[ Music ]
>> [Background Music] Our speaker today is Kristina Wong
and she is an international performer,
writer, actor and educator.
If you were lucky enough to attend one
of our two film screenings of Kristina Wong's "Wong Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest",
you'll know that she is a very funny comedian,
but with a serious message of the high rate of suicide
and depression among Asian-American women.
And you will have an opportunity to purchase her performance
in DVD format after the talk.
Kristina has been a commentator for PBS,
American Public Media's Marketplace, and Playgirl Magazine.
She has also been a commencement speaker at UCLA.
Just this last August, she performed in Edinburgh,
England-- Scotland, sorry.
That's right, it's way up north, Edinburgh,
Scotland at the very popular
and prestigious Edinburgh Festival Fringe
which is the largest art festival in the world.
Please welcome Kristina Wong.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you so much.
This is such a lovely reception.
I was very happy to see my face on the Jumbotron or my name
on the Jumbotron, and so I knew I made it when I saw
that as I pulled up.
So I've been asked to talk about sort of my creation process
and how I put together shows,
which might be helpful for future writers
or current writers or playwrights.
And I thought so much of me explaining the process
of how I made "Wong Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest" would be me sort
of outlining a little bit about how I am and how I came
to be in the profession that I'm in,
which is sort of a profession
that I never really knew existed when I was growing up.
I very much have made my own creative live,
which in ways is very inspiring
and it can be completely anxiety making, right?
To go everyday and not know like, what am I supposed to do
for money today, you know?
So I'm just sort of taking you through that
to even understand my process
and sort of the anxieties I have in making shows
and how I go about what is the support system
to structure the life that I have and how it is that I go
from having an idea to revising it,
to bringing that out in front of people
like I am right now today or to stages of people.
So, I'll tell you a little bit about myself.
I'm-- Don't tell anybody in Los Angeles,
because we hide our ages so much, that's where I live now.
But I was-- I'm 34 years old,
I grew up third generation Chinese-American, my family,
very culturally conservative.
I definitely did not grow up in the kind
of the family that's like, yeah,
why don't you become a performance artist when you grow up?
So I had two parents who very much worked
in sort of finances.
My mom is an accountant,
my dad sold insurance for many years and then grew
up in the banks-- or grew up in a bank, work in a bank.
And I had from both sides, my grandparents were immigrants,
working class immigrants, and I did go to Chinese school
to try to become bilingual, didn't quite stick.
Chinese is a very hard language,
I don't know if anyone has tried to learn it
but I had a really hard time learning it.
And so I think my experience was I grew
up not really seeing my specific experience reflected back
to me, at least in what few place I saw.
I didn't really watch a lot of place until I got
into college and as an adult.
And that's where I began to see sort of the nuances
of my experience reflected back to me more.
And I definitely did see it on television then.
I think now, I see, you know, when I do watch television,
I don't watch television that much, I do see more diversity
in more different kinds of Asian-American personalities
but it's still television, right?
It's still set along a specific narrative arc.
It's still really basically a thing
to get commercials shown on, right?
It's not really about truth telling.
So there I am, young,
trying to figure out who I am as growing up.
I went to college at UCLA and UCLA is a research university
so I didn't necessarily learn to become an artist at--
I think I learned to become an artist but I didn't--
I was never a theatre major.
I was actually an English major, I did--
did I do a minor in Asian-American studies,
I can't remember.
I can't remember now, it's been so long.
But it did another major called world arts and cultures
but it's a research university.
So, it's different than going to a trade college
or state college where you sit
and you're actually working on creative work.
I did a specialization in creative writing
which is basically three creative writing classes,
but a lot of where I learned about what I liked to watch
and what I wanted to make was I worked as an usher
at UCLA live which is sort of,
they brought in international performers
and I would watch performances through the little slit
in the doorway and then we would take turns
as ushers watching the shows.
And, I was really interested in sort of--
in dance and sort of these all encompassing shows
and shows that really broke the boundaries.
I had thought for a long time that plays were supposed
to be boring, because that was what my experience was
and it's so exciting to watch shows over there.
It was like they brought water out on the stage
and dancers are on harnesses and floating around
and I thought, "Wow, this is so amazing."
And it was also very political climate when I went to UCLA
from '96 to 2000, there
like protests happening all the time.
And a lot of my friends were like,
"We're going to lock ourselves
up in the chancellor's office," and then I was like,
"I don't want to do that," I'm kind of, you know,
I just didn't grow up with that sort of sensibility,
you know, and understood that it was important.
And then this time that I was in college,
probably what you might be going through now, I had to,
you know, I stepped out of the cocoon that I was raised in
and I had to look at who am I.
And I don't know if you've had the experience of moving
out of your house and moving into a dorm
or into an apartment but just trying to decide, well,
what do I-- who am I and what am I bringing
from my old life into my new life?
What posters am I going to put up on my wall?
And so, this was a very interesting time for me.
So, this is sort of the history, I guess,
of the cannon of my work, I've made five solo shows
and one ensemble show.
I was-- I took and taken a one-play writing class
in my life.
I'm not bragging, I'm just saying that a lot
of my learning comes from different places,
from watching things and trying to mimic what I enjoy
or try to comment on what I do not like in my work.
And so much of what I've--
how I've learned to make shows and how I've learned
to write material is sort of this process
of constantly just doing.
So, I also have a body of guerilla theater work,
culture jamming, I do commentaries in the radio
and site-specific works.
So, I think it's really important.
A lot of my friends, you know,
why are you including this slide,
in your slide about your process, revenue streams?
And the reason why I do this is
because the reason why I'm sharing with you is that I live
in the same economy you do.
I have to survive in the same economy you do and especially
with the parents I have, I have lot more anxiety
about how to make a living.
And this is something that I have to constantly think
about when I'm making the shows and it adds
on the unnecessary pressure.
If you saw "Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest",
you might remember that me, this character Kristina Wong is
under this insane unspoken pressure, maybe spoken pressure,
to save all these women with the show,
which is sort of an unrealistic feat, right,
that no one show is going to save people.
But for some reason, this character
and her efficiency is hell-bent on winning awards
and getting grades and being this high-achieving person
who will also save everybody with the work of theater.
So, that's why I share this.
I share with you my hassle in trying to stay alive
in all the different things that I have to do
to put a living together and it does inform how I make shows
and it doesn't-- like if I were just someone
who had a desk job and was contented to do shows
on the side, my shows might look a lot different.
And when-- It wouldn't be informed with the same anxiousness
like on hassle as it is.
So, this is a choice I made to make a living doing this
and because it's a story that I think
that there are this kind of themes of the same anxiousness
that carried themselves through my show.
So, because I do this for a living,
I have to do a lot of marketing.
The reality of my day-to-day life,
my process is that I do not wake up
and sit down with a computer and write my next great play.
I spend a lot of time working on the business
of doing my work and a lot of my working artist friends,
we often moan and bitch about having to constantly spend
like 90% of our time just trying to market ourselves
and administrate our careers and maybe 10% of the time,
actually getting to create and do the work.
And so, my philosophy in making a lot of the works
that are not on the stage is that it is a part
of this marketing that's part of drawing people
into coming to my shows.
And so, this is sort of what I constantly have to maintain
and do on a daily basis sending out newsletters.
I'm working with independent and mainstream press,
working with grad students or writing about my shows
for their theses, self-archiving,
blogging and guest blogging.
One of the big things I put
at the top is guerilla style work.
So, I'm going to show you some of these projects
that I've done that I've never really been remunerated for
but it has brought a certain--
it helps me think about the process of working
on ideas in my work.
So, one of my very first projects was out of college
and colleges seem to enjoy when I hear this
because this is actually a college project that is still--
we can still look at it on the web.
So, if you are familiar with the internet.
It's the little thing that we have.
If you were to search for Asian women, what would turn up?
Any? Anyone want to throw some guesses, some wild guesses--
pornography, exactly.
So, and that has not changed much in the last 15 years.
And unfortunately, and now actually,
it's a little bit more organized
because there are Google ads and people place ads
on their sites end up at the top.
And so I was-- Like I had said,
when there are these protests happening at UCLA
and I was just like, I just-- I know--
I remembers participating in some of them
and I was just like, "Oh, this is giving me an ulcer to be
like screaming and mad all the time," and this is not
that it's not a necessary thing but I was like,
"There's got to be a funnier to go about resisting the man,"
you know, instead of like spending half a day screaming
at the man.
There's got to be another way around this.
And so, this is pre-Facebook, pre-MySpace, pre-Friendster.
Some of you don't even know what Friendster is,
but I thought, "Well, what if I had-- could intercept?"
This is, you know, this is very revolutionary that now,
we see a lot of projects like this all the time.
But what if I could intercept people looking for pornography
and have a fake mail-order bride website.
So, if you go to this site,
there are all these fake mail-order brides, with profiles,
these fake testimonials.
And basically, it's modeled on a real--
this is a natural mail-order bride website.
So, there's sort of this similar thing and you can go
through it but this was my college project.
It was my-- and we were--
Our college project could be anything.
It can be a research paper, mini documentary, and I thought,
you know, instead of writing a paper
that would just get shelled and get red ones by me
and the TA and that would be it.
Why don't I do something on existing public space?
And for me, that was super revolutionary.
This is sort of my first early public performance.
And it was very terrifying to me,
this idea that when I'm asleep, someone who does not agree
with me is looking at pictures of me, you know,
across the country or on the other side of the world.
That was terrifying to me and it helped me get over a lot
of anxiety very quickly, a lot of--
I had a lot of very mixed reactions,
a lot of people who I actually thought in going into this
that I was critiquing other activists on my campus,
like that was actually original intention.
But those people who I thought would be mad
at how I was challenging sort of traditional modes
of activism were actually really into this site.
And I got a lot of hate mails from people
who identified themselves as I'm from the KKK
and you're blah, blah, blah, and it was just--
it was sometimes really terrifying.
But it was a good experience for me
and that it helped me get over a lot my anxiety
and that I had always been raised in like you have
to make everyone happy all the time.
You can't rock the boat.
So, to have something that this was--
that was this polarizing that left a lot of people confused,
that left my own friends confused about who I was.
I had one friend who was a white guy
who was dating an Asian woman who told me he was afraid
to introduce me to her because he thought
that I would get really angry.
And so, I became confused.
I'm like, this person-- No, I'm not that person.
So, you know, it was really--
It's very challenging when you perform yourself in your art
because people are not able to, you know,
whatever they assume you are.
They-- It gets thrust into you in real life.
So, as I describe more my processes as a playwright,
why do I not really write for the page?
Why are so many things
in this performance reason and I'll tell you.
I did-- I do have a novel.
It's collect-- It's not been published.
It's still in progress.
It's been collecting dust for the last 12 years.
Every few years, I'll pick it up
and try to work on it again.
And, I'm not sure that I'll ever finish it,
but I realize in trying to discover who I am
as a creative performing writer person
that I don't really do very well in long-form writing.
And some people are because they're very good at, you know,
working in a room alone uninterrupted.
I have-- It's so hard with Facebook.
I often wonder how many novels have been delineated
through like 600 posts on Facebook
and how much brilliance is now, you know,
scattered everywhere because it's so hard
to sit down and focus.
But this is why I have a hard time writing
on the page is writing is a really lonely,
easily distractible process.
I have no publishing deals.
There's no impetus.
There's no big check waiting for me.
As a first-time novelist, I was struggle--
It was difficult to find--
It takes a lot of time to work to write, right?
And if you don't have that money to sustain that time,
it just creates anxiety and also, the--
it was hard to get immediate feedback.
I was very nervous about sharing my writing with people
and I felt like that's what I needed as a creative person,
is to have someone I can constantly shuffle ideas back
and forth to.
So, my performance career has gotten a lot more attention
in my own life as a result.
And this is not to say that I'm discouraging you
from writing but I'm trying
to help you understand what is taking me to where I am.
So, my very first show was a show called
"Miss Chinatown Second Runner Up," and I was--
I don't talk about the show too much,
but it was my very deep performance art show.
Like I said, I used to watch all these
like world class performers perform at UCLA live and I just
so badly-- I wanted a piece too where there'd be paint
in white paper and be so symbolic.
And so, I was really intrigued
by the icon of Miss Chinatown.
Miss Chinatown is-- are you familiar
with this beauty pageant?
It exists specifically in Chinese-American communities
and intrigued by this idea that I was--
that Miss Chinatown was sort of this fictitious icon
that she was supposed to perfectly represent someone
who had acclimated the Chinese-American culture.
And who is perfectly Asian--
or perfectly American and perfectly held
on to her Chinese-American roots.
And I felt so frustrated, I could never be that.
And I was also struck how sexy she was and yet I was like,
I was raised in such this repressed away
that I can never ever imagine being able to put
on this dress and not looking totally awkward
like to put on Chinese dress.
So, it was sort of about that awkwardness and puberty.
Is anyone familiar with "Carrie" by Stephen King,
which later became a movie?
So, that's-- This is the ending scene.
If you remember the movie, it was this basic of "Carrie,"
great movie, is this giant vagina comes
down from the rafters and I reached into the giant vagina
and all this blood comes down onto my white dress
and it turned into a lucky red dress and I pull a tiara out
and I'm crowned Miss Chinatown.
So, I like getting the attention of everyone
at the computers when I talk
about the giant vaginas bleeding on me.
But, anyway, so that was like so great.
It was such a great show but it was very hard to replicate.
It's very-- If you're a first-time performer,
it's hard to be like, you've never heard of me before now,
bring me into your theater.
And my postcard image was of this, was of--
which shows up not all in the show,
which is this is sort of wayward cigar,
hustling beauty queen and a lot of people who knew me
from my last project assumed that I was just going
to tell jokes for an hour.
And they didn't assume that I had this like soft, quiet,
symbolic performance art.
I keep getting lipstick on this mic.
But, didn't know I had that in me.
And in my sort of like, OK, as an anxious artist, I don't,
you know, I can't wait once every two years
to get into a theater.
I need to find ways to keep performing or share my ideas
and this is where I started doing more
of guerilla performance work.
And I said OK, I'm going to start going around then
as that image from the postcard of the show.
I'm going around as this character named Fannie Wong,
former Miss Chinatown Second Runner Up and basically,
she's a fake Miss Chinatown.
And a lot of the impetus for me wanting to show
up at places is that I would get annoyed
when I'd see Asian-American events
and they would tout this celebrity
and the celebrity was some actor from some show
that had been canceled, who no one really had heard of.
And I just thought, "Wow,
we're just so hungry to have celebrities.
Why don't I just become a celebrity?
I'll just help add to the pile of celebrities."
And so, I would just show up at places--
So, that's an actual Miss Chinatown, right?
And that's-- And we're friends now,
he name is Pricilla [assumed spelling] and there I am.
And I would show up at community red carpet events
with an escort and do interviews with the press.
And those interviews would turn up on the web.
So, this to me is sort of like
in that big bad Chinese moment
like intercepting public space and seeing what happens.
I did a postcard project with my friend,
Steve Wong as this character and basically, I--
his postcard series is really great.
It's this idea like when you go to California,
what kind of postcard--
we'll you're in California but like what kind of post--
what kind of images are in the postcards?
Golden Gate Bridge, as if everyday,
we cross the Golden Gate Bridge or go for a walk
across the bridge, right,
or bikini lady which is even stranger,
right, in the Bay Area.
And he was interested in this idea that people come
to Chinatown to see like a slice of China
and tourists especially.
And so, his idea was to take a bunch of postcards
with fictitious subjects of Chinatown,
print out these postcards and hide them
into postcard racks in Chinatown.
The people will buy the postcards
and they would circulate around the world.
And so, I'm one of the subjects in this fictitious series.
Another great-- This is Steve's project
but I love this series so much.
One of the other subjects that he has photoed is
when you see movies set in Chinatown,
why are there chickens running around on the street?
Why is it like five times more crowded?
You never imagine, like I have [inaudible] the
Chinese factor.
And so, when "Starsky and Hutch" shot of, you know,
the movie on his block in LA's Chinatown,
they took an empty storefront and they turned it
into a laundry for the sake of the, you know, for the--
to make it more Chineasy [phonetic].
And so, he takes a picture of that fake laundry
and that's one of the subjects of this postcard series.
I went-- I actually--
This is actually a thing I'm trying to deal with right now.
So, I've been doing this project.
This particular character on
and off for the last 10 years, it's a long time.
And I basically showed
up at the Chinese New Year parade in Los Angeles.
I snuck in with the gay-lesbian contingent.
And they didn't, you know, they're so opening--
they're so open, they didn't, you know,
they didn't think they kicked me out but I think some
of them were like, "Why is she here?"
But basically, I walked to the whole line of the parade
and when I got to the end,
the woman who is with the parade counsel asked me
to remove my sash and I knew if I remove my sash, it would--
I would get the whole group in trouble.
So, I just sort of run away.
And they-- And she basically screams,
"You're all disqualified from the parade next year."
So, basically, 150 gay and lesbian people and PFLAG parents
and things are-- have now been booted out of--
this is what we're trying to deal with right now is
to make sure they don't get booted out of this--
I mean kicking gay people out of parade.
This is like insane, why would you do that?
But anyway, so I got them in trouble
because this is their brand and they're very protective
of their brand, of the Miss Chinatown thing.
But what is cool is that if you go through some of the--
lot of the flickers from that day,
flickers and different photo streams that a lot of pictures
of this fake Miss Chinatown show up.
So, anyway, but for me,
it is sort about challenging how we look at femininity,
challenging what we considered to be celebrity
and embracing a sort of awkward and this is
to me what I would have been had I ever run
for the Miss Chinatown pageant.
OK. So, my-- So I told you my first show was
"Miss Chinatown Second Runner Up",
the big vagina bleeding on me.
And the show I made after that was a show called "Free"
and it was basically a lot of short pieces,
sort of like a book of short stories, short little pieces,
sort of critiquing things around me.
And like I said, the anxiety that was kind of--
that still continues unfortunately that rules a lot
of our lives, right, is how do we make money?
And as I was looking about at the artist that I could think
of who are of my demographic, my age and race demographic,
who were making money,
a lot of them were spoken-word artists.
And I was very annoyed because I'm not a spoken-word artist,
I'm much more visual and a lot of them were dong kind
of angry spoken word, which I was just like--
I felt at times was sometimes too dimensional for my taste.
And I was annoyed that in thinking
about how I could possibly work that am I working
because I'm a good artist or am I working
because I fulfill some sort of slot for this space?
And it was-- It's of constant negotiation because I want
to feel like I'm a good artist
and that's why I'm being presented.
So, this particular piece, you can look up video for,
if you look at Kristina Wong, question mark, free,
but this is called checklist.
And then basically doing a bad spoken-word piece
and there's a checklist of all the items that people expect
to see in the spoken-word piece,
are being checked off behind me.
So, it's sort of fulfilling.
So, it's sort of a critique on what we expect to see
from Asian-American performers and pieces.
So, some of the things like reference food
from the homeland offers snippet of mother tongue.
So, sort of a critique of, you know,
what we expect to see of Asian-American writing
and it's very salient.
It ends with the big dance at the end.
So, if you want that look that up,
I think you can find it on YouTube.
So, this is the question I ask,
how do you learn how to write a play?
By writing a play.
So, this is where I'll take you through the process
of making "Wong Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest."
I am constantly looking for ways.
I think I had imagined when I was younger going,
I'm going to become an artist that my days would be filled
with like line on a hammock and having existential thoughts
and then going off to the theater at night.
It's totally not like that.
I realize that just like people, you know,
and in fact like right now, I'm contemplating whether
or not to rent the office space out.
So, it's sort of like the things kind of--
like will save my life for the same things
that people are trying to escape and in their nine to fives.
Like I think I need a desk and deadlines and I'm, you know,
even contemplating, should I hire like a manager
or life coach to kind of just, you know,
keep me accountable?
But these are the things that add structure
to my process is people ask me,
how do you get so many grants, Kristina Wong?
And for me, it's because I apply for them and I apply
for them and if this might be helpful for you if you're,
you know, a writer or a playwright is to just apply
for things because that forces you
to articulate what it is you are trying to create
and to really articulate it in a way
that a panel can see it.
And that actually helps me a great deal
in seeing this big picture.
So, there's a show that I'm going to make maybe three years
from now and I'm already starting to apply for grants for it
and that process as much as I hate that process
and being under the gun,
it forces me to articulate what I'm trying to do.
Exhibition or show deadlines, this is something that a lot
of stand-up comedian coaches will tell budding stand-ups is
just sign up for an open-mic and commit to showing up at
that open-mic and it will force you
to come up with some joke.
So, for me, same thing, I will sign on to shows
that I don't have a show yet, you know,
like with "Wong Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest",
I had a premiere date I think a year before the show was
made and I had to come up with a show.
Was the show ready in my opinion when it went up?
No. But I had to present something.
Timeliness of subject matter and this is more of the case
of some of the YouTube videos I've made is that, you know,
obviously if something is happening in the news,
I have to jump on it if I want to make a critique
or whatever about it.
I can't-- No, wait or wait or also, it just won't get done.
Especially now what I'm finding that's really tricky is
that people are making YouTube responses so fast
that it has almost obliterated the need for a lot
of live performance work,
which used to be the more timely response to current events.
I still feel like there's value of course
in live performance.
It's a different aesthetic.
But in terms of addressing things right away, I feel like,
you know, even winning,
Charlie Sheen's winning got old super fast.
So, these are things that I have to think about now
as a live performer is what is sort of timeless
that will last for two or three year run of a show.
Accountability, I'll just announce to people as I've been
like I'm working on a podcast.
I'm doing-- If you do that, you know,
and you don't get it done,
you're going to feel really embarrassed after.
But I mean in terms of like, you want to write a book
or want to launch an app or something, you start telling,
you go around and tell people and then,
your ego is on the line.
If you finish it or don't finish it, so that's what I do.
And then sometimes, I do artist residencies
and these are things you can apply for if you go to,
I think artist-- you can Google search it
but nifa.org is a great resource for looking up grants
and artist residences.
And there are places where you just go to a cabin
and you usually don't get--
maybe they have a small living [inaudible]
but sometimes they feed you.
But the idea is that you're so far away
from everything else,
there's nothing else to handle except your book
or your play.
And, I've gotten into artist residences
that had been provided by foundations and organization.
I've also had-- I've created self-imposed residencies
where I fly to go work with the director in Texas and I stay
in someone's house for two weeks and I am accountable
to getting work done with that person that I'm working with.
So, these are things that I'm sharing with you
if they are helpful for you to get things done.
So, "Wong Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest."
Who-- Can I just get an idea
of who's actually seen the film?
OK, not everybody.
So, "Wong Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest",
that's my third solo show.
That was the show about the high--
it's the show exploring the high rates of depression
and suicide among Asian-American women.
And, I'll share with you where I came up with the idea.
Like I said, there's this constant anxiety
that always runs through my head.
What am I going to make because it takes a lot of effort
and energy to make a show.
And what show am I going to make
that will have a long touring life?
So, it's horrible.
I wish I didn't have to think about these issues
of economics all the time in my career
because I think that's the whole point of being an artist.
It's like you're not supposed to be thinking
about those kind of things.
But unfortunately, it runs my life a lot and --
but I think in a way,
it is nicely informed what the show looks like.
I was at Wellesley College in the Massachusetts area,
in Massachusetts and it's an all-women's college.
It's so eutopic.
People like can leave their backpack out on a bench,
go for a walk and the backpack is still there
when they come back.
You know, it's just like where am I?
And they have this beautiful lake on the campus
and it's like $50,000 a year to go to this school.
And I was walking around this campus thinking, "Wow,
my life would have been so different if I went to a school
like this like all these women are so educated and smart."
And as I'm walking around the lake with my student host,
they start to talk about suicide attempts that had happened
at nearby campuses and students that they knew
that were depressed.
And my very naive thought was how can anyone be
depressed here?
They all look like they're doing fine.
And, that's when I thought, "Well,
maybe this is where this new show is."
This show, I should do a show about this issue
that nobody really sees on the Asian-American community.
And I get this all the time
when I tell people what my show is about, "Really?
What's wrong with Asian-American?
They don't-- They seem so happy."
Like they, right, like one of these unified front.
And another thing that had happened around the time,
this is 2005 that I made the show is Iris Chang
who I've learned was an author spoke here a few years ago.
She wrote a book called the "The Rape of Nanking,"
which is about the forgotten holocaust of China.
She wrote some really intense historical accounts of events.
"Chinese in America" was one book and she was working
on a book about and I think veterans coming on war, just--
and she just seems so bulletproof to people,
I think that they kept thinking she's the go-to person
to handle all this heavy, heavy stuff.
And so, she committed suicide and I don't think a lot
of people saw it coming.
I remember her coming to my class at UCLA
and I remember her saying that she had been approached
to write a story about the Korean comfort women,
these women who were used during the war sort of just
as places for soldiers to relieve themselves sexually.
And, she said, "I can't write that book because I need
to protect myself psychologically."
And I had a moment where I was like, "Oh, wow,
she seems so bulletproofed like she actually has boundaries
but unfortunately, I think she had taken on too much."
And it was too much for her to take to separate her self
from what she was writing about.
And then, so that intrigued me.
I think also just sort of the general misconceptions
that I had experienced in my own life and family
around mental health.
You know, as many generations as my family has been here,
I grew up and I was told that if you saw a therapist
which is not true, if you see a therapist,
you're not going to be able to get a job when you're older.
If people find out you--
Because they will think something is wrong with you.
I mean, I don't know if anyone,
you can nod maybe if you've heard this in your families,
or we don't pay people to get better,
which is who pays strangers money to get better?
So, these are sort of things that I was thinking
about like-- and then I had heard this statistic
that Asian-American women have the second highest rates
of depression and suicide.
And I was just like in a way, it was so shocking like,
"No way," but it felt familiar.
So, the challenges on to write this show about a topic
that nobody talks about and I was-- I have complete anxiety.
I was going around being accountable, right,
announcing to people, "I'm doing this show about depression
and suicide among Asian-American women.
Guess what I'm doing, everybody."
And I was really shocked at what had happened
that in classes that I was invited to speak
to about my old work that professors would pull me aside
and tell me about their suicide attempts
that at conferences I was at,
people who were not even Asian-American were telling me
about medication they'd been on.
And I'm just like, "Wow,
these people are like secretly confiding in me."
And had-- I'd experience this openness growing up,
how much different would my life have been?
And if we as a culture could feel so comfortable
to share this with each other without being judged as crazy
or whatever, how would life be different?
I had people email me who I never met,
who just heard that I was writing a show, email me and ask
and start to tell me that, "We want to talk to you.
We want to be part of your show."
And I'm just like, it was so overwhelming.
And so, I found myself,
like I don't know who smoke cigarettes,
I don't smoke cigarettes but I did find myself--
you hear this cliche about the writer who smokes a lot
if they can't get through an idea, writer's block writer.
I would knit a lot.
So, I was knitting about a scarf a day,
just sitting on a couch, knitting a scarf a day,
so this makes its way because I just was
like I don't know what to do.
And my mother actually said to me, "You know,
we're so happy that you're doing this show.
Just don't talk about us on the show."
So, I was just like, "How am I supposed to do this show?"
Like I just felt like there was--
I had suddenly set myself up for this insane pressure
to do this show that was somehow supposed to be
about other people outside the family.
And I think this is where the problem for me persists.
If I do not show that I am vulnerable at all,
how do we do a show about depression and suicide?
I'm not going to do a show about other poor, poor, oh no,
I feel, feel sorry for these other people
because I'm the sane one and I'm going to do show
about these other people.
It didn't feel good.
So I just-- I was just sitting on the couch watching
"Grey's Anatomy" and just knitting like crazy
and just going, "How am I going to turn this into a show?
How do I turn this into a show?
I have no idea."
And then I would interview people because I was like,
I'm going to be an interviewer.
I'm going to interview.
I'm going to-- And I found myself just like bad interviewer,
bad reporter, just started to cry listening to people.
So, I was just like, "I don't know how I'm going
to do this show."
So, this is how I had to figure out how I'm going
to make this a piece.
So, I guess this is something I recommend
to a lot to writers.
What are the main problems of your process
and how can those problems inform the process
of making your show?
So, the questions plaguing me in this process,
how do I put together all of these despaired elements
in the show and how do I maintain the stamina to stay
up for an hour and a half to do this show?
So, what I did is worked
like a self-imposed artist residency.
I went to Texas to work with a dramaturge and director.
A dramaturge is basically what I call sort of the maid
of honor or the sort of someone who helps the playwright,
you know, always the bridesmaid never the bride,
like helps the playwright organize the thoughts and ideas.
And she very much was a sounding board
and a pseudo therapist for me and I had-- see, I don't--
like I told you, I do not sit--
I do not write sitting down at the computer and just typing
out monologues and rehearsing them.
That's just not how I work.
I have a lot of stray ideas for things.
And what she did which I thought was so brilliant
and it's the process I teach
to other people is we wrote every kind of major idea
on a piece of paper and then we began to organize them.
Well, this might go after this.
This seems like it goes in this cluster of ideas.
This goes here.
So, we had what look like a long structure.
Then, I began to ask myself questions,
why are Asian-American--
What am I trying to answer with this show?
Just what am I-- Why are
so many Asian-American women depressed
and killing themselves?
How can we save them all?
More importantly, how can Kristina save them
in a 75-minute show before anyone else does?
How can-- I do this without homogenizing all Asian women
in the same category and keep activists
from protesting my own show?
How can I keep it-- So, this is all my anxiety, right?
And how can I keep it fun enough
so that it has commercial appeal?
And how can I justify it as already enough
for those grant applications?
And how can I do it without diminishing the severity
of the topic?
And how do I not piss off people who work in psychiatry?
And how do I piss off--
do not piss off people whose family members are mentally ill
or ill themselves?
Like this is all-- This is why I was going crazy knitting a
scarf a day, right, because I was just like, how do I--
And my dramaturge was so good
about taking all those questions
and figuring how this could actually be the show,
the anxiety about making the show is this show.
And so, basically, what she would have me do,
we pin this up to the little cabin
that I was staying in Texas.
And she gave me a recorder and I basically had
to talk my way through each section.
It's sort of like a stand-up.
Have you ever seen stand-up comedians?
They have a little set list and it's like the Kleenex joke.
So, you know, bananas in the butt.
I don't know, you know, like whatever.
Like there's different topics.
I'm trying to keep you awake.
And so my first topic-- So, my first scripts look like this,
they look like stand-up comedian sets.
And it was so hard for--
And I, you know, I'm trying to like just find my way around.
Eventually, what we would do
as I'm reading this is we would transcribe everything coming
out of my mouth.
And so, another thing that we were finding because I had
so much anxiety about like, you know, like I said like I--
this-- how do I do a show about depression and suicide
but make it about other people?
Like I feel like it has to be sort of this thing
where it seems like it's about me,
so you're invested in watching me.
But, because nobody talks about it
in the Asian-American community, I need to protect myself
so that the audience doesn't go, "Oh my God, she is--
" you know, and so this--
If you saw the movie,
the whole gimmick of the show becomes the dramatic arc
of fiction.
And this idea of that the show is all fiction.
It's not about me, it's
about other people outside of the Wong family.
In fact, because it's a work of fiction,
we're going to follow the dramatic arc of fiction
and the show sort of devolves into this bad lecture, where--
you've seen this in English class, right,
where we can sort of diagram a story out.
And what happens during the show
like a very efficient narrator who is very--
and I think a lot of this sort of comes from, you know,
like how I was raised and raised
by like very practical business-minded people is that,
you know, the show has--
every story has to have an arc
because the story wasn't having an arc.
And what happens is your unreliable narrator
who has my same name of Kristina Wong keeps ramming
into the-- every time we check in with the arc of fiction
to see how we progressed, we are still at the crisis.
We're still at the crisis.
We're still at the crisis.
So, it's very much becomes a metaphor for why the problem
of depression and suicide persists among Asian-American
women is because this sort of this fiction that's happening
and this need to try to save everyone with the show
and take on all these invisible problems
and make it seem like, it's all fine,
I got this under control.
When in ways, it's not.
So, as I said, this was-- these were my early shows.
So, my very first show when I premiered the show in December
of 2006, it was over two hours long.
And I can not tell you what a nightmare it was for me
in my head and body and probably for a lot of the audience
because it's like in my mind,
I'm like I'm going through the show
and it's like you know there's an end
but it seems so, so far away.
And it was really hard
because I think we did a Q&A right after.
The show ends with me in a hospital gown.
And the audience was asking me questions as if it was
like now ask the character questions and it was awful.
There was no separate--
There is no separation obviously that they had
between the character named Kristina Wong and me on stage
and the questions were really invasive and really awful.
And it became clear to me.
I need to edit this if I'm going to continue touring this.
This is like the most painful show I've ever had
to make in my life.
And so, basically, the show ends like this, right?
And I'm doing a Q&A like this because I didn't think,
maybe I should change my clothes and do a Q&A
so that people can ask me questions as me
and not as the character.
So, I learned a lot about boundaries in this process.
So, this are the issues that inform each revision
as the Q&As were getting me really--
I was getting really upset.
Because people were asking questions like, "So,
tell me about, you know, how you were depressed?"
And it was just, "And what really happened?
What didn't?"
And it was, I felt like the audience had full license
to attack me and I didn't feel comfortable about that.
It felt like the audience wasn't getting it.
And I was getting annoyed with myself that I had set
up these huge expectations.
Remember that when I had named off all those questions,
I was like, "Why did I do that?"
So, continually going back to these questions help me figure
out where to pair down, where to hit the hammer
on the head a little clearer and try to make fun of myself
as this overambitious person.
I think it was very unclear to my early audiences who was me
and who was the character.
And now, the show very much looks
like a performance I think.
So, and this is an image we see a lot in the show is
that I give these bad lectures
and try to solve this problem.
And this-- oh, and the knitting,
the knitting shows up a lot in the show.
I'm sitting and that's the yarns
and my own sweater is unraveling.
So, it was really great to work
with this particular dramaturge because she was able
to respect all the aspects of my process and find,
we're able to talk about how--
what I was actually going through trying
to make the show was a metaphor
for the problem I was trying to address.
So, OK, as I come to a close, I wanted to talk a little bit
about how I combat writer's block.
I asked Facebook for ideas.
Sometimes, it's a bad thing because you could just get lost
in Facebook and you get a lot of very unhelpful suggestions.
But sometimes if you wanted to stir the pot, it's weird.
It's hard to get people together for a writing group
but it's really easy to come up--
for people to come up really smarmy ideas
on Facebook and offer them.
So, here's an example of how I asked on--
I asked Facebook for help.
Speaking of social psychology [inaudible],
I was supposed to leave an exercise
in disrupting norms, any ideas?
You know, and so it's just a way for people to know what I'm
up to, but also get some ideas
on how maybe what I can do can change, right?
And some of these are completely helpful, you know,
"Did you pack your [inaudible] vagina?"
Like that some of these are not good ideas.
But at least it makes the process a little less lonely.
Impose deadlines, like I said, like apply for grants, shows,
to have someone sit with me while I work
and just bounce ideas off of them,
that can be tricky because sometimes,
you just end up blowing off work altogether.
Create an arbitrary task what leads
to production of something.
So, I've paid-- I've rented theaters for like $50 just
to have a reading of my play and that, you know,
and I've invited people to come and that means that by
that time, I have to have something
that I'm presenting to them.
Or another thing I like to do which is very, I think,
you know, everyone, if you have a Facebook page,
you are a storyteller.
You put a photo up.
You put a caption.
That's a story.
And so, what I-- A lot of my shows
of late are created this way.
I organize a group of photos and a PowerPoint
and do what's a basic show and tell and figure
out an order that they go.
And so, like I said, my "Going Green the Wong Way Show" so,
basically, I had a car that ran on vegetable oil
that I bought in 2006.
And it caught on fire in 2008.
And so that show basically started because I took a lot
of pictures with my cellphone camera
and stuff as I owned it.
And I just basically, my-- that show was--
it was originally a 12-minute show
and tell where I just showed different pictures
of where I picked up oil for the car
and look at the odometer, that's 172,000 miles.
And that had-- It grew into an 80-minute show.
So that little task, that's the car that I had
that caught the fire.
That-- So, anyway, so I'm sharing that because I feel
like that it is just that simple in ways
that we are all storytellers.
It's just a matter of taking it off of Facebook and putting
into other forms that people consume
or just keeping it on Facebook.
But, I hope this helps you understand how I put ideas
in order and how I work through them.
>> Thank you very much.
We really appreciate having you.
>> Thank you.
[ Applause & Music ]
[ Music ]