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I conducted this interview with Jennifer Weir, the director of Mu Performing Arts� production of Happy Valley, as part of my coverage of the first National Asian American Theater Festival (NAATF). The feature article on NAATF that I wrote for TheaterMania can be viewed by clicking here. This is an expanded version of our interview, containing a lot of stuff that wasn�t able to make it into the final draft of the article. The interview was conducted May 29, 2007.
DAN BACALZO: You originally directed Happy Valley in 2005, right? Is it the exact same cast?
JENNIFER WEIR: There�s one cast member who has changed, but otherwise, it�s the same. One of the original cast members is now living in Korea, and she�s flying back to do this show, which is sort of an amazing, fun thing.
DB: Now, that�s commitment.
JW: Yeah, I know! I couldn�t believe it. I think it�s awesome.
DB: There are only four performances in New York. Are you going to be doing additional performances in Minneapolis as well?
JW: There�s a TCG conference in June at the Guthrie, and we�re going to informally invite some folks from there to watch a rehearsal wherever we are. Hopefully, it�ll be run-throughs, but we�ll see. And I�m hoping to have an invitation only audience before we leave. It�ll be interesting, because there�s a balcony set piece that we�ll have to ship at least a week prior to when we have to leave. So, I�m trying to front load the whole rehearsal process to do the run-throughs and then once the set�s gone to do some more intense scene work.
DB: Do you know what went into Mu Performing Arts� decision to do this particular play for the festival?
JW: I�m a member of the artistic core group, and was part of the discussions. But ultimately, it was decided by Rick [Shiomi, artistic director of Mu Performing Arts]. Since it�s a small cast, logistics was part of it. But we also felt that it�s a new script which we were able to give its premiere. It�s such a great, smart script, and we wanted to highlight the playwright, Aurorae Khoo, and get more people to see this show.
DB: What specifically about the play appealed to you as a director?
JW: Many things. It�s fun revisiting the script, because there�s always so much more there than you even saw the last time you looked at it. One of the things that first grabbed me was that at the end of it, I was genuinely moved. A lot of scripts that I read can be clever or interesting, and you can see the potential. But I was actually emotionally moved when I read an early draft.
DB: Tell me a little about the play.
JW: It takes place the year before the handover of Hong Kong from the British to the Chinese and focuses on one family's experience with that transition. I like how the playwright balances the family drama, grounded in emotion, with this whole other world where the characters represent the greater nations at play at this time in history: Chester being the expatriate British, his new wife representing Mainland China, the maid representing third world labor, and Tuppy, the young girl who is sort of in the center of it, representing Hong Kong where everything sort of conflicts and collides. So, it�s a delicate balance, and it�s interesting how the playwright can do that through both some moving scenes and fun fantasy sequences. It gives the actors a lot to dig into.
DB: To talk a little more generally about Mu Performing Arts, it seems that Minneapolis has become one of the Midwest hubs of Asian American performance.
JW: Rick is an interesting guy, and in his time in Minnesota he has created this whole community of artists who can tie their development directly back to him in some way. At least, many of us can. He does it in this sort of subtle, you don�t realize the work you�ve done until you stop and look back it sort of way. One of the strengths of Theater Mu/Mu Performing Arts is its commitment to developing and nurturing artists, as well as new work. I started out as an actor, and then got involved in the Taiko program, and then I started directing. Obviously, being in Minnesota, there�s a smaller Asian American population to draw from in the first place, but what�s been unique is that many of the artists that have come in through Theater Mu have not had an Asian American community of their own. So finding one, especially an artistic one, has been a transforming and great thing for a lot of people.
DB: The name change from Theater Mu to Mu Performing Arts, is that because the company now encompasses more than theater?
JW: Yeah, it�s basically because of the Taiko program, which started off as an offshoot of something people were interested in but we didn�t think would go anywhere. We had our first concert and Rick thought that would be it. But it sort of snowballed and just grew and grew and grew until now half of our activities are theater and half are Taiko. So, we decided to change our name to encompass both worlds.
DB: You mentioned that part of Mu�s mission is to do original work. Aurorae Khoo is Los Angeles based, so how did her play come to you?
JW: I was desperately looking for a script for a directing project, and Rick happened to be on a panel -- maybe a grant panel -- where he was able to read a draft of Happy Valley. I don�t even think he read the whole thing, but enough to know there was something interesting there. So, he gave it to me to look at and I worked on that script as a workshop production for a director�s festival. Everybody liked it so much we decided to produce it fully in the fall.
DB: Since Happy Valley will be coming to New York to perform in the National Asian American Theater Festival, why do you think such a festival is needed, and why now?
JW: I�m sort of shocked and amazed one hasn�t happened before now. It seems incredible that there�s been all this development, all these theaters, all these artists, and there hasn�t been a unifying forum to see what�s going on. Especially for us in Minnesota, we�re more isolated than the folks on the coast in terms of seeing what others are doing out there. So for us, it�s a huge chance to see a lot of theater and also to get our work out there. What I�ve been frustrated by sometimes is that I think there�s a unique perspective in having Asian Americans working in and on theater, that even when other theater companies do an Asian American play, or what they think would serve that community, they often miss the boat -- really miss it, in ways that I find shocking.
DB: Can you elaborate?
JW: There�s a greater diversity and multiculturalism with repertory companies wanting to show more of a global sort of world as far as the stories they�re interested in producing. But the problem is that these projects also get developed through systems of which the Asian American communities may be totally left out of the dialogue. So, as far as the playwrights, directors, and actors, I think it�s more important than ever to really have strong Asian American theater companies. It�s simply a chance to develop as an artist where you wouldn�t get a second look at another theater company -- even for an Asian role -- if you didn�t already have some caliber of professionalism that without any roles between now and then, that you would never get to. I�m not saying that Asian American theaters are training grounds for Asian American actors, but there�s just a wealth of work that can be done there that�s going to enrich everybody�s programming.
DB: What are some of the challenges facing Asian American theater companies today?
JW: At least in Minnesota, being an Asian American theater means you�re often looked at as providing a certain sort of cultural education or check box of that kind of work. Anything more challenging, or more edgy that may speak to an Asian American population, may not necessarily speak to your paying audience.
DB: Are the audience demographics of Mu Performing Arts primarily Caucasian?
JW: There are always great efforts to develop an Asian American audience, but in general, it�s still more Caucasian. So, I think educating, growing, and leading this audience into more interesting territory creatively is a challenge for the more established Asian American theaters.
DB: Among the current crop of Asian American playwrights, who are the ones that interest you the most?
JW: Julia Cho, Chay Yew, Aurorae Khoo, Michael Golamco. There�s a growing swell of interesting voices that are emerging and starting to get produced, which is really exciting. They�re also moving beyond that initial phase of cultural drama, or whatever, where you�re only talking about being Asian American. The ethnicity stuff is still a huge part of what�s going on in the script, but now it�s getting more complex, more interesting. I also think there�s this wave of solo artists out there creating work outside of even an Asian American theater support system or network. The theater producing model needs to be adapted to find them, so we have a wider lens of what kind of performance is out there, what people are saying, and what voices are emerging. I think that�s reflected in what�s been programmed into the festival in New York, which is exciting.
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