Stars align to give playwright an opportunity to bring ‘hope and healing’ to new Cygnet Theatre commission – The San Diego Union-Tribune

During the pandemic, playwright Ray Yamanouchi found himself captivated by Carole & Tuesday, a sci-fi anime about two girls trying to make it in the music business. He began to think about how he could challenge himself to create something similar, something rooted in the kind of optimistic expectation that this show made him feel. Around the same time, Cygnet Theatre was looking for an artist to support in the creation of a play that would offer hopefulness to this current period of radical change.

Yamanouchi became the first recipient of the inaugural Dee Silver M.D. Commission, with an award of $10,000 and an unrestricted time limit. The commission includes three development sessions: a weeklong retreat with The New Harmony Project in Indiana, writing with a team and group of playwrights; a weeklong workshop with the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis to dig deeper into the play; and a final workshop with Cygnet for a reading in front of an audience with a full cast, director, and dramaturg (with the final goal of producing Yamanouchis play as a premiere at Cygnet in an upcoming season).

Yamanouchi is based in Astoria, Queens, in New York City, earned a bachelors degree in film and theater at Hunter College-City University of New York. His plays include The American Tradition and Impact; hes developed work with Leviathan Lab, WT Theatre, Rising Circle Theater Collective, among others; and is a commissioned playwright with Ars Nova and the co-creator of RE: (Regarding), a theater talk show in New York City. He took some time to talk about the Cygnet commission, his approach toward this new challenge, and hope as survival. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Q: How did you get started writing plays?

A: (My work) focuses on race in America and all of its intersections, and initially, I wanted to pursue filmmaking. Akira Kurosawa, great Japanese filmmaker (Seven Samurai, Yojimbo), was my idol growing up as a kid. My dad was a huge fan of his films, so I watched his films growing up as a child. Hes a very influential filmmaker and I just idolized the man. When I decided to go into filmmaking, I read so many books on this guy and I read his autobiography, and in the very end of it he has notes for young filmmakers. One of them was to learn every part of filmmaking, including how to write scripts. To be a good scriptwriter, he said that you should read all these different kinds of plays, whether you like them or not. It was just necessary to know why they were important. So, I started reading plays and taking classes in theater, getting involved in productions. Then, I was like, Oh, I think I like this better. Theater was much more democratic. Theres a much more democratic creative energy, and the sense of community was much stronger, especially where I went to college. When I started really getting into theater later, I just thought that I needed to go back to my roots, to writing plays, writing, writing, writing. Then, in 2015, I decided that I wanted to see if I could make this a profession.

Q: What led you to shift your focus more on playwriting in 2015?

A: It was sort of how I got into film as a kid I was just so excited about it. It was that moment in theater where I realized this is something that I identify with and its the most expressive I can be, so I wanted to make this my lifes work. I feel like the only way to do that is if I make it my profession, a part of my identity.

Its very difficult to be a playwright full-time. You either need to be in an educational institution or write for TV, which is playwriting adjacent. For me, I still work in the box office at an off-Broadway theater, and I have other forms of income to supplement that.

Q: Congratulations on receiving Cygnet Theatres first Dee Silver M.D. Commission award. What was your initial reaction to the premise of the project?

A: The fact that it has to be hopeful? It actually worked out really well because, with the pandemic and everything going on, I was watching this anime called Carole & Tuesday. Its a very feel-good, family-friendly anime and I was just so drawn to it because it made me feel really good and hopeful. It was so different from the things Im usually interested in, which is grieving or things that tackle big subjects. I was thinking, Man, I want to do something like this. Then, coincidentally, this commission came my way and the stars aligned, and now I get to do something that takes a different direction than what I usually go for. I always like to challenge myself in those ways. I still want to explore the big themes that Im usually drawn to, but Im going to try and explore in a way thats different. Im going to try to use the energy of Carole & Tuesday. I cant say for sure because were still so early in this process, so I dont know where its going to go, but Im hoping that Im going to be able to find something there.

Q: In the announcement about you receiving this award, it says you approach difficult subject matter with a tilt towards the mystic and develops characters with gentleness. Was this always an approach you took toward your playwriting? Where did this focus in your work come from?

A: Gentleness is an interesting word. I definitely approach every single character with empathy, no matter how much I disagree with them or find them despicable because you need to make them human. I like to see my characters as products of their environments, so in that sense, I always approach them with empathy. The mystic is a little different. I was talking about the idea I had for the commission, and I was thinking of a sci-fi setting with these, potentially, supernatural elements. Typically, I dont really go for that sort of thing, but Im challenging myself so Im approaching this material a little differently.

Q: Where did the focus on approaching your characters with empathy, come from?

A: Its based on my upbringing. I grew up in Long Island, New York, in the early 2000s when I was a teenager, and it was very White. I was one of the few Asian people, people of color, in the entire community, so I endured a lot of racism. At the time, I didnt really know it was racism; I just thought it was teenagers being as. In my public school, the way that we learned about racism was through the Holocaust, and segregation, but it wasnt really about these microaggressions that we know now. You dont even really learn about Asian American history unless its about the Japanese internment camps during World War II, or that Chinese immigrants built the (transcontinental railroad) across America.

I didnt really think about it until I left and went to college. Becoming older, doing my own research, talking to different people helped me realize that that was the real world, especially learning about housing segregation and school segregation in Long Island. I realized that the environment Id grown up in was so dictated by government policy and systemic issues and history. The only reason that people think the way that they do is because of the big, systemic, historic things that they dont really think about, but it has shaped who they are, shaped their communities, shaped their families. Learning that really felt like a violation. It felt like history, and the government, have altered these peoples personalities. In a weird way, its not their fault. These people have just been living in this false, artificial community thats been manmade to keep certain people out of very White communities. Knowing that made me feel like were all products of our environments, and the only way I could really make character-driven plays while tackling these big subjects, was by approaching every character with seeing how they are psychologically and personally influenced by their families, their environments. I cant do that if Im going to immediately start painting people as good or bad, evil or racist; thats reductive. Its not that simple. Thats why I feel like I always have to think about the history of where they came from, and thats why I try and approach a lot of my work with research and history, and to see how that trickles down to regular people.

Q: The point of the commission is to provide funding and an unrestricted time limit to the creation of a play that responds to our present times with hope and healing. Whats been coming to mind for you in thinking about the meaning of our present times?

A: After the summer of 2020, there were a lot of institutions trying to respond to the moment. You had a lot of companies saying, Black Lives Matter and were gonna diversify, yadda, yadda, yadda. Now, a lot of that seems to be pushed under the rug. I was so hopeful at the beginning. I guess, naively so. It almost feels like were now retracting to a business-as-usual type of thinking and its very frustrating. I dont know how thats going to affect my work, but perhaps I can sort of see what kind of thing I want.

Ive been really obsessed with this idea of a utopia. What does that word mean? The commission sent me to The New Harmony Project, and they do this thing that emphasizes the idea of that utopia and hopefulness for the work. Ive also been interested in the ideas of this Dutch historian, Rutger Bregman, who talks about envisioning the utopia and working backward in order to make progress. You cant just make these incremental changes that are just Band-Aids, without having an idea of what you want your future to look like. Its better to know what the future looks like and then take the necessary, concrete steps to get there. Ive been thinking about that more and more, nowadays, especially with this commission. What is this utopia that I want and what are these things that I could explore in a play?

Q: I understand that youve completed the first of three development sessions, in partnership with The New Harmony Project with a weeklong retreat in community with more than 200 other writers and artists. What was that process like for you and how did it help inform your work in this commission?

A: When I went in there, I had zero idea of what I wanted to do. By the time the week was over, I wanted more time there because I felt like I finally had a play idea. I went from nothing to Oh, I have three or four pages by the end of the week. That may not seem like a lot, but to go from literally nothing and having no idea what I wanted to do, to having some sort of trajectory for where I think I want the play to go, was pretty big for me. The reason I was able to do that was because the artists they had there were really incredible, intelligent people who had diverse backgrounds. Not just in ethnicity and gender, but also in ideas. Everyone was aesthetically different, and it was just interesting to hear everyones takes on certain things. The things that helped a lot were the post-workshop time of hanging out and having drinks, letting ideas flow. The next morning, Id wake up and be like, Oh yeah, what that person said. Then, wed have these dramaturgy meetings to work through your play with a dramaturg and basically just brainstorm. It was like playwriting therapy. It was really wild; Ive never done that in my life. It was so cool.

Q: Why was this commission something you wanted to participate in?

A: I think its because I wanted that and I feel like, if this commission didnt come my way, I cant say I would have put my brain in that space. I think about these things and think, Oh, I kind of want to do this. I also think about writing TV scripts, like every playwright does, and that maybe I should write a pilot and that feels something thematically close to Carole & Tuesday. To do a play in such a way, I truly didnt really think about it until this commission came my way, and then I was like, Well, of course. Why didnt I? because thats sort of what I want to do anyway. Id just been thinking in TV terms and not play terms. So, I was ecstatic. And, again, Im repeating myself, but its different and I like to challenge myself in those ways. I think its perfect for what I need and what I want.

Q: Why does creating a story that responds to these tumultuous times with hope and healing, matter?

A: I think hope is survival, ultimately. Sometimes, with my plays, my generous interpretation of them is to think of them as hopeful because I write them with the idea that if we investigate these big things, well find ways to solve them. Someone who may just be engaging with it without that context, might feel some despair and that these problems can be so big. If I can have an objective like hope and healing, perhaps I can make that sharper. I think, especially for these times when everything hurts everything hurts maybe this is the type of play I need to be writing anyway.

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Stars align to give playwright an opportunity to bring 'hope and healing' to new Cygnet Theatre commission - The San Diego Union-Tribune