One True Artist: Playwright Julia Cho
January 23, 2004
Barely a month into 2004, playwright Julia Cho is already having a memorable year. Her first full production, The Architecture of Loss, about a man who returns to the wife and children he abandoned 16 years prior, recently opened at the prestigious New York Theater Workshop. To add to the accomplishment, The New York Times called it a “touching new play,” adding “Ms. Cho is both talented and young, and The Architecture of Loss will stay with you.” Not bad for a young writer still firmly in her 20s.Additionally, the year will see Cho criss-crossing the country with creative stopovers: this week, she’s at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre for a reading of BFE, a coming-of-age dark comedy about the anxieties and dangers of growing up, then to Los Angeles where she’s developing a couple of plays at the Mark Taper Forum, then to Minneapolis where her 99 Histories, about a troubled young woman’s search for understanding of her family’s past, is scheduled for a spring production at Theater Mu. She’s also got commissions from Ma-Yi Theater Company and South Coast Repertory that she says she needs to get working on. And that’s just the year’s first quarter!
Born in L.A. to immigrant Korean parents and raised in Arizona where “the only theater I saw was bad Shakespeare and the traveling tour of Les Miserables, if I was lucky!” Cho began writing plays as an undergraduate at Amherst. After attempting an English PhD at UC Berkeley, Cho headed to New York to try playwriting again, this time at NYU.
AsianWeek: So why theater?
Julia Cho: I often ask myself the same thing: ‘Why theater?’ I didn’t grow up around it, that’s for sure. I think the epiphany hit when I was around 14. I was attending a summer school on the East Coast and one of our day trips was going to NYC. We had the opportunity to get half-price tickets to a show and somehow I got handed a ticket for John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation. I remember being disappointed because I wanted to see Gypsy. But it was one of the best mistakes of my life. Guare’s play completely blew me away. I’d never been affected so profoundly by something I’d seen. It took me a few more years to figure out that what I experienced was something called ‘theater’ and that I could be part of it through writing. But definitely the seeds of my desire to be a playwright were planted that day.
AW: How did your parents react to choosing such a non-traditional career, especially for APAs?
Cho: Well, up until the last couple of years, my father was still saying my English was so good, I’d make an excellent lawyer. Neither of my parents knew anything about theater and when I left English grad school, they were both a little miffed; why would I leave a PhD to go off and write plays? But they never, ever tried to tell me what to do. And the longer I’m in this, the more supportive and proud they seem to become. They still worry about me, but I know they believe in me. And that has meant the world to me because you know how it is: Korean kids, we want our parents’ approval almost more than anything.
AW: Have you been able to do theater full-time?
Cho: Knock on wood (or particle board as my IKEA desk seems to be made of), I’ve been able to write full-time for almost the last two years.
AW: Architecture is your first full production … how has that experience been?
Cho: I’ve had two playwriting fellowships at New York Theater Workshop and they’ve been very supportive of my work for a number of years. Architecture is the third play of mine they’ve helped develop, and I couldn’t be happier that my first production experience is with them. And working with Chay has been a gift. I’ve known him for many years, and he has been an amazing champion of my work. He’s very generous and because he’s a playwright, he’s incredibly protective of the text. I feel like it’s been a process of letting the play go and letting Chay and the actors own it. And even though I was incredibly happy that the production was happening, on a day-to-day level, going to rehearsals almost felt like going to a job—a creative, challenging and immensely satisfying job, but a job nonetheless. I’m looking forward to having my days back and being able to get back into writing mode. During this entire process, I found it difficult to write, and I miss it. I guess that’s why I’m a writer and not a director or actor; as much as I enjoy rehearsals, I’m happiest at my desk, mulling over some new idea.
AW: Say a bright-eyed, 18-year-old came to you about starting a life in the theater. What advice might you offer him or her?
Cho: I’d offer the same advice I got: only do it if you can’t do anything else. You have to need it — it’s not a noble pursuit, it’s not fun and it certainly doesn’t pay well. But the only thing I know is this: Following what you love may not necessarily make you happy, but if you don’t follow what you love then you definitely won’t be happy.
AW: As a writer, what sort of legacy might you want to leave?
Cho: In my dreams, I would love to be a woman of letters and write across genres: non-fiction, essays, novels, poems. I’d love to be a real writers’ writer. I’d want to be remembered for a body of work that reflects what it was like to be human at this moment in time. And I would want to leave a legacy of activism. Somehow, I want to make a difference and combat all the hate and racism in this world with kindness and compassion. I’m just not sure how to do that yet.
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