 Good afternoon. Hi. Welcome to Carpenter Hall and the Festival Noon series. Also welcome to those of us joining us on HowlRound. Hi. My name is Trisha Patrick, and on behalf of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, I thank you for your attendance. Broshoers about the Festival Noon series are in the front of Carpenter Hall and highlight upcoming Festival Noon events. Please allow me to share a couple of the events coming up in the next couple of days. On Wednesday, June 29th, we will have a demonstration, learn the dance, the whiz choreography. That should be a lot of fun. On Thursday, June 30th, we have a preface plus for row. On Friday, July 1st, we have a conversation, fantasy, magic and folklore, the river bride and the art of storytelling with members of the river bride cast and moderated by yours. Truly, we can see each other again. Thank you for your enthusiasm. So tickets for these events and more can be purchased at our box office. Please take a moment right now to silence your cell phones and we ask that you take no photos. We have our wonderful staff photographer, Jenny Graham, here to take photos for you all on your behalf. Thank you so much. So today I have the pleasure of introducing Peter Stegel and Queen Quig Nguyen. Give a round of applause. So Peter Stegel is the author of numerous plays that have been performed in large and small theaters around the country and abroad, including Longworth Theater, Actors Theater of Louisville, Seattle Repertory and Florida Stage. He also has written a number of screenplays, including Savage and Cuba Mine, an original screenplay that became, without his knowledge, the basis for dirty dancing Havana Nights. Among Stegel's honors in theater are a Drama Log Award for directing grants from the Jerome and McKnight Foundations and a residency grant at the Carmargo Foundation in Cassis, France. Yes, he has been commissioned to write new plays for the Seattle Repertory Theater and the Wind Dancer Theater and has been invited to work on his plays at Sundance, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and New Harmony Project. In 1997, Peter joined the panel of a news quiz show on NPR. Yes, co-produced by WBEZ Chicago that made its debut on air in January 1998. In May of that year, he moved to Chicago to become the host of the show. Since then, wait, wait. Don't tell me. Has become one of the most popular shows on public radio, heard by nearly three million listeners on 520 public radio stations nationwide and heard by a million people every month via podcast. So that is our lovely Peter. And now, Qui-Gwen is a playwright, screenwriter and co-artistic director of the OBE Award-winning Vampire Cowboys. That's right. Even the name deserves an award. His scripts include the critically acclaimed Vampire Cowboys productions of the inexplicable redemption of Agent G, Soul Samurai, Alice in Slasherland, Fight Girl Battle World, Men of Steel, Living Dead in Denmark, Staying Glassed Ugly, A Beginner's Guide to Deicide and Vampire Cowboy Trilogy. Other scripts include She Kills Monsters, Bike Wreck, Ilians vs. She-Leaders, Trial by Water, and Crunk Foo Battle Battle. Additionally, Qui is an award-winning fight director who has worked extensively as an instructor and choreographer for such places as Columbia University, Lab Rint Theater, Mayi Theater, Long Wharf Ensemble Studio Theater, The Public, Here Arts Center, and many others. Recent honors include the 2016 Harold and Mimi Steinberg ATCA Award, a Sundance Institute Fellowship 2013 AATE Distinguished Play Award, and Best 10 Plays of 2013 by Time Out Chicago, 2012 and 2009 GLAAD Award Nominations, 2012 ITBA Patrick Lee Award and 2010 IBA Award Nomination, and TCG Young Leader of Color. Qui is a proud member of New Dramatists, Mayi Writers Lab, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Playwright Center, and an advanced actor-combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors. For television, he has written for Peg and Cat, airing on PBS KIDS. They are here today to have a conversation, two playwrights talk, Viet Gan. Please join me in welcoming Peter Segal and Qui Gwynn. Hi. Guess which one I am? We had a wonderful talk plan for you today, but sadly we spent all our time listening to our resumes, so thanks for being here. We're out of time. I think Qui and I just bonded over the hellish experience of standing waiting for you in time. It was down to, like, specific things. I forgot that. I didn't know that was your blood type. I was really excited to find that out. That was great. My calling award from kindergarten? Amazing. My problem is all of my theater credits, thank you for looking them up, are 20 years old, so I was listening going, yeah, I used to be something. What happened to me? So, anyway, hello. Qui and I just met a little while ago before this started, and it turns out we have something very important in common, which is neither of us have seen this production of Viet Gan. That's true, that's true. I hear it's good. Is it good? Have you guys seen it? Because we both got in last night. We're going to be talking about a production that neither of us have seen. Well, I know a little bit about it. Yeah, Qui at least has seen it before, but I've only been able to read it, so that's what you're in for, is just ignorance. The idea is that we were going to talk about the play, and maybe if we have time at the end, take some questions from those of you who have seen it, and maybe you can describe it to us, because that would be really interesting. So, let's start here. When I was writing plays, everything I wrote usually started with one little thing that got stuck in my mind, like the grain of sand that became a pearl. So, what was it that started you off on this play? Money, like someone... South Coast Rep. Is it kind of a joke? No, no, no. They commissioned me to write a play for them, and I didn't know what I wanted to write about. It was a very open end, and they were like, I'll write anything you want. I was like, well, I'm a geek. I'll write about comic books, and that's what it's going to be. Because it was set in Orange County, it's right close to Comic-Con. I'm kind of known for writing geeky things. But part of the commission was you're going to go around the community of Orange County and meet folks there, and just see what... If there's anything that would inspire you, I'm totally open, because I literally don't have any idea what I'm going to write about. And so, they sent me around to meet people of the community of Orange County. And what I didn't realize was Orange County has the largest population of Vietnamese Americans in America. Yeah, there's a neighborhood they even call Little Saigon. Yeah, Little Saigon over there. And so I was meeting all those folks, and they brought me to UC Irvine... UC Irvine? UC Irvine, where the artistic director of this theater used to teach me. Yeah, and so they have like an archive of just photos from all the refugee camps across America. And so they were trying to tell me all about Orange County, but I just got obsessed with looking at these photos, because one of the photos kind of like files was photos from Fort Chappy, where my parents had, you know, whatever the place said, where they'd come into America. And that's... I had never seen photos from it. And so like, you know, as they blabbered on about Orange County, I just kind of went through and just was obsessed with trying to find a photo of my mom or my dad. I didn't, but that was what was stuck in my head. And I was like, well, I guess I'm not going to write about geeks after all. I'm going to write about my parents. So wait a minute. So you had this sort of long... You went to Orange County. You were talking to other people you don't know. Yeah. Because South Coast was like, oh, maybe you'll find something to write about here. And what it brought you back to was your experience of your own parents. Yeah. Right. In Arkansas. And had you, prior to that, written anything or thought of writing anything about your parents' experience, about the Vietnamese American experience, anything like that? Yeah. The very first play I ever wrote was a play called Traw Ball Water. It was the first play that was ever produced professionally by my theater company in New York. It was my first professional gig. And it was the sheer opposite of what VidCon is. It was very reverential. I was trying to make Vietnamese people look and feel like Vietnamese people. What does that mean? It was... In no way was it... It was like... I was trying to basically imitate what I was assuming David Harry Wong would do. Or like some other writer would do to approach a very serious subject matter. They were noble. They were noble. Yeah. And I was 22 at the time. I had never written anything in my life. Literally my first play. And so it got produced. And then my parents saw it. And I thought, this is amazing because people were there and they were clapping. And my mom looked at me and was like, this does not sound like you. And my response was like, if you mom, you don't know how I sound. Like, no, no, no. You haven't read anything I've ever written. She's like, no, no, no. Not like what you write. I don't know what that sounds like. You don't talk like that. And that kind of stuck in my head. So you were... And this is, I think, for those of you who have seen the play, extremely relevant. Yeah. How these characters talk. Absolutely. So you were at that time, 22 years old, you were writing a play about Vietnamese people in America, I assume. Yep. And they were talking in that kind of... I mean, I won't say stereotypical way, but a way that I'm used to seeing Asian characters. Absolutely. And there's a sense of dignity to them, a sense of nobility. Like, every Asian character sort of always... They're all like Spock. Yeah. Okay, there. They're all like Spock. There's a lot of reverence for parents. They're really logical. They're robots, absolutely. Issues of honor come into play and shame. So that's what I basically did. My mom hated it. And it was literally that was the thing that transitioned me into creating vampire cowboys. I was like, fine. You don't want me to sound like that? Then I'm never going to write anything like that. And I started to write the most obnoxious, vulgar kind of in-your-face theater period. Right. It was like... It had superheroes and comic books and fights and martial arts and hip-hop and lots of vulgarity. And... Because that sounds like you. That's you. That is who I am. Yeah. Right? And so I was like, that's going to be the thing. I did that for like almost 15 years. Right. And then when this came around and I knew I was going to write about my parents, the one thing I knew that I was going to do was I was going to make sure that I wasn't going to make that mistake ever again. Right. This play was going to sound like me. Right. It was not... Even if it didn't make sense and it might offend people, I was going to make it sound like me because when my mom and dad see it, they might go, I can't believe you put our sex lives on stage. But that does sound like you. Right. So I wanted to make sure that was... I'm going to skip ahead and say, have your parents seen this play? No. No. They keep saying they will. But then they find out what it's about and they're like... Really? So this is production number two and more are coming. This production is going to Seattle and they're going to do it Manhattan Theater Club. Where do your parents live? They live in Elroy, Arkansas. Oh, are they still there? They're still there. Right. Right. Right. Okay. And how are you anticipating that day when your parents show up? Well, I'm going to sit by them because I'm afraid they'll kill me. I hope they like it. They've read a lot about it because it's made into the Vietnamese press, which ironically is the thing that made my parents finally think of me as a real writer. When you got written up in the VTV press? Not the New York Times, like the Vietnamese press. Oh, yeah. They're like, oh, now you're a writer. I just want to put out here that as a Jew from New Jersey, my parents cared about the New York Times. That was a big day for me. When the New York Times referred to me as Peter Segel, a playwright, they were like, oh, there you go. Anyway, but be that as it may. So let's talk about the language of the play. So the play opens. Playwright character comes on stage, which I have to say, speaking as a guy who's seen a lot of bad theater in my time, that is like warning sign number of like four on the list. Oh, yeah. Right? You know? Yeah. The only thing worse than a playwright come and say, hello, I'm the playwright. As a character comes on stage, it says narrator. I'm already like that. That's kind of like my thing. So the play opens with a character playing you, identifies himself as you, comes out and says, this is what we're going to do. This is a play about people who are not my parents. And this is how they're going to talk. And when did you add that scene? I added that scene very late in the process. At some point, the lit manager at South Coast Rep was worried that starting the play with Yellow Motherfucker on a motorcycle might offend people. So she's like, maybe you warned them a little bit. Yeah. Let me establish this. So we have people who haven't seen the play yet, right? Is that true? Okay. So in the play, give me an example if you can. You don't have to quote it. Just give the sense of it of how the Vietnamese characters and presumably they're in America mostly, but they are speaking Vietnamese to each other. Give me a sense of how they sound. They sound like me right now. Yeah. Just like dropping F-bombs. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to stay somewhat clean. Yeah. They don't, though. Yeah. They don't. Not at all. Yeah. So in the course of the play, they speak really idiomatic modern English. Absolutely. And they swear an awful lot. And I'm not going to swear to that because it's too early in the day to hear me swear because it will blow your minds if you hear my voice. Say fuck. So it's not only that. So let's establish that. So they're talking very idiomatic modern English. The kind of thing you might hear with 20-year-old or 30-year-old persons, Americans speak today. Yeah. And the Americans, characters who show up, how do they sound? They say things like cheeseburger, hamburger, waffle fries. And that's a sentence. Right. That's them saying something like, oh, nice to meet you. And were you trying to sort of say this is how American sounded my parents with their limited English? Absolutely. That was what it was. As opposed to like, I'm going to turn this goddamn stereotype on its head. Yeah. Well, I was like, I didn't know what a broken English sound would be. So I was like, oh, I'm just going to write random English words that were specifically like American things that my parents were like, what is that? Right. Huh? Ascar? Yeah. And so that's the aesthetic of the play. That's what happened. There's a lot of other things in the play, including martial arts, we'll get there. But at one point then, somebody working in the play with you said, oh man, you better explain this because if people come in and they see actors purporting to be 30 year old Vietnamese people recently exiled to America talking this way, they're going to be freaking out. Well, it's more so the fact that the play kept changing the rules. As we went, like it broke time. It like suddenly would change style. And so her thing, because she knew that in like my, the New York audience knows me very well. So I'd never have to do that shorthand. Yeah. So she was like, you just need to have a scene that establishes that you, the playwright, control this world in a very like willy walk away. Yeah. And so that was the purpose of writing that. So they just go, oh, well, here's the play. This guy is obviously not me. Yeah. He's going to say, I'm me. Yeah. And then just do whatever I want on it. This is a playwright question. Did you resist that idea? Were you like, no, they need to figure it out, man. Yeah, I did. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And how do you feel about it now that that's part of the text? I think it's funny because the people do it really funny. Yeah. And I'm a whore for laughs. Yeah. We all are. Oh, you're laughing. This is amazing. Okay. Let's keep it. Yeah. I don't know what you're talking about when it comes to that. As I'm sure you all know, I've never debased myself for a laugh. All right. So that's the language of the play. Was your intent something along the lines of, if you could speak a thematic Vietnamese at this time, that's what they would have sounded like, or were you doing a more Hamilton-like thing, which I believe the phrase is the story of then told by the people in language of now, i.e., are you trying to describe how they actually spoke, your parents or the people around them, or was it more of a fantasy of how they might speak if they existed today? Well, it goes a little deeper than just, I guess, that impulse. It's mainly because the heartbeat of why I made it sound the way it sounded was the fact that I as an Asian-American kid growing up never saw anything that made me feel good when it came to seeing stuff that was about Asian-America. What do you mean? How did they make you feel? Well, seeing the noble Asian made me feel nerdy. It made me feel like the other, made me feel exotic, made me feel out there. And so when I wrote the play, it was, though I'm very excited that everybody seems to like it, I was literally writing it specifically for the teenager me, like the teenager me who was going to be sitting in that audience who was longing to see a badass Asian-American character because you don't get to see that on TV, you don't get to see that in movies. That gets whitewashed right out, right? And so I wanted to see that. And so I was like, well, then I'm going to make them, I'm going to take away anything that makes it feel exotic. I'm going to make it feel like now, I'm going to make it sound like the stuff that I would have been drawn to. Right. And also like there's the, all the swearing and all that, I understand it may offend some, but for me, when you're like 13, 14, 15, you're looking for something that's cool, right? Like you're looking for something like that's part of it. You can get like the very smart yo-yo mods out there like I want to be a violinist one day. But like you also need, I think regardless of what your race is, like if you're black, you want strong African American characters that make you feel strong, whether it's Jay-Z, whether it's Denzel, like here I needed to give that to a group of kids that I didn't think that look was out there. And so when those characters came out there, I just wanted them to feel cool. Well, I can totally dig that, but there's this whole other element, you're writing about your parents. And that's, I mean, that's a kind of overwhelmingly psychological. It's super creepy. It's super creepy. You're writing about your parents, not only you're writing about your parents from romance, you're writing about their sex lives. Yeah, no, I don't like talking about that. And whistled by that grave. And what I mean is that it's so like, all right, when you are writing, let's just say it, when you're writing about your mother having casual sex, which she does a fair amount in the play, are you engaging in a kind of like, again, this sort of fantasy that you were talking about, what if my mother at that time was a sexually independent, confident person who did this sort of shit, or are you actually trying to describe how she really was at that time? I want my answer to be A, that this was not real, but unfortunately for me it was B. Because part of my interview process with my parents was they didn't want to talk about anything. Honestly, they did not want me to write about them. I've said this, well, it doesn't matter. When you're interviewing people from like a traumatic kind of like experience, they kind of don't want to talk about it. It's like the same problem when people try to interview holocaust survivors or Syrian refugees or something. Likewise, Vietnamese don't want to talk about the hardship of the fall of Saigon. And so I kind of lied to them. I totally tricked them out. I was like, okay, I'm just doing a general play about Vietnam, not about you. No. But I need to fact check some stuff, right? Even though they know that the internet exists, but I pretended like I didn't. And so I was like, oh, so the Vietnam War was like a war between Vietnam and China? And they're like, no, why are you so stupid? And because like the biggest fear that any Vietnamese parent or any Asian parent has is having a dumb child. And so that kind of opened them up to talk more. But then specifically at some point, I kind of eased that the specificity about Vietnam to them. And at some point, they started talking about their sex lives. Because the story that I grew up with about how they met and fell in love was we met in this refugee camp. It was love at first sight and we were together forever. And then now in my mid-30s, asking about this conversation, like, oh, you're not dumb. We just had sex. And really? What? And they creeped me out and they were so tickled by how creeped out I was. Just like how you like to mess with your own kid. They're like, oh, no, we're going to mess with you. We're going to tell you all of it. And so it was like, so they just kind of told me stuff I never wanted to know. I was like, I don't want to tell this story. What happened to the love at first sight? I was going to write like, you know, when Harry met Sally, but with Asian people. They're like, no, sorry. You're writing a sex comedy now. Really? And so, but they, again, didn't know I was going to write a play about it. And then at some point they did. And then suddenly they tried to retcon and retroactively go, oh, that was lies. It's like, no, no, no. So, all right. So I'm going to tell you a story. So one of my close colleagues and friends is similar to you. She's about 30 years old. Parents of Vietnamese, born of Vietnam, immigrants. And they're very conservative people. They're, you know, she had to get married, even though she's not religious in a Vietnamese Catholic church in Sacramento, where she's from. And I said, so I'm like, I'm reading this play. I'm talking to the playwright. And it's like, amazing. Because in this play, his parents, who were your parents' generation, like, have casual sex and talk about it with their own mother. And she looked at me like, no goddamn way. So, so like, do you think that your parents were exceptional or different or that her parents have been lying to her? I don't know. Again, I would like to think that my parents are just weird. But I don't know. I actually, I have no idea. I mean, like, my parents' words for me was about the refugee camp experience in general were to kind of go, don't judge us, but like, we had lost everything. Like, my dad had lost his wife and his two kids. My mom lost her fiance. And so they were like any human being, they were looking for connections, something that would comfort them. And there's nothing more comforting than the human touch. And so that's their, she's like, well, you know, like we didn't talk about it because we are from a more conservative community, but it was part of, like, it's all humans. It's not like, you know, so that it's, I don't know. I have never seen, and this is just maybe my sheltered existence, I have never seen a play about Asian characters, i.e. from Asia, i.e. not immigrant kids, second, third generation, having casual sex. It just doesn't come up in like, that number we were talking about, that image of Asian people that you were writing in your first play. They don't do that. You know, there's, you almost like parody that with that scene with, I'm going to say, your mother, Tron, right? No? Yeah, Tung. With her fiancée back in Vietnam, where he's like, oh, I love you so much. And he's speaking in this very typical flowery language. And she's like, you just want to do it? Yeah. And, I mean, were you like going to write it, were you intending to write about sex in the context of Asian characters in a way that we haven't seen before? No. Like, I don't, I don't think that it was a conscious effort. It was, I mean, like, with that in doubt, the syntax was definitely modern. Like, I don't think my mom was as cold. Yeah. Because she's pretty cold. Yeah, she's pretty cold. Like, but, but I did want to, like, hit the experiences that they went through. Like, that was a, like there was a proposal at a hotel room that she was trying to avoid, because she didn't really dig them, but my grandmother was like, he offers like, he's stable and she didn't want that. And then when, like, my mom met my dad, my grandma was like, you don't want him. Right. And, yeah, so it was, so all those events were real. It's just like the way that it was, you know, they're very modern. Yeah. Without that, they're acting like me because I didn't really do any research to how Vietnamese in 1975 acted. Okay. I want to ask a little bit more about your parents and then move on to some other topics. And this is, I'm going to try to avoid spoilers, but at the end of the play, you're, everybody dies. No, I'm sorry. That's Hamlet. At the end of the play, your father appears again. He's been throughout the play, but because I haven't seen the production, I don't know this. It's the same actor who appears, the same actor. But he's transformed into what you might call a more realistic version, i.e. instead of speaking idiomatic English. He's speaking accented English. That's more, and is that character we see, is that like, recognizably your father, if your father walked in after seeing the play, but, oh yeah, that guy. That's not a good idea. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So two questions, and this is where I want to avoid a spoiler. He has a monologue in the last scene, which is about his experience and his feelings about the Vietnam War. So two questions. Why did you want to present for what we'll call like the real father versus the imagined father at the end of the play? Why did you think that was necessary? And that's also the reintroduction to the playwright character, who thank God we don't see. Oh. Yeah. And why did you save what struck me as a really important central speech about many of the things that happened in the play until the very end? Well, I think there's a couple, a couple reasons. One, the number one reason why I ended up being there was because when I did my first draft of the play, it was really short. And this was another play I had written. Yeah. That was included on. Right. So that was the number one reason to make it longer. This happens more than you think, by the way. You're sitting there going, shit, this is short. I got to tack something on here. I know. Yeah. So that's what happened. But then as I kept writing the play, that last thing that was, which I intended to cut the whole time, just started to make more and more sense to the whole play. Really? Like it was like, oh, I kind of get how this, all this gets to this. That you get to see my kind of like comic book version of 1975 and then land in something that felt very real and poignant. Because even on the page, I thought it was really powerful because as you just said, you'd have this comic book version, this very fluorescent version, almost, well, let's say, not very realistic version with hip hop and fights and sort of cinematic stuff. And then all of a sudden you have this guy at a table saying this is what happened and this is what it was like and this is how I feel about it. And even though that's the end of the play, it was really quite powerful. Like, oh, it made us, I'm guessing that it makes you sort of all of a sudden think about everything you've just seen in a totally different way, which is cool. But I don't want to say anymore about that because that's the end of the play. How about time in the play? It shifts back and forth. Yeah. And what's interesting though is that for the most part it shifts back and forth within the present, which is weird. I mean, obviously, it's one thing that was seen in the present, then go to far past and then come back to the present to proceed. But you skip around the present. When the first scene is there riding in this motorcycle, they say, oh, yeah, I don't need to bet that girl. And then you go back just a month. So what's that about? Why not just tell the story at least at the Fort? Is it Fort Bennett? Fort Jaffee? Fort Jaffee. Why not just tell at least that story? Well, I just thought it would be really weird to go all that and then just have like another play where they were just on a motorcycle and then have that tacked on. So I was like, oh, well, I have to tell both my dad's journey to how he, like part of that motorcycle journey is how he got back to my mom. Right. And so I needed to tell that but I don't know how to tell it like in his own chunk. Right. So I just decided to like sprinkle it across the whole thing. Right. So you keep going back to the motorcycle? Yeah, I just keep going back to the motorcycle. Did that motorcycle trip really happen? Did they really ride from Arkansas to Sacramento? Yeah. Well, it's interesting because like at first I thought this was a unique story. Right. But when we did a reading of it in Orange County and when I was, you know, when they hurt from all different ages and a lot of people, they were my parents' age and a lot of Vietnamese people including one gentleman in particular were like, that's not uncommon and that's exactly how I met my wife. Well, what's that like on a motorcycle trip? That motorcycle trip to go to, to, to, if you were in Fort Chaffee getting to Fort, to Camp Pendleton to get on that plane to go to, back to Guam because that was a thing like for a moment in time anyone who escaped Vietnam, Vietnam said, anyone who wants to come back, they'll let you come back. So the, the triumphant government, communist government was like, now unified Vietnam said you can come back. You can come back but here's your time to do it and so people were trying to do that. Some people were like, I don't know how to live here and so they were trying to do that and then most of them didn't go, my dad didn't go back and there was one gentleman during that reading was like, oh, not only did I do that trip, I met your father. I know your father. Really? Yeah. He was like, his rank, what squadron he was in, all that and I called up my dad. I was like, dad, do you know what I mean? He's like, oh yeah, let me talk to him. And so it was like, it's like, oh, well, I guess I wrote this correctly enough that people recognize my dad. Did your father, by the way, really go to up on a motorcycle from Arkansas to Ocean Cycle, California? No, no, no motorcycle. And I'm like, no way. There's more people. There was him, there was the character Neon, there was also another, there was a nephew that isn't in the play at all that went with him that he had reconnected in the refugee camp. There was a group of them. A group of them. Yeah, but like in this and made it, I made it just one because it made it easy. I understand. Yeah. Let me talk a little bit about your general aesthetic. You talked about the fact that you were like a comic book guy and you like fights and you like manga like hip hop and you stick that in your plays, right? Yeah. And you're a fight choreographer. Yeah. Right. So have you always like had lots of physical action in your plays? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I started off as a martial artist when I was a little kid. Yeah. And so that was something that was always part of my life. Yeah. And when I started writing plays, I didn't, it was, honestly the reason why I put fights in my plays, it's the only way that I know how to communicate with my actors. And so I was like, well, I want to get a reason when I get to talk to them and become friends with them as well. Oh, I see. You were like trying to actually find an excuse to talk to the actors. That was it. And if you wrote in a fight scene and since you're a fight guy, you get to go in and talk to the actors. Yeah. And I could have my own relationship with the actors because I always hated that little gap between me, the director and the performer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wanted something that was a little bit more direct. Yeah. So they felt comfortable enough to go to me and feel that collaboration felt more natural and organic. So you're how old? I am 39. 39. And you started writing plays when you were 22? Yep. Okay. So you grew up in Arkansas? That is correct. Okay. How does somebody of your age, you're not quite, you're a little old for millennial, but still, how does somebody of your age who grew up, as you say in comic books and I'm assuming martial arts and martial arts, movies, how did you end up in the theater? I thought the theater was for old people like me. I love this theater because it's still, it's the most, to me, the most punk rock thing I can do. Like I write TV, I write film, I do that, but there's so many elements of getting approval from other people. Yeah. And I want this thing. Do you approve it? Okay. And then don't give me no. It's not to address it because they're giving me money, right? But in theater, because I had my own theater company, it was the opportunity like, this is what I want to do and nobody can tell me no. And that allowed me to create the aesthetic that I have because I think if I didn't, if I didn't do that, I think it would have taken me a long time. We were just talking about Annie Baker. Right. Like how she just kind of came out the womb and she had her voice. She knew what she wanted to do as an artist and it just keeps growing and evolving, but it was always ever present. I wasn't, I don't feel that lucky as a writer. I felt like I needed that time. Did you see plays? I mean, because I grew up going to Broadway in like the 70s and saw plays which were very, shall we say, theatrical? I mean, it's about to say theatrical, but in a weird way, what I mean is the opposite of theatrical, which is that they were, usually took place in one room, one set, characters, you know, glass menagerie, you know, likes that or Arthur Miller plays or Eugene O'Neill plays, goddamn him to hell. I could go on about Eugene O'Neill. And so for me, it was a real, when I started writing plays, that's what I was writing. I was writing plays that took place and took me a long time to find out that you could do things like have music or have people break into songs or have fights or anything like that. And so I'm asking, I guess, when did you, what was your influences as somebody who started writing plays at the age of 22? What did you experience? Did you go to the theater? No. I didn't go to a lot of theater. I went to whatever theater was at my college campus. So I did it. I grew up in Arkansas, went to Louisiana Tech and then Ohio University. It wasn't like I was in mecca of art. But I grew up on a lot of film, a lot of black exploitation, a lot of food flicks, a lot of whatever. I read comic books. But specifically what I was drawn to by the medium theater was when I did take a film course or when I did make a short film in college, I realized that no matter how, whenever I was ambitious with those films, they looked like crap because they were all built on, because if you wanted a special effect, you need money. Right. And if you don't have money, it looks terrible. Right. You can't make a low-budget, like, Star Trek. Right. It just looks terrible, right? Right. And you know, you're wearing helmets covered with aluminum foil. Yeah, it's like colanders on head the whole time, right? Yeah. But in theater... You can have a colander that somebody's had. And it's actually quite incredible. And imagine, I could make a whole spaceship story, which is you, me and this chair, these chairs. Right. In the audience, because, you know, I always think that film and television is trapped by budget. Right. And the budget is what makes it good, because it's always trapped in realism. Whereas in theater, to me, the budget is imagination. Right. It's that communication with the audience, and that's infinite. Right. So I can make worlds with no money. And so that's what attracted me to theater, the fact that I can make really big stories with no money. Whereas when I started when I was writing my first screenplays, it was... I was stuck, oh, we're going to be in a cafe. Can we go for that cafe? Can we borrow that? Someone's living room. Okay, so I can write a little 15. Yeah. And so you're always stuck writing what you could afford. Whereas in theater, I could put a dragon on stage that could kill children. And then they would suddenly become warriors and then kill the dragon back. And it worked. And then you would do it and not only was it fun, but the audience is, you watch people's faces just like melt. Right. It's like, oh my God, I can't believe you did that. When I was a little son, I watched The Lion King, that first opening number, which is puppets. Yeah. You know? It made me cry. Literally, like I didn't watch that at all. I watched him. Because it was just like, I knew that it was tickling something that movies didn't. It was like, I do that medium too, but that's what I love about the theater. Well, once you got to New York and you started seeing plays, or did you see the work of anybody who, like, inspired you? Like, yeah, that's what I want to do. Steve Alegaris, I loved his stuff. He was like, the Jesus Judas story, but it was all modern. Yeah. So it was kind of like, very much like Hamilton. It was super modern, but it was the Bible story, but told as if it was happening today. And I was like, wow, and it was large and big. It had like, 20 people in the cast. And I was super inspired by that. Top dog, under dog, which was the opposite. It was just two people in the thing, but the language was so cool. And I was like, wow, you know, so there was definitely big influence. David Henry Wong was a big, big influence. Just because he was the Asian guy that was like, oh, Asian people can do this. Yeah. And I can do it too. And without a doubt, with him opening the doors of the stories he told, it allows me to write the stories I get to tell. Yeah. So. Let me ask you, we have a few more minutes before I open up to your questions, but I wanted to ask you about fights, because you and I have an enthusiasm, which is I love fights in my personal life. No, actually, I don't. What I love is I love fights on stage. Yeah. I love combat on something of a dork like you. It just never occurred to me that I could like do that in the theater. There's a big fight in Vietnam. Yeah. Why did you include a fight? Because there wasn't one yet. Kind of like that's, I, I, like my, both my director May and the other director you work all the time, Robert Ross Parker, like always laugh because I do think of theater the same way as I would say a studio thinks of like a big budget Hollywood movie. Right. I think of plays of Jesus. I go, oh, we've gone 15 minutes nothing crazies happen. So hip hop song. Oh, nothing's happened. Movement dance sequence. Right. Nothing's happened. Kung Fu fight. Nothing's happened. So it's, it's mainly to keep, it just tickles me because it's the thing that, because I know I'm going to have to watch this like a million times from an audience. Like I need stuff that makes me want to watch it all the time because like the actors talking to each other after a while, I'm like, this is really their director's job. Is there any resistance to that? Like, oh yeah, we have to do a big Kung Fu fight right in the middle of the play. People are like, we're not going to do a Kung Fu fight because we don't do that. No. No, no, I mean, like that's the one good thing about, you know, being the writer of the thing is the fact that they, luckily people want me like when they get me to write a play, they want my play. And so they know that my style is part of that. And part of my style is just random Kung Fu fights, because I don't, I'm not lucky enough to know your prior work. What's like the coolest thing you ever like said we're going to do when you did it? It was the five-headed dragon that was, it was like the line was a stage-sized dragon attacks this one girl. Yeah. And like, and basically the set which was all hidden was actually parts of the dragon and he all just like came out at one time and she had to fight this giant dragon and that was pretty cool. That's pretty cool. No, I'll say that I reached a point in my life was after I got into and stopped writing plays myself where I, if I walked into a theater and saw, you know, curtain up or maybe the set's waiting for you and it's just like a living room. It was everything I could do to flee. I did not want to see this is my favorite story about the theater. Many, many years ago I got an iguana and I didn't know anything about iguanas so we got a book about iguanas and the book was written by this man who loved iguanas he loved iguanas and at the back of the book there was a little iguana bibliography after you've learned everything you can go see things or read things about iguanas and one of them was an entry for the play The Night of the Iguana and this is what this iguana obsessed author, expert thought of the play The Night of the Iguana not about iguanas at all but just a play about people with problems and all I could think of this guy front row center got there early wearing his iguana tie watching the play and being like where's the fucking iguana the reason the reason I mentioned this is I got to the point where I would like see all these plays and be like oh my god it's just people with problems and I would start sitting there thinking where's the goddamn iguana one day some years ago I went to see a play in Chicago where they had in the course of one play like eight rock and roll musical numbers a cattle stampede and four gunfights and I was like these are my people finally so I mean I feel the same way it's like yes goddamn it the theater I mean for some reason and this is why I hate O'Neill I realize it's become a rant I'm sorry the reason I hate O'Neill is because O'Neill back in the 20s the theater was amazing Elmer Rice was writing plays they were doing all these crazy great things and then O'Neill came along and said no the only dramatic act worth presenting as art is the act of confession which will happen at the end of a very very very very very very long conversation and fine you're a virgin just say it and get off stage and so I this is the end of rant I am very grateful for writers like Cui who had who didn't know that's all you were supposed to be able to do on stage and I don't know if you knew that you were breaking this rule I had no idea I mean with that ignorance is a huge benefit to taking the kind of theater I make I mean to me it's amazing because in my generation we were all wondered about the future of the theater because our audience was aging and young people weren't going to it and we never knew what we'd have to do to the theater to make young people like it it never occurred to us that young people would like the theater because in the theater they could do whatever they wanted which ended up saving the theater so thank you for saving the theater and we wanted as many of you have seen the play so perhaps you have more smart questions for quee than I did so by all means do we have microphones Russell here we have a microphone is it on? yeah okay are you going to either or both are you going to have an opportunity to see this play here sadly it's not being done during the two days I'm here so but fortunately fortunately for me and I think the world at large this production is moving on to Seattle another production so I have a feeling it will be coming to where I am pretty soon yeah and are you going to get to see it? not this weekend because I leave tomorrow morning I came in last night I'm here for you just you somebody right there apparently we're being live stream so we need to be on I thought the music was brilliant I want to hear a little bit about how you picked all the right songs for just the right segues well the music was I mean it's more my sound designer Shane Redig and Mae than myself in that but I do remember having one very strong opinion which was I don't want any war rock in it because like we would define that like you know like you know the kind of rock and roll like a credence CCR yeah the sort of thing that you would put in like the apocalypse now yeah like that because I was like kind of the war like when you think of the Vietnam war movies that's the that's the soundtrack we all hear right I was like well you know during that time there was a whole bunch of other music that had nothing to do with that I and it's very important to me that I needed to define you know like how we were going to experience this world and so and I myself grew up like that was the music my parents listen to and so that's like I don't want to put any war rock in this play also because I didn't want the play that yes it was about the aftermath about war but it wasn't about war itself so I was like let's just it's a love story let's put a whole bunch of like you know good music that we all would like to have sex to so yeah bring somebody right there precisely the love story was caught in not just the beauty of the learning which we do from anything that comes from somewhere else but the whole idea that Shakespeare and everybody has used cast off on the foreign land as the beginning of a new life yeah and they've left people in those other plays they've left families behind as well so this was very much how love stories happen there's a question right there I think as Peter mentioned you explore the libidos of your parents quite extensively in this play but you actually go further and explore the libido of your grandmother in this play which in my experience is unprecedented the relationship though between your mother and her mother is one of the engaging aspects of this play and I wonder if you talk about how you developed that and what you were trying to show us well that's the relationship I probably know the best out of all of them because that was like my grandmother and my mom had like throughout my like my grandmother lived with me till she passed away and it was that relationship you know I always laughed at them because I always thought of them as the the agent's afternoon son of you know of our neighborhood because like my mom was very much like Lamont and she was very much like Red Fox very you know she's like I'm gonna die any minute and she never did she's never sick she's always threatened to die like right then and there you know and my mom was tried to you know appeal to her and a lot of it had to do with like oh I didn't marry a terrible person um but yeah but addressing her my grandmother actually never hit on my dad I was about to mention that that was that was actually I had another character my mom had a friend in the camp and they only had one scene and in which she was the one who was first attracted to my dad and then my mom was like no I'm not gonna do that but it was weird to suddenly just have one character and I was like I'll just take that and shove it into my grandmother's character and then just have that be there because it doesn't make sense and also I only had two actresses so I didn't have another actress to shove up so it was out of necessity that that happened and then it became really funny so I just was like how about it guys yeah hey I have one more question which is you said you wrote this first play when you were 22 about you know the experience of Vietnamese Americans or Vietnamese people a successful Vietnamese American writer to speak for the Vietnamese American experience wow it's definitely an onus that I start to realize is on me more and more now like when I started I was totally like the kind of rock and roll kid who was like not that's not my thing I'm just gonna write what I want and then as more and more people started to write to me very angrily that I wasn't taking up that responsibility I started to realize that it was really the angry audience members that would write to me because I did get those that they're like oh you're not speaking about us more you've written a lot of things about you know I see someone there with some plays of mine that deal with dragons and zombies but you don't write you know but you're one of the few you know Vietnamese American writers out there and you never write about Vietnamese and so to finally start doing this like I'm starting to realize the impact that I have specifically I got an email like during the first month of this run and it was from this this young Asian kid I don't even know if he was Vietnamese and the end in the email just said you know as an Asian American kid the world teaches me or tells me I need to be weak but this play made me feel strong and so that was like okay I realize I have a responsibility so it's one that I'm starting to take more seriously and is that something you're gonna be pursuing of a Hollywood career going on now you're writing for TV is this something you're gonna be doing yeah well with that doubt I would I would definitely would like to see I would I would go more positive Asian American representation but right now any Asian American representation out there that you know so that's definitely you know when it comes to Hollywood and TV that's something that I'm definitely pursuing but I'm still I'll be writing these plays too everything starts on time everything ends on time which is unusual in the American theater so we have about six minutes I love the rap music and the songs and just I mean it was so moving and the other piece of the play that really was amazing to me was how we could be laughing hysterically but then you put the mic up a little closer oh but then I'd have tears in my eyes you know the next second and just you just did a beautiful balance there of helping us hear what you wanted to say through the through both ways so thank you very much absolutely we have a microphone there and then we'll come to you so I understand that there's more to the story there is and I'm wondering where you are with that story and when might we expect to hear more especially about your father's first wife or relatives oh yeah well I mean that's what the plays are about cause there's things in this play that that I only answer the do they get together in play one but like play two, three, four and five really five plays five plays I didn't mean for it to be five plays it's funny how that happens I meant to write a two part play cause I'll make it I'll just answer real quick and then as I kept during I realized I had too much story for each play and so I just kept on going okay well I've outlined five plays so I'm at an outline stage they've been outlined play two is basically about my parents getting married cause all you get in play one is them getting together play two is their marriage dealing with my dad's first wife what happened to my you know like well I actually don't answer the brother question yet in that play two but it's really about that marriage and it's going to be a while before the play comes out so I'll just tell you what it's about so play two is basically like at some point like they get married the first wife finds out you know my dad's alive and they get you know get in contact again which immediately annulles their marriage my mom's and dad's marriage that really happened for those of you who hasn't seen the play one thing you find out early is that the character of Quy's father had a wife and kids in Vietnam who he lost in the Exodus out of Vietnam and so it's really them dealing with that and how my parents relationship survives and manages through that period it's very very rocky play three deals with my mom's brother in the play that you get a little bit you know the question does he make it to America or not and he doesn't like that was with a very the verse play that I ever wrote was actually about that that was done poorly and so this is my second attempt to finally write that play and it's basically like him his wife has two kids in 1988 boarded a Vietnamese fishing boat and tried to make it to America but the engine of the boat died they all lost their lives except for the youngest son which is who we adopted as my brother and it was my mom's kind of struggle and fight to get him to America it was the the story the play three play four is actually brings you all the way back to like 1940s 50s Vietnam because it deals with my grandmother's suicide in 1999 and in that play we'll go back and explore Vietnam that existed before the war because we never talk about that Vietnam right and so you get to Vietnam her experiences of being a not a sign brighter I can't think of the word but like about her life and her two marriages and then the last play is about my parents to that today this moment they're dealing with retirement for the first time and this and also there's this kind of motif like at the very first in the very last scene or second to last scene you hear about them going to a diner well my mom actually ends up working in that diner and owning that diner and that's the diner we grew up in and then in just this past year it's the reason why I had like they were able to afford college or everything for me and my mom had independence right you know it ends with a crow crashing a car through my mom's diner and that's the end of my mom's diner that actually happened this year and so I was like well I know how this play ends because it all wraps around this one diner that is actually the crux of my parents' marriage because there was a lot of like in play too you'll see there's a lot of fighting between my mom and my dad when the marriage gets rocky my mom wants to buy this diner because the people are leaving and my dad very like very unsure of himself was like no I'm a Vietnamese man you're a Vietnamese woman you have to listen to me we've saved all this money to buy a house not a diner if you want to go through that you know we're not going to do that my mom's responses then you can get the hell out and kick my dad out and my dad disappeared for a week and I was a little kid and I was like five or six at the time just bawling my eyes I was like what happened to dad where's he going he hasn't come back and then after five or six days and he told me about what happened there he finally comes back home with the deets to the diner puts him down and it's like I'd rather be your husband than a Vietnamese man and from this point forward you are that head of this household that's it and so it's the story from that point forward of how my mom becomes the matriarch that is uncommon when it comes to my mom is the most powerful voice in my family and so that is kind of what this five play journey is it's about their marriage and how they how the marriage goes this way and this way it's not a love story of like it's all perfect like it's each time it was about how my dad and my mom had to actually make each other fall in love with each other again to save themselves from the broken marriage from the death and it's really about how love saves them each and every time over five decades wow that was pretty amazing and it's pretty exciting and we kind of have to leave it there so thank you all very much for coming and thank you for coming thank you hold on thank you