Multiple Loads

A short play about how much one can take.

The magic of theatre lies in its imaginative limitlessness. That's probably why "Theatre" is the root of theatricality.

Theatricality: the quality of being exaggerated, excessive, and dramatic.

In Shakespeare, they talk like rhyme-y assholes. In musicals, they sing instead of speak and dance because everyone in the theatre is gay. In 30 Rock, Jenna Maroney actively campaigns for the Tony Awards to add a category for “Living Theatrically in Normal Life.”

I love theatre because of its theatricality. One of my favorite plays has BIPOC actors satirically portraying white people who live in homes by the sea where they “CAW” like birds looking at the sunset. The only thing to denote the white face is the actors' use of boat shoes. How fun? How theatrical?!

But me. While I may have the personality dramatics to give Jenna Maroney a run for her money at the Tony Awards for “Living Theatrically in Normal Life,” I am actually a playwright deficient in theatricality. My instinct as a writer is to be simple—and I've always been insecure in my austere. My plays are plays about people being people who live lives that suck. They're somewhat "slice of life." 

However, as an Asian American writer, I feel this puts me at a disadvantage. As an Asian American writer, I feel the weight to write something that says something. White writers can get away with being slice of life. They get to write plays about "the human experience." I get to write plays about race. 

I get jealous of the writers who continually pollute theatre seasons with basic plays about nothing or writers—more of my cohort—who find success with varying versions of the quirkily long-titled play that mines their trauma about how it sucks to have ancestors and how white people are mean to them. (I have too polluted a theatre season with a play about my trauma of how white people are mean to me. So let me be a brat about it!) I've tried to fit into that box—and I've successfully fit into that box. But forcing myself into that "Asian trauma porn" container takes a lot of effort. All the creator in me wants is to get away with writing simple plays that don't require me to slit my wrists so that I can use my own blood for ink on the page. 

The last time I wrote a new play was in 2022 because I convinced myself nothing was left in me and that I was tapped out of creativity. Did I have nothing of substance left to say? Was it still too raw, after writing my solo show My Dog Died; and Other Concerns, to dive back into my trauma vault for inspiration? Or was my insecurity in my creative instincts enacting blinders to the nothingness I wanted to convey? 

Recently, inspiration struck where I least expected it.

Inhale, exhale.
Consciously relax your body.
Calmly relax your mind.

These directions greeted me inside the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA). A suggested guide on how to experience art followed by these five questions:

1. What am I observing?

2. Is there anything that reminds me of myself?

3. How do I feel?

4. What surprises me?

5. Do I care?

Before I entered the exhibit Feels Like Home, I caught a glimpse of text sprawled on the white museum wall, welcoming me at the start. The words "Honest, intimate...everyday occurrences" were hidden in a paragraph introducing the exhibit and its artist, Alice Neel. They were also the words that stuck with me after. Alice's paintings are expressionistic and banal—many are simply portraits of friends, family, lovers, and strangers painted with a quirky distortion. 

Thankfully, for the OCMA guide to art, I was surprised to feel something familiar with what I was observing. It was Alice's “everyday occurrence” of it all. The straightforwardness of her work reminded me of my desire to write something just as banal—a play with a subject matter that is just what it is and possibly about nothing at all. But like Alice does expressionism, I can do whatever the fuck the thing I do is (usually, it's a lot of poetic butthole metaphors and jokes).

I left the museum on a mission to write a 10-minute play. For no other reason than to write and put a toe in the water of the craft after almost a year of no new ideas. The play would be simple, intimate, and radiate everyday occurrences vibes. So much of my work is theatricalized retellings of my dreams, fears, and shame, so I aimed to write something that didn't steal from the places that naturally fueled my writing. 

One would think simple would be simple, but it took me days to type a word on the page. I may have been obese with determination, but inspirationally, I was still starved. The spark finally came when I heard Omar Apollo's song "Live for Me." 

“How you feel about the way your life is goin'?
And tell me why you'd wanna go through it alone, hey
Won't you live for me?
Or could I live for you?
There's nothing I won't carry
So you don't have to...”

Inspired by "Live for Me," I settled to write a love story. There's nothing more simple in storytelling than love, right? Everything is about love! This love story would be about nothing but the love between lovers—and that love story would be a play. A play that excluded me in it and answered these questions: 

• "How do you love someone who doesn't love themselves?"

• "And what do you give up when you love someone you don't think you deserve?"

That play is called Multiple Loads. 

Read it below or on New Play Exchange.