AN INTERVIEW WITH PLAYWRIGHT LAUREN YEE

“Unmitigated Theatricality”

UCSD Grad Student and Up-And-Coming Playwright Lauren Yee Talks About Her Delightfully Strange Works As Two of Her Plays Hit San Diego This April

By Donnie Matsuda

Lauren Yee seems to elude reality in every facet of her young but prolific life as a playwright.

First, her fanciful imagination naturally concocts quirky characters that are not grounded in reality – a talking wall, a traveling hat, for instance – and manages to mine both the humor and heart in the most unexpected of situations. Second, this fresh-faced twenty-something (who is in her third and final year of UCSD’s MFA playwriting program) defies her youthful looks by having produced a plethora of critically acclaimed plays, all of which speak to the fierce talent and unique gift for narrative-based writing that lies beneath her unpretentious exterior. And third, this talented playwright has achieved so many accolades in her young career, it is almost unreal. Among the many honors that have been bestowed on Yee: a Dramatists Guild fellowship, a MacDowell Colony fellowship, a finalist for the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the Heideman Award, the Jerome Fellowship, the PEN USA Literary Award for Drama, the PONY Fellowship, the Wasserstein Prize, and writing fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Byrdcliffe Artist Colony, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the El Gouna Writers’ Residency, and the Mills Cultural Center.

Yee’s first full-length play, Ching Chong Chinaman was a finalist for the 2008 Princess Grace Award and the winner of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival’s 2010 Paula Vogel Award and Kumu Kahua Theatre’s 2007 Pacific Rim Prize. Named one of the top 10 plays of the year by both the East Bay Express and City Pages, Ching Chong Chinaman has been produced on stages all across America, including Berkeley’s Impact Theatre, Minneapolis’ Mu Performing Arts, and New York’s International Fringe Festival.

Since writing this seminal masterwork, Yee has churned out nearly a dozen new plays (both short and full-length) and is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon. Her latest full-length play, A Man, his Wife, and his Hat was developed at PlayPenn and UCSD’s Baldwin New Play Festival in 2011 and is returning to San Diego for a full-fledged, professional staging at Moxie Theatre this April. At the same time, her thesis project Hookman (described as “an existential slasher comedy”) is set to premiere as part of UCSD’s Baldwin New Play Festival in 2012.

Amid the craziness of writing new plays, mentoring productions of her current plays, and preparing for her MFA graduation this June, Yee took time to answer some questions about her aspirations as a playwright, her educational journey, and her penchant for making the unfunny funny.

Playwright Lauren Yee. Photo by K.C. Alfred.

DONNIE: Tell me about your childhood…where did you grow up? And what fueled your interest in playwriting?

LAUREN: I was someone who always wanted to be a writer. It was not until high school that I stumbled into playwriting. I love dialogue. I love how language hits the ear. And I think it was this love of hearing words out loud that pushed me into theater in particular.

I grew up in San Francisco and while my parents weren't artists, they've been always very practically supportive of what I do. They were the ones building sets, putting up posters, and ferrying things back and forth for my shows. I owe them a lot.

DONNIE: What did you study while at Yale University?

LAUREN: I was an English and Theater Studies double major! The Theater Studies ended up being much more helpful than the English, surprisingly.

DONNIE: What made you decide to come to UCSD for your MFA?

LAUREN: UCSD's MFA playwriting program is easily one of the best in the nation. Visiting UCSD as a prospective convinced me that this was the only program I really wanted to go go. Naomi Iizuka is now in her fifth year as chair of the program, and she's someone who's really helped to push my writing in new directions and of course correct me when my writing goes off the rails. And I love my colleagues here. The Baldwin Festival is also a huge asset for the playwriting department and the school in general. You get the chance to see your work, attend rehearsals, and form really close relationships with the artistic teams. That doesn't always happen in the real world.

DONNIE: Out of all your plays (both short and full-length), which are you most proud of and why?

LAUREN: I would say I'm pretty darned proud of A MAN, HIS WIFE, AND HIS HAT. It's a sneaky play that is (hopefully) both funny and heartbreaking. Also, I think that it allows for unmitigated theatricality and explores some really emotionally resonant metaphors. Also, it was amazingly fun to write and hear the characters' voices.

Photos of "A Man, his Wife, and his Hat" at UCSD's Baldwin New Play Festival in 2011. Photos courtesy of Lauren Yee.

My first full-length play CHING CHONG CHINAMAN has been my most successful play. I wrote it at a time when I didn't realize how hard playwriting is, and it's really interesting to see how my writing has changed since then.

[More about “Ching Chong Chinaman”: The ultra-assimilated Wong family is as Chinese-American as apple pie: teenager Upton dreams of World of Warcraft superstardom; his sister Desi dreams of early admission to Princeton. Unfortunately, Upton’s chores and homework get in the way of his 24/7 videogaming, and Desi’s math grades don’t fit the Asian-American stereotype. Then Upton comes up with a novel solution for both problems: he acquires a Chinese indentured servant, who harbors an American dream of his own.]

DONNIE: How did you come up with the concept for “A Man, his Wife, and his Hat”?

LAUREN: I wrote the play in Egypt, almost two years ago. I was there at a writers retreat on the Red Sea, staying at a German golf resort as part of the residency. I was surrounded by foreign accents, and the TV in my room only received two English language channels: CNN and the History Channel. I also had always thought that the title of Oliver Sacks's book THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT would make a great jumping off point for a play. And it did.

[More about “A Man, his Wife, and his Hat”: Hetchman loves his hat. Oh, and his wife, too. But when both go missing, the retired hatmaker vows to stop at nothing to find them, if he can ever muster the strength to leave the comforts of his armchair. But the arrival of a talking wall and a hungry golem threatens to derail his endeavor. A klezmer-inspired love triangle between a man, his wife, and his hat.]

DONNIE: What excites you most about this San Diego staging of “A Man, his Wife, and his Hat”?

LAUREN: This play does a little bit of the impossible. People float. Creatures climb out of pits. Walls shake and move. What will be fun for me with this production is seeing older actors in the main roles. In my UCSD workshop of the show, we used MFA actors, who--while extremely talented--were not exactly old.

Photos of "A Man, his Wife, and his Hat" from Moxie Theatre's 2012 production. Photos by Daren Scott.

DONNIE: Your work has been described as “delightfully strange” and “a little absurd.” How would you describe your own body of work?

LAUREN: I think my interest lies in expanding what theater can be. I'm drawn to different slants on a certain topic. I also think that all my plays contain some desire to make the seemingly serious and unfunny funny.

DONNIE: What upcoming projects/readings are you most excited about?

LAUREN: Definitely excited about Moxie's upcoming production. But I'm also thrilled to have two workshop productions of my new play HOOKMAN running or soon to open--one at Company One in Boston and one at UCSD.

[More about “Hookman”: Freshman year at college is hard when your roommate is weird, you’re feeling homesick, and a hook-handed serial killer is slashing girls’ throats. But if Lexi can discover what really happened to her high school best friend on that car ride to the movies, everything will be okay. In this existential slasher comedy, Lexi and her friends learn what it means to grow up – and it’s not pretty.]

Show poster for Moxie Theatre's "A Man, his Wife, and his Hat." Courtesy of Moxie Theatre.

A Man, his Wife, and his Hat opens tonight, April 7 at 8pm at Moxie Theatre located at 6663 El Cajon Blvd, Ste. N in San Diego. The play runs through April 29. Tickets are $25-27 with discounts available for seniors, students, and military. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 858-598-7620 or visit www.moxietheatre.com.

Hookman opens April 19 at 8pm at the Theodore and Adele Shank Theatre in the UCSD Theatre District/La Jolla Playhouse. It is part of UCSD’s 2012 Baldwin New Plays Festival (and Lauren’s MFA thesis!) and will run through April 28. Tickets are $20 with discounts available for UCSD students/alumni/affiliates. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 858-534-4574 or visit http://theatre.ucsd.edu/season/Baldwin/index.html.

And to learn more about fascinating playwright Lauren Yee, visit her website at: http://laurenyee.com/

THEATRE REVIEW: "A Raisin in the Sun" at Moxie Theatre

A Ripe "Raisin"

Moxie Theatre’s powerful and poignant revival brings out the best in Hansberry’s revolutionary play

By Donnie Matsuda

In many ways, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is a play ahead of its time.

With its beautifully nuanced and incredibly moving story, Raisin captivates with a lovingly detailed portrait of an African American family (the Youngers) as they struggle to make ends meet on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. With a commitment of spirit and some heartfelt humor, the play takes this small family dynamic and (thanks to the smart and sensitive writing of Hansberry) carves out some simply sublime characters that act and interact with each other in ways that are at times ordinary and at times awe-inspiring.

Even more than that, Raisin has the insight to rise above the quips and quibbles of a fractured family to provide some subtle social commentary and thematic timelessness that still resonates today. While the characters are utterly intriguing, it is the universality of the themes in Hansberry’s play - the shifting of values from one generation to the next, the emotional and financial strain that can alienate a husband and wife, the omnipresent tension of racism and classism, and the hope and devastation inherent in dreams deferred - that truly make it a pioneering piece of theatre.

The Younger Family in Moxie Theatre's "A Raisin in the Sun." (Top row): Yolanda Franklin and Mark Christopher Lawrence. (Bottom row): LaTahj Myers, Sylvia M'Lafi Thompson, and Kaja Dunn. Photo by Daren Scott.

A Raisin in the Sun was revolutionary in other ways, as well. When it premiered on Broadway in 1959, Hansberry became one of the youngest playwrights and the first African American playwright to be produced on Broadway. Not to mention the director of the production was the first African American director to have worked on the Great White Way. By being so ground-breaking, Hansberry’s play changed the face of American theatre forever and has endured as a classic period piece with a timeless appeal. Now being revived by Moxie Theatre with a committed, compelling cast and a dynamic director, the story of the Younger family is being told with a fresh and fully-realized staging.

Yolanda Franklin as Ruth Younger. Photo by Daren Scott.

The setting for the nearly three hour drama is a gritty, run-down Chicago apartment (a perfectly shabby yet snug set design by Sean Fanning) that is shared by the five members of the Younger family. We first meet the exasperated Ruth (a pert and pleasant Yolanda Franklin) as she tries to rouse her son, Travis (a no-nonsense LaTahj Myers) and her husband, Walter Lee (a dynamic Mark Christopher Lawrence) to get the family started on yet another grueling, mundane day. But today, there is reason to be hopeful, as the family’s matriarch Lena (a quietly arresting, tour-de-force turn by earthy Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson) is about to receive a check for $10,000 from the insurance company, following the death of her husband. This amount of money could be a game changer for any member of the Younger family: it could give Lena the chance to buy her dream home in the highly affluent (and exclusively white) community of Clybourne Park, it could give her son Walter Lee the chance to quit his dead end job and start his own liquor business, it could give her daughter-in-law Ruth the chance to raise her ever-expanding family in more dignified digs, or it could give her daughter Beneatha (a smart and sassy Kaja Dunn) the opportunity to go to medical school and become a doctor.

Sylvia M'Lafi Thompson and Mark Christopher Lawrence. Photo by Daren Scott.

These dreams may seem basic to some, but they are all that this family has going for them and it gives them both hope and heartbreak, which is gut-wrenching to watch. As each family member deals with expectation and disappointment in different ways, Hansberry’s brilliant blend of comedy and tragedy, united with its timeless themes, makes for a powerful evening of theatre.

The evening also includes some strong performances by a handful of supporting characters that come in and out of the Younger household. There is Beneatha’s Nigerian friend Asagai (a winning Laurence Brown) who gets her in touch with her African roots, an uptight and wealthy suitor (a suave Dail Desmond Richard) who turns out to be an arrogant bore, and a painfully uncomfortable member of the Clybourne Park “welcoming committee” (a flustered Kent Weingardt). When combined with the stellar performances of the five member Younger family, the triumphs and tragedies inherent in the play come to life in a way that is as palpable as it is affecting.

With this poignant production, it is easy to see why director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg is in such high demand these days. She, along with assistant directors Ashley McGuire ZeMans and Patrick Kelly, manages to mine Hansberry’s play for all its worth, presenting an authentic staging that showcases both the heart and pathos of the piece.

Laurence Brown and Kaja Dunn. Photo by Daren Scott.

With time, some classic stage works become dated period pieces forever stuck in an otherworldly era. Others, like A Raisin in the Sun, remain staples of the American literary cannon and seem to become more relevant as the years (and decades) pass by.

Moxie Theatre’s moving and masterful revival proves that now is a good time as any to revive an American theatre classic. With an arresting cast and universal themes, it is a story that is as timeless as it is timely.

Things to know before you go: A Raisin in the Sun plays at Moxie Theatre through March 4th, 2012. Running time is 2 hours and 40 minutes with a 15 minute intermission. Performances are Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 2pm. For more information or to purchase tickets, call (858) 598-7620 or visit www.moxietheatre.com.