Editor’s note: Velina Hasu Houston participated in the recent National Asian American Theater Conference and Festival, last month in Little Tokyo. In response to a request from LA Stage Times to discuss the generational issues that dominated much of the conversation at the conference (see also Krystal Banzon’s vlogs here), Houston offers the following.
Velina Hasu Houston
When I was 20, I did not worry about writing something “new” or “different” in subject matter or form, although my work often was perceived as such. I still do not concern myself with a quest for something different. Then and now, I wrote and write to write, period.
If a play’s subject matter or form is deemed as being new or different, it is a natural outcome of artistic expression and not an intentional result. I write compelled by passion for characters and story. To concern myself with re-invention in the process of original invention seems a waste of energy. If we write from the gut without worrying about how it is going to be perceived or where it will be produced or if it is “new” or “different,” we are more apt to create something truly imaginative and fresh.
Many of the established playwrights I know understand this intrinsically. This is also true of many emerging playwrights I have come to know via the University of Southern California School of Theatre’s Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing program. Most serious playwrights understand that we neither need to re-invent the wheel nor waste time thinking about how to re-invent it. We just write.
We write with knowledge enriched by the people with whom we engage and by the roads we travel. We read, visit places, view media, and engage with individuals who feed our spirit, thereby helping us to nurture and cultivate artistic expression. We write despite naysayers who proclaim theater is a dead art. We know it is in fact quite vibrant. It allows audiences and artists to commune in a live, collective experience that is the culmination of their mutual presence, and that indeed magically never repeats in the exact same fashion. We view paintings, television, and film, but with theater we – audience and dramatists – hear each other breathing and share in a mutual response that shapes a distinct artistic experience. There is nothing like it.
But for some it is not enough. They want instant access and opportunities, greater financial rewards, and more fame – and fast. I understand; technology changes the rhythm and pace of desire. Moreover, theater is, after all, part of show business, even if often viewed like a poor distant relation, and so why shouldn’t it be a pathway to the American Dream? Well, because theater is theater. If success is defined as wealth and fame, then it is not a secure choice. At the heart of it, does anyone become involved with the theater for fame and fortune? Really? What about what we do for love, as clichéd as it sounds, Edward Kleban’s and Marvin Hamlisch’s brilliant song notwithstanding? As far as I am concerned, theater is always a first kiss.
Given my theatrical ideology, I must admit I am thwarted when some millennial dramatists declare that theater needs to be re-invented with new forms, themes, and approaches. They state that it needs to be “different.” Different from what? The “what” is not easily articulated because these dramatists reveal that they have not seen nor read much drama that existed before 1999. They say such drama has little to do with their lives. At a mentor’s suggestion, I read international historical and modern drama during my teenage years, not because I had a burning desire to do so, but because I wanted to be a playwright and it made sense to expose myself to the history of the discipline. Many millennials understand this without counsel. Others think only veteran artists deem this to be important – but veterans were not always veterans. Exposure to the discipline and seeking out of artistic mentors via institutions, organizations, or individuals in the field are important to the cultivating of a voice. With little context, how can one know what is wrong with theater and how to fix it? Are any of us truly able to tell colleagues to put on their sun gogs because the spectacle of newness and difference we can deliver is going to be blindingly brilliant? I want context. I will continue to seek it out. And mentors? Yes. Significant.
Theater is a tough relationship, but one we enter knowing its dynamics. We work other jobs and make sacrifices to keep it pulsating in our lives. I am thinking of a playwright who wrote comedy sketches, and worked as a journalist and physician in order to write plays. He may be familiar to you — Anton Chekhov.
In the late 1800s, Chekhov said the only thing new about art is talent. I do not believe he meant that the fear that theater has lost vitality is due to a lack of talent. I believe he meant that theater evolves because talent does. Nascent, maturing, established, and revered talent – such are the dynamics of artistry. Artists exist at every stage and the cycle propagates, ensuring a variety of voices at all times. That is an embarrassment of riches.
My interest in context motivates me to read drama as well as see productions as often as I can. With regard to newness, in reality themes and subject matter do not change as much as one might think. Their application to specific time periods, cultures, ethnicities, styles, etc., may change, but I often discover core elements innate to human nature. By seeking context, I find a broader and deeper understanding of the discipline. It is my hope that those who want to be different read and see theater so that they understand what has come before them and what is in their midst. One must know the “what” that one strives to be different from, or else one’s difference is usually not different, but a regurgitation of something created a thousand, hundred, or 25 years before.
For playwrights and theater artists in general, humanity is our laboratory. Start the experiment. Rules only impede the imagination. Set it free. Write because you must.
**Photo by Pacific Rim Photo Services
Velina Hasu Houston is the author of Tea, which premiered Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club in 1987, and Calligraphy as well as over 30 plays produced internationally including 16 commissions, two Rockefeller Foundation fellowships, a Japan Foundation fellowship, Pinter Review Prize for Drama, and others. Currently, she has commissions with Los Angeles Opera (Jonah’s Faith) and Canada’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council (Iphigenia At Aulis). She is founder and director of the Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing, USC School of Theatre.
