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[0:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: What This Place Makes Me is a book of first-generation playwrights of many backgrounds—Nigerian, Polish, Bengali, Korean, Lebanese, Mexican—a group of playwrights speaking about what this place makes them. The editor, Isaiah Stavchansky, compiled all of them together, and we had a wonderful panel.

[1:32] David Rigano: It involves our wonderful co-host, Dylan, who we adore, who also talked about his previous situation of putting a playwright foot in his mouth when he talked to David Adjmi, as with this is a situation like that. Sorry to out you, Dylan, but it was a really fun moment.

[1:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So, when we close the store to prep for the events, it is fast. It is us getting ready to, okay, we have to put books away, we have to exit people, we have to turn the event space or turn the store into an event space. We have a lot to do.

[2:04] David Rigano: We try to do as much of it as we can before closing, but also there's only so much that you can do when people are still trying to look at the books that are on some of the displays that we have to move, and then we have 15 minutes between closing and letting people back in.

[2:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, it's so fast. We try to do a lot. One of the things we do, whether it's an event or not, and this is just general knowledge for any of our guests, we close the bathrooms 10 minutes before the store closes.

[2:30] David Rigano: Yes.

[2:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And when I close the bathrooms...

[2:32] David Rigano: Just make sure that no one gets locked in the room.

[2:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Exactly. I not only put a rope up, but turn off the lights in the hallway and then lock the bathroom doors. So, there's a lot of hoops you have to jump through to get to a closed bathroom. So, we're getting ready for the event, and Dylan is in the back. Dylan and I are putting books away. And those of us who don't know Dylan need to know that he is the nicest, sweetest person. If you could bottle up niceness, it's Dylan. I've just never seen him not be nice.

[3:06] David Rigano: Anyway, somebody, right as we were closing, beelined into the store, went directly to the hallway, into the dark hallway, and started walking towards one of the bathrooms. And Dylan immediately ran back there and was like, excuse me, those are closed. We're closed. And as he did it, the person turned around and said, oh, I'm so sorry, I really have to use the bathroom, and I'm on the panel. And Dylan goes, oh my god, you're Hansol Jung. And I was like, come on upstairs, come upstairs to the green room area. And then, of course, Dylan was just like, ahhh.

[3:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Don't you love that?

[3:36] David Rigano: Of all people.

[3:37] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Of all people. And by the way, I really love No More Sad Things.

[3:41] David Rigano: Yeah, and that's the thing. I'm that person too. If somebody goes back there after the lights are off, I immediately go from nice Mark to like, what are you doing?

[3:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Business, yeah.

[3:49] David Rigano: And so the one time Dylan did...

[3:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I read No More Sad Things at Dylan's recommendation.

[3:56] David Rigano: Yeah, yeah, he's such a fan. And so I remember he was like, oh my god, they just did that. And I'm like, it's okay, it's all right. But it was such a fun way to start off the event. Yelling at Hansol Jung about the bathrooms. But she got to use one upstairs. Everything was fine.

[4:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: When I was in college, I had a professor who told us, and this was, boy, was this a mistake. He worked at the Atlantic Theater Company, and they were in tech for a new David Mamet play. And he told us this story. I don't know why. It was just like chit chat at the beginning of class, because it didn't really have anything to do with learning how to focus a lighting instrument. But he told us that they were in tech for this David Mamet play, and they had set up a table of bagels and, I don't know, cream cheeses and cold cuts or whatever for the crew for when they went on break. And that at one point, he saw David Mamet going for a bagel, and he said, oh, hey, just so you know, these are actually for the crew.

We want these to be read. And David Mamet was like, oh, sorry, and stepped away. And that was all that it was. And by the time they were all at the bar that night, having a drink after tech, people were coming up to him, and they were like, I hear you cursed out Mamet. And he was like, what? He was like, yeah, I hear you were like, hey, get your fucking hands off the bagels.

[5:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: In the most Mamet way possible, is how it went.

[5:22] David Rigano: This is evolving until he flipped the table. And the reason that this was such a mistake for him to tell a bunch of college freshmen this was because he could not be stern with us for the rest of the semester.

[5:40] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Could he flip a table?

[5:41] David Rigano: If no, if he tried to get serious and stern with us, someone in the class would go, get your fucking hands off the bagels.

[5:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I love it.

[5:51] David Rigano: And completely lose any sense.

[5:54] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh, I love it. There was just someone at the door, and I didn't know if we were going to have to stop and let her in.

[5:59] David Rigano: But then she walked away.

[6:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I think she was just looking at the hours.

[6:01] David Rigano: I love that. I also, I want to know who started that, because that's such a Latino way of storytelling, where it's just like one small thing happens, and then it's like...

[6:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: By the end of the night, everyone's heard a different crazy version of it.

[6:13] David Rigano: I had an aunt who fell down a slide once in front of... and the mistake, the big mistake one was going down the slide backwards into a pool. The second biggest mistake was doing it in front of the family. Because she went down the slide, and her legs went up, and she rolled down the slide afterwards. But by the time my uncles got done with that story, not only did she roll down the slide...

[6:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: This sounds like Instagrams that you've sent me.

[6:41] David Rigano: Yeah. But like, she was wearing like sweatshorts and stuff, and she was swimming in like sweatshorts and a shirt. But like, the seams of the sweatshorts started snapping one by one, and like leg came popping out like Pillsbury dough. And like, it was just the imagery. And then when she hit the water, everyone pulled up numbers of like, when does it die? And this happened within five minutes of like the one second thing of her falling down.

[7:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So I love that exaggerated storytelling. Here's the other thing I want to know about that, is how many holidays and family gatherings do people still tell that story?

[7:18] David Rigano: Oh, still.

[7:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, it's a moment of shame for her. That's what I've learned with my family. Never mess up. They bring up stuff. I got locked in a bathroom once, and my another aunt had a bathroom that like, if you closed the door all the way, which you should, you had to push the top corner to unlodge the door. It just lodged a certain way. And I did not know this. So I was in there, and I go to leave, and it won't open. And then I hear my cousin walking, and I'm just like, hey, I know you're out there. Hey, I'm stuck. This is your house. You know how to get out of here. And then immediately, she runs away. And I was like, are you kidding me? And then, and meanwhile, this is a family gathering. Not only is this a family gathering, this is a family gathering where I introduced them to Rodrigo, my husband.

They literally met him that day. And it's huge family outside, all just sitting there chatting. And then finally, my aunt comes up. It felt like hours later, but it was really maybe five, 10 minutes. And she's like, somebody's stuck in there. I'm like, yes, I'm stuck in here. And then so she teaches me how to get out. I do. And then I walk out there, and the entire family is looking at me. Even Rodrigo is laughing. They're all just like, you got locked in there, huh?

[8:25] David Rigano: They still bring that up.

[8:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. Sometimes, listen, sometimes when something embarrassing happens, the first thing to do is not help the person. When my family took a trip, God, almost 20 years ago to Italy, my brother and I were sharing a hotel room. And we got in, and we were like, oh, most of the rooms that we've been in have two beds. This one just has one really big bed. So I guess we're sharing a bed in this hotel. And my brother goes to flop down in the middle of the bed.

[9:01] David Rigano: It was two beds.

[9:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh, no. They had just been pushed together. So when he flopped down dead center, the bed started to spread apart. And he slowly sank, because he was still on top of a blanket, and he slowly sank down. So of course, the first thing I did was grab my camera. And these were in the days, you know, we didn't, this was back in 2007, we didn't all have a camera on your phone. There was a Polaroid. So I went into my bag and got my digital camera, and I took a picture. And then, of course, I helped him out, but I had to get photographic evidence first.

[9:35] David Rigano: Yeah, that's very much the thing. Anyone in my family falls, they fall to the ground, and we laugh, and then we help them up. Usually, I try to make sure they're laughing already. I'm also one who will, as soon as I fall, will laugh. But I've learned that's a very non-American thing to laugh at our follies like that. That's a very immigrant thing. I've just noticed that. That's a very, like, outside of the country thing that we tend to be a little prudish here.

[10:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Our storytelling is a little different.

[10:02] David Rigano: What generation are you?

[10:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I am third.

[10:04] David Rigano: Okay.

[10:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Depending on where, yeah, I'm third, depending on, like, the lineup of which parent. But same, because I have, I'm just, like, thinking about this, that, like, my mom's dad was born here, but he had siblings who were not. So I'm not exactly sure, so again, like, it depends a little bit. But it's also, it's just the way we tell stories. It's the exaggeration. It's the acting out. It's the, like, less inhibitions, I think, in our storytelling, which is another thing that intrigued me and brought me to this book, because I like to hear other storytelling, other styles of storytelling from things other than what I know.

[10:48] David Rigano: And so we got that. And then how that becomes theater, American theater.

[10:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, exactly. So let's let our panel discuss that.

[10:58] David Rigano: I'd like to start this off by asking you both how you became writers.

[11:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Go for it.

[11:06] Hansol Jung: Oh, man, he spoke first. How we became writers, or how I became a writer, I actually started out, I'm a musician first. So played trombone, sang opera, thought I was going to go to law school and use all my music training to get me in through there. So I went to Wellesley College to set that trajectory. Got to Wellesley, lost my mind, and had an incredible dean that said, what do you do for joy? I said, I don't know. I'm the daughter of immigrants, huh? And so I started actually performing again. But looking at it as a thing that I could potentially do, I get out in the Great Recession of 2009. And I made a mistake because I can't get a job. And I started writing then. I started writing in order to understand the world. And that took off. So I didn't come to writing thinking I'm going to be a writer. I came to writing...

[12:12] Hansol Jung: I landed in it. So yeah, that's me in a nutshell. I think me too. I think mostly I landed in theater. I thought I was going to go into politics. Dodged that bullet. Theater and that was my entry drug. I was doing directing. I came to the states actually in '08 to study musical theater directing at Penn State and I took like a class in undergrad, like an undergraduate class in writing 10-minute plays and was like, "Hey, this is—I have so much more power as a writer." Politics full circle. But yeah, and then that sort of became more and more, I think it was a surprising discovery that I liked it because when you're bilingual, which I'm Korean but I grew up in South Africa, it's like you're not really good at the language of either.

You're like 70% of both and I didn't—I never did some translating but I never thought I could like actually create my own language and people who speak it. I think starting from people who have trouble with expressing themselves and then getting communicated through to a live audience was where a lot of the move—I think that was the actual drug that made me keep writing and why even now when everything's breaking and burning and theaters are closing, I still write for theater first. It's that thing of I said something in my broken way. I put in my broken characters and they reached people and I see it reaching you and that's such a miracle to me. So that's, I guess, did that answer your question? How did you end up writing for this stage?

[14:03] Mfoniso Udofia: I actually started—I was depressed and I was an actor trying to act in 2009 and I was an actor that was told my energy was too—I was too sweet to play a lot of the African characters that were being written and I also didn't have an aesthetic a lot of the time to play the Africans that were being written and I was like, I would go home and I'd be like, "I guess I'm not war-torn enough." I'm sorry, okay, that was like a little bit of bile that just came out, sorry. Okay, anyway, continuing forward. And so I started writing and I didn't think it was gonna go anywhere but I started writing theatrically because I had studied so much as an actor and so that was the form I knew how to process in the best.

And as I started sending the plays out, the response that was coming back to me was, "Why are you so worried about acting? You should do this." And yeah, so no, I was writing really to process my world. I was also in the middle of figuring out what coming out was as an African woman and also a queer woman and so the plays that I was writing at that time held a lot of those themes and I was very tender and people were like, "Go forth," and I'm like, "I don't know." And so it took me a long time. It took me maybe two or three years even into writing to call myself a writer and to feel good about it in my soul and like I said, not somebody said it of me. In that tenderness, what was the experience like of sharing that work?

[15:54] Martyna Majok: For me, it was really exposing. I write Nigerians. I write questions. Even if the plays aren't 100% autobiographical, even if they never happened like that, the questions are real and because the questions that are inherent in all of the plays are real to me and I am struggling with those questions myself. I know where my eye is in the play and who I most identify as and I'm sitting there dying because it feels as if you all are watching a part of my soul and if you don't get it, part of me weeps. If you do get it, then I squint and go, "Did you really?" It's just an—it's just like a little cyclone of—and it's all vulnerability, sure. And it's gotten better with time. The more I say to myself, "Oh, this is scary to have yourself and your writing be seen and be heard," and the more I talk to myself, the better it is. But in the beginning, no, it was frightening.

[17:02] Hansol Jung: This is for either of you. How do you know when something is ready to be shared with your collaborators?

[17:09] Mfoniso Udofia: I don't know. I think it depends on the collaborator. I feel like right now I'm in a phase of writing where I depend very much on my people and so I'm like, I think when I was first starting out, it was very clutched. It was very like, "It's mine and I'm scared of what you will say to me," because my insecurities are making my brain very squishy and I don't want you to—that whether you say something good or something bad, that stays and it impacts the thing before I have a relationship with it. It was the belief I had, maybe the yell training. But I think right now, I at least have a relationship with my work enough that I'm like, I need your voices first. This is too—now it's getting a little insular.

It's getting a little boring with just myself. And so I feel like I pitch my ideas to my collaborators. I have a theater trip that I collected, basically the cast of "Wolf Play" at MCC and Dustin, the director, and Lexi, the dramaturge, where I was just like, "I will write you many more plays. Stay with me. Go do other things but also stay with me." And in the past year, I've written four plays very quickly in just like doing 10 pages and they're like this and that and then, "Okay, 30 more pages," and like getting their brains baked into the play has become like sort of a new kind of way of writing for me. But I don't know. I guess if I'm writing something that feels, again, very me, I think right now I'm writing very of the world and of them and I guess the trade-off has been I haven't really given anything that's like very scary or hurting right now. So maybe if I go there again, it will come back, but I feel like that's been like my trajectory of being very clutchy and now very open.

[19:28] Martyna Majok: How do you decide what in the world you're going to write about?

[19:32] Mfoniso Udofia: You know, I don't think I get to actually. I think I write, I'm like, "Oh, that's a good idea." I start writing, like that was not a good idea or I'm like, "Someone's write this." I'm like, "That's okay, fine." Oh, okay. And then I start. It's like, it's really hard to—you can come up with ideas and try them out, but whether they become plays or not is a little bit process, chance, timing, what the world wants. I've never been a writer that's like, "This is the thing that must happen and I'm just gonna do it and put the audience through this." It's maybe because of being an immigrant or having no roots or being very everywhere. I think I'm aware of how alien I am or like how I am outside writing for your home.

So what I feel like it's always a collaboration with the people I've decided to write for instead of my own people. And so it's always been like, "What is the anxiety of the world?" I think I'm very open to that, open to that as well as what do I need to write about.

[21:06] Martyna Majok: For me, I am primarily a questions-based writer. I don't—commissions can be some of the hardest things for me because I'm given them and it's wonderful and I don't take them because thanks for the money, but if I don't have a question that I am looking to figure out, that commission could take 15 years. So I have learned that about myself now and will say more notes up front because I know that I'm not burning for something. I know that this is—I've become at least aware enough to know this is the gardening part of my life right now. I plant things, I go do something else, or this is the part of my life that is dedicated to television because that is a very different kind of writing for me. But yeah, most of my plays have a question at heart and then I'll see the characters erupt.

I've been writing in cycle, so I know these characters too and I can feel them in my body and where each of them are placed and I know the questions that they might be dealing with in their life and if it's aligning with a question that I'm also interested in, that is when a play is erupting from me. Who knows what that's going to turn into once the cycle is truly completed? I don't know, but for what I know now, it's been questions-based.

[22:35] Mfoniso Udofia: I do feel like you and I are very, very different in like that question of where do you find your ideas or like what do you decide to write on. Like it's more about like where your inspiration points and I feel like you're always finding ways to articulate yourself and your family story and your surroundings and I'm always looking to define where I'm at more than myself. And I think, yeah, I definitely—you will have to write about yourself or you think your thoughts and you put them down, so it's a sense about me, but I think I hide it.

[23:10] Hansol Jung: No, I can't hide.

[23:11] Mfoniso Udofia: No, I can't. It's amazing to see that sort of vibrantly there. Yeah, but we circle around to come to something very—I think at the—no matter what the process is, because I do—I absolutely love your work and I've read you quite extensively, it will come always to what is true. There is something about your writing that will then illuminate a truth and a very raw, achy humanity, friendly.

[23:40] Martyna Majok: Sure, but I am interested in for each of the characters, what is true? And then for me as a playwright and where my eye is going, what is the meaning that I did get? And I don't know if it's always me. Sometimes it's a community. Sometimes I do get a little global, but I do see that thing that I am investigating in my head very clearly.

[24:01] Hansol Jung: So "Sojourners" is the first in a nine-play cycle, yeah, which is all being done in Boston in these couple years, yeah, correct? Can you tell us about the UFO cycle, those nine plays, how you came to write them? There's nine; there might be a sneaky other coming.

[24:24] Mfoniso Udofia: To round it out, I am following, over the course of a hundred years, from 1978 to 2078, one family, one lineage, as they are building here in America. I watch, or I will ask you to watch Abasiyama Uffat, who is our matriarch. And I really like to start with her because there's not a lot of women-centered cycles, and she is a heartbeat, and she's the person who sets the ship and kind of sets this lineage on course. You'll watch her in 1978 come in through Houston, Texas, which is a port that, or a landing spot, that many Nigerians took. If you're ever in Houston, Texas, and you look around, you'll be like, oh, yeah, Nigel, yeah, Nigel, hello, Nigel, hello. Yes, so there was a landing there, and I am watching how this country affects the Nigerian dream, what of America is incorporated into their lives, what do they decide to leave behind, and how does that dream morph once you move generations and start talking about children, and then God help you, the grandchildren.

And yeah, I do that all the way until 2078, where we culminate with Adi and Clara Snatch Joy, where I pass the baton on who's holding lineage and story and go, this family will be good here in America. At least there will be one tributary in America, and then others will have gone other places. We know the family is fine, and I won't write them again. Sojourners is a bilingual play.

[26:01] Isaiah Stavchansky: Yeah. How did, did it come out bilingual? Did it start bilingual? What was the process like of putting those characters on stage?

[26:07] Mfoniso Udofia: So I, the playwright, do not speak fluently. I hear, I hear very well. And it was interesting, because as I was writing, I would write in English, the things that I knew I would have to go to my mom, go to a person I sometimes work with, I will shout her out, Ibi Bassi, work with people who know the language to help me, because my body felt that this would never be said in English. I just knew because in my household, even the split and divide between English and EBBO was quite clear. And so even though I couldn't do the work of translating, I would have somebody come in. And one of the anchor points for me in my plays and in my work, is it true? So I never wanted to write anything, or write in a way that would make it easy to digest, but would make the characters not true to themselves.

And so Abassiama, and then her husband Upong, and the man who would then go on to become her second husband, Disciple, they think in Ibibio, they do not think in English. And I wanted to make sure I held that, and then ask the audiences to lean in. And I figured that it was okay, because the first time I watched a Shakespeare play, I didn't know what the hell was going on. And I was like a kid in school, and I was like a smart kid, and was like, I don't know Othello, I don't know. And so I had to lean in and figure out a lot of my first Shakespeare plays from context clues, and I got it. And so it's an ask in my work to lean in. And maybe for a moment in time, step into the body of an immigrant in that way, where they have to lean in to understand the world around them, my play will ask you to do the same thing. So yes, bilingual on purpose, also without translation on purpose. I've been asked by many theaters if I can subtitle, and the answer is always no.

[28:14] Isaiah Stavchansky: I love that. I had a similar experience growing up and reading it. Although I couldn't understand the words, I knew what was happening. And that was remarkable to me. Putting this book together, I really, in seven plays, wanted to encapsulate sort of the endless experiences of immigrants. And when I saw your play, Hansol, it was really important to me that I included the experiences of adopted children in this country, because I think that we don't often refer to them as immigrant, but in many ways, technically they are. So I wonder if you can talk about your experience as an immigrant writer, and whether you identify as such, or what is your relationship with that term?

[29:02] Hansol Jung: I don't think I do yet. I've been here for maybe 15 years now. I learned the craft here. I'm mainly writing in English now, no Korean. But the word, it just means that I've taken this place to be mine. And it doesn't feel like mine. And maybe it's the problem of the perpetual Asian alien-dom, and Asian Americans have been here for generations, and for generations still feel like they're the outsider. Maybe that's probably a part of that, maybe. But in terms of, is this, I have a home here. I have my tribe, my collaborators, my friends. But it doesn't feel so. Actually, when you said you were going to put it in your book about immigrants, I was like, oh, why? Was my first thought. Because, I don't know, it's also not really about adoption.

Maybe it's just about the fact that it's very much about being uprooted, and trying to find a family that you have chosen, who have chosen you. And that sort of active thing of, I've decided that you are mine. And not because you were born there, not because I have birthed you. Nothing else has predicated this decision than my own. And if you accept, then we are a family. I guess I don't feel like America accepts me yet.

[30:51] Isaiah Stavchansky: Can you talk to me about the puppetry within the play?

[30:51] Hansol Jung: Puppetry? Wolf, or Ginu, is the adopted boy. The actor has a puppet for the whole play. How did that come to be? It came for so many reasons. I was writing a very realism-driven play, Three Unities, and I got so bored. And I was writing this play to please get me out of here. And so I added boxing, I added realities, wolf, puppetry, anything. That's the surface excuse. But really it was about, I read the article that Megan Tewey wrote in 2013 about this internet rehoming of international adoptees. I got very angry, I don't know why. I'm not adopted, I don't have children, but I got so angry. And I was like, I can't write about this, because it's not my story to tell. But I think, it just kept gnawing on me.

I was like, okay, maybe I'll just write one monologue, but it has to be from the point of view of this person. And I have to give them the most agency. That means they can't be a child. And also you don't want to put a child through that story. So I was like, okay, then it's going to be a very hot, charming adult. And being the spirit and having director at rest with the audience is how you give power in theater. So giving all the things I know how to give this person the most authority and the most power and the most command, and let him be the voice of the boy. And that's where that idea came from. And then as I was workshopping it, I found something really cool, because I haven't trained in puppetry, but you could put a sack of potatoes there and people will love it more than when there's a human child.

Due to the fact I've given you a blank canvas that people interact with as if they were a child. And so they put their own child or their own childhood onto the sack of potatoes. And so they care about it more. And so when you poke a hole in it, they're like, what the hell? Whereas opposed to a human pretending that it hurt, it actually hurt. And it was so magical to find that. And so I think I started writing that more and more into the play.

[33:11] Isaiah Stavchansky: Both of these plays were written a few years ago now. Do you think that this current moment in which people with green cards are being deported, has that changed your relationship to the stories?

[33:29] Mfoniso Udofia: What I have come to understand is my disciple, Upong, my three Nigerian immigrants who are here on student visas, might not have gotten into the country today. And the people who are, I am so interested in the lineage they make, how their children understand themselves over time to be Black American, how they then will then go on to create and make in this American world the low tuition rates of 1978, the laxer immigration laws of 1978, meant that they could come and dream in that way. And I don't think, I think the hurdle to their coming is would be higher. And I know that it would be, because I am working with a Nigerian student, want to be student, hopeful on the ground in Nigeria, and he has gotten into Columbia, he has gotten into NYU, he has gotten into pay, he has gotten in, and he cannot secure the visa to come.

Yes. And the tuition rates are too high, and he is not moneyed international, which is so different than being poor international with all the same talent, and he can't get in. And a lot of what I try to do, and it has been not easy, is to keep breathing hope into him, especially because there are programs there, but it is not held all the time in the same way. And he just wants a place to create his craft. So yeah, yeah. I even think about even the fourth play, her portmanteau, and how Eni Abasi, who is a citizen, but had been abroad for all her 36 years of life, how she would have a difficult time getting in today. So yeah, I actually do think about that. And as people are processing the plays in Boston, I think the reason why it also might be hitting there in a different way than it did when it was in New York, is because the circumstances are making people look at the play and register how hard it is, because what they're seeing on their televisions is now representative of that difficulty.

[36:14] Hansol Jung: I don't know if I can, if I have anything smart to say about this. Severe fear and denial about what's happening. I think, I have a green card. My immigration lawyer told me to not leave the country. It's so intense. So what does my story do? And I don't care a little bit. I will say this though. I think, and in essence, a lot of what I write about is

[36:38] Hansol Jung: How do we create community? And how do we accept people? How do we see the people in front of us as also people? I think a lot of the pain that happens right now is our atrophied muscle of the ability to do that. And in America, because we see more differences really quickly and it's still very easily articulated, that pops to the mind and the collective imagination more. But I feel like the cool thing about theatre is you make people come to sit there next to each other. And with Worldplay, what was really nice was that we made them look at each other while this was happening, and there's like a, I love that theatre can do that. That thing of, oh, we just did this together. Or if there's a big white man who's like tisking through the whole thing, we collectively give him the side-eye.

That kind of experience, I think, is what our job is as playwrights, is to create that kind of thing where we keep nudging the imagination towards what is similar between us more than what is not. So I really enjoy having that job right now.

[38:00] Hansol Jung: I'm going to ask one more question, then I'm going to open it up to you guys for a Q&A. But I want to end on a positive note. So I want to ask you guys what people or art is inspiring you right now? The thing with that question is that I have an answer, and then you ask it, and it goes away. And just dissipates like vapor. If I'm being really honest, it's really embarrassing. So I can't. It's also being recorded. We can cut it later. I'll let you guys know. I'm a little obsessed with G-Dragon right now.

[38:47] Mfoniso Udofia: Oh, you have been. We were on vacation together.

[38:53] Hansol Jung: Okay, so G-Dragon is the leader of Big Bang, a K-pop second-generation massive boy band that I did not care about back then. But currently, since last year, I started writing a play about the return of a boy band group to write about AI, and then it became this obsession about G-Dragon, which is crazy. But I think I'm looking for just really incredible people who overcome incredible odds, like really intense difficulties from their society, and just are able to still do their thing, and just hold the North Star of, all I want to do is inspire people. All I want to do is help people smile, help people live. All I want to do is find the way that we as a community can thrive. And he does it through K-pop, okay? And it's inspiring to me.

[40:03] Martyna Majok: I mean, I think you can put mine in. I don't know what this means, though. I don't know if it has, because mine is also music. But the problem is that I've been listening to this woman who just grabbed me by the throat. I like her. Her name is Snow the Product. And she raps in English and in Spanish. I do not know what she's saying. I like the sound of this woman's voice in my ear. It is trap music, too. Or it's not actually trap. It's not actually, if I'm going to be specific. But it's got a beat to it that my body understands. And I will have a little dance break to myself, going, I pray you are not cursing me out in another language, because I like you. And so that's, yeah, that's me. I've been really into a very particular kind of hip-hop sound that is real rough. And I like the women who are, like, Lovrilla is fantastic. I want it a little gritty in my ear. And that's what I'm doing. And then also maybe listening to a harpist, too. Amazing, amazing.

[41:14] Hansol Jung: So do we have any questions from our audience? Yes.

[41:34] Martyna Majok: Okay, so the question is, what does our writing process look like? It used to be far more regimented and a little tight. I would be up at 4 in the morning. And I was doing that because I used to teach a lot, like substitute teach in the beginning. And so whatever I could do to get in enough writing hours in the day. And also that is when my brain is most generative. Around 2, 3 o'clock, I really, I stop processing. Or I stop processing artistically. And I found that out early. I can do an email. I could maybe teach a class I've taught 30 times before. But I'm not going to be doing my best writing after that time. And so I used to be very particular. Now I'm 16 years deep. I'm juggling 80, what feels like 80 projects. And also trying to have a personal life. I'm writing when I can, how I can. And praying to Jesus it gets done.

[42:34] Mfoniso Udofia: Yeah.

[42:36] Hansol Jung: Me, too. I don't think I've ever had any discipline or knowledge of when I write the best. But it's always been in like, I have to submerge myself in the thing for a while. It's like, all right, today's a writing day. I get up and don't write. And then at 5 p.m., I'm like, oh, no. And then I write the title. And I'm like, good job. Dream about it. And then the next day, okay, no, today I'm definitely going to write that monologue that I dreamt myself writing. And then I think about it until 5 p.m. And then I write that first sentence. That's not right. I can't work. I can't. And then I go and, I don't know, go drink. And then I was like, this sort of stays, goes on for four days. Until it becomes two days before the deadline.

And then that's, I'm talking like week span. If the deadline is a week out, that's what I start doing. A week before, I have to write. And then four days of excruciating pain and just the title. And then two days of go, panicked go. And somewhere in there, there are things I like. And then I think somewhere in there are things that I think I was like percolating on, dreaming about. And as I write it, I learn. And then cut. And usually, so the first draft for me is very drafty. And then about collaborators, take it to collaborators. They say the way a person reads it, a way an actor who knows your writing reads something is a note. And that helps it get to the next level. And I think that's sort of it.

I don't know. I don't think I'd ever be able to write a novel because I don't know how to do it just by myself. I don't know how to just sit and actually just write five hours, eight hours a day. That's me.

[44:29] Mfoniso Udofia: I can go, which is sometimes my partner looks at me and is like, this is not good. I'm funny, so stand up. Walk. See the daylight. Try to be human. I can go an eight to ten hour swing just writing. And I also write in my head. So I'm noodling on that question for a long time usually before I even set to write. So my first drafts don't look like first drafts. But they aren't technically. Because I have been writing inside of myself. So, yeah.

[45:13] Hansol Jung: I know he hates you. I love you so much.

[45:15] Mfoniso Udofia: I love you so much, Hansol.

[45:22] Martyna Majok: Yeah, I will say though that there's busts and boons to both, to be honest. There's something, I look at how Hansol writes, how some of my dear playwriting friends who I know write. And there's something that feels like really spontaneous and organic. I have got very lived in frames. Which can feel really good. But if you've done that and have hardened too early. Like I have one play, Run Boy Run, that took me so long to break out of a frame that I had. Because I baked for so long. So I was no longer spontaneous in it. And had to almost crack it and break it badly in order to reimagine again. So there are busts and boons. And my earring confirms that. Thank you.

[46:16] Hansol Jung: Oh, there she went. Thank you. Do we have another question?

[46:23] Martyna Majok: Yeah.

[46:27] Hansol Jung: Please.

[46:30] Audience Member: Hi. First of all, thank you for this interview. It's something that resonated with me. Or sparked my curiosity in Mr. Chodkow three weeks forward. Was when he says about the sort of collective or collaborative experience between playwright and audience when a work is performed live. I'm assuming that not many of us here tonight have a chance to see either a decision or a solo play performed. I was wondering if either of you could speak to what was surprising to you. What felt different seeing your work in motion as opposed to as part of the process of writing?

[47:16] Hansol Jung: Well, I think part of my process of writing is that it's always in motion. Like it's not valid until I've heard it being spoken and see how it lands on people who've heard it. And so, yeah, it's not in terms of page to stage. That happens in the rehearsal room. I would say though, there are always surprises. I love it when people laugh when I didn't expect it. Or like collective gasps when I didn't write it in. That sort of becomes the landscape of the piece. And that's like my favorite moments actually in theater.

[47:57] Mfoniso Udofia: I have to co-sign the laughter. There are times where I'm writing the saddest thing to me. I'm like, oh God, this is so profound. I'm weeping while I'm writing it. And then I see it on stage and I'm weeping and people are laughing. And I'm like, stop y'all. He's going through it. I'm so happy that everyone is engaged. But it has been a learning too that people process things differently. And so what strikes my funny bone? I have learned what makes me laugh usually makes other people cry. I'm cracking up at certain things. These two people are coming together wrong. That's a funny line. And people are like, no, that really hurt me. It is always interesting to see where my conception bumps up against the audience.

[49:20] Mfoniso Udofia: There was somebody who spoke Ibibio. I don't know who they were who was calling back in language to the stage and then looking at everybody going disciple is back because she could hear everything, so she was getting a different experience and pulling people into it and it was real fun for me. It's always fun when there are Ibibio people in the audience and when there are Niger people in the audience because I'll say this last thing and then I'll stop. There's a lot of prayer in my place and sometimes without the West African people in the audience those prayers become reverential in a way that you're like oh my god this is profoundly beautiful whereas some of the Nigerians will watch disciple pray and go you got to go, you got to go because they understand something about that kind of cultural prayer he might be swirling in so yeah those are some of the things that happen for me. Fascinating. We've got time for one more question.

[50:38] Hansol Jung: I'm going to give this as an answer but I was wondering how your place in the community where you work to be of inspiration to show yourself. I was also saying that people start talking to you and people start researching to hear your story. How are your places showing themselves to you?

[51:04] Mfoniso Udofia: How our place show ourselves show themselves to us is the question and I think we did tap it a little bit before but I am so happy to say it again for me it is really questions. I do walk around in my life just fraying about certain things like one of them is like when is trauma become tradition and that becomes run boy run so yeah for me it's usually a question that is very particular to me that then I explain or journey through in play. From like seed to how it grows into a play I think that's actually quite a mystery to me and that's why I think what's fun about doing writing plays for me it's I think I am circling the same problem and I keep writing about the same thing but it's like a game where I'm like can I pull it this and will it be the same thing can I pull it that and I grew up in South Africa.

I went when I was six and a half and I was in Africana preschool and I have this vivid memory of being like because I was like I had a lot of friends I was popular in Korea. I got like I got plucked and stuck in this country new country no friends no one this I was the first Asian that anybody ever saw and I remember sitting at the edge of a seesaw not knowing how to get anybody else on there and I'm like I don't I'm sitting here just go sit there was no language I didn't know gestures and people they like people these little kids were what is she doing they're sitting there on the seesaw by herself I just remember that so vividly and I feel like that's what I'm always writing about how do you get the other person to sit on the seesaw when you have no language and in terms of seed I think I always start from whatever not done yet and what do I want to see what's interesting to see right now what do people want to say I don't know it's it can start commercially can start poetically can start a little I don't know just like as a writing etude whatever and it becomes a play when I can hook into that thing I think it becomes and it becomes a thing worth pursuing for 10s 20s 30s of drafts if I found if I find the thing that connects to that problem of humans of communication and connection to be very trite.

[53:39] David Rigano: Great thank you both for contributing your place to this anthology and for coming here tonight and thank you all for listening to us it's been an absolute pleasure.

[53:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Same thanks and we are back all those wonderful first generation stories yes and second first and second generation stories just it's the storytelling I love it it's so specific to not having the repression of the U.S. but again it's it is the melting pot what parts of American culture influence you through the lens yes of the culture you grow up with at home it's so different just the lifestyles my husband's from El Salvador and he saves everything and I'm a total thrower aware and it's just for you.

[54:42] Mfoniso Udofia: Uh oh I I'm a pack rat which is a nice word for a hoarder.

[54:49] Hansol Jung: Yeah I love to throw stuff away because I just I like a clear space I can't think otherwise but it's just that we're very different mindset on that and so I think it's just interesting to see that melting pot to see how all our stories combine. We had a we have a Christmas tree at Christmas and at one point I came home and this is like 12 years of marriage have gone by at this point or 12 years of relationship have gone by at this point and I happened to see a bunch of orange and lemon peels on the tree and I was like that's new like all our ornaments are up there but there's also a random bunch of orange and lemon peels and I've never seen that in the entire time we've been together and all our Christmases is this some Salvadorian Christmas tradition that I don't know and is it such something that I don't I growing up Mexican-American is it this what what am I missing here and then finally like and he saw on TikTok he saw that cats don't like citrus and it was a way to keep cats from getting into the tree not a cultural thing not a cultural thing at all just a culture of cat owners but just that like I but immediately though I was looking it up because I'm like I want to learn I want to learn what is this and I'm like googling it and googling it like Salvadorian Christmas tree yeah lines and it's funny because I feel like I have a lot of Italian-American culture on my mom's side my dad's side is Polish but I really don't feel any ownership of a Polish-American identity I like this I like pierogies and kielbasa as much as the next guy but I don't that's what I grew up with culture-wise on that side of the family was like New York Jew yeah but I also knew and this goes back to your exaggerated stories that on my father's side his grandmother claimed that she came from Russia and then his grandfather would say if you came from Russia and I came from Poland how did we grow up in the same village but the borders were also always shifting yeah back then so who knows but yeah that's the that's the background immigrant culture that I grew up with because I think that they had a very New York specific culture that they were able to assimilate into but I also know that my dad's grandmother mostly spoke Yiddish and hardly spoke any English dad grew up with that he also had a great story that he told never really having conversations with his grandmother because she didn't speak a lot of English and saying like finding himself in the 60s alone with his grandmother in the living room or something and just trying to figure out how to make conversation and he said hey grandma boobie I don't know if he called her did you hear that they they put a man on the moon a man flew to the moon and her response to him was you have money you travel.

[57:57] Mfoniso Udofia: So those are the kinds of stories but I also I remember pounded into us the story of my my great-great-grandfather already being here and my great-great-grandmother coming over with no not my great just my great-grandmother coming over with three boys all of her belongings sewn into her clothes and losing her luggage at Ellis Island getting to Ellis Island and the luggage is nowhere to be found and she has I don't know three four boys a newborn oh my god and my mom recently did all of this genealogy and looking for stuff and I think we always had this image in our heads of this kind of like little old Italian immigrant lady she was like 25 wow yeah once we were looking at the papers yeah you realize I'm thinking oh yeah she had five more kids when she got here my gosh they did not all survive but my grandfather was the second youngest of 10 wow yeah wow and you go oh yeah she was young when she came over without her husband because he was already here with three or four boys and all of her worldly possessions on her back that's because anything else that was supposed to be was lost was lost stolen who knows yeah wow and that was like drilled into us if you go to Ellis Island look for this luggage look for we we have we did when you go in there is actually an exhibit of a pile of lost luggage wow and we immediately went oh holy shit this was a thing we knew that this was our family story we didn't realize there was a lot of people it was and so we did we started walking around that thing and trying to see if we could see our name written on it those are the stories that are that stay with us that our families pass down that make good storytelling and make good theater and so I am so grateful to have had that panel with us to do that.

[1:00:00] David Rigano: Our next episode going from storytelling through generations of immigrants now we're jumping to storytelling as therapy. We had Diana Feldman in and she talked about the enact drama therapy method which uses drama improvisation communication to help adolescents develop healthier coping mechanisms and relationship skills.

[1:00:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Nice I love drama therapy please follow us on Instagram at Drama Book Show Podcast please subscribe to the Drama Bookshop on Eventbrite so that you can be alerted every time we add in-person events to our calendar and remember that all the books we talk about can be found here at the Drama Bookshop and so can we and we will see you at the bookshop.