An interview with playwright Jesse Jae Hoon

Maria Striar: When I reached out to you on Valentine’s Day to ask you if you thought you might write something to “address the current moment” what did that mean to you?

Jesse Jae Hoon: The best Valentine ever! When you asked me about this “potential gambit” and told me the quick timeline, my first thought was: “what efforts urgently need numbers right now?” Amidst rapidly escalating fascism, what was most evident to me was the need to quickly build robust organizing structures to protect each other and take action. The rapid community defense projects built by the residents of Minneapolis were emblematic of the work that is necessary now. It seemed to encompass every core organizing principle I hold dear and reminded us that organized struggle is the only way forward – now and always.

MS: I reached out especially because I’d read a few of your Lehrstücke— can you explain what those are, what yours were about, and how you adapted those constraints for writing this play?

JJH: The Lehrstücke (“learning plays”/“teaching plays”) were an endeavor undertaken and adapted by Bertolt Brecht in the late 1920s. Rooted in the core theory of dialectical materialism, these plays (such as The Measures Taken, The Flight Over the Ocean, and He Who Says Yes/He Who Says No) were meant to shift the dynamic between author, performer, and audience from a hierarchical one of consumer/creator to an exercise between equals. All who participated in Brecht’s plays (workers’ choirs, high schools, etc) were meant to learn key tenets of socialism in the process of making the work, as would the audience and the author.

I started adapting this process for working-class Asian American communities in Queens and Asian American performers as Ma-Yi Theater Company’s resident playwright through CRNY’s Artist Employment Program. I interviewed and observed fellow organizers Hailie Kim, Rima Begum, and Whitney Hu about their work around food insecurity and housing justice. Two of the three resulting plays – Always Eat the Food (about the first Bangladeshi tenants’ union in NYC), Bags (about food banking in Flushing), and Benedict Cumberbatch, Am I Irredeemable? (that one’s crazy) – were read at Glow Cultural Center in Flushing and were designed to investigate organizing efforts that audiences and artists alike could replicate in their communities.

Because of context specificities, I knew that these plays – like Titans – must walk a bit of a tightrope wire, existing as a hybrid of dialectical theater and traditional American theater. Eat it, Bertolt, Americans need catharsis to learn – we need to feel and experience politics to understand them. That’s who we are.

MS: How did you plot out this play?

JJH: I do not outline! I am a chaos demon! I have a sense of the characters the story needs to show the full context, I have a sense of the world… then I write a scene and let it all spill out! In this case, Gabriel & Diana’s scene in their car and Fran & Farida’s scene with the food came first. I have a sense of where I want characters to start and finish, then I write and write and write until the structure is in place. Luckily this one’s not my 8-hour play – you do not wanna see my notebook for that one.

MS: What are your other formal inspirations for this play?

Brecht, for all his many faults, understood clearly the need to adapt popular forms to the purposes of the work. I wanted to work inside the framework of the SummerWorks plays I’d seen, as well as play in the sandbox of superhero movie structure. I’m fascinated by the battle for the collective good against the rugged individualism and nationalism perpetuated by Marvel and American culture at large – I wanted to see if we could adapt the dramatic structure of an Avengers: Endgame while flipping its ideology on its head.

Additionally, I draw from a bygone era of Chicago theater — think Strawdog’s Red Noses and The Hypocrites’ Pirates of Penzance — which utilized the strength of an ensemble to create an epic scale in a small space. I also recall Stadt Unter Einfluss, a German production from HAU which united a punk musician, tenants’ rights organizers, and musical theater performers to create a musical about Berlin’s ongoing fight against gentrification.

MS: What is the difference between this play and agit-prop? What do you hope is the take away from this?

JJH: Well, agit-prop has a bit of a bad rep, so I don’t see it as a bad thing. However, the event of agitation – that is, the revelation of a major contradiction in our society – has happened long before this audience has stepped into the theater. You see it on your phone or, God forbid, you’ve witnessed it in person. If we’ve done our job tonight, perhaps we’ll have opened your mind to a more collective way of thinking and a path forward.

Let’s be clear: from a formal perspective, this IS an American play through and through. Its primary goal is to exist as a play (this runs counter to the objectives of agit-prop). You will see characters learn and grow and change, you will see relationships develop, and everything you might learn here will be experienced through the people you’re about to meet. You will not see my call to action in the script itself (you’ll get that in the flier/pamphlet as you leave). What you will experience, rather, is an invitation towards hope in action.

I hope you walk away with the spark of what I believe and what every effective organizer must believe: that a better world is possible if we make it together.

MS: Obviously we have access to coverage of the real factual circumstances around this play all the time (if we wish to engage). How does this play operate differently from the world of facts?

JJH: This city is an amalgamation of different cities in their responses to ICE. Some stories are from New York, some from Minneapolis, some from LA, some from Chicago. Some are inspired by real incidents, like the mass arrest of Hyundai workers by ICE or the ongoing political persecution of Mahmoud Khalil. I don’t expect audiences to replicate the tactics these organizers use exactly – our play is designed to show instead what is possible. There are a myriad of tactics and strategies at our disposal, all dependent on the political/geographic/economic contexts. These are just some of them. BUT you can and should read my friend Gaby Del Valle’s reporting on Minneapolis. It’s excellent.