like or act like. I have not been in this country long enough to know the ways in which I might differ from other ladies you have encountered, or what your particular curiosities might be, but I have been told to highlight certain features that I possess, as they may seem exotic and foreign and unusual to you. I understand it is my duty to show you things that are exotic and foreign and unusual.

[16:34] Shannon Tyo: Set in the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Far Country is an intimate epic that traces the forging of an unlikely family through invented biographies and poems of longing from rural Taishan to the wild west of California. The price is 100 dollars for every year of age. Typically the fee is a little less for women, so we can say 1,600. You'll need 160 dollars as a down payment, plus the price of passage. You will earn one dollar per day. Twenty-five cents will go to room and board. Ten cents you can send home for a repayment of the advance costs. The rest will be garnished until your debt is paid. What are the conditions of this room and board? The conditions? Do you live in the workspace?

Yes, in a room above the storefront. Is it just one room? Yes, with one small closet. Is there a bathroom? The bathroom is downstairs. Is there a kitchen? Also downstairs. Who cooks who cleans? G and I. The food, is it good? No. Is the apartment clean? No. Will I be expected to do the cooking and the cleaning? I wonder that you might find the food unacceptable and the lodging unsanitary. We are often tired at the end of the day, and as bachelors have given way to an admitted indolence. So if you are motivated to improve our collective lives in either way, we would be open to it. But if you don't mind our mess, you are more than welcome to join us in our collective sloppiness. So then, yes, I am expected to do the cooking and the cleaning understood.

So you and G share a room? Yes. But not a bed. No, we have separate beds. And for me? I hadn't yet considered. I need to fully understand your expectations. Right. Because if I'm not mistaken, you are asking me to be your wife, yes. Technically, yes. And technically, in your expectation, does this involve sharing a bed? I haven't really thought that through yet. I find that hard to believe. You've come here after several weeks on a boat in preparation to bring back a wife. You haven't really thought that through yet? I might have thought about it, but I don't want to make presumptions or assumptions about something that ultimately. I'm sorry. I'm feeling a little surprised, unprepared. Surprised by what?

Not surprised, unprepared. For what? I don't know. For me? I'm not asking the kinds of questions you expected? No. Or it's the way I'm asking? Maybe. I've met your mother. Surely you're familiar with a woman who speaks plainly. Familiar with? Sure. Comfortable with? That's different. I'm not. You're not used to talking to women. Plain spoken or otherwise. That's true. So it makes you uncomfortable when I ask about sexual matters. Yes, wow, very much. Yes. And yet, you understand why I need to ask, of course? Yes. Yes, of course. But I don't know how to answer. It depends, right? On what does it depend? Alright, let's. Because yes, if we were to agree to two, we would be entering into a sort of partnership. Yes? That would be working together to come to some common understanding of what the what this what the terms of the s so it's negotiable? Hmm. Because yeah, why? What do you think?

[20:07] Shannon Tyo: A play for young audiences. Bina's six apples follows Bina, who finds herself all alone when the Korean war forces her family to flee their home and they are separated. With just six precious apples to her name, twelve-year-old Bina discovers that she's not the only one, searching for a place to call home. We have to leave. When? Right now. We can hear the fighting getting closer by the hour. By nightfall, it might just be right on top of us. Where are we going? Pusan. The furthest edge of the country, touching the big blue ocean on the southeast point of Korea. What's it like there? Safer than here, I hope. I don't want to go. We don't have a choice now, Pina. I hate the ocean. You love the ocean.

I hate Busan. You've never even seen it. I hate war. Yeah, I do too, Bina. But sometimes that's how the world is. It's full of hateful things as much as it is full of things to love. Best we can do is try being one of the lovely things. Can I bring Chi Hun? Who's Qi Hun? My corn husk doll with the burlap dress. Corn husk what now? You haven't played with that doll in years. What do you need Qi Hun for? I just feel like maybe I'll need her. If you think you can carry her in addition to the rest. That's your decision to make. What's happening now, Pina means I gotta trust you to make good decisions on your own. What else am I supposed to carry? Other drops. Apples. Apples? We can't carry much, but we each gotta carry our share.

Only what we need. What we need the most is food. What are you gonna carry? As much rice as I can. What is Mama gonna carry? Bag of jars full of kimchi and vegetables. What about Junsu and Yongsu? Your brother and sister carry pots for the cooking and canteens of water. Hopefully we'll get the chance to refill them time and again on the journey. What about Hami? Your grandma? She carries wisdom. And that's the heaviest, most important thing we've got. I can carry lots of apples. See how many you can fit in there. She's apples and putting them in the net. Make sure to pick the best of the best. They need to last. I can only fit five. Five is pretty good. Five apples is nothing. I can take more.

Remember, these apples are the best in Korea. Denser, juicier, fuller than your average apple. I can carry more. Five Korean apples from Moon's family farm and orchard are better than a dozen apples from any other spot in the world. It's not even heavy. We just need a bigger bag. That's the only bag we got. Besides, what about your corn husk doll? Cornhus dolls are for babies. This is wartime, Dad. We all gotta make sacrifices. That's a good kid. Cornfold. I can hold way more. I can lift more than a dozen. Don't matter how much you can lift, it matters how much you can carry. There's a big difference between lifting and carrying, Pina. Picture trekking through mountains and crags and traversing rivers, and consider how many apples you can hang on to when you're doing all that.

She drops. I'll carry six. Bag only holds five, he said. There's six of us moons. I want to carry one apple for each of us. I can carry one in my hand. You're gonna need your hands on the journey. Won't be easy. Mountains, crags, and rivers, remember? I'll carry it here. So it's always right beside me. Good. One for each of us. That one's yours then. No, Daddy, this one's yours. How much he loves this. She hugs him abruptly. He holds her tight. What's this war about, anyway? I guess it's about the same thing all wars are, which is who gets to be in charge of things. Who's in charge of things now? Around here? No one is. Past five years or so, which I guess is most of your life. There hasn't been anyone in charge.

So right now there's two types of folks who want to do something about that. Whose side are we on? I don't even know. Sometimes no one's looking out for you the way they should. So in situations like that, well, you gotta be on everyone's side. We've gotta look out for each other, and that starts right here with you and me, see? I'm on your side. Always will be. No matter who's in charge of the country, no matter if we're here on the orchard or way down south in Pusan. One thing I can promise is that we'll always be in charge of ourselves, and always in charge of each other. You understand what I mean when I say that? No, I don't think I do, Daddy, but it's good enough for now.

[24:25] Shannon Tyo: In Charles Francis Chan Jr.'s exotic oriental murder mystery, it is 1967 in San Francisco, California. Frank Chan is trying to stage a revolution. Hi. Hi. I'm Frank. Kathy. That's a nice name. Bullshit, it's a boring and common name. I like your hat. It doesn't even fit. Your song was really beautiful. No way, it sucked. I did the last part all wrong, and it doesn't matter. Artist pointless and insufficient at making any lasting impact on the cultural conversation. Besides, we're all gonna die alone anyway. Have you ever done any acting? Seriously? Yeah, I'm writing something that I think you might be right for. Shut up. No, really. I'm a playwright. I've never heard of an Oriental playwright.

Asian American. Say what? Not Oriental. Asian American. That's not a thing. Not yet, it isn't. But it will be. Alright, you can buy me a drink. Lights. Scene Franks of our lion. Undressed. Sorry about that. Don't worry. Happens to a lot of guys. I'm hungry. Me too. Do you have any food? No. Maybe we can go get something somewhere later? Look, before you get any ideas, I should let you know that I'm emotionally unavailable at the moment. Oh. Yeah, I just don't have time for frivolous things like love. See, I had to end my most recent relationship to focus my attention on some really serious artistic and political commitments. You mean your play? Oh, it's not just a play, it's a manifesto of a nascent revolutionary identity politic that establishes Asian American as a new but permanent social movement that will rise up in defiance of our gross misrepresentation in American culture and our cruel subjugation in American society.

Cool. I know, right? And sure, that sounds easy, but it's complicated because I'm also inventing my own language. Language? Yes, because American English is a colonialist system of cultural biases that cannot accurately contain the full force of what I have to say. I know what you mean. Yes. You what? Wait, you do? I speak Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese with a fairly advanced understanding of Hawaiian pidgin and other Pacific Polynesian dialects, and I often find there are many concepts and semantic modalities of each that are nearly impossible to translate into American idiomatic English. Exactly. Will your new language be an amalgam based on the root systems of other linguistics sets, or have a new and original phraseology?

You know what? I haven't decided yet, actually. It'll depend on some other stuff that I'm still trying to figure out, but hey, so what's your what's your deal? What? Where are you from? You mean where am I really from? No, just like who are you? Who am I? Wow. Let's see. I was born in Canton, Ohio. My father is an engineering professor at Kent State. He doesn't understand me. I'm a junior at Berkeley, double major in studio art and chemical engineering. My hobbies are algebra and performance poetry. My mother killed herself when I was 14. Gunshot to the face, I discovered the body myself. I worry that suicidal tendencies are hereditary, especially when I wake from dreams believing I'm the Messiah. That happens sometimes. But it doesn't answer your question, does it?

[27:47] Shannon Tyo: It's an impossible question to answer. What do you want to be? Fuck you! I want to be important. I want to feel like I'm contributing in some way to the good of humanity and the pursuit of universal world peace. I want to be an artist, even though I can't draw and don't know music and can't dance and hate myself. I want to be loved by a family because I've never had that and probably won't until I have a child of my own. Which I do want, in fact, twelve of them. Twelve, like the star signs or disciples of Christ. One black, one Chinese, one Native American, one Persian, one Chicano, one Romani gypsy, and the rest should all be mixed race. Let's get married. Shut up. No, I'm serious. Well then, okay. They get on each other's body. You know, like most Oriental guys. That's because I'm not Oriental. Oh, no. I'm Asian American. Asian American. And so are you.

[28:59] Shannon Tyo: Over the course of one impulsive evening, fueled by wine and roasted sweet potatoes, they share their hopes and fears in making their new home a reality. I would like to take you to the Louvre. But this is not rip my really real answer. My really real answer is that if we left for really real, we would go to a place I saw once in the countryside. When we first came here from the airport, at one point we pulled off the highway to some kind of side road. And I saw this place. I didn't see it all at once. First a little barn it was, and I was like, oh, look at such a cute little barn, fresh paint. It was yellow. I'd never seen a yellow barn before. And then we passed a little garden so full of flowers, like you couldn't imagine.

Purple, pink, yellow, and the deepest red any person's ever seen. Then a basketball thing. What's it called? Hoop on the side of the house, and children, laughing children, and now I'm sitting straight up in my seat, yeah, and looking out the window of the car like I'm on a Disneyland ride, but it's real life. I see a little market off the side of the road. Buckets and baskets of corn, carrots, even pumpkins, and then we turn the corner, and there are all these people all gathered around. I look around to try to find what it is these people are here for, and then I see it's a band. A band playing music, and I can hear it so faint only through the car window. It's a music I've never heard before, and the people there dancing, and there are kids on the shoulders of their parents, and they're clapping and swaying to the music, and the car it passes so slow, so slow, I can hear just enough of the song to remember a few seconds of it today.

And we pulled away and we passed a big open field, and there were still more people. There were children just running and dogs without any leashes, running side by side with the kids, but we passed it too quickly, too quickly. But I saw enough to know these children with their dogs weren't running to anywhere in particular. They were running in a circle. They were running just to run because they're already right where they're supposed to be. This place. I know it can't be like this always. I know it was some special day, some special situation in the town, and I know it if I go there, probably it's not the same kind of fun for a goofy Filipina girl who's super ignorant of that particular music, but I think about it just the same. I think about what it would feel like to be in the middle of it, to be a part of it somehow.

[31:54] Lloyd Suh: Come on down, Lloyd. Thank you so much, Shannon Daniel. Another round of applause for the all right. We've got a few questions, or I have a few questions. Lloyd, you might have questions. No? Maybe. Oh yeah, maybe you'll see. We'll see. And I think here's this beautiful book. And those listening in on the podcast probably cannot see this. Great. When I was drafting the introduction to this book, actually as early as the book proposal, I knew there were gonna be two epigraphs that hovered over this project. The first is from Heart Sellers, the line where the title of this collection is taken from read for us this evening by Shannon. My really real answer is that if we left for really real, we would go to a place I saw once in the countryside.

The second epigraph, which I learned that we couldn't afford, is from Min Jin Lee's novel Pachinko. Quote, history has failed us, but no matter. End quote. For me, these two lines situate for us, situate us as readers and spectators in time and place. Both a here and now, the really real, that's also somewhere and someone else, both a past and a future. So I'd love, Lloyd, if you could tell us the story of how you found yourself immersed in history, this journey of moving in and out of time to write these five history plays that have taken you a decade.

[33:50] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, it all it was all very accidental. And I tell this story in the starts the interview in the book, which is that like I can track it as there was this party at the Lark where Mia Kickback was there and we were talking about murder mysteries, and she said, Hey, you should do this adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel that was in the public domain because she was very interested in commissioning Asian American writers to revisit classics and Agatha Christie being like by a long shot the second most produced playwright in history. That idea really intrigued her. And so I looked at it, and it was one of the early Poirot stories. And I looked at it and I wrestled with it for just like a second before I reached out to her and said, I don't think I can do this because Poirot is like if you do like the underestimated foreign overweight guy that's comic with face people with facial hair and that people underestimate because he's because of those things, then it's Charlie Chan if it's an Asian guy.

And then she was like, Yes, dummy, that is why you must do it. And so I was like, ooh, oh. I like it hadn't occurred to me just to be like, oh, wait, what if I did lean into that? And so I did. And in the process of that, I just came across scholarship that wasn't around when I was a kid. That just it the first immediate thing it led me to was A Fang Moy. And so immediately after that play, I was already thinking about A Fang Moy, and the way I do like just haunted me. It just I couldn't shape thinking about Afang Moy. And so the way the only way I knew how to reckon with those feelings was to get in a room with people, in particular actors, because the performative nature of what Afang Moi did.

I felt like I just wanted to get in a room with actors to talk about Afang Moy. And that led to that. And then so each one was very organic. I never set out. It's funny, I never set out, it never occurred to me that's what I was doing. Even up until the last one, even at the heart sellers, where I tell the story like when I was having that conversation with Mayadralis around that commission, I was like, I want to move away from this stuff that we've been doing. I want to do something very different. And then I ended up writing The Heart Sellers and then realizing, wait a second, this is another history. But then as I think about that before, I think even before that is like I wrote this play called Franklin Land, which was way before any of these.

And I think that's a history play. Like I think it rooted in the very same impulses. So I think it's something that I've been circling around a long time, but just never Yeah. And I still don't even know how to organize it. Cause I actually earlier today I went to visit a freshman seminar. I was a guest at a freshman seminar called Writing About History. And they invited me to come before I knew I had to come here, so I actually had to rush from campus. But they read this short play, Disney and Fujikawa, which it was before. But actually I think somewhere in the middle, I don't know, somewhere in the middle. But that's a one-act play that I think is really historically right in there. So I think they're all connected in ways I don't know how to organize. But it just go speaks to it's it was all completely organic, and I really had very little oddly self-awareness of what I was doing while I was doing it.

[36:53] Lloyd Suh: So this book with all those five plays represents, as I said, over a decade of playwriting for you. How have you changed in that time? How has theater changed? How has Asian American theater changed?

[37:07] Lloyd Suh: Yeah. The first question, I think that a decade is I've changed in many ways, like not related to writing plays, of course. But I think if I track, if I track the ways I've changed as a writer, I think that honestly, I satisfied some kind of urge, I would say. There was something about the heart sellers. And the last two that I wrote, chronologically, the last two that I wrote, The Far Country and The Heart Sellers, I basically wrote during the pandemic. Those are plays that I wrote at a time when like we were workshopping them over Zoom. So like Francesca said, there's people, yeah. We were workshopping in, yeah, Nisi, Christy, you guys were in those Zoom rooms. Yeah. Like we were workshopping these plays over Zoom.

And like I can track whatever that impulse was and just remembering that time of like, why are we doing the things that we do, why are we doing them? Maybe we're all gonna die. What is what do I want to spend my time doing? So that decision at that time for me, like the first stretch of that pandemic, I was like, I'm not right. It's like commissions, nobody's asking for these. What are you gonna do with the hand in a play? Theater, nobody's gonna do anything. So it was very easy for me to be like, nobody's coming after me to write a play. But actually making the conscious decision in that time to be like, no, I'm gonna write these plays. I think that was that was in service of this impulse to finish whatever that historical thing was.

And I think the process of rehearsing and watching the heart sellers and seeing the ways in which I actually was able to look at to look at that play and be like, there's me. That's me that they're talking about that is like I can see myself on that long term continuum. And even before I realized it, that the Heart Seller Act is a bookend to the Chinese Exclusion Act. That's the continuum I had written, and that I had written in whatever way I had written it as a way to satisfy some kind of personal curiosity or journey or urge. And yeah, in terms of the only way I really know how to answer that question for myself is as a writer. And I would say in that way, that's the way I've changed as a writer.

In terms of Asian American playwriting, I think I'll do them in order. I'll say, how is theater changed? Theater's in trouble. Theater's always in trouble. But I think that there's we feel like I think I can feel most playwrights here, most any people who work in the can feel like the diminishing amount of institutions, in particular institutions that support developmental early career artists, like just the grassroots, just that's you know, that part of theater that we can feel those gaps. We can feel even the larger institutions doing less and less. I've maintained for a while that I think that playwrights, I've been here in New York doing this like over 25 years. I really think that this era, like COVID post-COVID era, the most adventurous, most exciting writing that I've encountered in my 25, 26 years in New York.

But the what's being produced, what's being written, I feel like it's the best it's ever. In terms of what's being produced, it's the worst it's ever. So I think that's just where, unfortunately. And I think that Asian American writing is there's a big part of that is yeah, I mean, there's just I feel it. Like I have students who are just like, I don't know, doing amazing. And then I also feel that there are just fewer organizational support mechanisms out there. Like I have, like I took to graduating seniors when I was teaching at MFA programs, you could feel the panic in some of these students. Just like, what do I do? Like, I don't know. Like the places I would tell you, ordinary tell people to seek out, they're not around anymore.

So I start I can feel like there are fewer, it's a shorter list. The people who are on the list, some of you are right here in the room. Yeah, EST, yes. But it's a shorter list than it's ever been. And that's that's something we're gonna have to reckon with as a thanks for that, Lloyd. Now I have some questions for Shannon and Daniel.

[41:21] David Rigano: So this evening, we all got the treat of getting to see and listen to you reprise your roles as Afang Moi and A T. You played opposite one another for three productions, starting with the play's premiere in July 2018 at Barrington Stage, through its production here at the public in 2022.

[41:43] Shannon Tyo: What was it like to live with this play? Live in this play together for four years, and actually even longer than four years since you both workshopped it. I think of this play as something that changed my career and it's like a career highlight. So I've always held this play in Shannon and Lloyd and a special place in my heart. Uh I made Shannon lactose intolerant because we lived together in Barrington and I'm lactose intolerant and so we were sharing a fridge and like literally living together and then I'd cut dairy out of her diet for so long that she had a cappuccino in the middle of a two-show day and was like, I think we might have to put in an intermission. I think I have food poisoning.

I have food poisoning because I don't know what's going on with my body. And then afterwards she was like, oh, I haven't had dairy in so long. I think you made me lactose intolerant over the course of this. Yeah, and then in 2022 I got COVID for the first time on opening night of Chinese Lady, so that was rough. Thank you, John Norman Schneider, who was our understudy. Yeah, I mean it was a wild thing because our production and definitely the text, like maybe three words changed from 2018 to 2022 and in 2018 the reception was like very tepid and I think honestly that speaks to the state of the world. And then by the time we hit 2022 and I think about that time, I'm like man, it was like maybe a little early to be trying to do theater.

We were getting COVID tested like four times a week. Some of us got COVID. It was almost, it was really hard to do theater and like it was at the height of like what I perceived to be the violence against Asian people and all of a sudden everybody believed us. And nothing about our production had changed, it's just that everybody believed us all of a sudden. And that was a wild thing to witness.

[43:58] christine mok: Do you want me to ask you a question?

[44:02] Shannon Tyo: I do, yeah. You shared, you did the courtesy of sharing your questions with me, the fans. I feel bad giving you a question that I didn't just, but yeah, no, I'm in because it does occur to me that for every one of these plays, you were there for the early product, like initial productions, like you were in rooms when they were just starting. And I'm curious, like from that vantage, especially going through this journey and then compiling these plays into an anthology and editing them and curating the amazing essays that you curated for the publication, if there's anything that surprised you, like from the beginning to the end.

[44:45] Lloyd Suh: Yes, yes. There were things that surprised me. There were things that are small that surprised me. Your obsession with dust was incredibly surprising. It comes throughout the play. I think there's something really interesting that when you, I don't know, as an editor and as a dramaturg, when you live with scripts, and then to have the gift of living with a playwright's oeuvre. Can we call it that? Yeah, we can call it that with five of these plays. I was really surprised by the range of genre, but also actually the persistence of the kinds of questions. There's an insistence, and I think there's such an insistence on presence, and I think there's such an insistence on materiality in your plays that I don't think that I would have realized if I hadn't been like elbow deep in them.

And in some ways, though, the tip of that iceberg for me was like, Wow, Lloyd, there's something about dust that you seem to be really into. Something about the detritus that is left by the lives that we live that accumulates, that we do so much to try to get rid of, to clean, to push aside. And yet, in some ways, I kept thinking actually of Beckett's grain upon grain, heap upon heap, that in some ways was the kind of insistence that I felt that your plays were making for Asian and Asian diasporic subjects. And in some ways, I could have said this from the get-go, but it felt, it became instantiated for me while I was working on it. So speaking about that and speaking to what it was like, it really was a pleasure to live in these plays.

Something that we were joking about upstairs was that these plays are not necessarily laugh riots. And actually both Shannon and Daniel had earlier mentioned that part of the, because they had actually wanted to like rehearse before this, which they're such pros. They've also been in workshops of this, but they didn't really want to rehearse it. But one of the things they named was that something that they would have to work at was to not cry reading these plays. And I'm sure anybody who has read one of these plays is oh, yeah, absolutely. There are all these moments where certainly in rehearsal, I would just be like bawling at that table in the front. Uh but that while yes, these plays are not a laugh riot, they're also incredibly, I don't know, they're such vibrant worlds to live in.

There's so much joy and humor and but also pain and empathy. And so my question to Shannon and Daniel, is there another Lloyd's world you'd like to live in? Another character you'd like to play? And perhaps this is a sort of bid for more productions, future productions with Shannon and Daniel in them.

[47:52] Daniel K. Isaac: Of an established play, it's Bina. I love Bina's Six Apples. We did a reading of it with Kimber Lee. And I just remember as Bina. Yeah. And like in a good way, we were sobbing by the end of the year. Ugly crying. Everybody in the play for young audiences, and we are just weeping our eyes out. And I don't cry. And I was like, this is pathetic. What's happening? Is that answer, is that answering the question? I love Bina.

[48:24] Shannon Tyo: Yeah. When I did the workshops for The Far Country, I remember not being able to not cry reading the text, even though the text was a very clinical moment of describing what the experience on the island was like. And yet in its very mathematical recitation of facts, I felt Lloyd does an amazing channeling of history and of the weight of the ancestors or the pain of our very recent history that I would always be ugly crying doing it. Even though our director of Chinese Lady, Ralph Pena, says you can't cry in a Lloyd Suh play. The audience can cry, but you can't cry. And so I'd be doing these workshops thinking, how are we gonna not cry when we're actually doing it if we can't get through a single read-through without shedding so many tears? So F you for that, and thank you.

[49:27] Shannon Tyo: We're gonna open it up to questions from the audience. And as how would we logistically do that? Send a question around or send one of these around or all right. I will repeat the question. And perhaps to let you have a little bit of time to create or develop your questions, I'll ask one last thing to Lloyd, which is actually not on our script. And I'm stealing this question from poet Jane Wong, which is that if you could make a meal or cook a food for your manuscript of these plays, if you could feed these plays, what would it be?

[50:10] Lloyd Suh: Oh man, there are so many, uh there's a lot of food references to these plays. Yeah, I'll just go with the first thing that came to mind, which is Thanksgiving dinner, man. Yeah, like a full Thanksgiving thing that your characters don't get. Yeah, an American Thanksgiving feast. Yeah, that popped into my head. I have to go with that.

[50:32] Howard: Yeah.

[51:10] Lloyd Suh: Great. Yeah. I love to, if I'm gonna be somewhere, if I'm gonna, the last thing I want to do is see the same thing again. So I especially if I'm going from one place to another, I really am like I seek out the ways in which what's possible, especially in the second one. I want to test, I want to know what are the limits here. When I write, I try to leave as much open as possible. I try to be very specific about the things that are really important to me. But anything that doesn't feel really specific, I like to leave as open as possible. That's even in like the way, even what intentions are, like what tactics and what intentions are from a character from a moment to another. But even like I try to be very spare with stage directions to allow things to be additive.

And this is new. This is with The Chinese Lady, it was the first time I ever had the opportunity to see the same play done in multiple places, like in a short amount of time. And a big part of that trajectory was interrupted by COVID. So there was like a kind of an urge to test the, to figure out or to like wrestle with what are we even doing here? Justin Jane, he's uh he's not a text-based director, is the way I'll put it. And I had conversations with him during COVID, we're just like, I have crazy ideas. And I was like, try all of them. Like I want you to try all of them. And I went there and I was like, what is, I was like, what is this? But it was amazing, right? It was amazing. Because it was like stretching at what my understanding of that play was.

And in some of those ways, it was amazing. And in some of those ways, it was like I didn't get them, but then I realized, oh, you know what? That speaks, like this moment, that prop, it was a prop where I was like, I don't get that. But then people were like, that prop is deeply meaningful to Asian actors in Philadelphia. Like it's an incredibly local prop that had like real power. And so I was like, oh man, like I started to become really attracted to the idea of the ways in which a production can be very local, and also just based on when it happens in time. So, like for The Far Country, the only thing that changed in terms of the text is that middle act, that act two, which didn't change dramatically in terms of what was there, but I split it up into one additional character.

There was an additional voice, and I reordered the sequence so that it was more jarring, it was less chronological. That's the only part where the text changed at all. But what that did was it gave us the opportunity to like play with the ways in which it's more jarring, that it's less chronological, that it's less like less of a documentary style theater and more like impulsive, expressionistic. And they ran with that. Like the designers, the core, like you remember that second act in Berkeley, right? It was like overwhelming. And so I love just that opportunity to just pull at it, see where those the edges are. And yeah, I like that's the thing that I just love, especially that second productions is I want it to feel different.

In particular, I wanted to feel local and to be able to do a story about Angel Island in the Bay Area. Obviously, that created another dimension as well. So just letting all of those things really feed.

[54:41] christine mok: Any other questions for Lloyd or Shannon, Daniel, myself?

[54:50] Audience Member: Yes.

[55:13] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, I was just talking about this at that class, because I don't know how true this is of me. I think this is true, but it's what I tell students anyway, is research is the most effective and powerful form of procrastination there is that anything that you say, I have to do this blank before I start writing.

[55:36] Lloyd Suh: You don't. The most common one people do is I have to research this before I start writing. You don't. What I like to tell students is your first draft is your first draft, it's yours. You're not obligated to anybody. You're obligated in looking at it to know I have to do things before I can share it with the world. But your first draft is only yours, right? You can say the wrong thing. You can dishonor your family in your first draft. No one will know. You can do that. That's what first drafts are for. So that's the approach that I took generally. And you do that in the first draft, and then you look at it and you're like, oh wow, I need to. These are the gaps. These are where the gaps are.

Knowing where the gaps are is much easier research. It's targeted, specific research, instead of, oh, I have to understand everything about this giant topic before I even start writing. You're dead in the water. You're in a lot of trouble. You have to try it first and then know where the gaps are, and then be like, oh, I just need to know about this one moment or this law or this. And then it's very targeted and very specific. But that being said, I research-wise, I once I started writing, I did very little because these are things that I sat with before I started the plays. Like for each of these plays, I knew at least I knew setting, I knew political background, I knew that kind of stuff. I knew what I wanted to say about that time period in advance of me even sitting down to write.

And before even knowing I wanted to write a play about that. So that helps too. History can sometimes feel like it's the opposite of write what you know. But if you're learning it like on your own, then you know it well enough, at least to start a first draft that's generally good enough. But I yeah, the biggest part of the answer to my answer to that question is just about really first drafts and just letting them be very sacred, being yours and being a place where you can get it really wrong. You're allowed to get it really wrong in the first draft.

[57:38] Shannon Tyo: I think that for Far Country, something that happened during the Atlantic production. Oh, yeah, I got a lot wrong. Yeah, I was the dramaturg on that. And in some ways, the question of the history and the research sits on me. But one of the things we spent quite a bit of time talking about was the way in which history operated as a scaffold to the play, and then we were really trying to pull that scaffold away to see how it stood up on its own. Because this isn't about a history lesson. It is a play, it has to live, it is a world in and of itself. And the research informs that, but that we did spend quite a bit of time pulling things out. I remember the incredibly beautiful dramaturgic dramaturgy packet that you made.

And I looked at it like once because I feel like But I feel like I wasn't tasked with the majority of the actual history history. And I do feel this way about like Chinese Lady too. It's more just what would a person do rather than the historical. You told me the historical things. You wrote those in. So it's like you were saying it's oh, I will look up that one thing, but everything else is what would a person do and then do that, which is just what acting is. But it's not as much research. I didn't find the research to be super helpful, to be honest. Like it's more just feelings. I think that the It's okay. I see Krista also smiling, fellow dramaturg. But in some ways, that research is there just to inform the world so that when I get questions or when we in our like rehearsal report get questions about millet, I can answer the question about millet.

And I wrote the scene about millet, and I knew less than I had to look up. Like I knew enough to feel like, well, I could write that scene. I knew millet wasn't expensive. I knew it was a common grain. I didn't know what it tasted like. I didn't know the crop can, I didn't know anything. I just knew what I needed to know about millet for that scene. But then they had to answer questions that I didn't have to look up. So that's the discrepancy between what is dramaturgical practice, what needs to live on the stage, and what you need to know as a writer in order to write that scene. I knew enough, but I didn't have to know that much.

[1:00:05] Lloyd Suh: I see a hand in the front, and then Alvin.

[1:00:36] Daniel K. Isaac: I think when I thought about that a lot. That I don't know how to give my students those kinds of experiences anymore. I feel like this sense of somebody should build something. Somebody should build that. There was a time when I was in my 20s or 30s, I would be, I would have been like, I should build some. Right? Right now, I look at my no, I know how old I am. I know how old other people are. I look at it and be like, that's not mine to build. But I can encourage and help and do my best to provide the opportunity for people in their 20s, people in their 30s, to build those things. And I think it's theirs to build. It's not mine to build. I will but I'm game to help, is what I would tell. That's the best way I can answer that.

[1:02:10] christine mok: And then we have a last question.

[1:02:18] Audience Member: I heard from Jeffrey Paul Chant from Jeffrey and his wife, and he told me that Frank's son that he was gonna invite Frank's son to that show. I don't know if he ever did, but no, I haven't heard from I will say that you and I had a conversation where you were like, what do you think Frank Chin will think? And I said, you give him you make him well endowed. So he might be thrilled.

[1:02:53] Lloyd Suh: I guess, yes, we can squeeze in one more question.

[1:03:23] Daniel K. Isaac: Do you mean the book or the plays or is it too? Oh. Yeah, I don't know. Like like Lloyd was saying, he puts so few stage directions in, like, truly just she stands for pages and pages is all you're given. So I think there it was great. I don't know. I wouldn't say that we necessarily influenced any of the themes or anything like that, but Lloyd is always very good about being open to like single word changes that like in a stupid actor way. It's this is really bothering me because I've said it five thousand times. What do you think about this word instead? And usually he's like, Yeah, that's yeah, sure, whatever. Which is great. Because not every playwright, some players will push back be like, I wrote that word for a reason. I'm like, I have to say it five thousand times. Lise, I'm begging you, I'm begging you. So that's always like a it just felt like a very easy and collaborative room.

[1:04:20] Shannon Tyo: Yeah. For me, I like to, especially when I'm developing, I was talking about these Zoom rooms. There are a lot of people in this room that I like to have in the room when I'm doing something first for the first time. Because they know me. And I know them and I can tell. If they have an impulse, I can tell where it comes from. I have context for what they say to me, and they have context for what I'm doing. And even if we don't even say anything, even if nothing really comes from it, there's something discomforting about that. So I just do having, yeah, just like some consistency there, familiarity, even if I don't use it. Just knowing it's there is valuable for sure.

[1:04:58] Daniel K. Isaac: And to pair these last two questions together, when I was studying abroad in London in the 2008, 2007, the RSC was doing all of Shakespeare's history plays with one company. And I remember thinking as your anthology came out, how cool would it be to do Asian American history with one company? How cool would it be to have these five plays produced and in rep with one ensemble, and how many playwrights, Asian American or otherwise, have given us the gift to be able to do that, and how wonderful a future could that be if a really rich person wants to finance that and then contact us, please let us know.

[1:05:41] Lloyd Suh: I know some written, yeah. Okay, I'll work on it. I think that's a wonderful way for us to end to dream for when that will happen soon.

[1:05:51] David Rigano: And we are back. Now, there was a sentence that he said that may resonate with you guys. It definitely resonated with me. And it was to the idea of that first draft is the one that's allowed to upset your or disappoint your ancestors. And man, that hit so hard. Because as someone, especially because I write a lot of Latinese stories, I'm always thinking about my family, and I'm always thinking about like my own heritage and what am I bringing to the table, and to have that permission to be like, hey, it's okay. This first draft, it doesn't have to be that. Yeah, and it means a lot. I've had I've seen other authors who have shown some of their first works or their first passes at even Broadway shows, and seeing that, hey, it's not great, and that's okay, and it was gratifying to know that okay, you didn't write that song the first time out. That okay, when I write a song that's not what I want it to be, yeah, that's okay. Because you need to do that step to get to the next step.

[1:07:03] Daniel K. Isaac: Yes. You need something there to fix.

[1:07:07] Lloyd Suh: Exactly. I when it comes to rewriting, I'm gonna be so real. I have a really hard time. And I have talked to Mark and David ad nauseum about rewriting, specifically at this play that I wrote in college that I would like to like zhu jump because my problem is I just I delete too much. I'm like, throw it all away, write something no. And I don't know, it's very helpful to hear, get it on the page, edit it. Even if you make a change that you don't like, it'll still be in a folder somewhere on your computer and you can put it back in.

[1:07:39] Shannon Tyo: Exactly. I was talking to a friend yesterday, and it was funny because he goes, Where did you learn to do that? And I was talking about just one of my processes. And I was like, I don't know. I think I just learned it over time. And it's something that I just wrote a brand new play. I just wrote a draft of something a couple weeks ago. And I was like, oh, I just finished this draft. It's about this. This is what I want to talk about. These are the themes of it. And I'm pretty happy with the draft. I finished it two weeks ago, so I'll look at it again in about a month for and print it out and do some edits. And he goes, What do you mean? I'm like, oh, I when I finish a draft, I usually take six weeks and put it aside and don't look about it, don't look at it, and don't think about it.

That way, when I do look at it again, it's like reading a new play with fresh eyes. And I if I try right now, I'm all I'm never gonna get past page one because I'll already start that editing process. And I don't want to do that. I want to know, I want to look at the play itself. And he was oh shit, I've never thought about doing that. And it's just and I don't know if that works for everyone, but for me, I like to like I have I'll finish it, goes in the drawer, I know I'm gonna hit it, put it on my calendar. Six weeks from now, I'm gonna pick this baby up, and I'm gonna write something else now and move on and get whatever that was out of my head. And then also some of those because my brain is still working, some of those answers may start to be there, and I'll give it on a note, but again, pick up the script, like yeah, because I want to sit down and read it, like a fresh new play, look at the look at it from the big picture, and that helps the editing.

I want to have a moment where maybe I look at it and go, What the hell was I thinking? Yes. Because if it's too close, I will remember my whole process, and I won't be as objective. But if I can look at it and go, what does that mean?

[1:07:56] Shannon Tyo: The thing that I have always said is you cannot rewrite an empty page.

[1:09:25] Lloyd Suh: Then if I don't remember what it means, then an audience is not gonna get it, and that tells me something about the work that I have to do with handling.

[1:09:32] Shannon Tyo: Yeah, it's like a screening process because I have friends who are like, "Oh, you finished it, can I read it?" I'm like, "In about six weeks. I'm gonna read it, I'm gonna look at it, do some edits, and we'll go from there."

[1:09:42] Lloyd Suh: I will, Dylan was there for the first draft of a play that I literally, it was during end of play, right? And end of play month. And in April, which is, God, coming up, I should get to work on the next right to play. But I pulled a cast together before I had finished writing.

[1:10:04] Shannon Tyo: Yeah, nice.

[1:10:05] Lloyd Suh: I had really, I had enough work done that I was pretty sure that I could get something that was complete by the end of April, National Playwrights Month, and I pulled the cast together and I literally was making edits. I don't know if you remember this, that everyone had with script, but then I emailed everyone the day of it, and I was like, "Hey everyone, don't use just making sure that was for reference so that you could take a look at it. Don't, that's not what we're reading tonight."

[1:10:30] Shannon Tyo: Yeah.

[1:10:31] Lloyd Suh: So literally everyone was reading a draft that had been completed that day.

[1:10:36] Daniel K. Isaac: Wow.

[1:10:36] Lloyd Suh: But it was a group of people that I really trusted.

[1:10:38] Shannon Tyo: And you have to.

[1:10:42] Lloyd Suh: And they don't have to fit the parts, and they don't have to, they just have to be storytellers.

[1:10:47] Shannon Tyo: Yeah.

[1:10:47] Lloyd Suh: Got great feedback that I recorded on my phone so that I could then step away for it for a couple months.

[1:10:55] Daniel K. Isaac: Yes.

[1:10:56] Lloyd Suh: Again, it's always that. And then come back and I have the feedback recorded so that I could listen back to remember what, you know, and it wasn't just my chicken scratch notes. And then me going, "What the hell did that mean?" So that I could do the editing process. And that draft was a little over 60 pages. That play is close to 90 pages.

[1:11:17] Shannon Tyo: Yeah.

[1:11:18] Lloyd Suh: It's really about seeing the forest for the trees. And just saying, okay, like I can look at the whole project now and make sure that all of the pieces line up. Because again, if I sit down right now and pick up the thing I just finished, I'm gonna be editing spelling, I'm gonna be editing grammar, I'm gonna be like, "Oh, I can be funnier here, I can be funnier here," and then forget that, oh, there's a plot to this.

[1:11:37] Daniel K. Isaac: Yeah.

[1:11:37] Lloyd Suh: And so you want to take a look at everything and see if that emotion still hits. Like the reason you wrote it, is that still there? Are the themes that you wanted still there? And those are hard to see when you're looking close. I think the, I'm currently, I'm currently with the play that I'm avoiding right now is Wheel Leo, as I probably talked about it before on podcast and also just tuning you both personally. I've only ever really done like major rewrites of a play once, and that was for Sleepy Hollow. And the purpose was to cut it down, which I thought was like, I don't know, it looked that was very doable for me.

[1:12:05] Shannon Tyo: Yeah.

[1:12:12] Lloyd Suh: I have, I don't have a lot of practice reading my work objectively. And so I think it's gonna be a fun challenge to just sit back and not be so like judgmental of myself, being like someone else wrote this. Do you know what I mean? And to be able to go through it and figure it out.

[1:12:26] Shannon Tyo: Yeah, that's what the time away from it can do sometimes because it feels like someone else wrote this because you don't remember like what I was thinking. You don't remember what you were thinking, what you were eating when you wrote that paragraph or like what music was playing, like that starts to fade. And so it's really just words on a page.

[1:12:40] Lloyd Suh: Yeah.

[1:12:40] Shannon Tyo: Yeah.

[1:12:41] Lloyd Suh: But also if someone else, if it, if I had written it and I had given it to you for feedback on what needed to change to think critically, you would not be judging it. You would be thinking of the best ways to help your friend make it the best that it could be.

[1:12:58] Daniel K. Isaac: That's true.

[1:12:58] Shannon Tyo: I would like to add the caveat of I might take a few years to get to it. I'm sorry, Dave.

[1:13:01] Lloyd Suh: I do that.

[1:13:04] Daniel K. Isaac: No, I know you're not saying that.

[1:13:05] Lloyd Suh: I'm just adding that.

[1:13:06] Daniel K. Isaac: I know you're right. What I mean is you'll be looking at your own piece the same way. You won't be judging it. You will be thinking of all of the possible ways to improve on it to make it the best thing.

[1:13:18] Shannon Tyo: Yeah.

[1:13:18] Lloyd Suh: That's great.

[1:13:19] Shannon Tyo: Yeah.

[1:13:20] Lloyd Suh: And he talks about, he talked about that too about trust and about having those people that you, that trusted circle.

[1:13:28] Daniel K. Isaac: A trusted triangle.

[1:13:30] Lloyd Suh: Oh, whatever shape your trust is in, have that because you can't write in a bubble, because the show's great in your head, but you have to see if other people understand it. And so it's important to have that trust.

[1:13:44] Shannon Tyo: And I think I'll go on. I feel, I look up, I feel like I am very inspired by and look up to artists that are able to look at their work objectively because I have a really hard time doing that. So, like for instance, I don't know, like Beyonce, like just about let's get in, let's fix the work, that kind of stuff. I'm reading this book right now. You know, scream Wes Craven seems to be very much no needle about him. Just let's get the best line here, the best. If you have ideas, like but yeah, I admire artists where I go to do that.

[1:14:14] Lloyd Suh: I love that because it's what collaborating is hard, but it also it's having that's the that's what makes it easier is saying, okay, this is about the show and about the best idea. I'm very happy that most of those are mine, but it's really about having that ability to be like, actually, what you said was really funny, let's do that, or actually what you're saying about the character makes sense.

[1:14:38] Shannon Tyo: I love doing that with actors, yeah.

[1:14:41] Lloyd Suh: I teach a class called playmaking, and I am adapting that class into the book, and it is at its core a class and a book about collaboration. Because I think, and I think to the, we get so many people come to the store and they've just seen the newest hit play, and they want the script to it, and then so frequently we have to explain, oh, it's not published yet, and why. And I think so many people are used to seeing theater as a packaged finished product, yes, either as a book on our shelf or as a book that the licensing company sends to you, or as the play on Broadway, and this is through no fault of anyone's, they don't know the process that goes into.

[1:15:33] Shannon Tyo: Yeah.

[1:15:33] Lloyd Suh: And especially this is for my theater students, my who probably their only experience with making theater is when they get that finished product in their hand and then they have put it on stage. And I think we have this idea of the mad genius who sits alone in a dark room by candlelight and scribbles away until the masterpiece is finished. And that is so not what it is.

[1:15:54] Shannon Tyo: Yeah.

[1:15:57] Lloyd Suh: There's so many other steps, and there are so many other people come in before the piece is even ready to be considered to go on stage before the play is even ready to be considered for publication. And so that to me is what playmaking, and that's why it's not a playwright book. It's about all of the people who are involved in putting their two cents in before you can see it on stage, before you can hold the script in your hand.

[1:16:30] Daniel K. Isaac: Yeah, before you can act it out, before like all of that.

[1:16:33] Lloyd Suh: I applaud the collaboration of directors and intimacy directors and stage designers and lighting designers, like all of that is part of the story. Yes, you can write a story as a script, but it's not the same as seeing it and experiencing it at all.

[1:16:53] Shannon Tyo: And you don't know when you're holding on to a script and reading it what line is in there because the designer had an idea that made the writer think of something. Oh, if you're gonna put them in this costume, then that makes me, if this is what the metaphor, if the design is, let me lean into that in the writing. The director does something. Oh, now you have them on opposite sides of the stage, and that is so much more compelling than what I saw in my head. So let me write this new thing. It all comes down to all of this collaboration, which is why if the new play is on Broadway, it hasn't been published because for all we know, the playwright is still sitting at the back of the house every night and listening to audience reaction because that's a collaborator too.

[1:17:38] Daniel K. Isaac: Exactly.

[1:17:38] Lloyd Suh: And seeing ways that even if the show is frozen and you're not bringing new pages into the actors, the author could be thinking of ways to improve it throughout that whole run that they're then going to write into the play before it gets published.

[1:17:55] Shannon Tyo: Exactly.

[1:17:55] Lloyd Suh: Making those changes, and it's, I just love that process. I love the process of writing theater is a living process that continues, it doesn't end like that. I was seeing a movie a while back, and I remember not liking it in the moment I liked it, but I was judging it from the view of how I judge a lot of workshops when I see like people's writings where I'm going, okay, I love this show for what it's going to be. I love this show it's going to be, it's going to, I can see where they're going with this, and I'm excited by it, and it's going to be a cool show. And so I was watching this movie going, "Oh, this is gonna be good when it's done."

[1:18:26] Daniel K. Isaac: Yeah.

[1:18:39] Lloyd Suh: And then I realized, oh, it this is done. Oh no, man, this could have been good. And I was great. Other people liked the movie, but I was just like, this could have been really good, and it was just okay. But that's, I love that theater has that ability that you can see a show on Broadway, and then it'll be revisited later, and it'll be a different version of the show that goes out on tour, and from that tour becomes a different version of the show. And I remember it's a magic.

[1:19:05] Shannon Tyo: Yeah.

[1:19:07] Lloyd Suh: I remember seeing a show everybody loved. And both my friend and I walked out, went okay. We like, we get it, but it feels like something was missing, and I don't know what that was. And then that play won a major award. I went, huh? That play. And then I learned from other people who had seen it and loved it, that the play went through a lot of major rewrites over the preview process.

[1:19:39] Daniel K. Isaac: Wow.

[1:19:40] Lloyd Suh: And I went, oh, and I actually still have not gotten around. I own a copy of the script. I have gotten around to reading it. But I remember going, I need to read the play then. I need to read the published play. Because for all I know, everything that my friend and I left to see her going, "I feel like something was missing." The playwright thought the exact same thing, but the playwright had the power to put the thing that was missing into it. So everybody loved it. It won some major awards. So I need to go back and see what the difference was between the preview performance that I saw, the play that ultimately won those awards.

[1:20:17] David Rigano: As soon as you finish reading Angels in America, David, I'll be really faded.

[1:20:21] Dylan Glick: Wait, have you ever read Angels in America?

[1:20:23] Lloyd Suh: No, I was joking about that.

[1:20:26] David Rigano: I was just trying to pick some play that would be so polarizing if he hasn't very gullible to when I was there.

[1:20:33] Dylan Glick: Oh yeah, you performed today.

[1:20:36] Lloyd Suh: I did not know that you were at the preview of performance label these.

[1:20:38] David Rigano: Oh, that's ungullible.

[1:20:39] Lloyd Suh: I'm sorry.

[1:20:40] Dylan Glick: The way your jaw dropped, Dylan.

[1:20:43] Lloyd Suh: I pulley, also I'm not one to talk because I've anything anyone ever recommends. I take years to get to.

[1:20:49] David Rigano: Yeah.

[1:20:50] Lloyd Suh: I live essentially under a rock. But yeah, I was very shocked there for a moment.

[1:20:54] David Rigano: No.

[1:20:56] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, it wasn't that, or maybe it was. I don't know. We don't need to know that. I have notes.

[1:21:00] David Rigano: Oh no.

[1:21:02] Lloyd Suh: Tony, reach out to the no, we never talk about what we don't like. We talk about what we like.

[1:21:09] David Rigano: And we liked this opportunity to talk about writing and talk about theater on this podcast with some very wonderful people. But we're gonna switch gears for our next episode because we're gonna go from writing and we had a lot of playwrights, and now we're gonna talk with a singer.

[1:21:26] Dylan Glick: Wow.

[1:21:27] David Rigano: Yes. We're going to to Steve with Love.

[1:21:31] Lloyd Suh: Yeah.

[1:21:31] David Rigano: With Liz Callaway.

[1:21:33] Lloyd Suh: Yes, a real journey to the past, because we did this a little while ago.

[1:21:36] Dylan Glick: Wrong Steve, but no, I know.

[1:21:40] David Rigano: I'm so excited for this nanny theme up show that we're doing. Because like, how do I pepper in the fact that we talked about the nanny at all?

[1:21:51] Lloyd Suh: We had a lot to talk about.

[1:21:52] David Rigano: You had a lot to talk about, but I don't remember if that was in there because there was a lot of sound time.

[1:21:56] Lloyd Suh: I know once you get on sound time.

[1:21:59] David Rigano: That is true.

[1:22:00] Lloyd Suh: Yeah.

[1:22:00] David Rigano: Once you get on sound time, it's hard to get to the nanny.

[1:22:02] Lloyd Suh: That's actually rule number one.

[1:22:04] David Rigano: That's different podcasts.

[1:22:06] Lloyd Suh: When the last cultureistas, yeah.

[1:22:08] David Rigano: All right. We are gonna talk with Liz Callaway in our next episode. So remember to follow us on Instagram at Drama Book Show podcasts. Please subscribe to the Drama Bookshop on Eventbrite so that you can be alerted when we add in-person events to our calendar. Give us some likes and subscribes and some happy faces and some stars and some comments. And tell us our plays. Tell us about your writing process.

[1:22:31] Shannon Tyo: Absolutely.

[1:22:32] David Rigano: Chat writing. I would love that.

[1:22:34] Lloyd Suh: Yeah.

[1:22:34] David Rigano: That's just inspiring to me. I love hearing other people's processes. Because you never know what's going to inspire me and change my own writing.

[1:22:42] Daniel K. Isaac: Or get published and be on our shelves at some point.

[1:22:45] Lloyd Suh: Exactly.

[1:22:46] David Rigano: Exactly. And remember that all the books we talk about can be found here at the Drama Bookshop. And so can we. And we will see you at the bookshop.