Tonight on Medium Cool we will be talking about She Devil of the China Seas, written and produced by Balloon Juice commenter (and playwright) gwangung.
In case you missed the post that introduced this piece a couple of weeks ago:
She Devil of the China Seas by playwright gwangung (Open Thread)
I asked gwangung if he could share a bit of his backstory for our discussion of She Devil of the China Seas. What motivated him to write this play. What he’s trying to accomplish with the play. The various roles he played in this particular production. And anything else he wanted to tell us.
Straight from gwangung:
Well, now….that’s an interesting question (and might make me drone on a bit, so bear with me).
I’ve spent most of my artistic life being an advocate for Asian Americans on stage and telling Asian American stories on stage (it’s not hard to fall into this when one of your college dorm mates is David Henry Hwang, and you helped him stage the world premiere of his Obie-award winning play in our dorm lounge)(unfortunately, I can’t claim any credit for his subsequent Tony Award winning play M. Butterfly).
In particular, I want to promote stereotype breaking stories for Asian American actors. And that’s why I founded my company, Pork Filled Productions, where we specialized in breaking the expectations, whether it was doing comedy when there were no Asian American comedians, or in genre work like SF or steampunk (you noted it took Ke Huy Quan 30 years to get cast again after being in The Goonies and Indiana Jones).
And one of the stories I was REALLY jonesing to see was the story of Ching Shih, the woman who rose from prostitute to wife of pirate leader to leading that pirate fleet, that some people said numbered over 10,000 ships and 70,000 crewmen.
But nothing ever came. There was a rumor of a mini series starring Maggie Q (good choice). There was a side mention of her in Pirates of the Caribbean—but they showed her as a dowdy middle aged matron—and Ching Shih became a commander in her 20s, fresh off her rep as one of the most beautiful women in Canton.
Clearly this could not stand. And I had the cojones to think I could do it myself. So I sat down and began to write. I’ve been produced before (the aforementioned sketch comedy and I’ve done a number of short 10 minute plays around Seattle), but I had never done a full length show before. Well…no time like the present….
After some fits and starts (one theatre company chose the play for production, but demanded to replace the director, which I didn’t do) and some last minute changes (I changed all the names from the Mandarin pronunciation to the arguably more accurate Cantonese)—don’t ask me, I’m more of a Cantonese/Hakka bastard speaker,
I finally had a script I was happy with (folks who saw an earlier reading will note I changed the godly presence to Yuen Loh, the goddess of war and erotic arts—which was an irresistible choice for patron of this pirate queen.)
Folks will note there’s a lot of resonance with Marvel comics in this script, in particular, with Marvel’s 1970s Conan the Barbarian and his female counterpart Red Sonja. All I can say is…write what you love. And there are fights. Lots of fights. I share that love with another Asian American playwright, Qui Nguyen (who some may recognize as co-writer of Raya and the Last Dragon); I’ve had a long relationship with him and produced the Northwest premieres of some of his shows.
I decided to go with my own theatre company to produce my script—there’s an inherent advantage in that (no arguments with the producer on artistic intent, fewer arguments with the director). But that also means you do a lot more work—you’re not just the playwright, you also do the PR, the grant writing, the administration, the finance and budgeting, and even the graphic design and photography for the show. (Don’t worry, I saved enough for other folks to do work—I lucked out and got great lighting design and fight choreography.)
But enough about me—what do you guys think? And what else you want to know?
We’ll let gwangung moderate this post about She Devil of the China Seas, but don’t be surprised when BGinChi chimes in with comments.
NaijaGal – A Novel in Interlocking Stories!
gwangung
Here to answer any questions or comments…
WaterGirl
@gwangung: So your play runs just 2 more days, right? What’s it been like to have your creation out there like this, and what’s it like to have the run come to a close in such a short time
Edit: though maybe it doesn’t exactly close, since I assume people can still watch online? And it’s capture for posterity!
BGinCHI
In the trailer it’s all sword fighting, and I’m curious whether you do weapons training or whether your actors already come prepared to do that.
It’s badass either way.
gwangung
Actually, tickets are sale until October 2, but we’re keeping the video up for a bit longer than that so people can watch (I guess that’s the video on demand part).
I can’t speak for other authors, but it’s both a bit unreal and a bit normal to have your work come out. You always hope (and sometimes wonder) how you’re work is going to get embodied, and I think I was lucky to get a cast that very much embodied what I was trying to do. I think I’m gratified that I got a pretty decent product out there with folks who aren’t the “hot names” in local production, which tells folks that the talent pool is a lot deeper than what they think it is (hint to Hollywood!).
And I’m sad that everything gets done and the production is so ephemeral….but that’s the nature of theatre. It gets done and move on. I’m relatively lucky that I can tape and extend it a little, and give a chance for folks with access and mobility issues a chance to see it (most theatres are TERRIBLE for disabled people to go to). if they want.
And as a playwright, you always hope there’s a chance elsewhere for more productions…
Sure Lurkalot
Sorry to say that the Marvel genre and fighting are not my thing but FWIW, heartfelt congratulations on seeing your many roles in this endeavor rewarded on stage. I hope your audiences enjoyed every minute!
gwangung
@BGinCHI: That’s a particular pride point for me.
The nature for most Asian American actors is that they don’t get trained in stage combat of any sort. Despite the cliche of the Asian martial artist, a lot of them don’t have a martial arts background or fake it when they get hired. All of my actors had no training in stage combat and only one or two had any martial arts.
So I snagged an opportunity to get training for my cast. I took advantage of a pilot program from the Society of American Fight Directors to give 15 folks (this included stage managers as well as actors) a 30-hour course in unarmed stage combat. We were able to fly in an instructor from Texas to train folks and everyone who took the course then became certified in unarmed combat.
And THEN, we took that training, and layered on top of it some basic one armed sword combat…..which got us up to what we did on the show.
This was all free for us and the actors, thanks to the SAFD’s EEE program (aimed at marginalized communities).
BGinCHI
@gwangung:
That’s VERY cool.
I once gave a paper at a conference in which presenters were on stage and used actors in demonstrating the argument of the paper (amazing conference). My paper went really well, but I was followed by a guy who did sword fight demonstrating and weapons training and I could just see the audience’s memory being forever wiped of what I’d said.
eclare
@gwangung: What an amazing resource! Congratulations on seeing your “baby” on stage!
gwangung
@Sure Lurkalot: Thanks.
I certainly realize this kind of pulpy storytelling isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it fills a need and a big gap. Mainstream culture tends to tells certain kinds of stories about marginalized communities like Black folks, Latin, indigenous and Asian American….and they tend to fall into stereotyped tropes. It’s all about oppression and suffering, or generational clashes or identity (and it helps to include white people; every screen/playwright of color I know has a story of being asked to include a white person in the story).
So there’s a lack of BIPOC centered genre stories (i.e., steampunk, horror, science fiction, sword and sorcery etc.). And in particular, there’s a lack of larger than life heroes and legends—the cultural playground tends to be dominated by the James T. Kirks and Indiana Jones’, with a token Shaft (maybe).
So this is my chance to fill the gaps in both the type of stories Asian Americans can tell and star in, and the type of heroes it can put up (my pirate queen isn’t anywhere close to Bruce Lee).
gwangung
@BGinCHI: Oh yeah, stage combat is VERY cool. Qui Nguyen made his name doing stage combat shows, and he definitely marketed them to the geeks and nerds (he had several demos at NY ComicCon and that’s how he sold out his shows and got a Obie for his theatre).
I might actually think of doing more combat shows since I have a cohort that has training….
Mike in NC
Last night I downloaded the first hundred pages of “The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021” to my iPad and I have to say it takes a strong stomach to relive the Fat Orange Clown’s four-year insane shitshow.
BGinCHI
@gwangung: Probably a dumb question, but is there a tradition of Chinese tumbling and weapons training that overlaps? Some of the martial arts are so beautiful in terms of form and function I’ve always wondered if they were adjacent to physical performance.
gwangung
@BGinCHI: This is getting a bit beyond my expertise (I’m second generation both here, so direct knowledge is a bit attenuated), but I THINK there’s overlap in a lot of the physical performance stuff. After all, the human body is the human body….but don’t hold me on any of the specifics…
(Oh, I should have that I won’t claim to be “authentic” when it comes to this story. I come to it and translate it through my own experiences and cultural diet (I mean, the story frame is straight up sword and sorcery). But that’s the case for any storyteller, even within the culture. Any Chinese retelling of Ching Shih/Zhang Tse is going to be filtered through their 21st Century experiences as well).
zhena gogolia
@gwangung: that makes a lot of sense. I was kind of shocked to read in a review of The Woman King that the young woman character has a romance with a European settler. Sounds like some exec’s brilliant idea.
gwangung
@zhena gogolia: Yeah, that romance has studio exec/financial person thumbprints all over it. Comes from a mistaken idea that white people can’t identity with a story with POCs in it unless there are white people in it.
(That the converse isn’t true—BIPOC people can identify plenty well with white heroes—doesn’t sink in with them. Also…with movies, the majority of tickets in America are now bought by non-white buyers, so the insistence on shoe-horning in white characters doesn’t make a lick of sense).
Sure Lurkalot
@gwangung: Absolutely! Everyone needs heroes and villains, that both look like them and culturally connect via legends, memes… what have you. And if they cross all the artificial barriers we humans erect, so much the better.
gwangung
@Sure Lurkalot: Well, if you invent enough of them, you’re bound to come up with one that’ll cross over….
YY_Sima Qian
@gwangung: Fascinating back story to your work, & equally fascinating back story of Ching Shih/郑一嫂, which I had never heard of before!
On the subject of portrayal of Asian Americans in American pop culture… I remember when Crazy Rich Asians came out, it was hailed as a breakthrough of telling an Asian focused story w/ an Asian cast, in the mold of Black Panther. I enjoyed it as slapstick fun, but it successfully diversified from the tired stereotype of brainy nerds that lack confidence by introducing the polar opposite (& more recent) stereotype of the obnoxious & sociopathic über-rich progeny/富二代. As a 1st generation immigrant, there are elements of that story I found some resonance w/, but overall I thought it did not deserve the reputation that was foisted upon it. The movie also did poorly in Mainland China, probably because few Mainland Chinese identify w/ the immigrant experience, the SE Asian Chinese Diaspora experience, or the über-rich experience.
Ripley
Living in a lily white community, our local productions tend to be pretty lily white stories by white authors and producers.
Not knowing where you reside, how difficult is it to find Asian American actors? Especially enough to produce something so specific?
gwangung
@YY_Sima Qian: I mean, it’s a breakthrough in that it made MONEY (and pretty damn big money. $200 for a non-VFX story is pretty good). But, yeah, it’s more an Asian American story (immigrant Asians included) rather than an Asian story. There’s that tension between the folks who stayed and the diaspora Asians, with the latter looking for recognition, and the former take a position of superiority over the latter. The folks in Asia won’t find much resonance there, but the diasporic Asians will (that’s what my dorm mate David Henry Hwang mined in his first play).
Side note: I’m not surprised that an Asian American rom com made big box office. A compatriot in the local theatre scene did a serial soap opera that was essentially a rom com centered around four Asian American women, and it was hugely successful, with 20 episodes over 12 year (I’m not sure there’s a recent theatre serial with that many chapters). Think they had to end it because both the cast and audience began to age out….
YY_Sima Qian
@gwangung: I guess I have been irritated that Crazy Rich Asians became successful by selling the experiences of the obnoxious & sociopathic über-rich set, which represents a tiny slice of the Asian American immigrant experience.
Out of curiosity, why do you think Asian American rom coms do well?
gwangung
@Ripley: I live in Seattle, where the population is 20 percent Asian American. More importantly, there are several generations of Asian Americans; you’ll see more artists once a community has two or three generations and the community has gotten beyond the bare bones survival stage.
Not that getting actors is ever easy, but places like Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Chicago has a bit more of a pool to draw upon than other area.
But it’s certainly possible to cast in relatively homogenous area; producers have to work harder at recruiting actors, and you have to work on a much longer time frame. It’s not enough to just put out the audition notice; a producer has to be able to sweet talk people into coming out (particularly when there isn’t a tradition of theatre or the community is new). It’s never acceptable to do put white actors in yellow face to do a show.
(I’ve done conference presentations on doing this sort of thing and there are consultants you can use. But it’s certainly true a lot of groups are cheap or lazy, and try to BS their way through).
YY_Sima Qian
@gwangung: BTW, does your handle refer to Guan Yu/关公/God of War? I have always wondered.
scav
@gwangung: See also Judge Dee, a Tang era historical figure written as a folk history Ming (-ish) one and then interpreted / expanded into English by a Dutchman. (plus a lot others apparently. I might have to go play & struggle with French; it’d be fun to work in still another angle of interpretation.)
TaMara
@gwangung: That is so cool. And congratulations on this. Nothing quite so terrifying, disorienting, and exhilarating as live theatre!
One of my professors in college received his doctorate in Japan and studied both Kabuki and martial arts – so we spent several weeks every semester in stage combat training which also incorporated the mindfulness of martial arts. I probably got more out of those sessions than almost all my other theatre classes combined.
gwangung
@YY_Sima Qian: I think it helped for Crazy Rich Asians to have a middle class protagonist. Having love triumph over the snooty rich through a middle class heroine is part of rom com success no matter who the snotty rich is. That taps into the underdog narrative that ends to cross cultures.
I think having snooty/arrogant in-laws is often a key part of the rom com formula; it’s an obstacle to overcome and it’s satisfying for a protagonist to overcome that. And wealth often plays a part in rom coms, because it’s an aspirational aspect that middle class or lower audiences tend to aspire for. To see one of our own gain entry into that strata, and on their own terms, is immensely satisfying.
That doesn’t have much to do with the success of our local offering, though. But the whole romance idea is a very powerful story that permeates human culture around the world*, and having an Asian American perspective wrung enough changes and brought enough new insights that it seemed to prove popular for them.
*I can attest to that power, in that, much to my surprise, there’s a strong romance element to She Devil; I never meant to have one, but it crept in there and it proved popular with the audience (as well as the cast).
gwangung
@YY_Sima Qian: Yeah, but not directly. Gwangung was taken as a patron saint for Chinese American immigrants by the first Asian American playwrights, and the character was taken by David Henry Hwang as a part of his very first play, where Gwangung and Fa Mu Lan had a theatrical throw down. So, it’s a tribute to David basically (and I quote his line from that first show in mine).
gwangung
@scav: Yeah, I’ve always wanted to follow up on that and see what happens when you refract that through a diasporic lens, and compare that with the European conception. Might find that interesting…..
(But that just means another project in my backlog, and I have LOTS of them….).
YY_Sima Qian
@gwangung: Thanks for the response! Very interesting. I suppose my reaction has been influenced by my personal aversion to the über-rich set. OTOH, I have developed a taste for certain expensive/luxury items myself. Perhaps if I ever have that much money, I would not be so different… Sigh.
gwangung
@TaMara: Now THAT’S an interesting combination of teaching I’d be interested in sitting in on…..
YY_Sima Qian
@gwangung: Haha, the back story to your handle is great! I have always wondered why someone w/ seeming liberal arts inclinations have taken such a martial sounding handle.
Wish I could have seen a production of a battle royale between Guan Yu & Mulan.
gwangung
@YY_Sima Qian: Well, it was a high faluting literary one with David…if I ever get to sequels, I might manage a three-way physical donnybrook….
(ETA: speaking of which, I’ll mentioned that when I got involved with David, I had no arts background…I was more of a geologist/science journalist (I even have a publication to my credit). But if you keep at it long enough, you pick up SOME expertise….).
Darkrose
@gwangung: Just dropping by to say Okada Represent! and I am so happy for you! This sounds amazing!
gwangung
@Darkrose: Aw, thanks! (Recall you spent some time on the Farm, but did you ever live in Okada House? I’m old enough that it was known as Junipero….))
Darkrose
@gwangung: I was there my frosh year (1987-88) and then came back in senior year (1990-91) as a Theme Associate. I also worked with the AATP for a couple of years.
gwangung
Aw, that is so cool! I was a Theme Associate 1978-79, along with David (who has somehow morphed into being known as DHH to the world at large) (the joke used to be that we knew him before he had a middle name. Now I suppose that’s going to change).
Am surprised and proud of what the Project has been doing (as ambitious as any midsized theatre).
Had to miss my 40th reunion a few years back, but I have friends having their 45th and 40th this year, so I think I’m gonna crash and say hello.
eldorado
thrilled that your are doing this and the source inspiration is probably a good marketing choice, but hard pass for me too. good luck.