 Let me talk a little bit about it. Oh, great. So where are we guys from, sir? Oh, excellent. Wow. So the event that they were doing at the early. Oh, great. Yes. And Seth is on, though. Seth is on. To a duty, as he would be. Because he's Seth. Thank you, everybody, for being so patient. I appreciate it. As you probably already know, I'm Terry Stratton, director of education and outreach here at GIL. They went to my mother who's now watching online. Let me just remind you to silence your cell phones, please. You don't need to turn them off if you want to tweet or do anything like that to tell everybody about the wonderful things our panel is saying. That would be great. On the back of your program, you'll see my email address. If you have ideas for other seminars you'd be interested in in the new year, please let me know. I would like your feedback. That would be fantastic. I'm going to be sitting outside waiting for late comers. When we have the question and answer session, if you have a question, please make sure you ask it very loudly so our online audience will be able to hear the question as well. All right, without further ado, it is my great pleasure to introduce Christine Toy Johnson. He'll be leading our conversation this evening. Thank you. Thanks, Terry. Hi, Ted. I honestly don't think I've ever been in a panel that's being live streamed. You can get Twitter. It's very exciting. This, I want to introduce this wonderful panel, Kia Karthin, Fernanda Kapo, John Wideman. Please come up. Well, I wanted to let you know what we're talking about today. I was having a conversation with the lovely Seth Koderman and Gary Garrison one day about how perceptions that we have of ourselves and each other really impacts our storytelling. And it impacts our world view, how we populate the plays that we're writing, what we're writing about. And it occurred to me that I really wanted to talk to these three great writers about how they're writing a lot of topics and people and characters that you might not assume that they would write about. And it occurred to me that hearing from them about what their perceptions were of people that were not like themselves, how that was inspiring them to write what they're writing and impacting what they wanted to say in their place. So I've asked them to each start the conversation with telling us a little bit about the kinds of things that spark their interest, that lead them on the road of choosing to write, to spend an enormous amount of time and effort in years and blood and sweat and tears on a specific topic or something. And I think I'm going to start with John. Okay, I'll talk about a particular show that I wrote because it's the one which is most clearly on all fours with what Christine is talking about. And it was the first show I wrote, it was Pacific Overtures, which is a musical about the consequences. Well, it's a musical which is about Commodore Perry's expedition to Japan in 1853, which forced a country which had lived in isolation deliberately for 250 years, forced it into intercourse with the rest of the world. And I had studied East Asian history, particularly modern Japanese history. I had majored in college, which was a very weird thing to do when I did it, which was in the 60s. People didn't do that. Asia was still a very alien place for white middle-class guys like me from New York. But that's what I did. And I came out of it fascinated by the history of particularly Japan, China as well, and I felt that I knew a whole bunch of stories that most other people in this country didn't. And when I decided to sit down and write a play about the Perry expedition, I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to approach it. But I had a conversation with Hal Prince about it, and he said, well, you know, if you want to tell the story from an American perspective, it's a relatively minor event in American history, but a cataclysmic event from the Japanese point of view had completely changed the history of the country. Surely that's the perspective from which you want to examine these events. And I said, yeah, you're right. It is. And so, you know, in tandem with Hal, Steve Sondheim and I said about telling this story, but we had made a very deliberate decision to tell it from the point of view of people who weren't like us. I'm not sure whether American sailors on a steamship in 1853 would have been much like us either, and you know, you always make these leaps when you're dealing with people from another period of time. But the story, the interesting part of the story, the important part of the story, required us to tell it from the Japanese point of view, which is what we did. And you know, we were challenged at the time and have been challenged from time to time since then about how we could tell an authentic story from that point of view. And authentic is a very slippery word. I think we'll all be talking about it a lot. And the implication was that if you were Japanese, you would be able to tell this story in a way that would be emotionally, culturally, historically accurate, and that if you weren't, you couldn't. And that's not wrong, except it is. I mean, the authenticity, what we would produce was an authentic version of the story as it was perceived by three white middle-class guys in New York writing about what happened to Japan. That is not inauthentic, it's just different. And if it was done for the right reasons, and I believe we were doing it for the right reasons because we thought it was a compelling story, which involved the United States, involved the impact of something the United States had done, but which demonstrated what that impact, almost casual impact was on another culture, then we thought we would wind up with something that would be compelling in the theater. And I think we did. But we were all aware of the fact in 1975 that we were not pretending to be Japanese, but that we were telling a story from a perspective other than our own, although as soon as we assumed the perspective, then it became our own. However, we eventually delivered it. That's a little convoluted, but that's how we operated as authors when we were dealing with a cast of characters who were different from us. Not only had they lived 150 years before we did, but they lived in another country, they spoke another language, and we did not see that as a bar to telling an honest story about who they were and what happened to them. I think it's really interesting that you talked about how you took the show to Japan or that it was done in Tokyo. Can you just speak a little bit about the response there? The show was not down to Japan for a long time, and it was produced at the New National Theater I guess about 10 years ago. It was staged by an extraordinary Japanese director Amon Miyamoto, who was a celebrity director in Japan. Steve Sannam and I were both in Japan in Tokyo for different reasons. He was receiving the Japanese equivalent of the Nobel Prize, and I was looking for work. So we were both there. So we went, and with some trepidation, primarily, not because, why? Because we had taken some, we had taken liberties with some of the facts of what had occurred and when things happened, and honestly, if we were writing the show now, I think I would be harder on myself about making the show work without doing that. But we had no idea how a Japanese audience, a New York audience in 1975, only knew what we were telling it. They didn't know anything. They didn't know anything about the facts that they brought it to the theater. But a Japanese audience obviously knew this story inside out. What we discovered was that the Japanese audience was entirely relaxed and comfortable with what, this story, these Americans had told about their country 20 years, 25 years previously, and it helped that it was a brilliant production. But it was, to be reassuring, it was enormously gratifying to see that what we had done in New York with Japanese and Japanese American actors could then be picked up by a Japanese director and be done in Tokyo, in Japanese, for a Japanese audience, and that they really responded to it. And in fact, that production was then picked up and brought back to New York and done at the Lincoln Center Festival in Japanese with English super titles so that there was this extraordinarily satisfying circular trip that this show had made. And honestly, that production is the best production I've ever seen at the show. Was there any time that you were afraid to even approach the subject matter or you were young and eager and... You know, yeah, I was young and eager but you can add an arrogant to that, I suppose. I mean, it never... I really do mean it. I mean, I'm older than anybody else here so I can say it. I went to a very good high school in New York and Asian history or Asian culture was never mentioned. It was as if that half of the world just didn't exist. And at Harvard, majoring in East Asian studies was still, like I said, it was a very thin sliver of the student body that was interested in this material at all. So I thought I came out of college with this as a kind of an expert. And I mean, an expert in America, an expert in New York and the fact that everybody in Japan knew what I knew and, you know, times a thousand was sort of like that. That wasn't the point. It was just, it was who I was dealing with in New York. It was a long time ago and things Japanese were very alien. There were no sushi restaurants, maybe there were a couple, you know. But the way in which we have gotten comfortable with the Japanese and the Japanese have gotten comfortable with us was a very alien phenomenon. It was very little... When we did the show, we did show out of town in Washington and the first production, a group of World War II veterans who were still around had purchased tickets in the front row. And when the show started, they got up and very visibly walked out. That's how long ago, that's how different the world was then. So that, you know, I use the word arrogant, arrogant in the sense that we felt we were dealing with, we could sort of do what we wanted. I spent a lot of time at the Japan Society while I was working on the show. And afterwards, so it's not as if it was being done in a Caucasian bubble. But it kind of was. It kind of was. We'll come back to talking about a lot of your other work based on a lot of historical characters. But I'd love to ask Fernando now about to let us know what you were writing about and what's sparking your interest. When I sit down to write something? Yeah. I think in the most general sense, I have to be obsessed about something, either by love or hate. And whatever that is, it has to really be an obsession of mine, something that I'll still be obsessed with when I'm stuck on page 62 and I have no idea what's going to end. And I hate all my characters. So I guess I start from that place and then I like to do research, obviously as much research as I can, especially if I'm doing something outside of the world that I'm from. What is your favorite way of researching people that are unlike yourself? Well, I guess obviously reading. Reading is good. Also, I like to watch interviews. I like to watch. I like to observe people, the way they speak, and all of the general details that are foreign to me. And then I kind of just like to put all of the things that I researched away because I think that sometimes you can get really stuck in the research and the work can become an encyclopedia and not a dramatic text. And then I kind of just write the first draft with whatever stuck at that point from the details, from the things that I had remembered from the research of the people I spoke of or observed or whatever. And then I like to go back to the research. But basically I think that your first draft should always come from an organic place of like bravery that you absorbed, whatever you wanted to absorb about the people that are furthest away from you. And then also the actors that you cast and the people in the production once this awesome work is produced, hopefully, bring a lot to it. So I feel like in the truest sense since theater is so collaborative, what you need to bring to it is like your organic sort of perspective, your emotional connection to whatever you're writing about. And then you have so many people to help you with the rest. So like openness and organic sort of connection to whatever your subject is. What is a story or character that you've written that is farthest away from who you are and your inner circle of friends and family? What's the most different? I'd say a white male. I'd say that was very far away from me. And my issue with that character and those plays that I write would be not to have them be like a caricature because I don't want that when I see plays about Latino people or gay people. I don't want that character to be that way. And so to be sort of kind and compassionate to all of your characters no matter what they represent in your work is something that has really helped me in that sense. Well, there's something about stereotypes and how it seems like if I could write a stereotypical Asian-American person and kind of get away with it except my friends would hate me, but I could kind of get away with it more than John could. And I think that's an interesting dance we do. And I don't know if you have any thoughts about that if you're seeing... Do you feel like it's more palatable if you see a stereotype about someone like you or something that's written by someone not like you or... Do you know what I'm saying? Well, I mean... Okay, say I'll just use myself as an example. So on television it's easier to talk about some really horrible Asian-American stereotypes that are on television right now. One that comes to mind is a sitcom called Two Broke Girls. There's this character that we... He's just a... And really it's a male character, so I'm offended for my male Asian-American friends that he's sort of stereotypically nerdy, asexual, sort of a buffoon and I cringe and I hope that it's not being written by an Asian-American staff member, but if it were, I don't know how it would... If I would feel worse, I guess I'm answering my own question in a way. It's just something... Well, I mean, I think TV's really different. Yeah. In TV, there's a time crunch. Well, the front is working on a television show or she just finished one. I just finished one, yeah. So you can speak a little bit about it. There's a time crunch, so there's not that delicious time in the theater where we can research and work on our plays and workshop. It's very, like, quick. There are also bosses and then bosses above those bosses and then bosses above those bosses and people with a lot of money. And so, ultimately, I think stereotypes are more prevalent because of time and also because of money. Because people who are producing the shows or have the money don't have the most worldly view of these characters or these situations. So I think as the only Latino staff member on a show that was set on the border, I know that that wasn't always a priority. The way we're representing everybody, the priority was to get everything done and to make it entertaining in the way that they all understand entertainment to be. Right. So it's hard because, you know, I've been in that position where I'm the only one and then they go back and they're like, no, we want it to be more like this and this is a stereotype. And then you're in this really tricky situation where it's like, you need to pay your bills. Right. You know? And you're, and this is wrong, but at the same time in the bigger picture, you have to look at it in the bigger picture of what this means to you, not a lot of people of color right for television. Right. You're usually the only one in the room and it takes getting to certain levels to make things change. So it's different. But I definitely think that the one thing I can say that my bosses had a lot of attention to detail on the show. So I think that authenticity was interpreted as details in that setting. I mean, I, to me, it's the question you're raising is most problematic in a comedy. Right. In which stereotypes, I mean not necessarily, but in a comedy where a stereotype is used as a kind of a pandering shortcut to get cheap and easy laughs. Right. That's less of an issue in the theater than it is, I think, in a mass, some kind of mass entertainment film. But in that case, I, you know, the pressures on, I mean, if there's an Asian-American writer who is being essentially, was expected to deliver that character, kind of covered, that's a really, that's a bad situation. That's a bad situation. But I would have sympathy for the writer who was in that, who had been put in that position. You said something last night when we chatted about this, about an expectation of, when you're writing musicals, if it was set in another time period, can you, can you, I'm not... Yeah, no, no, musicals, musicals traditionally have been set in, not involved contemporary characters, they've been set elsewhere. And usually the period pieces, whether it's My Fair Lady or Oklahoma, because, you know, if you, if you're going to write a musical in which people are talking to each other the way we're talking to each other now and want to start to sing, it's odd. But if you're in... If you're starting out with the idea that you're in France in 1870, it's just an easier step out of this sort of exotic, is that a word? Is that the word I want? This otherness into song. And it's only recently that people really have started to use contemporary characters, tell contemporary stories in the musical theater. And, you know, it's still for the most part in order to make music work. A lot of people go to stories which are set in another time and another place. I just was thinking about that because of the question of stereotypes, and I wonder if sometimes it's been more accepted to have those kind of stereotypes in musicals that are set in other periods because we're not living in that world and so we can sort of keep an arm's length from it. I think that's probably true. Yeah. We'll come to, come back to that. Hia, can you tell us a little bit about... I know that you've been, you've been writing about a lot of things that people would say, I would never know that you would know something about that or I'm surprised that you were inspired by that Well, when you ask where I start, I'll fit in democracy now. I mean, I'm a political writer so I always start with something political. You want me to elaborate? Yeah, I do. Well, a few years ago, I was fortunate that the Guthrie Theater had these commissions where they got this big grand and they picked nine American playwrights so we could go wherever we wanted our world, in the world and write about the experience. So while some thought that my research does come from books, actually I could do it there at this time. So I went, in 2004, I went to Liberia as they were transitioning out of their civil war. And I... Yeah, and then you write the play and so that was actually interesting. You know, some things people think, oh, I'm black and that's Africa, so therefore it's your culture, but it's actually a totally different culture. Completely. Because where did you grow up? Maryland and Appalachia. That's pretty far away from Africa. But I... Yes, so... So yeah, part of it, because there's an American history, part of it is a history play because it was settled by free American blacks with something called the American Colonization Society. It's a whole other story, but so part of it's a history play and some of that is Americans and then ultimately it's a big three act play and by the end it's completely given over to the Africans because it comes to the present about the time that I was there. And so when we did a workshop of it in Minneapolis where they got three, it's interesting because there are lots of Liberian expats in Minneapolis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, I wrote another play for the Children's Theater there with Somalis because there's a huge Somali community so I had two Somali girls. That was a whole different exploration of a different culture. But with this, I had a person from the university who was like my guide, my consultant, so he was really helpful and he brought 10 people there from the community and he was a little late. I think there was maybe one person there by the first act. There were a couple by the second act. Most didn't get there to the third act. But that didn't keep them from ripping it to shreds. Interesting because I could understand that because they're thinking, what does this American know, right? The interesting thing is my Berians are very expressive. So in the theater, they were like so angry about it. When the theater didn't do it, they called the theater because they were so angry because the theater's not doing this play. It was, but I had, some of what they said was useful and I considered that and incorporated it. And some I had to remember what happened there and for example, part of it, I was on the firestone plantation which is an American firestone plantation and it's enormous. There's a million acres and they turn it into rubber plantation and pay the people nickels and you know to do all this work, right? And the only white person I met in Liberia was this person, this big blond man who was like in charge. That was very weird because the family sent me up this interview. He didn't say anything. It was just like staring at me but I'm talking to other people. This is very, very weird and creepy. But then we went to the workers, the tappers, they were coming back and it was, I mean, I mean it's a long story but they were in these shacks with you know half the slats of the roof missing and this was the rainy season and it was just everybody and the children came out and they were really happy because there were people here that were not they. I mean it was me and my family. My family was Liberian but my family dressed, they had comparably more money. I mean everybody's poor there right after the war but they had comparably more money to these people that were desperately poor. So they came out because it was actually different people here and I remember, I'm actually, I always say I could never be a journalist because I'm not very good with interviewing people because I'm always conflicted between wanting to understand the story to write and really feeling like I'm in other people's business. But as it turns out, Liberian English is very, especially for working class people is very hard for Americans to understand. So my family were speaking to them anyway and they just asked all these questions so I found out, you know these people that had to do with to have a ton of sap a month and all this and you know, no days off and as we were leaving, I'm almost going to wrap up in a song story. I got a question. As we were about to leave there were sort of two different places that we went and a young man came out of the forest and he started talking really quickly and I thought this will be the person to say what are you doing here? This is none of your business and actually what he said was I'm so glad you're here somebody needs to finally tell our stories. So I had to balance that with the Liberians in Minneapolis. Some of what they said certainly was legitimate but other stuff partly because they were angry again because somebody was talking about this. They said, Firestone is not even an issue anymore. Nobody was. And it was totally an issue and I had to balance what they said that was useful in terms of the culture with what I saw with my own eyes and what that man said to me about telling this story. And the point of what you wanted to say getting really being the bottom line. Yeah, and what I say ultimately the characters that I wrote were not the Minneapolis Liberians they were not the Liberians that I saw they were from my head but it was enriched by understanding the culture. I have to say one last thing which is all of this is a horrible work they're doing of tapping all these trees the rubber it's latex for our condoms that's why there's this near slave labor there for American condoms, right Simon? Well, you sort of answered it I wondered whether the critical response from the Liberian audience in Minneapolis was mostly about the politics of what you were presenting or was about she thinks that's us but that's not us she doesn't know who we are. I think she got us wrong. Yes, I think the latter but like I said most of them didn't get the third act so I believe and I'm not saying right or wrong but I'm saying that they were upset and the first was I was only there a couple of weeks so I think they felt that I didn't have the authority to write that and of course the project was about Americans going to other countries so it wasn't about a Liberian but yes, that's what I believe is that for example, somebody was this sort of says yes to both your questions in a way because a woman said that she was upset because I focused on women characters and that who were tappers actually and in the contemporary story and how women don't work outside the home and da da da and in Liberia and da da da and I think it was just nine days before that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected in Liberia the first female president of Africa but they just sort of were ignoring that sort of reality and no one brought that up and because of legitimate fears about someone else I would say co-opt in the culture I think they are afraid that it might be wrong to the point I think in this instance of maybe some of them deciding it was wrong before they heard it I think that's an interesting thing about whether the important thing was that you heard from somebody thank you for telling the story that's a really powerful thing even when I was there I actually made a documentary film with my Caucasian husband about the first non-Caucasian pro basketball player he's a Japanese-American guy from the 1947 Knicks so this is 1947 Knicks and I'm Chinese-American but for some reason over this period of time a lot of research and work about Japanese-Americans in the 40s and the intern camps and so some people would say well why are you interested that's what's offensive to me actually why are you interested in the Japanese-American story I am but the larger more important thing to both Bruce and I was that the number of Japanese-American people who came up to us and still do and say thank you for telling the story and that's the bottom line I guess to us we say whenever we feel even put on the defensive at all or put on the spot made to think maybe we shouldn't we don't have the right to tell the story that we are the ones who are telling the story we actually made the film we're getting the story out there and it's had a really big impact John I wanted to get back to talking about a lot of your work being based on or the things that you respond to have a lot of historical most of what I've written for the musical theater some historical something has caught my eye and has spurred my interest and that's where the show's going to be and you know I'm an assassin and I'm probably the best known and you know the conceit in that piece Steve Sondheim and I gathered together everybody who'd ever attacked the president and kind of put them together in one space and let them kind of interact with each other but the process of dealing with those was exactly I did a lot of research a lot of reading and then I sort of set all that stuff and basically invented the people and the inventions were informed by and based on everything I'd absorbed and then I kind of went back to the research to see if I wanted to tweak anything or change anything and didn't but I also whenever I've written a historical figure that's been sort of the the approach and I think it's if you're going to write a play would deal with this material in a particular way it would be great but plays are not documentaries and so they have to be fueled by some you know authors impulse I mean I'm working on a piece which is sort of not finished yet in which Charles Lindbergh is a character I mean I have a view of Lindbergh which Scott Berg who wrote sort of the standard biography of Lindbergh might not entirely subscribe to but I believe it and you can't talk me out of it because it makes psychological sense to me and I think that's sort of a playwright's work and you know but when you are starting with characters that people are familiar with in one way or another even if only glancingly you know people will say no that's that's not that's not Lee Harvey Osmo I said well yeah it is that's my Lee Harvey Osmo I guess on the flip side of this whole conversation is whether or not I'm interested to know whether or not any of you feel a responsibility for lack of a better word to write about your own culture or your own family stories and or who you're most touched by we haven't talked to you in a while so we talked to you in a while so yes in short well I mean I look at theater right now and I don't see a lot of people like me and that really angers me so I think it is important for me to continue to write stories that are close to home also because sometimes that's really good work like that's something that nobody can take away from you you are you have the authority on the authenticity of your own life and what you've seen etc so I mean definitely yeah I do think twice sometimes when I sit down because I know that there's a lack of flitino playwrights and of them being produced and so I do feel like that's an important thing I also think it's important to identify in that way also as a gay woman I think that's important too so yeah I do think about it I think it's really important to think about those things and when you're populating the world of your play when you're writing it do you specifically say this needs to be even if it's not a character that might need to be about race or ethnicity or sexual orientation but somebody that could be of many different or any different kinds of you know I'm trying to say do you write specifically in your script I've heard some people say well I know I write any ethnicity sometimes or I've never done it I like to write for actors that I see actors inspire me a lot so somebody I like that is of a different ethnicity I'll write them in so I've never done that before I've seen other people do that but that's just me personally I work better with people that inspire me and so I write for people generally what about you Q do you feel a responsibility to write about your own culture and your own family experience I don't feel a responsibility but I usually like to write about it so for example I wrote about landmines and about US responsibility for landmines around the world and part of it there's an employee at General Electric and they're black it was actually interesting because it was the first time I wrote about bourgeois blacks because I came from working class I usually write working class but yeah I didn't just I think in writing a not a play that's not about race and that wasn't about race but I just have to make all the characters black and deal with this issue yeah well I was the white man on the panel up here the you know the country has given me a free pass to write whatever I want and one of the things that underlies this entire conversation is the fact that non-white male voices still have a great deal of difficulty being heard in the state spaces around this country and I think you know things have gotten better but they have a long, long, long way to go and I think that a lot of what we're talking about will almost be self-correcting when a variety of voices have access to stages that they have to struggle to gain access to now and as I'm saying the 2040 the majority will be the minority and some of these issues are going to be simply self-correcting maybe we'll see but the theater is a place which you know as a cultural institution it should absolutely be the way as I was sort of pulling the rest of the culture behind it it seems to me that it's positioning in a way that makes it possible for the theater to behave that way and theater should do a better job commercial producers should do a better job but not for profit should do it a better job it's you know if anybody read Outrageous Fortune Todd London's book about what it means to be a playwright by quantifying it he demonstrated that it's actually not possible to be a playwright but that the yeah no read the book but nevertheless there are playwrights all over the United States the two things appear to be incompatible but they're not he also quantifies how difficult it is to get original non-white male voices on stage and it shouldn't be I feel like it has a lot to do with going back to the word perceptions perceptions of who who people think we are and how we fit into the American landscape I know I'm an actor as well as a writer and almost every new play that I have read a reading situation or audition for if there is an Asian character it's an Asian from Asia character there's not a lot of Asian-American stories except for those of us who are trying to write our own experience and you know for me personally my mother side of the family has been here since the 1860s so if we're assumed that I were writing about a Chinese story I would have to do more research about Chinese from China than people who grew up in Westchester County because that's where I grew up and that's an interesting part of this puzzle I think about trying to crack those assumptions of what kind of stories we we should be telling or that we would be telling and so I think that's why I'm so interested in hearing about all the variety of things that are on your minds and what inspires you to spend years and years and years and like I said blood and sweat and tears on a particular player musical there's a quote I'm going to put John on the spot a little again because I read he knows about this I evidently there's the Melbourne Australia debut of Pacific Overtures coming up there's still time to get and there was an article on some social media thing lately that quoted the director of this production saying that she was planning on doing cross cultural and cross gender casting which is really strange I don't know if you know Pacific Overtures but it's especially strange in Pacific Overtures but this is the inflammatory quote that the director said she said this is a story by an American playwright about a moment in Japanese history so it doesn't claim any cultural authenticity I know what she means and the language dresses the idea up a little bit but the essential statement is because Steve and I are not Japanese there is no way we could write something which would be culturally authentic set in Japan and what she means is we can't replicate or duplicate something which a Japanese playwright would write I suppose she's right but that doesn't mean there isn't as I said earlier an authenticity to what two writers in New York who aren't Japanese would choose to write about this particular episode writing it from the Japanese point of view it's a it's not odd but it's a disqualifying it's a sort of dismissive disqualifying statement that really needs to be examined you know I think the more you know you know at some point we'll reach a point where I think identity is an option for writers the way it's an option for me I mean I could write about you know the fact that my father was Jewish and my mother wasn't if I wanted to and I certainly don't have to and I'm not letting anybody down if I don't this is my country man look at the government it would be well I don't don't misinterpret my politics it would be terrific to reach a point where statements like that wouldn't hurt anybody I want to be clear I don't mean that you know I remember seeing the college museum at the public theater and whatever year that was and I thought this is an extraordinary piece of work and I thought I felt like I was being allowed to I was being let in on a conversation between George Wolfe and that basically was talking to a black audience that was the audience for the piece but that it was being made available to me it's like I could come in the room and listen but that the experience of black audience was having of the basis he was touching and how he was touching them would have a whole different resonance from me because I had had different experience growing up in this country but you know and George has now worked in a lot of different areas direct a lot of different things some of which are specific to black people some of which aren't and it just seems to me it would be great to reach a point where you didn't feel angry about because that was your word about the way in which Latinos were being represented or not represented and whether or not Latino author was sort of misrepresenting the culture that I'm stumbling now but it's just we remain in a very very difficult place for people writing from anything other than a majority perspective I just have a question that's the director is she Japanese-Australian I don't mean so I mean it's just an excuse because she wants to do whatever she wants with the play exactly exactly what it is so anything goes I can do whatever I want because a Japanese person didn't write this so yeah whatever and I'm a Japanese but that doesn't matter it's very interesting and actually if she reads her contract the theater's contract with a licensing contract she can't do that what your play looks like on stage not entirely but you can't have you ever had a case where well for example I've read about there was a production of hairspray being done somewhere in Texas over the last year or two where there were maybe no African American people in the show which seems ridiculous because it's about race but actually I think there was a quote from Mark Shaman that said well they did the play so it's okay but I just don't call me on that but I believe I read it because I was surprised that he was okay with it but have you ever had or have any of you ever had an instance where a play that you've written specifically about where the gender, ethnicity presence or absence of disability any of those things are really germane to your story and the person who or the company that's done the show not honored those things no I'm sure there have been productions of Pacific Overtures that have not been cast entirely with Asian or Asian American actors but I haven't seen them but I'm sure it's happened so it's not like hairspray I can show you my bank account also it's interesting that because I was in the off Broadway revival where it mirrored the original Broadway production in that all of the women's roles were played by men in the style of traditional and no theater and then in the roundabout revival you guys chose to have the women women's roles played by men honestly it was you know when I go back to this I use the word arrogance how Prince wanted to create this sort of amalgam of Kabuki theater and American musical theater which was a really interesting idea because Kabuki is big and vivid and there were certain decisions that were in retrospect seem kind of indulgent. It's like okay you know what we'll have the women played by men because that's the Japanese theatrical tradition but honestly you know when Steven and I saw the piece in Tokyo with a woman women played women it was like oh look it's much more affecting it doesn't seem like you know I think what always felt like kind of a gimmick and you know the Japanese you know as I said in this production Amanmianmaru we did it the way he wanted to do it which was fine and you know the actresses were wonderful and when we did it the roundabout it was like yeah no let's get rid of that that wasn't that seemed like a good idea at the time it does seem like a good idea anymore interesting and then you wouldn't have any sopranos right if it well wasn't that a problem that's what Steve had written Steve always writes for his actors and you know because because you write slowly the show is all cast and so he was writing for whatever vocal whatever vocal skills were already in the comic well and so in the Broadway production in our revival the women were Karogo during the play which is the staged hand so we had black hoods over heads until the very last number which was supposed to be modern day Japan so that the women were in the in society but so that was kind of deep too because to be a woman with a hood in your first Sondheim show it really took its toll for a while I have to say but I got the finale but it's not the finale the way Christine describes it it's like that was an idea built into the way the show because it's a very traditional Japanese theatrical concept that the women are the sort of stage hands and the women's roles are played by men but then when we sort of slam into the future it's like of course the women will come out as women it's only one of them it's a really difficult one it's a prize maybe we should take some questions how's that I have a question about when you were in Liberia you refer to your family was that a family that was assigned to you or did your own real personal family travel there with you no actually when I decided to go it was because there were all these different places I wanted to go I couldn't decide and I was somehow drawn in 2003 which is when we got this grant that's actually when the rebels descended upon Monrovians who have all held broke loose the warming going on for like depending on how you count 14 or 20 years but then suddenly it was the news it sort of disappeared from the news it was all over the news there was something about it was really drawn to go there but it took me like a year because of everything that was going on before I was able to make a connection a friend of mine another playwright who was she went to a different place she suggested to go through the universities and about a year later they were sort of finally coming round in Monrovi and through them I made a connection of an American who lived their years and years but was back here for years but she it was a former student of hers who had grown up in his family so I because I went there yeah in them and when I got off the phone because there have been some weird emails I remember when I got off the plane which was only once a week I was like if I don't see them I'm getting right back on that plane but there was only one plane a week that would go wow at that time yeah so they took you under their wing and started you around yeah these wonderful meetings and I you know I never would have gotten into those people at Firestone which really an education but also to refugee camps I got to meet the person with the big refugee what was it called the I-R-R-C the international refugee something committee yeah it was it was an incredible sad depressing a little scary kind of amazing trip but yeah yeah Tim just based on the stories that you've shared with us tonight I get the impression and please correct me if I'm wrong that it's fair to say that as playwrights you have a responsibility you feel you have a personal responsibility both towards the world as it is and the world that you want it to be put another way reality versus truth and I guess my question is I'd love to hear from all of you what your personal compass is and when those two things aren't the same thing like where do you go where do you lean towards when you encounter that sort of thing if that makes sense if I'm hearing you right reality versus truth truth is more important to me which is to say that for example when I was talking about Liberia I made up fictional characters but that they come to a certain universal truth I don't know what the question is to speak specifically to that story what is it that causes you to say no these characters are going to do what I want versus what an authentic critic might suggest that they do like what's your barometer for that and when you make the tough call I you know what I'll just say about this this is actually not the only play I've written but you know an interesting thing about this zillion years ago I read Augusto Bowell's theater of the oppressed it was so long ago I don't remember much about it but the one thing that always stayed with me was that if an audience if you're doing political theater and an audience leaves so devastated that all they can do is throw up their hands and despair then you've really not done anything because they're not going to do anything they're just going to say there's nothing to be done that you should provide a little bit of hope and I tried to stay by that since then but it has to be truth it can't be a forced happy ending when I went to Liberia everything was so depressing I mean there were things like we went to the Liberian Broadcasting Society where it was like you know part of it was built rebuilt after the war but one part we went to was all black just where the whole building was burnt and all you can see was exit signs and this like frame and the buses that were all burnt people were walking for miles and miles because there weren't any buses there were bullet holes everywhere there was no electricity or hot water my family had a generator so we had a little bit of generated electricity for a few hours a day so the thing was for the most part we went to the bush that was like the scariest part we spent a weekend there because they the rebels because there was no TV or radio that went out there there was a little bit finely in the city but it didn't go out there so they didn't know the war so it was be over right so that was the great but people in the city did and so people felt much better and even a year before if I had gone much much better in terms of safety but it was just so depressing because there was no money there should be which is a whole other story of how much the US owes that country but I'll like save that for another time but I like on that plantation where they're getting on this money of firestone but so I wasn't sure that I could write the hope at the end of this play and that without forcing it what happened was when I wrote that play and I kind of wrote it in the order from start to finish starting 18th century and sort of coming round the irony was when I got to the end going in order the journey that it went on became so much about the resiliency of humanity it is actually the most hopeful ending I've ever ended and it was I've ever written and it was totally organic I did not see that coming at all so does that answer a little ok do you want to respond I don't know that was really good no words of wisdom yeah I don't know I mean I agree with what Kia is saying I think that you can't really write reality where writers it's heightened reality it's the theater so ultimately your characters are leading to a certain truth a certain point that you're trying to make and that should be your compass you know which is I think kind of what you said yeah and I know I would absolutely but that was very well put I mean I think that as I said almost everything I've written has got some basis in history and there's no no playwright writes a documentary and you know I tend to look at historical material and most of the stuff is either about Americans behaving badly or Americans who have been pushed into a position where we perceive them as behaving badly and they are but there's an exploration for the reason for that and the particularly because their musicals it's easier to heighten the characters to lift them to a place where they can separate from whatever you would read about them and behave the way I want them to in order to deliver the whatever the thing is that I want to show to the loop oh yes question how do you feel that's in the Pacific overtures if the Japanese characters are played by Americans as it was and what originally I understand and the Americans played by Japanese the cast of the original Broadway production were all either Asian Americans or Asians the and sort of the conceit I mean that was essential it was felt that that was important so the story is being told from a Japanese perspective and so it was kind of their story and having Perry appeared as a kind of a nightmare figure in this ghost story not somebody you know a recognizable figure played by a Caucasian actor and it has always been our intention that when the play is when the piece is done it should be done that way and there are times when you know I'm in the world of production that Christine was in especially 1985 the opportunities for Asian American actors are in those days were extraordinarily limited they still are but I mean in those days you know to assemble a cast could be a challenge but it's an essential part of what the show's intention is so it's better not to have it done than to have it done with whatever that was going to happen in Australia yeah did you yes I'm interested you said your specific overtures translated into Japanese and I'm wondering well were you asked for example to it was just a direct translation or were you asked to bring in any kind of cultural aspects from their point of view to sort of tailor it a little bit towards them or anything like that the production that we saw in Japan was a production which we only came to Steve and I as audience members whoever had the translation had been done in Japan and we had not seen it and if we had I suppose we could have asked for a little translation of the Japanese translation back in English and in fact when the piece came back to New York and then to the Kennedy Center with super titles the Japanese translation was translated back into super titles and we tweaked those but again given sort of what the show's about that was I suppose Steve and I could have said no no don't translate the Japanese back into English just take the play and take the piece and put the dialogue if it doesn't quite fit it doesn't matter but we wanted to we wanted the language to have taken this journey from English into Japanese and then from Japanese back into English you know and with some of Sondheim's lyrics that was a challenge I bet if I could continue has anybody's play been translated or anything or have that ever come up of translation and then trying to sort of look at it from their point of view as well I didn't play Translate into Hungarian but you have no idea what they were really saying though that probably no I never heard it but it was a dramaturg from Hungary who was here and he just wanted to do this collection of American plays and he liked one of my plays so I had the book I have no idea what it says I see my name none of my plays have been translated but the show that I worked on we did have bilingual subtitles scenes in Spanish but they were already in English sometimes I helped translate them sometimes I didn't because it's a very long process but yeah it was always written in English and then subtitled Translate into Spanish Adam John talked a little bit about how it not only told this story of Japanese history from a Japanese perspective but the show also utilized traditions of Kabuki and there's haiku and the lyrics and a question that I had for all the writers is when you become interested in telling a story with characters from another culture do you also look to that culture in terms of how you tell that story question you know I guess Pacifico is kind of a stand alone for me as far as that goes as I said it's still an American musical I guess the bottom line is absolutely it's quite consistent I mean it's I talked about John Wilkes Booth earlier Assassins has got a variety of characters that surround up in America but what if I was writing a piece about John Wilkes Booth I mean I think there's a it's not the same but there's a kind of research that involves trying to sink into whatever his kind of cultural surround was what it was like to be a southerner of his class in the middle of the 19th century and you know I'm not quite sure what that would involve but Pacifico which is really the only time I've sort of inhaled a story from elsewhere and as I said when I came to it I had an academic background admittedly but I spent three years really living inside Asian history and culture so a lot of the homework had been done but it was enough that's another question Do you guys want to respond to that? Well with the Liberia play I mean it's so, such a specific as I said accent I could never get that I mean some people would talk that sounded just American it was like a wide range I wish it could have been better at that Minneapolis Liberians one criticism was they wanted more they wanted Liberian proverbs in it and the interesting and I added them I actually liked them I deliberately avoided that because I thought sometimes that can be an exoticism of cultures that way but when they asked it I looked into it and I actually liked that these things were very specifically Liberian I guess that is that there was this fine line between perception of it being co-opting co-opting a culture and integrating something from it to provide authenticity and that's really an interesting fine line Well I didn't think so much co-opting I just thought sometimes people the wise African in there I think I was afraid that it was going to some sort of stereotype but then because she said that I looked it in and I did it in a way that I was hoping wasn't stereotypical but hopefully that Liberians would recognize this if they saw it because they're specifically to Liberian specific Okay, I got it Here's a short story I'll tell which is not exactly on all fours of what we're talking about but I just remembered it I think it is interesting in terms of what we're talking about The first anniversary of the tsunami a large part of the theater community a part of it came together to create this event and it happened at Cooper Union but it happened a variety of different places around the country simultaneously and the intention was to raise as much money as possible for the theater community in Japan which had been damaged by this event and what we did and it was sort of driven by the public theater but ten Japanese playwrights wrote ten minute plays and ten American playwrights wrote ten minute plays and for some of the Americans it was a matter of adapting work that already existed Steve and I took two songs from Pacific Overtures and he rewrote the lyric and I rewrote the interstitial dialogue but Doug Wright wrote an original piece that was fascinating and Susan Laurie Parks wrote one and Philip Kangotan did I mean and the Japanese pieces were the kind of mashup of people from Japan writing about this and people in the United States who wanted to write about it to create this evening it was extraordinary to see what the differences were between these contributions from both sides of the Pacific one from the place where the disaster had occurred New York where people wanted to respond to the disaster in some way that would be helpful and that's the story's not going to be on that but it was a very rare experience to be engaged with this material in that way and it was very moving very powerful the stuff that came from Japan was amazing oh wait let me see because we've heard from you before just a couple of questions one would be is that I think many of us have at some point been on both sides of this divide I know myself as a gay man there are times when I will see materials and go like who wrote that why and the other end then I turn around and I write about another culture another cultural experience so my question is is that no culture no world is static there's cultural drift things change I know that I've looked back at plays that meant something to me at some point and go and horrified at what I've found so my question would be is over your career or careers have you gone through the experience of something that you treasured that was at some point culturally relevant to you or maybe the other side that now as over time you've come back to and look at like that wasn't a touchstone or that's actually more stereotypical than I ever thought or there's something underneath what usually what before repelled me that I can see the value of maybe not I mean I think it's natural to grow as a person I mean at the longest career ever at this point but when you look at someone like and you look at his really early films he has this film called time me up time me down and I'm sure something really inspired him at that time but when you watch it now it's so dark and creepy and I'm like I'm like his other things and it made me feel really uncomfortable and I know that he was like in his 20s and he was like saying something about something but so I think that's like and now his work has evolved and he's like this master and all his details and his you know films are amazing but I think that's normal you know that's something that you write ten years you wrote ten years ago that you don't agree with now and even when you're working on a play I studied with Marcia Norman and she has this rule like two year rule where if you've been working on a play for over two years it's time to give it a break or something because you probably change within like a three year cycle you probably have different opinions you know stuff like that so I think that if you think the same about your plays that you wrote ten years ago then you need to you know go outside and meet new people we're lucky we're not politicians so we're going to hold it up later on every time there's been a news sort of relatively prominent production of Pacific Overtures I've rewritten it cut stuff change stuff and there's some stuff in it that is difficult to change that resists change for a variety of reasons some of which have to do with plot some of which have to do with the fact that it's sort of embedded in the score so that there's a limitation but you know you can't do that so easily the film but you can do it with a stage piece and it's and I I keep trying to sort of sand down the parts that I'm not so happy with for a variety of reasons some of which do have to do with having made choices that make me a little squirmy at this point in a way that they didn't in 1976 what's your example this first thing that comes to mind and this is a sort of hand fist example but there there were a couple of things that I wrote that were described as haiku and the distribution of syllables in the three lines is correct but they have it was sort of used for humor in a sense they have absolutely nothing to do with the sensibility of an actual haiku so it's like I've changed instead of them being introduced as haiku it's like a proverb or something like that and so that's a very small example but there's a couple of scenes that I've cut because some of that has to do with dramaturgical issues not cultural issues but there are things that if Steve and I could sit down and inhale a whole thing and exhale and I think there are things that we would change now that would never have occurred to us to change previously yeah well for pieces like you pour again best that's stipulated by the family who owns the copyrights that it can only be done by a black cast whites are not allowed to portray blacks there what are your feelings in that is it better enough to have the work done at all after how the interchange of the of the race is there so you're talking about casting now casting yeah another one for instance Madame Butterfly when opera is different though historically opera has been I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you there but what are your views regarding something like this is better not to do the best role than to have it done with whites impersonating blacks my own feelings that I've always believed in color blind casting unless race is the issue in the play in which case that's it I don't want to see pour again best with white people because it's not there's a white sheriff who comes in to a black community so it's like what are we talking about there is no white version of pour again best it's not pour again best something like Madame Butterfly well as you know as Christy said the opera has conventionally been a place that was about the voice and people didn't worry so much about I mean beautiful young women were played by 300 pounds it was about the sound and the difference I think the difference though in the opera world is that everybody playing different roles so it was it was the convention was that an Asian American person could play an Italian person an Italian woman could play the Japanese Toshisan or something so it's a historically the convention has been different I don't know that they do that as much anymore they do yes I'm sorry I'm not an opera lover plays are historically when women were played by men historically that was the case I mean women were not allowed on stage and in certain but that certainly changed that was that and this is now that's really changed panterls and castradi also were yes I know sometimes like being like the one person of your culture in a room sometimes will become the expert or the spokesperson like oh here's a Latina play let's test her what she thinks about this issue has there ever been a time where you've been put in that position where you've kind of been like I shouldn't be the expert on this but by default I am and how do you kind of navigate that pretty much anytime I go to LA the expert in Latin American culture um I mean it's hard because just because people want I mean I think there's like a market now people are starting to realize that you can make money in certain situations and you can have certain types of people so I think it's hard just because somebody wants that sort of race or that story doesn't mean that they want it all of it you know what I mean they want what they want they want enough to make enough money but they don't want to know about something other than themselves so I mean yes I've been in that situation a lot and it's very uncomfortable and there's a lot of sort of like language tricks you can use to kind of you know say that you should ask someone who's more of an expert than you know what I mean but it's a really difficult situation to be in it's very uncomfortable yeah absolutely I think it's normal honestly to be it's very pessimistic view of the world but yeah yeah the use this is kind of a fine line the cartoon characters you know where in other words it's a play that's larger than life which will oftentimes strain or walk a fine line with stereotypes and sometimes for political purposes I think of Brett for example he will use cultural stereotypes and oftentimes in contemporary plays where they're kind of larger than life and you're actually meant to play off stereotypes what's your gut instinct on those things or do you find yourself when you go to see a play read a play that is using some sort of cartoonish quality to make points as to where they're basically using that as laziness or really using it as an insightful way of attacking or revealing some inherent truth I think it depends on whether they're using as laziness or if they're using that yeah I mean it could go either way but if it does reach the truth and then there are reasons that there is a point then yeah it seems to me that stereotypes when they're balanced by the truth that's when they will make a point to me as an audience member and there are some stereotypes I just don't want to see anymore I don't see the point in perpetuating a stereotype that might be hurtful or offensive that's my personal take we brought the bloody bloody Andrew Jackson and we were talking earlier that's a good example of a show that had a lot of broad stroke and it was really offensive to me I would have walked out if I wasn't in the middle of a row and felt like it would have made a big scene because for me personally I was offended by getting laughs at the expense of a person with a disability the whole story about the Native American culture not having any people to color in the show that was my take there are other people that might have seen it that thought and as a person who does a lot of advocacy and diversity and inclusion in this industry my head tries to wrap it around saying is there a point that I could take away from this where you're saying is there something that they're trying to say in another way that could be a positive take from this and I personally could not walk away from it with that do you have any I'm sure you saw it too right we're Tony voters and so we see everything I don't want it to become slashing other places I mean to be honest I mean I think people forget this because the play was about so much other things and there were a lot of things I liked about this particular play but we're talking about disability the deaf character in Kwaiborne Park I felt was really dealt with in an offensive way as if she was stupid I think probably the authors of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson would tell you that they would deliver choices in order to provoke that kind of reaction in order to support the discomfort that you felt so people would have to come face to face with it and the world would be a better place but I mean intention and impact are two different things and both of them have to be attended to it seems to me so yeah I wanted you to feel uncomfortable so you'd have to think about that does anybody have any other questions we're actually at 7.30 did anyone tweet us? we're going to sit here until somebody tweets us well thank you so much for being here and having this conversation with us thank you and if Alex Timbers was listening I'm sorry I'm a big fan of your lies a lot