Interview with Leigh Silverman

Leigh Silverman – I was directing David’s play Yellow Face at The Public, and we had a great time working together. We did the play out in Los Angeles and then brought it to New York. He said he had this idea about doing a kind of Glengarry Glen Ross businessman’s trip to China that he had been thinking about this for a long time. He also said he had this notion it was going to be bilingual and wondered if I thought a bilingual comedy could work. I said I had no idea, but we should give it a shot.

He and I talked about it a couple of times, and finally I just set a date and said we’re going to do a reading. He wrote the first act. It was amazing. We did the translations on a PowerPoint on someone’s computer – at that point, none of the play was actually in Chinese. We hadn’t engaged the services of a translator. David doesn’t actually speak Chinese.

We got really excited about it. He wrote the second act. The rest is Chinglish history.

AD – How was the process of incorporating bilingual elements into Chinglish?

LS – I have always believed that language is actually a character in this play. One of my challenges as a director on top of directing a play that doesn’t take place in my native language – I don’t understand a word of Chinese – one of the challenges was to figure out how to communicate what’s happening in the play to the audience in a way that still allows jokes to be funny. If you’re projecting a translation of something, you can’t cut the joke off half way through. You’ve got to put the punch line up there.

And how do we keep people’s eyes focused on the play while being able to read? We can’t use a traditional approach to subtitles like an opera where you look outside of the frame of the play. You have to be able to see the action of the play while reading. It became an essential part of the process of design, rehearsal and staging to figure out what‘s the timing for the audience to read. We actually project onto the set, in and around the actors, so that literally the words are near the heads of the people who are speaking. You can see the actions that they’re doing while reading the translations. It’s an exciting and different approach, and one that hasn’t really been used in this way before.

AD – What is at the heart of the messages in Chinglish?

LS – That it’s really difficult to communicate. This play shows – in a literal and a metaphoric way – how hard it is to really understand what someone else is saying. Even when we’re speaking the same language, it’s sometimes hard to understand. So when you have people who are speaking different languages, desperate to be understood, it is really difficult to communicate. That is what the play means to me on a number of different levels: emotionally, relationships, business, how to be honest, how to be direct, how to be deceitful. Communication is difficult whether you understand the language or not. The play resonates for people because we struggle daily with other humans to communicate. It is the most human thing to want to connect with people, to want to communicate with them, to be understood, and the frustration and agony it causes when you’re misunderstood.

AD – What are some of the major things that shape the story of Chinglish?

LS – It’s the levels of communication and miscommunication. In this story, the stakes are so high for Daniel, our lead character. It is essential for him that he be understood in a business sense and in an emotional sense. How incredible it is to feel like you are being understood by someone, and how devastating it is to find out that you are tragically misunderstood and you had no idea. Part of what happens in the play is that there is nothing but misunderstanding and often times they happen very quickly. And in terms of the relationships that happen, they may pin hopes and dreams on each other and they don’t actually know who the other is at all. They’ve really misunderstood their fundamental reasons for being together. The irony of it is so meaningful and deep.

It’s different not only from any other play I’ve ever directed, but from any other play I’ve ever seen. It is one of the most unique singular theatrical experiences because you are so engaged as the audience. You’re reading the translations while people are speaking. The audience leans forward in their seat. Because no one on stage understands everything that’s going on, the only people everything that’s happening on stage is the audience, and the experience that the audience has is one of just pure delight.

The characters are compelling and honest. And it’s a really relevant story. It’s a story about an American guy who’s struggling with his business who goes to China to try and make money. If that is not the most relevant story to where we are today – to have a desperate American looking to figure out how to keep his business afloat. It’s is a ripped from the headlines kind of situation.

And it’s a riotous comedy.

AD – What makes Chinglish so timely for audiences right now?

LS – Every single day in America there is a headline about China. We need to understand who the Chinese people are and who they will be to us. David hopes that the misconceptions and misunderstandings that are explored in the play will be taken home by audiences to use on a more global level. Hearing audiences talk in Chicago, it was amazing to hear how many people had been to China, had done business in China, or had been in rooms with Chinese people where they felt like they had no idea what was going on. I just heard a story from a CFO of an Internet company about doing business in China. This is what American businessmen are interested in. They are interested in China. This play takes on a currency and a relevance that’s unstoppable. This is what we are interested in as a culture and as a business. It is so relevant today.

AD – What sort of research did you do to understand the environment in Chinglish?

LS – I eventually said to David that I cannot direct this play unless I go to Guiyang. I don’t speak Chinese. If I’m going to be in a room with a bunch of people who are speaking Chinese and I’m the white person in the corner who’s trying to tell everybody what to do without knowing anything about the place or the culture … I have to go to Guiyang. I have to understand it. I have to understand what it’s like to be in a room where you’re the only person who doesn’t speak Chinese, or to be with a translator who’s translating you in a bad way, or to be with a translator who’s translating you perfectly. To more thoroughly understand the language and why everyone says it’s so hard, I wanted to be immersed in the culture. Specifically Guiyang, so I could understand how they are different from the people of Shanghai or Beijing, for example. So David and I agreed that we would take this trip to Guiyang before we did the play.

Story: In Guiyang, nobody speaks English. There are maybe 200 people there who aren’t Chinese and almost no Americans. So by the time we got back to Shanghai, I felt like I would be totally fine to get around without a translator. I looked in TimeOut Shanghai and found the Museum of Sex that seemed cool to check out. I looked at where it was, found it on the subway, and thought I’d be able to get around just. I’m a New Yorker. I went to where I thought the museum was, and it’s not there. I start trying to ask people where this address is and I can’t get a single person to understand me. I’m saying things like “museum” or “sex.” I start saying “opium” and “brothel.” Next thing I’m standing in the middle of the street, basically yelling “sex” at the top of my lungs in the middle of the street. And I suddenly realized you get reduced so quickly to an idiot and you start acting like a crazy person because you’re so invested in being understood that all of your manners go out the window and you become like a two year-old.

We took this incredible trip there and learned quite a bit. There are lots of little details in the play that we brought back from our time there. One of the things that we feel very proud about in this production is the level of accuracy both in the behavior of the play as well as the scenery and props, etc. We have China advisors who are the people who took us to Guiyang. They are experts on the culture and the region. Not a single decision gets made without passing it through them. If I have blocking where people shake hands, the advisor may interject to say that they would not shake hands at that point. When our native Chinese speakers came to see the play, they felt we really captured an authenticity about the place. Every single prop in the play was either flown over from Guiyang or purchased in Chinatown. It is a crucial piece of this puzzle, that it feels like a very authentic and accurate version of Guiyang today.

AD – What has been the most challenging part of Chinglish?

LS – One of the things I found out about the Chinese language is that when the intention of what you say changes, the word changes. In English, I can call you “honey” and say it in a nice way or a derogatory way or an ironic way, but the word is always “honey.” But in Chinese, the word “wife” is different is someone is being complimentary, or if the wife is older or younger, or how long they have been married will literally change what the word is. Often the actors and the translator will get into a discussion – in Chinese – about how the play has been translated, and if the translator is translating the lines most accurately. And David and I have no idea what’s going on, so it starts to feel like we’re all just in Chinglish, talking about translation in a play that’s about translation. That is always fascinating to me and sometimes difficult about the process.

To have the translator in the process with us, she can sometimes change the line when she hears my direction – now realizing that something is a joke, for example. Sometimes I want to emphasize a particular word, but the Chinese grammar has the words in a different order. A name that would come at the beginning of a sentence in English might come at the end in Chinese. There are often ways that I am trying to tell the story, and the language literally doesn’t bend the same way that English does.

AD – What has been the most enjoyable part of the process of Chinglish?

LS – My collaboration with David Henry Hwang is so deep. At this point it’s been a number of years. It spans multiple projects. To be with him on this journey of making this play, to feel that we are telling the story that he wants to tell and touching an important cultural moment, makes it such a wonderful collaboration. He is so smart and so inspiring. To be a partner of his is truly the reason to get up in the morning. I love working with him. It’s been really amazing to be in this process together and to be able to be at the helm of a story like this, I feel so honored. He’s just an inspiration for me every day.

AD – How does Chinese culture influence the rehearsal and development process of Chinglish?

LS – Joanna Lee and Ken Smith, who are our cultural advisors on the show, have written an almanac so things like our first day of rehearsal and our opening night have to get checked with the almanac. They are also in charge of all rituals that we do. They’re very grounding for all of us. Part of the strength of the company is how we come together around these different rituals and festivals that are very important to them and have become very important to all of us. For example, our first day of rehearsal is the Moon Festival , so Joanna already has the cookies ready. On opening night in Chicago we roasted a 35 lbs. pig. There was incense. When we moved into the theatre from the rehearsal room, we spent time with incense going around the theatre.

AD – What are you hoping audiences leave the theatre with after Chinglish?

LS – I hope audiences will walk away saying that was one of the most unique, fun, hilarious, and thought-provoking nights in the theatre they’ve had. The play is so spectacular, and I want people’s socks to be knocked off. I want their minds to be blown. I want them to say I’m coming back again. I want them to send all their friends. I want them to say I’ve never seen anything like it.

LEIGH SILVERMAN (Director) Previous Broadway: Lisa Kron’s Well. Recent world premieres: In The Wake (Center Theatre Group/Berkeley Repertory Theatre and The Public Theater; OBIE Award, Lortel Nomination); Go Back To Where You Are(Playwrights Horizons: OBIE Award); From Up Here(MTC; Drama Desk Nomination); Coraline(MCC/True Love); Beebo Brinker Chronicles(Hourglass Group/ 37 Arts); Creature (New Georges/P73); Hunting and Gathering (Primary Stages); Well (The Public Theater, The Huntington Theatre and ACT); The Retributionists (Playwrights Horizons); Blue Door(Playwrights Horizons and Seattle Repertory Theatre); Oedipus At Palm Springs(NYTW); Jump/Cut (Woolly Mammoth Theatre/Theater J and Women’s Project); Chinglish (Goodman Theatre) – Joseph Jefferson Award Best Director Nomination; also Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (Second Stage Theatre). West End: Wit (Vaudeville Theatre). This marks Leigh’s second premiere production of a work by David Henry Hwang having previously directed Yellow Face at the Center Theater Group and The Public Theater.