Gowiththeflow

Gowiththeflow is not passive
contrary to how it may sound
It is positioning
and posturing
and placing myself
to heed what the Moment calls for

Here's the thing about a template...

When you fit perfectly snug in a template, you don’t question it. You marvel at how amazingly appropriate and perfect it is for you. And you believe everyone would benefit from this template.

But when you don’t fit - or no longer fit. Even after you’ve stretched and warped yourself into so many shapes to keep trying to fit. And you’ve questioned your value if you can’t ever fit...

Eventually, if you’re one of the lucky ones, you start to wonder - maybe the template is the problem. Maybe it is the *template* that doesn’t fit *you.*

And then when you’re finally out of the template - in spite of those snug-as-a-bug Templaters who coax, plead, shout that you should get back in! get back in! When you’re finally out...

You realize how many templates there actually are. And you marvel at how amazingly illuminating this realization is. Even moreso the possibility that you might not need a template at all - or that you can learn from the existing templates to forge your own.

And you start to believe everyone would benefit from this awareness of the multiplicity of templates, and see the folly of asking all people to fit into just one.

navigation

I'm sorry it took me so long to get here
The map was outdated
I followed a wrong right turn
I'm so sorry

The map promised me a destination
but always seemed to shepherd me in the opposite direction
It told me I didn't have enough power for the 
journey without its compass
It gave me a windbreaker that was too tight,
causing me to choke
and hiking shorts that kept falling off,
causing me to trip
They must've belonged to someone else

I must've belonged to someone else
But I'm here now I'm here sh it's ok
I promise you
I am still arriving

— written on a plane-ride home

Cathedralprison

When you've lived
in a cathedralprison
and you stand on a pew
to chuck an offering plate
through a stained-glass window
to bore an escape for yourself
and walk through

At first,
the lights are offensive
the sounds oppressive
a sensory overload
causes you to rethink your exit

But give it time:
your eyes and ears will adjust
and you'll remark
"Oh, there is kindness out here, too."

Playwright as Arranger

The process of writing the stage adaptation of Inside Out & Back Again has been a unique challenge for me as a playwright. Thanhha Lai's book uses a series of poems to tell the story of Hà and her family. In early discussions with Bay Area Children's Theatre, we decided Lai's poetry was so beautiful and vivid that we didn't feel it necessary to create new text for the stage version. All of the spoken words (with only a handful of exceptions) in the play are taken directly from Lai's text.

My role in creating the play could be likened to that of an arranger of music, taking what already exists and re-organizing it to suit the needs of a play. In order to create my first draft, I typed the entirety of Lai's book word-for-word into a document I called "Source." When I decided which portions of Lai's text to include in the play, I would cut it from the "Source" document and paste it into my script document. I did this to keep track of which segments of the book I had already used, so as not to repeat myself in the script. I have cut, spliced, re-ordered, and re-contextualized the original poetry to try and create a version of the story that plays out well on-stage.

Some slight word modifications have been made. Since I wanted to avoid the feel of an overly long monologue from Hà's perspective, portions of text have been given to other characters in the story. Things like pronouns and verb tenses had to be changed to accommodate these different voices. But for the most part, any new text that I do contribute to the story comes in the form of stage directions – describing setting, gestures, reactions, visual cues to help accentuate and potentially convey more than what words might allow.

This method of building a script has had both its limitations and advantages. On one hand, sometimes I have wanted the poetry to provide words that it simply did not, and I've needed to find creative solutions to those problems by either re-contextualizing what is there, or by trying to go about it without words.  On the other hand, I have not had the problem of typical "writer's block," where you must generate words yourself, but can't seem to find them. In this case, all the words are there, and it's up to me to place them where I need them.

The result will hopefully be a piece that highlights Lai's beautiful poetry unpacked and opened up in a stage experience that will transport the audience along with Hà and her family.