Seeds of the Wee-Pie

By Lisa Dillman

Playwright Lisa Dillman is a member of the Goodman’s Playwrights Unit—a group of four local writers who have met monthly for the last year to workshop their new plays in progress. As the culmination of that program, her play American Wee-Pie will be featured in a staged reading this Monday, June 20 at 7pm in the Owen Theatre. Tickets are FREE, but rumor is that the reading is filling up fast, so reserve your seats here, or call the box office at 312.443.3800.

Playwrights are often asked to describe where a new work came from, its so-called seed idea. I’ve been asked this recently with regard to American Wee-Pie, the piece I am developing this season as part of the Goodman’s inaugural Playwrights Unit.

The answer is complicated. For me, there is almost never a single seed idea. Instead, a play begins to grow when several disparate ideas bump into each other and begin a conversation inside my head. Eventually, out of that linkage, a narrative starts to take shape.

With American Wee-Pie the bumping seed ideas went something like this:

Idea #1: In late 2009, as the economy was flailing, two of my friends were downsized out of their longtime careers. In telling me their stories, they both used the same expression; they said they needed to figure out their “second act.” It occurred to me that in this era of whole career categories disappearing never to return, a person’s “second act” might be almost anything. Poised in a kind of career intermission, one could view the second act as either terrifying or freeing. Or both.

Idea #2: Around that same time, I noticed that, despite the struggling economy, the number of high-end cupcake shops in Chicago seemed to be on the rise. The cupcake was thriving in hard times. I began to “research” this informally, sampling cupcakes all over the city. Though they varied a bit in style and presentation from place to place, all were pricey. In an online conversation with a friend, I mentioned my new interest in unaffordable small cakes, and she responded with some heated anti-cupcake rhetoric, assuring me that the cupcake bubble was unsustainable and about to burst.

Idea #3: The third part of the Wee-Pie seed equation was a moment that has actually been living in me for many years. Just before I left home to go away to college, I took an Amtrak trip from Chicago to Los Angeles to visit friends and relatives. I’d had some problematic teenage years leading up to this departure, and I was desperate to put the uglier bits of my past behind me and find out who I might yet become in the world up ahead. I got to Chicago very late and had to race to Union Station to make my train. I arrived with only minutes to spare; a loudspeaker was blaring that my train was in final boarding. I sprinted through the station and onto the platform. I noticed a balding middle-aged man in a rumpled gray suit running up ahead of me, head down, puffing. When he had nearly reached the boarding car he suddenly staggered to a stop and spun around toward me. His eyes brushed over mine as he went down to his knees and then fell straight over onto the concrete. A conductor rushed over and shooed people back. Paramedics came within minutes. The conductor shoved me onto my train, and I watched out the window as the EMTs tried—and failed—to revive the man in the gray suit. And then my train pulled out.

That man’s face—his eyes passing over mine for just an instant—has stayed with me. Bearing accidental witness to such an intimate part of a stranger’s life story—its end—seemed to carry with it a sort of cosmic responsibility. I have thought of that moment repeatedly, always at those times when something important in my life is either beginning or ending. Or both.

So. These three seeds converged in my mind and began a conversation that eventually evolved into American Wee-Pie—a comedy about a career second act, set in a cupcake bakery, and focused on a character who, haunted by two recent deaths, challenges himself to turn an ending into a beginning.

Chinglish Offstage: The Role of a Cultural Advisor

By Ken Smith, Chinglish Cultural Advisor

My wife Joanna Lee and I used to be China consultants, but after the thrashing the consultants receive in Chinglish we’ve now changed our title to “advisors.” The job description, though, is pretty much the same: resident authenticity police for a bilingual, cross-cultural play about an American businessman in China. How does one become a China “advisor”? As David Henry Hwang’s businessman says early in the play, every story is different, each deal giving birth to its own unique journey. From there (he soon finds out), those journeys are generally steered by guanxi, the distinctly Chinese spin on the idea of connections and relationships.

Joanna’s and my journey started nearly 10 years ago, when we began meeting Western artists who wanted to come to China and Chinese artists wanting to come to the West. Thanks to our own guanxi—I was a journalist with some diversions in book publishing and public relations; Joanna was an academic with a broad range of arts administrative experience—we could always find someone to help those artists with whatever they happened to need.

David Henry Hwang’s “Guizhou period,” as he sometimes calls it, began when he heard some village music that Joanna and I had recorded from that province back in 2003. The Dong people, one of the minority populations in that corner of the country, became a dramatic coda in his play Yellow Face (currently running at Chicago’s Silk Road Theatre Project directed by the Goodman’s Associate Producer Steve Scott). Soon we were traveling to China together, introducing David to people from different fields, from expatriate businessmen to the head of the Shanghai Opera House, who engaged in a friendly debate about Puccini. (Zhang Guoyong, for the record, thinks Madama Butterfly is an astute portrayal of Asian values; David, as we learned from M. Butterfly, feels rather differently. The two agreed to disagree, and a few choice lines eventually worked their way into Yellow Face.)

The Shanghai parties were indistinguishable from a night out in London or Berlin, with David and Joanna being practically the only Chinese people. Roomfuls of colorful characters were on the make, hustling to close a deal and get back home. “You know,” David said at the time, “there’s a David Mamet play here about American businessmen in China.”

As we all know by now, there was actually a David Henry Hwang play waiting to be written. Last summer, in-between Chinglish workshops in New York, David traveled again to China, this time with director Leigh Silverman and the play’s producers, who were astonished to find that much of the play’s exaggerated humor turned out to be based in vérité.

Coming soon: traveling with the Chinglish team in China.

Chinglish Roundup

Today is the first of five days of tech rehearsal for the cast and crew of Chinglish. The set has gone up in the Albert, the costumes are getting their last few stitches, and the script has been put on a strict “diet,” in the words of playwright David Henry Hwang. If you haven’t been following his weekly web log at You Offend Me You Offend My Family, or his daily journal at Broadway's Best Shows, we highly recommend giving them a read (as well as checking out our Chinglish video library) for a fascinating look into the making-of this new play.

Performances of Chinglish begin this Saturday! Go here for tickets.

Scene and Heard

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that we’ve still got one long week ahead of us before David Henry Hwang’s Chinglish premieres in the Albert. (June 18. Be there.) Luckily, this Monday at the Goodman we’re planning a staged reading in the Owen of another new work to hold you over—Rohina Malik’s The Mecca Tales, which was developed as part of our Playwrights Unit program.

The Playwrights Unit is the Goodman’s group of four local playwrights who have been meeting monthly over the course of a year to workshop their new plays in progress. Monday’s reading represents the culmination of Ms. Malik’s work on her play The Mecca Tales over the past year. The following Monday, June 20, we’ll stage a reading of another Playwrights Unit writer’s work, when Lisa Dillman’s American Wee-Pie takes to the Owen stage. Tickets to both events are FREE, but reservations are required (and the buzz is they're filling up fast), so if you’re hoping to snag a seat give the box office a call at 312.443.3800, or visit this page.

In the meantime, check out this week’s links, harvested fresh for your reading enjoyment:

While we continue to explore the culture and customs of contemporary China, The New York Times takes in the classical culture of China's neighbors to the North. (We’re keeping our fingers crossed for a US tour of Chinggis Khaan.)

What light is that through yonder multiplex breaks? The Los Angeles Times finds out.

And back on the East Coast, a critic takes note of one fleeting night when old-school underground theater came to life in Brooklyn. (The New York Times)

Speaking of coming to life, The Atlantic declares Google’s Les Paul-inspired doodle the search engine’s coolest doodle to date. (We’re still partial to the Martha Graham tidbit from this past April.)

And Denver’s National Theatre Conservatory meets a sad and untimely end. (The Denver Post)

The Los Angeles Times examines the dark marketing arts behind luring in an audience, one Tony performance at a time.

And in the UK, a theater (theatre?) manifesto hoping to ensure the young squirts have access to live-action culture. (The Stage)

Notes from the Big Room

The cast and creative team of Chinglish are in their final week in the Healy, the Goodman’s expansive rehearsal space recently dubbed the “Big Room” by playwright David Henry Hwang. This week in his journal at You Offend Me You Offend My Family, he talks Chinglish rewrites, the team of people it takes to translate a single word, and steps forward. (Warning: spoiler alert!)Also, for a sample of those Chinese feasts Johnny Wu spoke so highly of, check out his daily blog at Broadway's Best Shows.

Photo of Jennifer Lim and James Waterston in rehearsal for Chinglish by Eric Y. Exit.

A Rediscovery Through Language

By Johnny Wu, Bing and Judge Xu Geming in Chinglish.


During a viewing of an Olympics in my youth, my mother offered up to her guests a thought that lived somewhere between levity and heartbreak. "This little one will only root for America," she said in Mandarin. The guests shared a knowing laugh.

Now that I’m fully immersed in Tony Award-winning David Henry Hwang's latest play, Chinglish, here at the Goodman, I'm enjoying the feeling that I might finally be pleasing my mother. Outside of our lead and anchor, James Waterston, everyone else in the cast speaks Mandarin including UK native Stephen Pucci, whose command over the world's toughest language remains charmingly impressive in the rehearsal room. The cast spends ample time together; saying that we all get along would be an understatement. We frequent Chicago's Chinatown, lug home tons of groceries, gather in an apartment and cook up feasts to satiate emperors. I employ cooking skills that were (at the time) unwillingly learned from my mother. We laugh, we joke, we drink, we eat, we get lost in impassioned discourse, we watch ball games, we go out, we stay in—and through it all, we speak Mandarin.

Sure, I spent my first eight years in Shanghai, but I grew up in the urban paradise of Queens, NYC. My mom grew up in the rural oppression of Cultural Revolution China. When I arrived in this country, I immediately discarded my Chinese identity—I mean, who doesn't enjoy hot showers, and freedom of speech? And over the years, I've been thoroughly convinced that the American way of life is indeed my way, but I've always struggled to connect with my mother.

Well, a few days ago, I called my mom to tell her the French Open women's championship match was on NBC. She's not a tennis fan. But she is a China fan. And when Li Na became the sport's first-ever Chinese winner of a Grand Slam title, I knew that my mom was enjoying her nation's triumph. And I, too, felt a sense of overwhelming pride. As China continues to fortify its identity as a global leader, joining the ranks of countries like the US, I'm finding more comfort and more urgency alike in representing, as fully as I can, all that it is to be Chinese American.

For me, Chinglish has been a portal through which I'm afforded a better knowledge of myself. But beyond that, it has offered me a group of people that I can easily love. And it is with this love that this exquisite story is told. David's writing is poignant, hilarious, and stunningly truthful. The cast performs with veracity, with mastery and with regards to Leigh Silverman, our director, my only fear in using the word “virtuosic” to describe her abilities would be that the English language might run out of better adjectives to suit her future endeavors.

Chinglish begins performances at the Goodman on June 18th, closing on July 24th. Join us for a story that's set halfway around the world and yet lives so close to us—a story about our endless need to communicate beyond all else.

Top (left to right): Chinglish cast members Brian Nishii, James Waterston, Johnny Wu, Angela Lin, Stephen Pucci, and Jennifer Lim. Middle: Johnny Wu, Jennifer Lim, Chinglish translator Candace Chong, and Stephen Pucci. Bottom: Chinglish translator Candace Chong and cast member Larry Zhang.

A Glimpse of Chinglish

Rehearsals for Chinglish—David Henry Hwang’s funny, sexy, clever, timely, bilingual new play—are in full swing in the Healy Rehearsal Room. Only two and a half more weeks until it takes to the Albert stage! To document the process of developing this extraordinary work, the Tony-winning playwright has been prolifically blogging about the rehearsal process. Read his daily updates at Broadway’s Best Shows, or get an in-depth look into his process as a playwright in his weekly posts at You Offend Me You Offend My Family.

Chinglish begins previews on Saturday, June 18. Check out our behind-the-scenes rehearsal and meet and greet videos to hold you over until then.

Above: Chinglish Director Leigh Silverman and Playwright David Henry Hwang in rehearsal. Photo by Eric Y. Exit.