ANDY DRACHENBERG: How did you find your way to being a part of Chinglish?
JENNIFER LIM: What first brought me to this production? Facebook! My friend May Adrales posted on her Facebook wall, “Mandarin speakers, or actors. Please respond!” And I was one… So, I was like, “Hey May!” and she responded, “Oh my god! I totally forgot that, of course, you speak Mandarin. There is this new reading of a David Henry Hwang play that I am directing at the Lark…” Now you know, inside I was going “Oh my god!” I had no idea that David was writing a bilingual play! Anyways, I showed up that first day, and even that first round of reading, I think that everybody in the room new that it was something special. That it was a really special play. But yea… Facebook is the short answer. I should just try to keep my answers short (laughs).
AD: What is Chinglish about?
JL: On the most basic level it is about people’s need to communicate, and how easy and how hard that is. I have been lucky enough to have been invited to every Chinglish reading and workshop, so for me, having been working on this for the past year and a half… something that became more and more apparent as I sort of lived with this play a little more, and every time we worked on it and started delving deeper and deeper, is this idea of choice and the cost of choice.
AD: Is choice (and its cost) something particularly important for your character, Xi Yan?
JL: For my character, it’s especially overarching. The comedy comes from the misinterpretation of the language issues and that very basic struggle to communicate with another human being. Though I think that language plays a part in that, you have people who speak the same language who misunderstand each other all the time. Its also about love. And relationships. And how that can mean something so different to different people depending on your priorities? For me, it all comes back to that idea of choice. Choice and Sacrifice. With every choice that you make there is always a cost, and it’s about priorities. So what are your priorities? What’s important? What’s the most important? And when you know what that is, can you then also take on the cost of the sacrifice that you have to make? That, for me, is something that I understood very early on in the process.
I grew up in Hong Kong, and being half Chinese and half Korean, I grew up with a pretty conventional, traditional, sort of Eastern upbringing, and there’s a practicality to Asians, I think… you’re always told to keep your feet firmly planted on the ground… don’t get ahead of yourself… These are things I have always known and things I grew up with, and things that are almost second nature to me… through this play I have been able to pick it apart a little bit and articulate, “Oh! That’s why I feel this way,” or “That’s why I’ve always…” It’s really interesting.
AD: How does Chinglish relate to the world outside the theatre today?
JL: I think David’s very on point with his cultural observations, especially for a man who doesn’t speak any Mandarin and has visited but never lived in China. His observations and his ear for chinglish – the Chinese that all of the characters speak, is phenomenal and really spot on. I have been asked in previous interviews how I have made sense of the English that I speak. Well, if you speak the Chinese language it makes perfect sense. You know? For a bilingual person like me when I go to China and I see chinglish signs, the choice of English words that they use is a little shocking sometimes. Usually, it’s bad computer programming. It’s like somebody picked up a free translator program. So, if you speak Chinese and you look at the English words, it totally makes sense why it’s incorrect. It’s actually incredible insight into the Chinese language and the Chinese mind.
AD: Has working on this show introduced you to things you hadn’t noticed before in your travel between the US and China?
JL: Yes! Last time, I saw a chinglish sign for ‘lawyer.’ In English, it said “the lions of the law.” Which, you know, its like “Oh!” When you look at the construction of the Chinese, the three words that make up the Chinese word for attorney, and read it literally, it translates into English as “lions of the law.” That’s part of, I think, the beauty of the Chinese language. It is incredible, the sort of layers of imagery, and its very poetic.
Growing up in Hong Kong, I’ve traveled to China a lot growing up. I feel like I’ve always seen chinglish signs, but it has never amused me as much as it does now. I have a different understanding and I read these signs in a different way now. In the past, growing up there was a little embarrassment from them… you would read it and “grrr” was your reaction. It was kind of like “Oh, somebody should fix those.” But now when I go, I see the humor in it and I sort of have an appreciation for it, and I have to say that I actually love it. I love it! I think there is sort of two camps in China right now: people who want to fix all of the signs, and people who don’t, who now see them as a part of the culture. It’s a piece of the insight into what’s going on.
AD: Since you’ve first began, has Xi Yan developed or changed in your eyes? Do you see her in a different way now than before?
JL: When I first got the script, I immediately had about ten women that I know… all sort of Asian women that made me go “Oh, I see this.” What’s been great is that a lot of the feedback has been about how great it is that she’s not a stereotype. For me, she is based on real women. Women that I grew up with. Women that I was surrounded by growing up. She was very familiar to me in that way. As the process continued, what was interesting was how to personalize it. Of course there are things from my own personal life that I’ve layered in there as well, but it just keeps getting deeper. This play, and this role supports that. I still don’t feel like I have scraped the bottom of the barrel, and I don’t know that I ever will… and they say that about great roles.
AD: What is at the heart of this show for you?
JL: It’s such a beautiful play. There is just so much heart in the story, in the characters… Every character in this play grows… has a journey. For me, to be able to play this multilayered character, it’s a dream role. I think Xi Yan rediscovers something about herself that she had long forgotten here, or had sort of sacrificed way early on for other things and other priorities. I think the beauty of catching this character at this moment, in this play, as she rediscovers that, indulges in it, and still chooses to sacrifice it again is incredible. To be able to play a character that has so many discoveries, it requires very much for you to be in the moment.
AD: How has the backstage guanxi helped shape the interactions that happen on stage?
JL: This is a very special group of people. Everybody involved in this show… I mean it really feels like a family. If there is one thing about the Chinese, if I may, is that once that initial barrier has been set, we are a very generous and inclusive in terms of family. So, once you have been accepted, and once you are seen as family… it doesn’t matter who you are. You’re family and that’s it. That guanxi will be there for the rest of your life. That’s the spirit, I think, that this show and the people involved in this show has embraced.
JENNIFER LIM (Xi Yan) starred in the premiere of Chinglish at Goodman Theatre. Jennifer was born and grew up in Hong Kong but now resides, works and dreams out of NYC. After graduating with a BA in Drama from Bristol University in the U.K., she attended the Yale School of Drama for her MFA in Acting. Her New York credits include the world premiere of Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven (by Obie Award winner Young Jean Lee) at HERE Arts Center, Ching Chong Chinaman at Pan Asian Rep, Vengeance Can Wait at P.S.122 and YokastaS Redux(directed by Richard Schechner) at La MaMa, E.T.C. Regionally, she has appeared in Medea/Macbeth/Cinderellaand Iphigenia at Aulis at Yale Rep and A Christmas Carol at Actors Theatre of Louisville. International theater credits include This Isn’t Romance at Soho Theatre in London; the European tour of Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven; The Medea at Adana State Theatre Festival, Turkey and Hamletat Shanghai Experimental Theatre Festival and Grotowski International Theatre Festival, Wroclaw, Poland. Her film credits include The Savages, 27 Dresses and The Boy Who Cried Bitch: The Adolescent Years, and on television she has appeared in “The Good Wife,” “Blue Bloods,” “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Law & Order: CI,” “Royal Pains” and “Dirty Sexy Money.” Jennifer is also a member of Gia Forakis & Co. www.jenniferlimonline.com.