This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:14] Christine Toy Johnson: I'm your host, Christine Toy Johnson.

[0:17] Christine Toy Johnson: We're so happy to be back.

[0:19] Christine Toy Johnson: This season is all about reinvention.

[0:23] Christine Toy Johnson: With so much change going on in our industry and our country, I wanted to sit down with some of my fellow writers who also serve on the Dramatists Guild Council and ask them about the many ways they're writing in and about the moment we're in.

[0:38] Christine Toy Johnson: I hope you'll be as inspired and fascinated by their responses as I've been.

[0:43] Christine Toy Johnson: In this episode, I talk to award-winning playwright Lloyd Suh about his speculative future plays, uplifting other writers through service, and the shift in new play development.

[0:55] Christine Toy Johnson: Lloyd Suh's works include The Chinese Lady, The Heart Sellers, and the Pulitzer finalist The Far Country.

[1:03] Christine Toy Johnson: He teaches playwriting at Princeton University and serves on the Council of the Dramatists Guild.

[1:09] Christine Toy Johnson: Here we go.

[1:10] Christine Toy Johnson: Hi, Lloyd.

[1:11] Lloyd Suh: Hey Christine, how are you?

[1:12] Christine Toy Johnson: I'm so glad to talk to you today.

[1:13] Lloyd Suh: Thanks for coming in and chatting with me.

[1:16] Christine Toy Johnson: Of course, anytime.

[1:17] Lloyd Suh: Thanks for hosting in this beautiful room.

[1:20] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah.

[1:21] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, I live here now.

[1:22] Christine Toy Johnson: So you, as I've told you, the season is all about reinvention.

[1:28] Christine Toy Johnson: And I do think that as creative people, we're always reinventing ourselves and always finding new moments in the climate we're in.

[1:40] Christine Toy Johnson: But it occurs to me that especially over the last five years, we have been through so many changes and so many unpredictable times.

[1:40] Christine Toy Johnson: So I really wanted to ask you about that.

[1:58] Christine Toy Johnson: How have the times changing every day really affected you, especially your creative life, how you express yourself in many different ways?

[2:10] Christine Toy Johnson: And that's, I know that's an intentionally broad question, but I wondered if you have initial thoughts about that.

[2:16] Lloyd Suh: Great, yeah. I mean, there's the one big way, and I don't know how much of this is related to, you know, like what the precipitating causes are, but it feels like informed by just the way the world is, which is that I had spent about a decade of my career writing these plays about history.

[2:36] Lloyd Suh: Of them, like pretty intensely researched plays into forgotten or underexamined moments in Asian American history.

[2:45] Lloyd Suh: But since over the last few years, like I guess a couple of years after the pandemic, I've completely switched gears.

[2:52] Lloyd Suh: Like I feel like I've satisfied whatever that historical impulse was, and I'm now doing this very new thing for me, which is I've been writing speculative fiction about the near future.

[3:04] Lloyd Suh: And so that feels like just a completely different way of working, I suppose.

[3:12] Lloyd Suh: You know, I would say that I'm doing this like plays about the future.

[3:19] Lloyd Suh: I'm doing this kind of in the same way I would write about the past, only it's about the future.

[3:24] Lloyd Suh: But it does feel like a seismic shift; it feels like something like a reinvention.

[3:28] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah, that's so interesting because when you're looking at the past and when you're looking at the future, you're still bringing your own, obviously, your own point of view and what you hope it is, right?

[3:28] Christine Toy Johnson: And even in the history, you're interpreting it and getting things out of it that you hope you will.

[3:28] Lloyd Suh: I imagine totally, yeah. And you know, like even in writing about the past, I had to do this thing of, you know, the thing that you do, which is figure out what is your way into history, what is, you know, whether it's stylistically or thematically as a writer.

[3:28] Lloyd Suh: And so, you know, even in writing about history, it wasn't so much, you know, like these grand historical epics that detail a lot of facts or anything like that; they tended to be focused on really individual and intimate human stories.

[3:28] Lloyd Suh: And so it's the same approach with the future; like I'm just thinking about, you know, how much world building do you have to do or do you just try and focus, you know, more narrowly on these individual human stories.

[4:40] Christine Toy Johnson: And also, it seems like knowing a lot of your work that it is the emotional history, the emotional life of the worlds that you're investigating.

[4:53] Christine Toy Johnson: I wanted to ask you about this term you used, what did you say, speculative fiction?

[4:53] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, it's about, in a lot of ways, speculating about what our worst impulses and our best impulses are and how they might manifest themselves in the future.

[4:53] Lloyd Suh: So it's a, yeah, it's in a lot of ways an exercise in imagining what's to become of these impulses and finding a balance that not only serves as like a caution against the things we're doing wrong, but maybe an encouragement for the things we're doing right, just to think about and uplift the values that I want to live inside of as a writer that, you know, as I'm working on these projects, getting in rooms with collaborators, want to lift up as things that are the things we want to endure.

[5:52] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah, that's so interesting.

[5:55] Christine Toy Johnson: Are you doing it as sort of a song cycle of plays, as it were?

[6:02] Christine Toy Johnson: You mentioned earlier that you had been doing a lot of historical plays, and so I wondered for both sets of time, do you envision an arc of these plays?

[6:17] Lloyd Suh: It's a great question.

[6:18] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, not while I'm doing it, I guess.

[6:23] Lloyd Suh: Like in terms of the history plays, those really came one after the other.

[6:27] Lloyd Suh: I never really thought about what the endpoint was until I got there.

[6:31] Lloyd Suh: So I sort of became aware as I kept doing it that they were in conversation with each other and that they felt like they were building towards something.

[6:41] Christine Toy Johnson: How many plays are in the package of history plays?

[6:46] Lloyd Suh: Boy, it depends on what you count.

[6:49] Lloyd Suh: Because I think that's, yeah, it's a hard question to answer.

[6:54] Lloyd Suh: Like I think there are five full-length plays that deal with these specific or underexamined moments in Asian American history, but there are plays that I guess you could argue are part of that, and there's some shorter works that could fit in that if possible.

[7:09] Lloyd Suh: So it really depends on how you count.

[7:10] Lloyd Suh: I would say between five and eight.

[7:13] Christine Toy Johnson: Have you ever seen them or done them all together?

[7:17] Lloyd Suh: No, no, no.

[7:18] Lloyd Suh: That would be so interesting.

[7:19] Christine Toy Johnson: We have to have a Lloyd Suh play festival of history plays.

[7:24] Lloyd Suh: I would be there in the front row.

[7:28] Christine Toy Johnson: And then so what about your future plays?

[7:31] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, I'm kind of doing those one at a time too.

[7:33] Lloyd Suh: Like with an awareness that, you know, they are in conversation with each other and who knows where they're gonna lead.

[7:39] Christine Toy Johnson: So you just are following your impulses and your inspiration.

[7:43] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, totally.

[7:44] Christine Toy Johnson: And has it, how has every day is something different, especially, especially I would say, since the pandemic shut down.

[7:56] Lloyd Suh: Yeah.

[7:57] Christine Toy Johnson: So do you find yourself shifting with the times from day to day or month to month?

[8:09] Christine Toy Johnson: I know that's sort of a hard question to answer when you think about inspiration and how it leads you, but I'm just curious.

[8:17] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, no, I think it's, I think that my doing this is probably a symptom of that, you know, like it's something that happened during the pandemic where I was thinking about these history plays in a really confusing context because like during the pandemic, I was writing this play called The Heart Sellers, which is set in the 1970s against the backdrop of Watergate, and thinking about Richard Nixon, thinking about the early 1970s, that, you know, a very tumultuous time in American history and in world history, and writing about that simultaneous to an obviously very tumultuous time in America, a different tumultuous time in American history.

[9:04] Lloyd Suh: And I could feel the echoes, you know, and as a writer, you want to lean into those echoes.

[9:11] Lloyd Suh: And so thinking about, oh, how does this play now become an exercise in thinking about how does it, how do I make it feel really 70s yet echo in today?

[9:26] Christine Toy Johnson: Right.

[9:28] Lloyd Suh: But then the next wrinkle there is that theaters were shut down, everything was shut down.

[9:33] Lloyd Suh: We all wondered maybe, you know, maybe we're all gonna die.

[9:36] Lloyd Suh: Maybe theater will never come back.

[9:38] Lloyd Suh: So to even think about what is it to write about now when any possibility of a future audience is future tense.

[9:46] Lloyd Suh: Right.

[9:46] Lloyd Suh: And future tense in a way where you're like, I don't know if it's gonna be one year, five years, ten years, right?

[9:50] Lloyd Suh: Who knows?

[9:51] Lloyd Suh: And I realized that, you know, that's kind of the act of writing a play anyway, because it's never that fast.

[9:57] Lloyd Suh: So you can't, like to think about what is it to write about now, is to think about what is it to write about in the near future.

[10:04] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah.

[10:05] Lloyd Suh: So it becomes then a projection into something else.

[10:10] Lloyd Suh: So it made me feel like, oh, to write about the early 70s and to make it feel like it echoes now, and to make it feel like it might echo when and if this play ever makes its way in front of an audience, is an act of aspiration on one hand, but also an act of making the themes and the impact of the play portable across time.

[10:40] Lloyd Suh: So it's like, oh, I can't just write about now, because what is now?

[10:43] Lloyd Suh: I have to, you know, do this in a way that you know, if it's uh 2020, if it's 1973, if it's 2025, that it might still have that same resonance.

[11:01] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah, right.

[11:02] Lloyd Suh: I think it's really interesting that I I know that as of 2016, there are these markers, 2016, 20 uh 20, 2025, right?

[11:16] Christine Toy Johnson: Uh for a lot of people, and used to be you could write time, the present, and you can't do that anymore.

[11:25] Lloyd Suh: And I think that's really um an interesting point that you make about making those stories portable, and what does it mean to do that and and reflect where you are at any given moment in your own creative um energy and impulses? How have you found things in the theatrical ecosystem changing over the past five years, especially?

[11:56] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, it's uh it's rough, yeah.

[11:56] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah.

[11:59] Lloyd Suh: Um I mean, I try not to be overly um reactive, and I try not to, you know, f spend too much time thinking about it because it can get be very depressing, but it does feel like there's just a lot less. There's a lot less um in the field in terms of opportunity. You know, some theaters are shutting down, some theaters are programming a lot less. Um, some theaters are forced to program more conservatively. A lot of early career support, uh developmental opportunities are going away or diminishing.

[12:40] Christine Toy Johnson: And do you think that's because of funding primarily or...

[12:40] Lloyd Suh: I think that's definitely part of it. I think part of it seems to be people still trying to adjust from the pandemic and the loss of those years. But it's uh it's definitely there. It's definitely something that I'm um aware of, even as I try not to um you know overreact to it.

[13:04] Christine Toy Johnson: Are the I I feel like there are ways that uh we are always trying to brainstorm new ways to develop work and to keep putting our stories out there. Um I know that's all we talk about this a lot at the Dramatists Guild, um how we can uplift each other and ourselves.

[13:27] Lloyd Suh: Yes.

[13:28] Christine Toy Johnson: Uh do you have any um any insight into what you would wish for if we could say, okay, we're going to band together and um help bring new stories out into the world?

[13:42] Lloyd Suh: Yes, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think um, you know, I think about this a lot. I have, you know, because I'm teaching undergraduates now, um, I've had conversations with graduating seniors, describing what I just described, how the landscape is um not as friendly to be graduating uh to you know, to a graduating senior as it was five years, or well, five years ago it's worse, but like ten years ago.

[14:09] Lloyd Suh: Um but I think that the good news there is that there's a realignment happening, and whenever there's a realignment happening, then there's opportunity, right? A challenge necessity, you know, it it is an opportunity. And I remember when I got out of graduate school, it was 2001. I, you know, I graduated here in New York. I went back to Indiana for the summer, and I came back like days before 9-11.

[14:32] Christine Toy Johnson: Oh wow.

[14:33] Lloyd Suh: And it felt like that, you know, the world changed. Yeah, the world changed then, and it felt like there was a realignment, there was a shifting of uh what the world was and what the world could be and what the world was gonna be like after that. So that's the way I I sort of entered into postgraduate professional life, and it felt like the reaction there was there was so much grassroots activity.

[14:58] Lloyd Suh: And that's the stuff that really got me going, you know, these opportunities, people creating their own things. So many people created their own companies to find their own opportunities. Uh, a lot of culturally specific theaters began during that time. A lot of places grew, you know, these small companies grew. Um, like at the time when I graduated, there were three, really three organizations that were really instrumental in my development.

[15:25] Lloyd Suh: One of them was the May U Writers Lab, which came out of those years. It was like a grassroots, culturally specific organization that really came out of that. Somebody sung no, it was just like, I just want to create I I need to create something. So we made it. Um, and the membership of that organization, especially in the early aughts, were like, yeah, we're gonna create this thing.

[15:48] Lloyd Suh: Um Second Generation was a uh culturally specific Asian American theater company devoted to developing early career talent, and that was created during that time. This guy Willie Yang just said, I need I'm gonna make this. I'm gonna I'm gonna make something. And he just made it. Um and the other was the Lark, which began I believe in 99, but it became what it is like in the the that early art odds.

[16:13] Christine Toy Johnson: So similar time period.

[16:14] Lloyd Suh: It's all like and you were in all of them.

[16:17] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah and it was a realignment and you know like none of these things were um really fancy. Actually I think of a fourth one which is young blooded ensemble studio theater. Like I remember like it's really hard to get into Youngblood now but at the time it was not because it was just it was so informal.

[16:34] Lloyd Suh: It was not um yeah it was it was really like a perfect example of the the adage that you know you you get what you put into it. You can make of it what you like you have a lot of agency in a time like this. If you want to create something there because there's a realignment happening there's more opportunity to do that.

[16:54] Lloyd Suh: There's more need there's more hunger and therefore hopefully there's more opportunity for it to grow. And so the thing that I would love the most for the field um is for s a similar groundswell of you know just people making their own opportunities, building their own things um not mourning the loss of organizations like the Lark or second generation but who's building the thing that's gonna take its place this is the time to build it.

[17:25] Christine Toy Johnson: And I think that that's what I would love is that if that kind of thing gets built organically by the artists who need it, who want it, and who have the uh capacity and you know, community to make it sustainable.

[17:40] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, I think that's that's always the dream too. Uh uh, and with with uh these days it does seem a little uh easier in in some ways to gather people and even um in who live in different places and build community, which I think is so important.

[18:00] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah.

[18:03] Lloyd Suh: You've said the word realignment several times, and I just want to uh uh explore that a little more. What does that mean to you?

[18:11] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, yeah. Yes, great question. I guess I don't totally know. I mean, what I what it seems to me is it's about realignment of of um where power is, but also like what do we expect?

[18:29] Christine Toy Johnson: Like when we come when we're interesting, yeah, expect when we're there, like what do we expect? What is what is the like okay? I have a play. Where do I where do I hope for it to land? What do I want it to do in the world?

[18:43] Lloyd Suh: And I think that for a stretch of time, it was like, oh, these are the places you want to go. And maybe that those aren't the places you want to go anymore.

[18:52] Christine Toy Johnson: Right.

[18:52] Lloyd Suh: Um, and that's uh a little bit scary, but it's also very, very exciting. It's potentially very exciting.

[19:01] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah, I I often think about this, how there are really a finite number of productions, a finite number of brick and mortar places, right, but an infinite number of stories, and the stories that we are compelled to write in order to get them out in the world.

[19:19] Lloyd Suh: And what does that mean? What how do we do that? Uh so I think uh what you're saying is so important and inspiring because we do need to take that agency and uh and uh figure out ways to to send the stories out in the world.

[19:39] Lloyd Suh: Yeah. I mean, yeah, and I will say, you know, like I don't I don't know if this is controversial to say, but I don't know anybody who like loves the regional theater and commercial theater model. It's like, oh, the way we're doing it, that's awesome. Like this is the way I would have built it. You know, I don't I don't know what the alternatives are.

[19:58] Christine Toy Johnson: Um, but there are lots of people all over, you know, who probably have ideas, and I think that those ideas are things that I would love anybody with an idea to try to follow through on because it's it's uh like really what I mean by realignment I guess is aspirational.

[20:16] Lloyd Suh: Um I don't know that it's something that I can point to and I say, see it's happening, um, but I see it as something potentially pretty exciting. I spoke with uh Lynn Nottage and Lauren Gunderson in uh season five, and Lynn really talked a lot about finding new places, imagining different spaces where this where our stories could be told, and and breaking out of the thought that they can only be done in a quote unquote traditional theater space.

[20:55] Christine Toy Johnson: Um so I think that that is something to really explore. How are your students um responding in the moment to all of these things we've been talking about?

[21:11] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, it really varies. Um, I mean, I you know, I teach right now I teach undergraduate, non-majors, which is um it's a different exercise than what I used to teach like in MFA programs.

[21:38] Lloyd Suh: And so having those conversations can be very depressing to talk about like the way the landscape looks now.

[21:44] Lloyd Suh: Um right now, because I'm teaching undergraduate non-majors, instead of that, at least when we're in the classroom and when we're in conversation, um, it can be focused on something else.

[21:44] Lloyd Suh: It can be focused on the hopeful, the possibility, the freedom, the imagination, because there is time, you know, there is you know, uh I try to prioritize that space.

[22:07] Lloyd Suh: It's like, oh no, this is space for you to imagine and discover and um not think about that landscape, um and not think about practical ways to, you know, have to advance yourself and navigate through that.

[22:21] Lloyd Suh: It's really freeing, I mean.

[22:22] Christine Toy Johnson: It is very freeing, yeah.

[22:24] Lloyd Suh: Although when I talk to graduating seniors, that conversation shifts then.

[22:27] Lloyd Suh: Um so when I talk to graduating seniors, then it becomes uh a similar conversation to what I was having in MFA programs that becomes really about um the nitty-gritty.

[22:37] Lloyd Suh: It becomes about life choices, it becomes about possibility, it becomes about like what are the things that you're willing to um and eager to put your energy and time behind?

[22:47] Lloyd Suh: What it like what what does it look like when you think about my life's work?

[22:53] Lloyd Suh: Like you kind of have to start thinking about that.

[22:55] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah.

[22:55] Lloyd Suh: Like, what is my life's work?

[22:57] Lloyd Suh: What are the things that I have to do to prepare myself for that?

[23:00] Lloyd Suh: Um and you know, again, that's a conversation that is a tiny bit scary, but also I think more than the scary, it's exciting and full of possibility.

[23:10] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah.

[23:10] Lloyd Suh: And so, like how that's the thing I try to prioritize.

[23:13] Christine Toy Johnson: Everyone should have you as a teacher.

[23:16] Christine Toy Johnson: I think that really that's my takeaway from what you just said.

[23:20] Christine Toy Johnson: Um I wanted to ask you about what inspires you currently when you are floating around in your um imagination, and you do you think, oh, I I want I want to write a new play because I'm inspired by XYZ, or how does that come to you?

[23:43] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, it comes from really just thinking about the future.

[23:45] Lloyd Suh: I mean, the the the idea of writing about the future, uh it you know, I didn't have to spend a lot of time thinking about it.

[23:52] Lloyd Suh: It was just this realization of that's all I really think about, you know, um, as somebody who um, you know, I feel so lucky to be in the room with these undergraduates.

[24:04] Lloyd Suh: Um, and to feel and remember what that sense of possibility in play felt like.

[24:10] Lloyd Suh: Um it's reinvigorating.

[24:13] Lloyd Suh: It makes me think about um what kind of future uh I would want and aspire to have happen for them, um, but also as a parent to three growing children, you know, there's this sense of um how do I prepare them for the world, but also how do I prepare the world for them?

[24:42] Lloyd Suh: You know, like what can I do to make the world something that they can thrive in.

[24:50] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah.

[24:51] Christine Toy Johnson: That's beautiful.

[24:53] Lloyd Suh: And I think one of the one of the great things about writing is that you can make it up.

[25:01] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, right?

[25:02] Lloyd Suh: The way you want to see it.

[25:03] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah, the world the way you want to see it.

[25:05] Lloyd Suh: Yeah.

[25:07] Christine Toy Johnson: Do you feel a certain responsibility to reflecting the present in any of your writing?

[25:21] Lloyd Suh: Probably, although I don't I I don't work too hard at that because I feel like I'm because I'm in the present, it's the only place I can really draw from.

[25:31] Lloyd Suh: Um that if I'm thinking, you know, even as I was writing about the past or now that I'm writing about the future, it's all happening like at the time that I'm doing it.

[25:40] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah.

[25:40] Lloyd Suh: So it's all rooted in the things that are preoccupying me, the news that I've read that day, the things, the values that I sort of hope to uh to instill in whatever it is that I'm working on, that those feel like they're the only thing I can draw on is the now.

[26:00] Lloyd Suh: So I don't have to work hard to let that be a part of it.

[26:03] Lloyd Suh: Yeah.

[26:03] Lloyd Suh: I just have to make sure that I'm feeling it, that you know, that I'm absorbing um all of those impulses, those present day impulses, and that I'm being honest about them, so that even if I'm writing about a different time, they're still there.

[26:18] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah, I think that's something that we struggle with often, right?

[26:23] Christine Toy Johnson: Being present enough to bring our whole selves to something.

[26:29] Christine Toy Johnson: I wanted to shift the conversation a little bit to the advocacy work that we do on the council of the dramatist guild.

[26:37] Christine Toy Johnson: So the dramatist guild exists and was created for the protection of theatrical writers.

[27:00] Lloyd Suh: What do you feel are the priorities of the the writer to professional writer today?

[27:08] Lloyd Suh: And how would you like to see us move forward to protect ourselves?

[27:17] Lloyd Suh: Yeah, I mean it's um I guess it's related to what I was saying before about the building of grassroots um opportunities, the building of communities.

[27:28] Lloyd Suh: And it's really about investing in leaders and thought leaders, in um people who are gonna take action, um investing in those kinds of voices, because you know the thing about being a playwright economically is that you kind of have to be a leader, you kind of have to be your own advocate as well.

[27:48] Lloyd Suh: Um I find this immensely valuable to be with other writers, to be with other playwrights, um, to be in community with them, in conversation with them.

[28:00] Lloyd Suh: Because I mean, the thing about this job is it can be really lonely if your relationship with the field is just about your plays.

[28:08] Christine Toy Johnson: Right.

[28:08] Lloyd Suh: It's very lonely.

[28:09] Lloyd Suh: It can be, you know, everybody has their ups and downs, their good days and bad days, good years, bad years, good decades, you know.

[28:16] Lloyd Suh: So it's like it can be really discouraging if that's your only relationship with it.

[28:23] Lloyd Suh: But if you're an advocate for others, if you're an advocate for the community, if you're um out there um building things, building opportunities, working on behalf of other writers, as I've had the privilege to do for many, many years, I get to feel like I contribute through my advocacy for other writers.

[28:43] Lloyd Suh: That I look at, you know, writers who have been through programming that I've been a facilitator for or um a program director for.

[28:51] Lloyd Suh: I can look at what they put out in the world and say, that's what I'm putting out in the world too.

[28:56] Lloyd Suh: You know, it's not just my plays, it's this wide range of writing that I believe in and want to see have life in the world.

[29:06] Lloyd Suh: And I get to help with that.

[29:08] Lloyd Suh: And that feels like, oh, that's a it's just a better life.

[29:08] Lloyd Suh: It's just a better way to better way to feel like you're contributing to the field.

[29:16] Lloyd Suh: And so, you know, I think that um investing in those leaders who are building, can build things to be of value to other writers, um that's how you do it.

[29:16] Lloyd Suh: That's how you do it.

[29:32] Lloyd Suh: It's just like the more the more building that people can do, the more advocacy people can do.

[29:38] Lloyd Suh: Um, investing in those people is uh it's gonna have you know so much more impact.

[29:45] Christine Toy Johnson: Thank you for all the ways that you have been doing that for many years.

[29:48] Christine Toy Johnson: Uh you have really been at the forefront of so many programs and uh uplifting other writers.

[29:56] Lloyd Suh: I mean, it's just such a privilege.

[29:57] Lloyd Suh: It really is a privilege just to be in those rooms.

[30:00] Lloyd Suh: Like I feel lucky that I got to be in the room with some of these writers doing those, you know, doing the work that they're doing.

[30:07] Lloyd Suh: It's just, it's lucky.

[30:09] Lloyd Suh: And uh yeah, I encourage any writer.

[30:13] Lloyd Suh: Um if you can if you can be that kind of advocate, um, it's gonna make your life better.

[30:20] Lloyd Suh: But also if you can help uplift other writers and be in their orbit and just be in conversation with them, it's gonna make you a better writer too.

[30:28] Christine Toy Johnson: I think that's such a beautiful thing.

[30:31] Christine Toy Johnson: And I know uh as someone who is also very um committed to the idea of service and um helping other people uh in the community, be in community, that there is really something to be said for that.

[30:50] Christine Toy Johnson: How it's not about competition or or or you know whose play is the best play when you are in community with other writers and sharing information and sharing inspiration.

[31:05] Lloyd Suh: Yeah.

[31:06] Christine Toy Johnson: It's something that's really it cannot be underestimated.

[31:09] Christine Toy Johnson: Thank you so much to all our guests this season.

[31:13] Christine Toy Johnson: This podcast is sponsored by the Dramatists Guild Foundation, a nonprofit organization that fosters playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists at all stages of their careers.

[31:24] Christine Toy Johnson: DGF supports these writers with financial grants, free space to create new works, and career resources and programs.

[31:32] Christine Toy Johnson: If you are a dramatist seeking support or are a lover of theater who wants to support the future of storytelling, visit DGF.org or follow @DGFound to learn more.

[31:46] Christine Toy Johnson: Talkback is executive produced by me, Christine Toy Johnson, and edited and recorded by Bruce Johnson.

[31:52] Christine Toy Johnson: Our music is by Andrea Daly.

[31:55] Christine Toy Johnson: As always, to be continued.