Playwright’s Perspective: Mia Chung
When I first meet someone, I often ask where they grew up, if they have siblings, and if so, where they are in the birth order. Those are the stakes in each person’s vast landscape of identity that I always tack down first—perhaps because they are how I understand myself.
What if I had been born in Korea, the country of my parents’ origin, instead of Tarrytown, New York? And what if I didn’t have two sisters and two brothers? I’m the second child. What if my parents had stopped at #3 (perish the thought)? Things would be so different. But which things?
Like so much in life, Catch as Catch Can has several origin stories. One is the short play I was asked to write based on interviews with two actors—an Irish American, the other Italian American. The idea to have the actors perform two characters—doubling as both parent and offspring—emerged after the interviews, as I drove into the night.
Gripping tightly to the steering wheel, I pushed through the snow on I-95 back to my then-home in Providence, Rhode Island and searched for a way in to the writing. And then my mind grabbed onto the one thing the actors would not talk about: their mothers.
Despite gentle, circumspect inquiry, these otherwise garrulous actors went silent on the topic. So, I still remember how it felt, scanning the endless darkness of that drive, when lightning struck: “I’m going to make them play their mothers.”
Ah, the Mother—that universal sacred cow. That so many of us, the world over, share this common nerve ending is, for me, reassuring. My siblings and I subconsciously strive to be our mother’s favorite. But at the same time, I think each of us would be disappointed if ever chosen. My mother doesn’t have favorites.
I return home regularly to see my parents and to remember who I am. And sometimes my sense of self emerges from how different I am from who my family expect me to be. I no longer fit into that outline, that space of expectation generated by the people who, paradoxically, also know me best. And yet I know that these selves—the one I think I am now, as well as all those I’ve long discarded or denied—are all inside of me.
What do we do when we don’t recognize someone we also know very well? When reality resists easy resolution—or a comfortable one—do we turn away? Find a new narrative? Widen our perceptions? How do we resolve the uncertainty and discomfort of the unresolvable? When grappling with experiences that resist language, how do we express them?
Life offers crises of endless variety. To which are you the most vulnerable? And how much do your parents or tradition or region or chromosomal DNA or birth order or height or that joke or that criticism or that fight or that children’s book or the shirt you wore that day inform how you meet a crisis?
What if I had been born to someone who did not have my mother’s agile and abundant sense of humor? Would I have a sense of humor? Would I have my sense of humor? And if not, would I recognize that person as myself?
What is inherent of our inheritance?
I can’t stop asking these questions, even though they are impossible to resolve. No favorite answers, no clear winners. And if there are, I prefer not to know. After all, the people I understand best in this world are my family, and they constantly surprise me. I will forever be discovering who they are.
A note about this production:
The 2018 production of Catch as Catch Can was exquisite, courageous, and resounding. I will forever hold it close. When the opportunity emerged to do Catch as Catch Can at Playwrights Horizons this year, I knew I could not and should not attempt to re-create that production. It would be like trying to hold onto a rainbow. I’m barely the same person I was yesterday—but inhabiting the self I was four years ago? Futile.
My instinct was to gather an entirely new creative team, and the play has been blessed with an exquisite, courageous, resounding one for this production. Moreover, I itched to investigate an early impulse: to bring the two off-stage, and yet pivotal, characters—one Korean, the other Korean American—on stage obliquely by casting the white characters with Asian American actors. My gut said that the play’s theatrical journey would be fundamentally different, but the story destination would remain the same.
Following these instincts has engendered a rare gift: a “second First Production.” The two are siblings: related but separate entities. The relationship between the two that is most worth mentioning is the birth order. Other than that, they’re just different.
Each production, each performance—like every endeavor, any acquaintance, each fresh day—is an opportunity to see anew. Like a sibling you’ve known your whole life, it may surprise. My hope is that the play offers meaningful discovery to you.
