 No, you look like I mean you know you look you look so good all the time. That's part of my introduction For you. Thank you for you. Yeah, this is part this is part of it. I know and oh team everybody. It's uh Shit, it's it's 502. It's 502 and it's Wednesday And uh, how do I know it's Wednesday because yesterday was blackout Tuesday and It's such serious times. I know we're making we're a little being making mary Uh And that's okay. That's okay. We have Oh, I'm sorry. So how do I do this again? It's it's watch me work. I'm susan larry park We've been doing this for 11 years mostly in the lobby of the public theater where we would gather um and uh talk about The audience's creative work and their creative process And for 11 years we've been gathering in the public theater much thanks to the public theater for supporting this endeavor of mine and ours And then a few years ago how round came on and we started live streaming And now how round has joined together with the public theater to create this beautiful community during these difficult And exciting and abundant Times I could use more adjectives, but I'll stop there. Um today we have an awesome special cool guest righteous Man great writer truth teller breaker barriers someone who as I was telling him a minute ago is always so well dressed um And he's david hinder wong and his stage works include plays in butterfly and chinglish and yellow face Kung fu golden child the dance and the railroad and fob as well as Broadway musicals with people like elton john and tim rice um and Flower drum song the revival flower drum song in 20 in uh 2002. Sorry having trouble reading and also disney's tarzan um david himry wong is a tony award-winning writer. Yeah A three-time nominee shit man Look at you a three-time obi award winner and a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer prize also also He wrote the book uh for the brilliant and moving musical soft power Which I saw last season at the public theater and absolutely loved it We were thrilled to have you thrilled to have you david joining our our our crew our our squad today What we do and watch me work is we work together for 15 minutes and it doesn't have to be on right It doesn't have to be a writing project. It can be any kind of project you want And we work together for did I say 15 minutes? No, I'm blabbling today 20 minutes I was marching yesterday. It was very interesting. Um Very moving 20 minutes today. We work together And then we will ask david questions about his work and his creative process for a little bit And then we will open it up to you all so you can ask david questions about your work and your creative process And if anybody's confused Audrey will tell you. Audrey will explain everything to you Hi Hey, hey everybody. Thank you for being here as always today Um as a reminder if you want to ask questions and you are inside of the zoom All you need to do is click on the raise your hand button Which should be on the bottom of your screen on a participant tab if you're on a laptop Or the top of your screen if you're on an ipad or a tablet. Um, if you're watching on howlround.tv You can tweet at us at at watch me work slp with the hashtag howlround h-o-w-l-r-o-u-n-d Or you can tweet at public theater and why or go into our instagram as well and that's all Okay, so it's real simple. It's really fun All we're going to do is work together for 20 minutes And then we'll talk with david about his work and then encourage david to talk with you about your work Okay, so here we go. Here we go There's the bell Hope y'all got some some work done or at least had fun sitting Sitting or standing. Hey, so we've got some questions for you david. Hopefully they're not too hard Hi, hi. Yes. You're here. So here's the first question. Here's the first question. Where do you work it on these days, man? Tell us. Oh, well, you know as everybody knows Um, many productions have been postponed. Um, and one of the things that we are Hoping to do is bring Um, you know the next iteration of soft power into a commercial production So I'm continuing to work on that Um, and then I'm kind of interested in the play. I've just I was doing a little Research on it just now I'm sort of interested and particularly based on the moment that we're in right now. Oh, thank you based on um in You know So I feel like there's a like like white people are facing the fact that By 2040 or so they're going to be a plurality no longer majority And then there's a certain segment which is you know, sort of represented by the trumpest impulse that's sort of going You know, we should just blow it all up And I'm kind of interested in that and and then I believe there is a reflection. There's a sort of historical fact that is about the british empire Destroying a lot of stuff in the Raj when they you know as they were withdrawing So again, they sort of lost they were losing it and they just felt well, let's just destroy You know destroy this we can't have it then nobody can have it And I'm wondering if that might be an interesting historical parallel to the current moment So I'm doing some research on that and then you know A fair amount of film and tv stuff because that's uh writers. They're working in film and television right now Are working in film and television Uh, do you work on more than one thing at once? I do Yeah, um because you know partially because it takes so long for anything to happen So, you know, if you only worked on one thing and you're waiting for it to get produced, then you just wouldn't get much done um so Yeah at the moment i'm writing the so You know how all of the 90s Disney animated movies are becoming live action features So I've been working for about a year on the hunt spec of Notre Dame um because I'm just I had this really you know, I was only interested in it as a way to explore refugees and and immigration and the sort of you know Isolation it's nationalist impulse that we're going through now and I thought I second Notre Dame was a good vehicle to do that and I had this pretty radical pitch on it To to disney studios and they went for it and process has been going quite well I think we're pretty close to being able to They you know, they'll want to add a director to it. So here's that and uh working on a movie for um Gemma Chan who something might know from crazy rich asian. She played osbridge. She's the sort of heper nasclin um for gemma to play anime wong uh in a in a biopic And anime wong is sort of having a moment now if anybody has watched um Hollywood on netflix, you know, michelle cruzak is playing anime wong um, and I think lucy lu also wants to play anime wong. There's just like a anime wong having, you know Having a thing there Do you have a preference for theater stuff? or film television stuff? I mean I theater still the the medium that I feel most comfortable in it's the medium there I can be the most personal Where I can just write the weird thing that I want to write um And also I like that theater is um metaphorical Somehow that appeals to me the sort of meta aspects of it. I you know, I do meta things a lot in my shows And and and sort of theatricalism was the term that was used in the 70s Um, and I like that, you know, it's not we're not even trying. I think a lot of theater is the theater that I like We're not even trying to be realistic. We're trying to acknowledge that this is an artificial space and it's about the relationship between the live actors in the live audience and really, um Take advantage of that And I like all that When you work on more than one project at once, how do you divide the time? We talk a lot about that in here just dividing up the time. How do you do you have a tried and true method or Yeah, it's it's I don't know that I've been trying. I mean, I usually write in the morning first So so in the afternoons like at this hour I'm doing Well, just now I was doing some research and stuff and right and I can work on an outline in the afternoon But I can't really write right in the afternoon um So I would really prefer not to write more than one thing a day um because I can you know, I can shift gears from day to day But it's kind I only have so much writing mojo in any given day And then if I you know use it on one project And then I go to another project It's I I feel like it's the second project gets short shrug so And in some sense as I said, I feel like the outlining process Which I wouldn't do for a play by and large but would do for you know film and television The outlining process is a different muscle different enough muscle that I can do that in the afternoon So you would divide it your days morning is for writing it would be for writing writing. Yeah afternoon maybe research Yeah, research, you know and in the old, you know Up until what 11 weeks ago it would be you know lunches and meetings and now Zoom meeting and um Emails of course. Yeah, so are you getting more work done now? You know having more meetings, which is weird because I mean it's not weird because there's no um There's no commuting time figured in right someday. If you just get like a meeting and a meeting and Right in the old days, you would have to at least go to the other place Right, right and producers are sitting around, you know poolside in los angeles and they're like What are we going to do? Let's have a meeting All they can do is develop um, you know, all they can do is develop scripts and uh, and there Well, there's editing going on and there's animation. That's about it. Right, right, right, right, right, right So what about uh these times that were in um You know, we had blackout tuesday yesterday and it's it's been very um You know as if coven weren't weren't enough Yeah Things have gotten more challenging more gnarly In a way more more vibrant in a way, you know, yeah, I mean what do you think? I'm kind of hopeful You know, it's a horrible moment that history the american history in terms of race and particularly as the You know relates to black people Um, it has been horrible. So that's not new That's just something that is being highlighted at this moment. And I'm glad that there's so much energy um, and so many people willing to come out um, and Say that things need to change. So I'm kind of hopeful that Maybe something will change and in terms of my own involvement Um, it's you know, I've been just trying to figure out what organizations to support and You know Minneapolis freedom and reclaim the block and trying to find more sort of, you know organizations run by black youth and And then because I'm chair of the american theater wing Uh, we've been trying I have been for four years and my term was supposed to be over at the end of June And I was like counting the days and now they're gonna make me extend for another year. Oh, um Which is and you know, it's anyway, but um Yeah, like how do we use those resources? to combat anti-blackness on Broadway and And off-road because the the theater wing now is sort of national and covers off Broadway as well. Um, and yeah, we're talking about a few a few initiatives, um and What sort of funds can we create? Um, and you know, I'm obviously very interested in people of color in theater in general, but I happen to think that this is uh, particularly a black moment and To focus on that I mean you're I mean, I I hope I'm right and since you're no stranger to violence that Could be motivated by Race What do you do you think that the artist or the writer has a particular obligation during these times? I mean I mean I hate to say that people have obligations because I feel like the artist should write and create about what they want to Create otherwise it you know, if you're doing something because you're supposed to be doing it Sometimes I feel like that the work isn't that great and then if the work isn't that great and it doesn't really help anyone anyway um, so all I can say is where I'm concerned From the beginning of my career I think this and but to this day the thing that excites me the most Is when I feel that I'm working on something that addresses the moment or could you know Could nudge the conversation in a direction of You know progressive social change and that's why even like with something with like contract Like I wouldn't be able to feel excited about doing it except that there is an angle That you could call political that Uh that I think you and yeah, I You know right before this moment, uh, this sort of george floyd moment. I was very focused on hate crimes against asians because obviously it's a very hard time to to be asian right now and Yes, not only was I I mean, I was stabbed in the neck a few years ago Which may or may not have been a hate crime, but so many of Myself and like francis jew who played, you know vh h and yellow face and Taima and acre burka. I mean we've all been yelled at or You know and it's it after being asian during cove it and so But I think, you know, this particular moment is about focusing on anti-blackness and police brutality against African-americans What about the burden? I mean, I'm going off script. Usually they give me questions to answer you I'm just reforming here Right Yeah, I mean I sometimes feel or you know, I talked to my students or you know There is or maybe one might feel That for a person of color who's an artist there is an additional burden Um that we have to carry it's not just enough to for example It's not just enough to come up with a great pitch. It's going to make hunchback and noted. Um Fantastic, you know what I mean We wouldn't be interested in unless it had an angle. I'm just I'm interested I guess I mean for example my day my regular work day in the past week or so has been Um in addition to the regular all the work stuff, right? Um I have these meetings with these big fancy who see Eos from big fancy hallowed companies because they want me to sit in on their staff meetings to talk to their staff There's an added What do we do with that? I mean, I'm not it's not a complaint I mean, it's it's you know something that as an artist of color Maybe we have to deal with more or I've told some of my students like that's the price of the ticket You know, um celebrate it I mean, I guess my feeling is None of us has to do it So I there are probably I'm sure there are probably artists of color who get asked to do these things And they don't feel like doing it and they don't So I and I think you should only do it if you want to do it. Um Because again, it's it's sort of like only if you want to write about this stuff It's great. And if you don't want to do it And you just kind of do it next to feel you should then you're just going through the motions I personally Really like to do this stuff. Um, so I mean, there's been a lot of it lately so So you can get tired of it. But I in principle I mean, it's weird. I think I just I discovered my voice as a writer at the same time I discovered my You know identity as an asian american it came together I discovered it through the writing and so I think those two things have always been linked for me in my sort of creative DNA And that's just true for me I'm sure it's you know, it's a million different ways for other people Right, right. No, that's a that's right. I love what you're saying about not feeling Like you have to do it, right? But feel like and of course, of course, I'm doing them because I want to but but that sort of You know, you think of hours in the day and you think wow, you know, this is my my day is a little more cluttered because of It's an interesting just just yeah Interesting. Yeah, sure. You feel like uh taking some questions from our Fairest assemble people. Okay. Take it away. Take it away. Audrey. Hey Um, all right. I will call out uh someone. Hi. Um, verneeda. You are up first Unmute are you unmuted? Okay, can you hear me? Yeah. Hey Hi, slp. Hi, david. Hi, Audrey Um, so speaking of this moment in time I know I've raised my hand a couple times in the recent um workshops that um I finished uh an article Uh on my yes. I'm like, I did it. Um, and it was a Definitely a challenging price process to create I wanted to create a positive framework around this moment talking about uplifting uh black men and um And of course racial justice and all those things and um We had a A question from the group a couple days ago about Writing and have being concerned about triggering people And so and I loved your slp's response to that. Um, I'm on the flip side now. I'm the writer I'm excited to make people think to get critical And the editor of this platform who is also a black woman said, ooh Uh, do we have to be so graphic? I'm concerned about Our triggering our readers and so just any thoughts on kind of managing Um pushing the envelope a bit, you know, it's not a social justice platform that I'm writing on But I also feel like we can trust their readers of these predominantly, you know professional of black women to be able to digest This and because they're also going through it themselves right now To digest this material and that it doesn't have to all be Um flowers and yoga mats like we can talk about some real stuff and Come back to the feel-good ending of finding healing and inspiration around uplifting black men I don't know any thoughts that the piece hasn't been published yet. I have just I have finished written writing it Yeah, I mean it seems to me that this is a moment when People don't really Want flowers and you know, I mean we're all in so much kind of conflict and a turmoil that This is that anything that's going to be speak to people and be meaningful. I think needs to Touch into that at least and then if it happens to end with a positive ending. That's like even better You know, that's what everybody wants. Um, I mean in terms of triggers per se. I don't know what I Not exactly I'll say. I don't know what your piece is and congratulations for finishing it, but um in terms of triggers per se I Don't know. I feel like As artists, of course, we need to write what we feel and what is most meaningful to us and I think it's okay to if if if someone wants to put like some kind of warning on my like the same you're watching a You know documentary on Netflix and or whatever and it says, you know, this contains nudity smoking And whatever and I'm okay with that. Um I don't want anyone to tell me what to write or not, right? So if they want to say well, these elements might be triggering I don't have a problem with that Also, thank you All right, thank you so much. All right up next we have got jennifer jennifer Are you there? hi Thank you so much for being here. Um, I First I just want to say that like as an asian playwright. Um trying to find china town was my first anthology All plays that I ever got and it means so much to me. So like kind of to that degree um as I've begun like exploring my own Asian-american identity as a playwright. I've begun to get into this like mindset of doubt where I keep thinking like Am I representing my community correctly? Like am I like doing justice to this culture to these people and I've found that it's starting to like hinder my writing and starting to hinder my ability to just Like put words on the page and I was wondering if you have any thoughts about that and about like That idea of representing your community but also being true to your own voice Yeah, so, you know when my first play was produced Um, it was at the public and it was called f o b and it was a play that I wrote to be done in my dorm And then it I eventually got to the public Um, and there was an asian-american publication at that time Uh called the samsaskew journal and they Reviewed my show and they said that I set asian america back 20 years And I was only 22 at the time. So um, so I think that you know, what that taught me was that There's always going to be some The people when you particularly when you have people that haven't been represented very often in mainstream media, they're going to be extra Sensitive and critical And some are really going to love it But they're going to evaluate much more closely what it is that you've written and you know and They should really because that's what we do with any piece of Art like if you know, if you're watching a marvel movie You and your friends are going to talk about you know, I hated this or I love this Because I think that the final piece in any collaboration is the audience right and that the audience is particularly trans theater and so There are elements of the audience that are going to go or for talk about asian americans They're going to be well. I really like you know, I don't like david Long's work, but I love jessica hagedorn's work or I and you know, that's good I mean, obviously, ideally I want everybody to like my work But it's really good when there's and people have opinions about things and they identify because it helps them go Okay, well that experience that's being portrayed is closer to my own and I identify that and I don't really identify with that one but You know that there's a that there's a range of stories that people can choose to identify with or not Or like or not is good. That's what we do so And so then that's a long way of saying The important thing is to write from your own proof because it's like any Like what I was saying earlier if you do something because you're supposed to be doing it Then the work might not be particularly good if you write what's true to you Then that's going to be the unique show that only you could write and some people are going to like it and simply we're going to think It's fake and that's okay Thank you so much. Thank you Thank you, jennifer All right up next we've got melania and we've got about 10 more minutes Melania go for it Hi susan, hi davis Thank you for being here. Um, I am Trying to write a theater play for children and I we are talking with susan um what I am Seeing myself Is that you said something that got to me very deeply that you discovered your voice through your writing and I am trying to To that to to see what what my voice is What do I want to say? What is happening to me and I am discovering through the writing that there are moments that are very Nice and I enjoy and there are some other moments that I want to run away and you know Leave everything so and I see that you love to write for children also and and I see that you respect and you Treat children in a very serious way With with respect so I would like to know A little bit more about this journey that you had in discovering your own voice and know how you Do your work when you write for children because I am trying to discover that and I know that is something that Maybe it's my own journey, but it would be great for me to To know your experience. Yeah, so I um The summer before my senior year in college. I Got to study with somebody who is I like maybe the great playwriting teacher of her generation. Maria Irene Fornes and Irene And and I also that was out of something called the Padres Hills Playwright Festival and Sam Shepard was there also and he taught He was great also But they taught us to write more from our subconscious So your your conscious mind is the part of you that says Oh, is this any good? Are am I writing the right thing? Does anybody care? Who do you who do I think I am and the subconscious is more the you know You're in your impulse the part that doesn't make sense sometimes Um, and of course the you know creating a play or any work of art is balancing those two things It's balancing your conscious and your subconscious. You're you know id and your Super ego and so But I think the thing that's sometimes hard is for us to access the subconscious And so, you know one Really easy exercise or obvious exercise that you just write as fast as you can you don't stop And therefore it's impossible for you to send to yourself There's an exercise that I love Where that Irene gave where you start writing a scene This takes two people there and then somebody else starts throwing in random words or phrases And it's your job to incorporate that into the dialogue And you find that you know, even when you're forced to do something which is just arbitrary That some in most cases the scene gets better When you're when you have to struggle with things that you don't understand And so it was in doing that that see I just wanted to be a playwright I didn't know I wanted to write about like Asian stuff Asian American stuff But as I started to do this and just let myself be More free. I found that these scenes started appearing on the page You know like immigration class of cultures and so that's how I began to discover that oh, I'm very interested in this stuff Um, I found it through the work in terms of writing for young people I mean, I don't think it's that different really from writing for adults Um, except that I don't know. I don't I don't even I guess you try to You know, there are obvious things I would stay away from um you know, just in terms of Sexuality or you know explicit sexuality and you know, certain language things But other than that, I don't think it's that different. I I I think it's just this The story I wrote a play my second play to be prettiest in New York was called the dance in the railroad And I read it It was thank you And it was it was a commission for young for for school kids um And this is it's hard to believe but this was the time when the u.s. Department of Education was commissioning plays So it was commissioned to be done at what used to be called the new federal theater Which is now now has a different name. I can't remember the name, but it's on the lower side um And uh, we did it and they bust in school kids and then one day Frank rich who was then the header had critic for the times came to see it He gave it a good review and joe pat moved it to the public and it became an adult play So I I really don't know the difference that well Okay, thank you very much Thank you. Melania. Good to see you Um, all right. It's got about six minutes left. We're gonna go to Angela Angela Are you there? Yeah, hi. Can you hear me? Yeah, hi um, my name is Angela and um, you spoke about Your process for writing plays like for example you write like in the afternoons or And like how you like use an outline and stuff like that And I was wondering if you have any suggestions for conducting research for your plays because there's times when I would Be writing and then I would get stuck at the part where I Want to incorporate research and it might be kind of hard to find exactly The answer to the question that I'm looking for And yeah, I would get stuck at that point Yeah, so I have a weird attitude Research, okay a couple things I believe in doing research I kind of tend to believe in doing it before I write the play and then I feel like you have to I have to forget my research when I'm writing the play Because it's easy to get like hung up on the research or especially if I do a lot of research It's easy to like show off like oh wait I remember like this weird thing and I really want to include that because I you know I'm going to show off my research whereas the thing that I really need to focus on is You know writing writing the play and writing a play that works So so there's that and then I also like I'm you know probably still best known for and butterfly and butterfly was Show that was based on a real story You know about a french diplomat who had a 20-year fair with the chinese actress who turned out to be asi And be what we would now call biologically male And the diplomat claimed that he never knew the true gender of his lover So this is based on a true story and I really wanted to research it But it was the late 80s. This is like before there was internet It was like happened in france. So there were all french papers. So I couldn't do much research I just wrote it. I just made it all up And it actually worked out pretty well. So I'm I think that if you're at a point where You are writing something and you feel like you need to do more research, but you're writing I would just like keep writing. I would You know, I would I mean, I don't know what your project is and I don't know how critical the research is to going forward Like if it's a docu drama, obviously it's different But if it's if it's a play just keep going just make it up You know and then you can like check later and you can like move things around if you need to but I would just make it up That's what I would say Thank you Thank you, Angela All right, do we have time I think for one more question Andrea or Andrea. I'm sorry from saying your name wrong. Are you unmuted? Yes Hi Hi, thank you. I had the question last time about triggering. So it came back up, which is cool But this actually connects to Angela's question about the research and getting bogged down and In the and I very much get bogged down in theory and research and this is what happened And I'm wondering for you you talked about doing the research before and then just kind of letting it go How like oh, how do you depart from it and because I feel like it can mess with your imagination a little bit when you're so Encompassing, you know, what really happened. Yeah, I think the way to let it go is just not to open the book or not to go to the website because I like to believe That the stuff that's really important is going to stick in my head and if I don't remember it, it wasn't that important Yeah, that's nice. I like that Thank you. Thank you. This has been so fun. Um, I think we've got about 50 seconds left And I don't think we have any more hands. So is there anything we want to talk about? There's a question there's a question in the chat triggers aside Is it an FLT's violence specifically dv in a novel? What's and what's dv? I don't know. This is Catherine Yeah, Catherine. Are you okay? Oh domestic violence. Yeah, usually stands for domestic violence Oh Thanks. Yeah Um, I don't oh, thank you. I don't think there's anything specifically Unethical it's particular if you're writing about domestic violence. I don't know how you don't include domestic violence So I guess I would have to say it depends on context All right It's just about six o'clock We're so lucky that you're with us. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Period. We're so lucky. You're yeah really um, what what a joy you are and what an inspiration david Just I just love the way you you you think and feel and and do your craft Thanks. Well, thank you for inviting me of this. This is the legendary what you do here Well, it's an open invitation. The carpet is always unrolled and always if you want to even feel like Jesus I'm kind of bored this afternoon. Come drop in and dispense your wisdom. Please because it's so so so very helpful Um, and I just I was just sitting here going. No, I just love listening to you All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're we're watch we work Thanks, david human wong. We're so lucky to have you here always welcome back We will be back tomorrow Pretty much the same thing. Yeah As a reminder sign up by 3 p.m. Eastern every single day That we have a session and I'll send you a link between 3 and 4 30 p.m. If you want to be in the zoom Okay, happy riding everybody. Thanks to you. Love you. Bye. Bye. Thank you slp. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, adri