BoD Episode 21: Aya Ogawa

Aya Ogawa is a multi-award-winning Brooklyn-based playwright, director, performer and translator whose work reflects an international viewpoint and utilizes the stage as a space for exploring cultural identity and the immigrant experience. Cumulatively, all aspects of their artistic practice synthesize their work as an artistic and cultural ambassador, building bridges across cultures to create meaningful exchange amongst artists, theaters and audiences both in the U.S. and in Asia.  They challenge traditional notions of the American aesthetic and identity by creating performances infused with a multiplicity of perspectives and languages, and by incorporating influences from outside the U.S. – of style, form, and content. As a theater-maker, they frequently uses a collaborative creative process with performers and designers and pushes the form with an eye not only on spoken text, but physicality, musicality, and interactivity.

 As playwright/director in New York City, Ogawa’s 2003 A GIRL OF 16 (Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center) was hailed by The New York Times for its “stunning visual sense.” Their 2008 OPH3LIA (HERE) was called “riotously alive…great theater” by The New York Times. Their ARTIFACT was featured in CUNY’s 2007 Prelude Festival and the 2009 Performance Mix Festival (Joyce Soho). They were commissioned by The Foundry Theatre to create a work in collaboration with Adhikaar, a human rights organization serving the US Nepali community. The resulting piece, JOURNEY TO THE OCEAN, was presented by The Rubin Museum in 2011.  Their play LUDIC PROXY commissioned by The Play Company, explored humankind’s relationship to technology (from nuclear power to VR and video games) through the events of Chernobyl, Fukushima, and into the future. Its 2015 premiere at WalkerSpace was described as “beautifully conceived” by the NYTimes.  They were a playwright in residence at The New Museum for X:ID a research-driven pop-up repertory theater designed to examine the shifting ethical boundaries surrounding intercultural cross-play on contemporary American stages. They wrote, directed and performed in the 6-person cast for their Obie Award-winning play THE NOSEBLEED (Under the Radar Festival 2019; Japan Society & Chocolate Factory Theatre 2021; Lincoln Center Theatre LCT3 2022; Woolly Mammoth Theater 2023). Their latest creation, MEAT SUIT premiered with Second Stage in February 2026.

As a director they directed Haruna Lee’s Obie Award-winning play SUICIDE FOREST in its world premiere production at The Bushwick Starr in 2019 and its off-Broadway remount with Ma-Yi in 2020.  9000 Paper Balloons (co-created by Spencer Lott and Maiko Kikuchi) was released as a puppet performance film by HERE in November 2021 and ran at Japan Society in October 2022. In Decmeber 2024 they directed Dan Fishback’s Dan Fishback is Alive, Unwell and Living in His Apartment at Joe’s Pub. Upcoming work includes Jared Mezzocchi’s one-person play 73 Seconds, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s historical epic The Unsinkable, and Haruna Lee’s 49 Days.

As a translator they have been commissioned to translate numerous Japanese plays into English that have been produced in the U.S. and London, including over a dozen plays by Toshiki Okada, writer/director of chelfitsch theater company. Time Out called their rendition of Okada’s ENJOY (Play Company at 59E59, 2010; published by Samuel French) an “effortless, idiomatic translation”; The Village Voice hailed their translation of Okada’s FIVE DAYS IN MARCH (Witness Relocation at LaMama, 2010) as “a miracle of transposed idiom.” Their translation of Okada’s ZERO COST HOUSE was presented at Philly Live Arts 2012, Under the Radar Festival 2013 and Yokohama, Japan. From 2014-2024 they served on the selection committee for the Japan Playwrights Association’s publication series  ENGEKI: Japanese Theatre in the New Millennium.

Aya has performed nationally and internationally.  They originated and performed numerous roles with the International WOW Company including JR Oppenheimer in The Bomb and the title role in Alice’s Evidence. Time Out NY hailed their performance as Chomsky in The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky by the Butane Group. International credits include their role in the world premiere of the award-winning Emperor and Kiss with Rinko-Gun Company, Tokyo; they were selected as part of the artist team representing the U.S. at the International Theater Institute’s 2006 Congress in Manila and 2008 Congress in Madrid for which they co-created and performed in the resulting collaborative pieces; and the European premiere of Young Jean Lee’s Songs of the Dragon Flying to Heaven at the Vienna Festival. More recently they performed in the first season of Shaina Feinberg’s web series Dinette and in their own play The Nosebleed.

They are the recipient of the 2025 Doris Duke Artist Award, 2023 Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting; 2023 OBIE Award for the conception, writing and direction of The Nosebleed; 2023 Grants to Artists from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts;  The 2023-24 Playwrights’ Center’s McKnight National Residency and Commission; MacDowell Fellow; The 2022-23 Cullman Award for Extraordinary Creativity at Lincoln Center Theater; MAP Fund grants; 2015 President’s Award for Performing Arts, WorkSpace grant and three Swing Space grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; an Artistic Fellowship at New York Theater Workshop (where they are now a Usual Suspect); the Van Lier Fellowship and 2017-2026 Resident Playwright at New Dramatists; a HERE Artist Residency; Artist in Residence 2017-2019, 2017 Parent Artist Space Grantee and Space Grantee at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX); support from NYSCA and the Urban Artist Initiative, and The Women's Film, TV and Theatre Fund by the City of New York Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME).  Aya served on the Obie Award committee for two seasons 2023-2025, and they’re glad to have their evenings back. They have been a guest artist/lecturer at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, UT Austin, Brown University, Mount Holyoke College, University of Maryland, University of Pittsburgh, New York University, University of Puget Sound, and Stony Brook University, as well as a mentor at The Orchard Project and Clubbed Thumb. 

https://www.ayaogawa.com/
 

This monthly gathering invites directors and other theatre makers to come together, share experiences, and seek advice in a supportive community. There is often an isolating nature to directing, and this new space aims to foster connection and collaboration. The Board of Directors is an opportunity to set aside time each month to be alongside members of the Directing community all over the world. 

Transcript

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When I started this podcast, I knew I wanted to speak to all my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances about directing. But I knew eventually I was going to have a guest arrive on the podcast through a recommendation, or through recommendations, plural, from different people in different conversations, until eventually you realize you should probably pay attention. That was Aya Agawa. Several former guests independently suggested that I seek Aya out. Not because they fit neatly into one category or discipline, but almost because they resisted categories altogether. Playwright, director, performer, translator. Depending on who I was talking to, Aya seemed to be all of those things at once. And after this conversation, I understand why. Aya is at heart a generative artist. Not someone attached to a particular role, but someone interested in making meaning, creating language, and building connections between people, cultures, and ideas. Whether through writing, directing, translating, or performing, the impulse seems remarkably consistent. How do we understand one another more deeply? In this episode, we talk about the role of the director as the first audience, about trust and vulnerability in rehearsal rooms, and about the fascinating parallels between directing and translation. We explore language, identity, belonging, and what it means to make work across cultures and across forms. Aya lives a life not just about expression, but about attention, about listening carefully enough to hear what exists between languages, between people, and between certainty and ambiguity. This is my conversation with Aya Agawa. Aya, thank you so much for joining me this morning. You've been recommended to me by several people independently, which tells me that artists feel deeply seen in your process and in your audience. Jumping right into the deep end of this conversation, what do you think artists and audience most need from directors right now? Oh my gosh. Not a complex question at all. Right, exactly. Um, what do they need from directors? I mean, I guess I would say that you know, part of how I view my role as a director is to be the first audience. And so that informs so much of what happens in the room and what comes of the final product. Um and in that sense, as an audience member, I'm always looking for why this piece is important to me right now. What is it saying? What does it have to contribute to like the larger and deeper conversation I'm having with the world or with myself or with my communities? So I'm looking to ground the work in as deep a way and in as many layers as possible. And whatever I can do to serve that is what I try to deliver. Do you find yourself coming back to themes or stories or ideas? Or is there a question that you are perpetually trying to answer in the work? Yeah. So this is what's when it gets hard for me because um I am a generative artist, so I often devise or write work that I direct as well as directing other people's work. And you know, I started creating my own work first and really directing my own plays as a necessity. And then when I started to work with other people on, you know, on directing their plays, yeah, I I mean, first of all, I I felt like it was just such a huge privilege and honor to be at it to be invited into somebody else's process in that way, but also feeling the kind of weight of the responsibility and weight of the labor of it, because it is like, you know, I always felt like making a play of my own was like having a baby. And now to be tasked with directing someone else's show is like, oh, now I have to have someone else's baby? Are you kidding me? Right. That's so much work and so much energy. So I really try to make sure I understand what the task at hand is, how I connect to it, and like what am I uniquely bringing to the table for that show? Like, what is what is it that only I can do to serve it or to bring it where I feel like it needs to be? So, in terms of like, and often that does mean connecting around certain issues or themes. I feel very passionate about stories around the immigrant experience or queer or uh gender non-conforming identities. I also feel really connected to stories that are rooted in grief or mourning or stories around uh family and generational divides. So that's not necessarily the only things that I'm attracted to, but I I guess that, you know, based on the work that I've done, that's that's what I feel pulled towards. You're now the third person that has alluded to the kind of doula midwifery kind of part of bringing a play into existence, somebody else's play, especially, not just devised work. And you've you've also opened up the fluidity that you have between being a playwright, a director, a performer, translator. Do those feel like separate disciplines to you or just different expressions of the same impulse? I would say I I feel like they're deeply related, at least to me. I'm I tend not to like to compartmentalize my brain so much. And in a lot of ways, I feel like all of my practices are some form of translation, whether it's like translating from the page to the stage, or translating from one language to another, or translating like what's happening, what I've created in the room onto the page and into a form that can be, you know, transmitted through the written word. It all feels like a similar or related process. And so I'm just I'm just trying to be the best, the best person I I can for what the play needs me to be in that moment. Yeah. I know you I I've heard you speak about, you know, most of us, the gateway drug was acting. And I I hear I heard you speak about this, and mom's not uh necessarily wanting that to be the career for you. But was there a moment when you realized you didn't want to stay inside a single artistic identity? That acting may have been the gateway drug, but then it opened the door to all these other things and realizing I don't have to just go down one path. I can keep going in and outside of doors. I mean, I think the way you the way you frame that story feels so uh expansive and like a a journey of discovery, but I feel I feel like the way I experienced it, even though the outcome may have been the same, was a lot more painful and arduous. You know, I always think that if at the moment that I graduated from college and started working or trying to work professionally in the theater, if at that point there were a lot of opportunities for me as an actor, I probably would have been very happy staying an actor. You don't you don't think that there was there was already a desire to speak differently or or or be more generative at that point? I don't know, I don't think so. I I feel like my need to speak really came out of the lack of opportunities that I had as an actor and the kind of I mean, I don't I honestly have so much respect for for actors because I discovered very quickly, I mean, really within weeks, that I just don't have that kind of resilience to put myself out there to be judged. The it is so humbling, humiliating it was for me to go through the process of auditioning um and auditioning for roles that I didn't even necessarily feel super excited about, and being placed in that position of not having much power or agency around what I was doing, the roles I was auditioning for. That was really what pushed me to turn the question into myself and say, well, what what is it then? What what if I can, if I have the power, if I give myself the power to say and do the things that I want to say and do, like what is that gonna be? And that's really when I push myself towards towards writing. And then uh, you know, after having written a play, then feeling like, oh, okay, I'm guessing gonna hand it off to somebody to direct because that's what happens, right? Like that's that's what you're supposed to do. Yeah. And then also feeling like, well, how come there's no audition process for a director? You know, like how am I supposed to know whether this person really understands what I'm trying to say or what I'm trying to do? Yeah. And also working with a handful of younger directors and feeling like, oh, I I don't know about this. Like, I feel like this is not the interpretation that I'm looking for. Like, let me just let me just cut to the chase and like speak directly to the actors because I know what it's like to act and I know what actors need to get there. And like, what's the what why am I holding back here? Like, what have I why have I constructed this false boundary? And so, really, out of a need to get my work out into the world, uh, I started to direct my own plays. When you enter a rehearsal room as both writer and director, how do you negotiate authority with yourself? I'm I I would never call myself a writer, but I have written plays. But I've written plays that I know that I can direct my way out of the dramaturgical problems that I'm creating for myself. So do you literally put one hat on, take another hat off, and say, okay, that's some bad writing sometimes, or no, I've I've fixed that in the room. How do you negotiate that? I I throw my playwright self under the bus constantly. I'm always like, who wrote this crap? Oh my god, let's just get rid of it. Like, I don't care about this. Like, we're just gonna completely throw it out. We're gonna rewrite it. Because honestly, like the my writer self trusts my my director self. And it's really like I I'm not precious about the words. I'm really just the text is a kind of blueprint for the thing that I'm trying to discover in the room live that exists inside people's bodies and between people, you know, and depending on the room, depending on the people in the room, I feel like the thing that I've written doesn't necessarily spark what I'm looking for. So I I feel very comfortable throwing the text out of the room. I mean, to a certain point, right? Yeah. Yeah. Until I feel like I've I've gotten the thing that I was looking for, and then I'll and then I'll set it. Do actors interact with you differently when they know you wrote the piece? Gosh, I I don't really know. I don't really know. But you know, I I do tend to work with the same actors who I trust and I think who trust me. And I really try to approach the room like, hey, we're we're all artists here and we're all trying to make this thing, make this thing work. Uh, and so I'm very open to their impulses and their suggestions. Not that I will necessarily like take every suggestion that they give, but I think that it's important to listen to what their impulses are. I mean, I often ask actors after we run a scene, like, how do you feel? Like, do you feel like you understood the arc of this moment? Um and if not, like let's figure it out, you know. Yeah, but I think that people who are used to working with me are don't don't see uh they and they you know they see me as the the uh a creative person in the room, not necessarily like uh I don't know that they would necessarily treat me differently um because I'm the writer. As being a performer yourself, has that changed the way that you direct actors? Absolutely. I think that the way I direct actors is rooted in my experience as a performer. Um I mean, I rely on my own sense of, well, what would I need in order to get through this scene? What do I need to build up to this moment? I, you know, most of my the work that I create and most of the work that I'm attracted to that uh to direct, they all have a very strong emotional journey, even if it manifests in a very abstracted way or expressionistic way or formally, you know, not not your traditional linear uh narrative. I'm still looking for what the what the audience's emotional journey is and making sure that that uh is really solid. That's very important to me. So in that sense, I am feeling my way through with the actors alongside the actors. And often I find myself, I mean, I don't know, this might drive my actors crazy. I've never really thought about it, but when I am in directing mode, I often am getting up on stage with them and, you know, like feeling, feeling what they're feeling, trying to feel what they're feeling physically, emotionally, energetically. And I think that it that's important, like that having that innate understanding is very important in my practice. No, no, I feel the same way. I I in the times that I have been in a rehearsal room that is not mine, watching other directors, which again is rare, I marvel at people that can just sit there and direct. Uh-huh. I I can't do that. I mean, I I'm standing the entire time. I I want to be able to walk up to the actor and have a conversation, sometime privately, sometimes publicly. But yes, the the body needing to stay alive and feeling what is happening. I I completely understand that. Yeah. What kind of rehearsal room do you try to create emotionally? What's the environment like? You know, it depends. It depends on the room. I mean, it depends on the play, but I think a generalization I would make is that I want to I want to be able to hold the deepest level of trust for people to have with each other and with the project and with me as much as possible. So to me that means really articulating, first of all, the boundaries of the room, the boundaries and the expectations of the room. Um and then also grounding grounding the room in a in a question that's pivotal to the work at hand, and so we can all articulate like where are we coming from and how are we connecting to the work. And I find that that that's usually a good beginning. I try to I answer the questions myself first to try to model to model a kind of vulnerability that will hopefully inspire trust and hopefully inspire people to ask the questions as deeply as they can for themselves. Yeah, you know, like a few years ago, like through the pandemic, coming out of the pandemic. Maybe it was before that, but I feel like it I really noticed it coming out of the pandemic where people were reading their community agreements at the top of rehearsal, you know. Um theaters were the the institution was, which I thought was a good step, but I really take it to heart, you know. And so I I try to bring to the table my my own set of agreements that hopefully the the the room will agree to and possibly add their own and keep that conversation open because I you know the work that we do, all of us, um is so is so vulnerable and is you know needs needs care always. I I teach at university and I have my I teach undergrad uh undergraduate directing and I have my directors write a manifesto. It's an aspirational document. We're never probably going to be able to fulfill the entire thing, but to say the type of world that I'm trying to create, not just on stage, but in the world as well, is is like this. And I am going to go to bat for these ideas and I'm going to enforce them when I can and fight for them when I can. Is there something in your agreement that uh is surprising to you or or is uh unique to maybe to you and to your rooms that I mean, obviously, care, vulnerability, trust, those are all things we're we're wanting to bring into the room. Is there something that you found that you've not found other places that you've found that you are uniquely fighting for? I don't know. I don't think so. I I actually don't think so. Um but I love the way you articulate that. I mean, I've never actually thought about a director's manifesto, but I have always thought about the practice of theater making as a practice of society building, you know, and and world building. And so every time I gather a group of artists to begin a project, I really do think about how they reflect the world I want to live in and the world I want to advocate for. But I don't know that I have that have anything unique in my set of agreements that I ask people to sign on to. Something to consider, I suppose. Well, I'm sure they're unique because they're coming from you anyway. I mean, even if they are the standard things that we all want, it is your room is different than anybody else's room. That's that's a given. You mentioned translation before, and translation feels deeply connected to directing to me. Because they both involve interpretation, rhythm, deciding what must survive the transition. How do you experience the relationship between those practices? I mean it's similar in that I feel like a total imposter in both processes. You know, I so much of what I Do now, you know, I didn't necessarily train in um or receive an education in. It was just kind of uh I was thrown into it, or I threw myself into it and just kept doing it. So on a certain level, it's like I have no idea what I'm doing ever. And that is a feeling of of intense fear and anxiety. But all the the other side of the coin of that feeling, though, is that like anything is possible, anything can happen. I think with translation, and I, you know, I I translate contemporary theater scripts written by living Japanese playwrights into English. And there's a lot of uh, you know, I have the privilege of being able to be in conversation with that person, ask them any questions. I also insist on being able to see video of their work, whether it's in rehearsal, just even a rehearsal run-through or a performance. Actually, rehearsal video is sometimes better because I can see the the edges and the intentions a little bit more clearly than a completely polished production. And so in that sense, I'm trying to understand as clearly and on as many levels as possible what that playwright is trying to do, how the playwright wants the work to hit their audience. And I will also say that most contemporary Japanese playwrights are also the directors of their work. Um so there's a I guess maybe the courage that I needed to be able to do, you know, first direct my own work came from watching them do it. And they're like, oh, well, they do it all the time, it's no problem. But I also have this like deeply disturbing like voice at the back of my head that's always saying, like, you know, there is no such thing as perfect translation. Right. You know, and there isn't. There really isn't because language is living, breathing, and constantly changing and changing and responding to the context uh of the worlds we live in. And so whenever um whenever a translated play of mine is published, I feel a total terror. And I don't want to look at the don't want to look at the book because I feel like it, you know, I will always want to refine it or change it, or I, you know, I would I know I will have opinions about it. I think with directing, you know, with directing my um directing my own work is in some ways easiest because I don't have to worry so much about what the playwright intends, because I I know what the playwright intends. With directing someone else's play, yeah, it it's similar to an extent, right? Because the playwrights uh whose work I'm directing are not necessarily directors themselves and are depending on me to find the pathway of their text to a to a manifestation on stage. So in other words, they don't have necessarily all the answers that I'm looking for, but I do hope that when we get there it is a version that they could feel at home in. Yeah. And you said you translate living playwrights. Is there a aversion to translating something that you can't speak to the playwright about? Or just not an interest? I guess so. I guess it's less of an interest. It is a less of an interest. Why is that? I mean, I've certainly assisted processes where, you know, ancient no plays were being kind of revisited and the language needed needed to be reconsidered and ironed out. I think maybe though it's just a desire not to be alone. I mean, the thing that about a play by being a writer that I the part of being a writer that I dislike the most is just being alone sitting in front of my computer. Um and I'm I always want to be in conversation with somebody or in a room with the with the collaborators because I feel like that's where theater really happens, is is between these interactions. And I guess I am less interested in kind of creating that pathway completely uh in isolation or or with with the text of somebody who's no longer uh on this plane. Does that go toward I'm just spitballing here? Because of because of what you're talking about, the ethics of trying to get as close to an exact translation, a real translation of their work. And then if the playwright isn't there, how much of Aya is allowed into the translation then if you can't actually have that interrogation? Are you is that maybe the fear is is the fidelity? Yeah, and maybe that's part of it. I guess I feel I I feel a deep responsibility to be able to interpret onto the stage or translate the the words right faithfully. And it is hard to do that work without getting feedback from the original. Or again, maybe it's like oh, like what who am I? Who am I to say that this is what they meant when I can't know that for sure? How has your relationship to language changed over time? Especially navigating multiple linguistic cultural systems. Yeah, well, that's really interesting because uh, you know, I was born in Japan and then we moved when I was like one or two to Texas. Uh and then just a little change. And then a year later to Georgia. So I spent kind of my pre-elementary school years in the American South, and then we returned to Japan for elementary school. What that meant was I was learning both languages simultaneously, right? So Japanese at home and English outside the home. And even when I returned to Japan, my parents sent me to an American school. So I continued to have the English as, you know, my outside language and Japanese as inside the home. And then we moved to uh California for middle school and high school. And so during those years, you know, adolescence is a time where when you're really trying to figure out who you are in the context of where you live and your relationship to other people outside of your family. And it was during that time where I felt increasingly separated from my Japanese identity and the Japanese language, and feeling like, well, I don't think that I'm ever gonna live there again. So what is that to me? What is that part of my identity to me? And I tried my best to really squelch it, to really kind of cut myself off from it. I think that was partially a normal teenage kind of intention of wanting to separate from my parents and my family in that way, but also societally and culturally. This was, you know, in the late 80s, there was a real, there was not a lot of language around the immigrant experience. And um, it was mostly the narrative was like, you know, assimilate, assimilate and try to emulate the things around you. And so, you know, most of my teenage years, my parents would be speaking Japanese to me and I would be answering them in English, more like yelling at them in English. And it was not until like many years after I graduated from college that you know Japanese became useful to me. And that was when I started working at the Japan Society and their performing arts program as essentially as uh as a producer and having to suddenly be in an office where 95% of my work colleagues were Japanese and doing work in Japanese. And I was like, oh, I gotta drag that out of the, you know, out of the corners of my brain. And and it was there, and it was there, and I was able to build it. So, and then that led me to translation um and and kind of growing my work as a freelance translator, which really sustained my livelihood, especially in the early years of being a mom and not being able to or not wanting to work nine to five in an office. So it became a really important part of my life. And now I do my best to keep it going, you know, whenever I have the space to be reading for pleasure, which is frankly not that much time. But when I do have that time and space, um, I I'm usually I force myself to read Japanese novels just to keep that part of my brain activated and engaged. Yeah. So so that's you know, my specific path, language path, which is running parallel to, you know, how I've brought my kids up to be um bilingual. And you know, I it early on as a as a young mom when I made the conscious decision to be really committed to raising my kids to be bilingual and bicultural, you know, people would say, Oh, that's so amazing that that you're doing that and that you're giving that part of your the, you know, your cultural background to them, which is true, and and it was hard, but it was less to me, less about specifically Japanese and about the the uniqueness of the Japanese language or the Japanese culture. It was really more about giving my kids the awareness that, hey, the context in which you live defines so much of who you are. And that context can change depending on where you go in the world. That means you are going to be changing depending on where you are. And I feel like that is an incredibly important knowledge to have of oneself and how to navigate your life on this planet. I think that that automatically means you have to have humility and you have to listen. And I guess those two attributes are also very Japanese in a way. They happen to be Japanese in a way. But I feel like that is also really important in my creative practice to be able to listen. Because sometimes my collaborators, you know, will uh gather up a lot of courage to be able to say something to me, and I need to be able to hear that without being hurt. Or or if being hurt, I'm be I am able to put that aside and really hear what they're saying. So yeah, it's it's all of it is a practice and uh communication towards a deeper understanding. Talked about the immigrant experience, gender, identity, those kind of things of of that kind of in the society that we live in currently, the othering of those things. And I made the conscious choice uh to leave America because as a white cishet male in America, this is a society that has been built for me currently. And seeking out those experiences where I could be as much of an other as I could be. It taught me a great deal. And I wouldn't give it up for the world. But my colleagues always, you know, the the ones who uh went down the artistic director path, you know, regional theater directing, and then associate director and artistic director look at my path and they go, Oh, that's so amazing what you've done. And I look at what they've done and I go, Oh, you're so further along in your career than I am. If witches were fishes, in hindsight, is there anything that you would change about your experience? Is there anything that you would not give up at all? Yeah, I was thinking about this recently. Um, actually yesterday, um, I was at the all writers meeting at New Dramatists, um, which is uh, you know, a playwrights resource and development organization where playwrights are given a seven-year residency. And I'm coming to the end of my actually nine-year residency there because of COVID. I got a two-year extension. And so I'm technically graduating and and it feels like a big kind of like traumatic experience to leave this community. But the thing that I you know kept bumping up against was both this feeling of like, oh, I wish I had done this, or I wish, you know, I I thought that this residency would give me like all these things, and I only did this much, or I only used this much. And while I do think that I I could have done more, I also what is that uh I can't be anything that I'm not, you know, and I'm here standing here, the person that I am, because of all the things that I went through. And if any of that had changed, I would be a different person. And so it so it feels very, it's a hard exercise for me to consider, you know, if I could have done this, I could, if I could have done that, then I don't know, then I then I wouldn't be myself. And I wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't be here, you wouldn't have what you have, yeah. Right. Yeah, but I do wonder, like, you know, I I'm not I'm not sure why this was, but nobody really told me about grad school. Or like nobody really told me that it was a real option. And I nobody told me what the well, you know, I've I've seen plenty of people who've come out of grad school where that experience seems to have seemed to have given them a lot of connections in the real world, and they've used those connections to like build their career up and and gain visibility. And also plenty of people who went to grad school and left the field, you know? Yeah. So yeah, that's that's just uh well, I didn't do it and I'm okay. I wonder if I how different it would have been if I if I had that experience. I bet you had grad school. It was called life, and you've gotten you you you have opened doors and you have met people and you have done the things. I agree, I agree. Grad school was a phenomenal experience for me because it did open doors for me, it did progress things. I had a fantastic time there. I'm fabulously in debt. But at the same time, you're at the place in your career where you are because you didn't go to grad school. Right. And there's no guarantee, as you said, you could have burnt out. Yeah. When you're working with institutions, when you're getting your work done, or when you're being brought in to do others' works, uh how do they categorize you? Have they tried to place you in a box that never quite fits, or are they are the places that you're working at, the places that you're interested in working in, um, not about categorization? If my own work is being produced by a theater, they always give me a writer's fee and they always give me a director's fee. Uh so thank you very much. You know, but the the problem, I think, is less with me and more of the process, right? The typical or you know, what what normal playwrights I think typically do, which is like create a play, they write a script, and that script gets picked up by a theater, and the theater then, you know, finds a director and then they go into casting and all that stuff. That kind of traditional or conventional process has never happened to me. What usually happens is that I take my play, I find the resources and I write the grants in order to develop my play to a certain point, which means they have an embodied expression. They have an embodied physical workshop. I get the play to a place where it's on its feet to a certain extent, and then it gets picked up by a larger theater. And so what that means is like to a to a large extent, I have overseen this development slash rehearsal slash workshop process. And in order for that process to succeed, I needed certain collaborators that don't fit normal theater categories or or positions. They're not necessarily the same, you know, set designer, lighting designer, sound designer. I needed like a Buffont clowning expert. I needed like a creative producer, I needed someone who was engaging community. And so when I get to a larger institution, they're like, oh, well, well, you we don't need your creative producer because we're producing it. Or like, who is this clowning buffant consultant? Like, that's are they in the union because you know, you know, all these issues come up and and they're very they're they're actually very disruptive to the fabric of the project. And it means I have to have very, very painful conversations with the theater and then painful conversations with my collaborators on that, and that is never um a happy situation for me. So I do wish that that process were easier because I don't like to be producing my work, but it's a big pain in the butt. But the good thing about producing my work is that I can uh have the people that I need and credit them the way I want and compensate them the to the best of my ability. Um and that's not necessarily true once a project is gets picked up. Yeah. What do you think gets lost? Um And I find this I mean it's true everywhere, especially in larger institutions, but in America. American theater where clarity and efficiency is valued over ambiguity and contradiction. What's what's lost in that? Are you talking about are you talking about artistically? Yeah. Well, yeah, I I fight with that a lot. Because I I do strive to make work that you know that is legible because I want to be in conversation with my audience. But I always feel like not only do I have to make the work, I need to also uh teach my audience how to view the show at the same time, you know, and give them a crash course on the vocabulary that's gonna be used in the play. Yeah. Which I guess I don't mind doing, but it does, I do feel like I'm always walking the edge of, you know, maybe I would enjoy more ambiguity, enjoy more of a a dream space. In fact, I know that I would a lot of the time, but being in the United States of America and making work here and making work for audiences here has changed me and has forced me as an artist to prioritize a certain kind of legibility, a certain kind of uh efficiency and clarity. Um but I think that there's also value in both. You know, I sometimes I see work in Japan and I'm like, oh my god, what the fuck? Like, what is this play about? What am I doing? Like it's there's it really it asks a different kind of for a different kind of attention, a different kind of endurance, a different kind of listening. And I I appreciate that, I appreciate that the audience is able to give that to, you know. It's it's all kind of valuable. Um, but I think that the the taste of the general American audience is is much narrower than outside of this country. I just I just have thought about this. I think about this all the time. I'm very interested in the audience experience and how we how we get them to be the perfect audience to receive the work. You know, you t you talked about, and I agree with this as well, of the director is the first audience to the actor. How do I how do I become the satellite dish to receive and feedback to the to the actor? And but I think about this with the audience as well of like, as you just said, like, how do I get them into the vocabulary of this world? And I wonder how much we have given over artistically that audience making, the building of an audience, so that I would agree the the general American audience is a very narrow idea of what to watch. But what would we need to do to, and I don't mean this word in a pejorative way, educate them, broaden that experience. What would it what would it take for us to get them to enjoy or want that dreamscape? Um to be in the mindset of go, I don't have to have answers right now. I know answers will come. Maybe not verbally, textually, but physically, spiritually later on. It's one of those things where I never liked the work of Richard Foreman, but I would always go and see it. Oh my God, same. I would, because I would I would see it and I would sit there in the audience with my arms crossed, seething, and then I would have lucid dreams all night long. And so I would never give that experience up. I would never want to have a different experience of that. But I don't know. I'm and I'm currently working on how do I get the audience, how do we teach the audience, how do we invite the audience into something different so that we can be more ambiguous, more contradictory, more open. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, that's a huge question. I mean, yeah, I mean, it it I think it's partially because of TV and the way TV works. You know, it's just it's just too everyone watches TV, like the, you know, Netflix, whatever. And it's hard to kind of I mean to me, the theater is a completely different medium, completely different medium. Absolutely. But I think to a lot of people, and maybe even some even writers, like the it's it's not that different. They're you know, the the stories are they're trying to tell the same stories. But I think that maybe stories, the stories themselves are just need to be exploded in in a way, you know. If so, I I just think about like the little steps that I can take. Like if I can if I can open a window in somebody's brain about what what story can be every time I put on a play then I'm I'm doing my work. I have hope. I have hope that with the impending AI revolution uh that's happening, we are going to we are going to be seeking the liveness because we're theater's gonna be the thing that's that can't be faked, you know. Yeah we already we already see there are AI films being made and consistent things added into TV and things like that. And it's gonna be to the point where like I can't tell what is real anymore. My lying eyes are lying to me, versus I'm in a space with another human being. Right. And this is this can do something that that thing can't do. That's my hope. That's my Inshallah. If all of your titles disappear tomorrow, playwright, director, actor, translator, is there an is there a creative um is there something that continues with you? If is there is there a kernel of I have to speak out, I have to tell stories, I have to, I mean, maybe it's in another artistic medium, but what remains at the center of why you make art? I haven't asked myself that question in a while, but there was a moment, there was a very specific moment in my life where I was in a very toxic situation and it was all wrapped up around my artistic practice at the time. And I felt like if I if I leave this toxic situation, I'm I may never be able to or have the courage to be make any theater again. But if I don't leave the situation, I might literally die. Like I I might die as a human being. So I was able to leave and preserve my life, and I also came to a belief that no matter what happens, no matter what I'm able to do or not do, that I am in my core, in my heart, an artist. So whatever that means, maybe my artistic output is the meal that I make for my family or the way I walk down the street. Whatever it is, I know that the the core of me and that identity will never change. Amen. Coming up to the end of the podcast here, I always ask these last two questions given to me by one of my students. She didn't realize how deep the question was and how much I was just gonna exploit this question on the podcast. She asked me, as I'm asking you, is there a show, not one of your own, uh, that you have seen that changed you as a person? Meaning there was Aya before this show, and then Aya after the show, and they were fundamentally different. About how you saw the world, how you saw yourself, about how you interacted. I so I would say in my late twenties and early thirties, I would have three of those kinds of shows a year. And I may not have had an experience like that in about twenty years. Wow. But maybe the last show that where that happened was uh it was actually a dance piece by the Netherlands Dance Theater uh choreographer Iri Killian. I can't remember the title of the piece. I've looked it up so many times I should know it, but it was uh it was a very theatrical piece, meaning it looked like like a Chekhov set or something, you know, and period costumes, and it and the piece opens up like a photograph with stillness. And then over the course of however long the piece was, maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour, there was just very extremely slow movement of this photograph kind of coming to life, and these people kind of being in relationship to one another, and also extremely slow acts of violence in the room. And the the piece kind of builds up towards a climax where there was a big shift in lighting and movement and a manifestation of a very violent moment, and then it receded back to the photograph that opened the show. And for some reason, in a uh and I can't quite articulate why, but by the end of the piece, I was screaming and laughing and crying in this incredible way. And I think it just tapped into uh a space of my imagination and of my emotional core that was just so jolting and just uh, I don't know, it was an incredible experience. Now I want to go look it up. Huh? So this question right here, this is where I this is where I learned about you because the question is who is an artist that you wish more people knew about? It's not about who you think is the best because nobody wants to say that nobody wants to leave any of their friends out. But this is the point where several directors that I've interviewed said, you need to have I on the podcast. Aw. So who is somebody that you think the audience needs to know more about their work? Meaning if they're in the city and this person's show is on, go and see it because it's always going to be something really fascinating. Oh my gosh. This is actually very hard. I'm gonna say this playwright named Reed Tang. And and to be honest, like I haven't seen many of his productions. In fact, I've only seen one one play of his uh fully produced, but I've read several scripts of his, and I just think that what he's doing is incredibly brave and violent, and he uh he I don't think he cares about the audience, you know, and I actually really envy that. Yeah. Just I just look them up. I will f I will find them and learn more and read more myself. Ah, cool. That's fantastic. I thank you so much for joining the board of directors. Uh it was a pleasure to meet you. I understand now why Mae Ann and Ann and Bill and Irina and everybody said go and see their work and have them on the podcast. Um fascinating what you're doing. I hope to meet you in person real one day and and look forward to uh seeing 73 Seconds tour somewhere around somewhere. And uh yeah, lovely to meet you. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. If this episode gave you any insight, inspiration, or even just made you smile, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts for more conversations like this. If you're looking for guidance with a creative challenge, or want to advance a dream of your own, we'd love to help. Visit Board of Directors.org. The Board of Directors is a global constellation of theater directors dedicated to building community, sharing knowledge, and transforming the role of the director in the 21st century. We convene and curate a fellowship that fosters mentorship, artistic inquiry, and collective care, transcending borders and institutions and traditions. Until then, take care of yourself and take care of each other.