Voices of heterosexual white women have proliferated through the viral circulation of #MeToo. Notwithstanding the importance of highlighting misogyny and sexual violence within industries that frequently capitalize on women’s performing bodies, the movement has sometimes obscured queer, kink, trans, and other articulations of desire that fall outside of heteronormativity. What possibilities for political collaboration lie outside of affinity with #MeToo? Who might be excluded from such a collective enunciation and what might such alternative relationalities teach us? These questions form the background of the following discussion with Melissa Li and Kit Yan, collaborative artists whose work models a queer and trans praxis that might help reshape our understandings of desire and collectivity in the current moment.
Sean Metzger (SM):
To start off, could you describe your collaboration process? Particularly how it started and what your process is like in terms of artistic creation.
Melissa Li (ML):
I’m Melissa, I use she/her pronouns and I am half of a writing team with Kit Yan. We mostly do work in the musical theater space, but we also work in film and TV. Because we’re both queer, and Kit is trans, and we’re both Asian American, a lot of what we write about has to do with queer and trans folks of color. And those are the communities that we write about and for.
Kit Yan (KY):
My name is Kit Yan. I use they/he/she pronouns and I identify as queer and transgender and also Chinese American, Asian American, Yellow American. I grew up in Hawaii, but I’m not Hawaiian, though I have a lot of respect and relationship to the culture and the land.
Melissa and I met in Boston in the back of a drag bar where we were doing a queer Asian cabaret that was monthly at the time. We decided to go on tour together. I did spoken word, and Melissa is a singer songwriter; we just jammed our art together. We got in my Toyota Corolla, we drove around the country to over 30 places, and we just performed our art. That became the basis of our first musical [Interstate]--it’s inspired by autobiographical life events. That’s how we became friends and artistic collaborators. We went on tour in 2008. We did it full time until 2010. We basically went anywhere that would say yes back to us--so that meant very tiny towns and all the big cities. During 2010 to 2012, we broke up the troupe and our friendship, and we basically hated each other for two years. We didn’t talk, we didn’t collaborate. We went off and did solo albums. And then in 2012, we just kind of grew up a little bit. Melissa is far more mature than me. She was like, “I miss our friendship. Can we do that again?”, which was really a beautiful thing because we started writing our first musical [Interstate] about the tour. Interstate has been 11 years in the making now and was a really integral part of the journey of healing our friendship and processing that time on the road together and meeting each other anew and becoming a new type of collaborator [with each other]. When we write now, we write plays and musicals for the theater, and we write features and episodic material for TV and film. We tend to treat all our projects similarly to a TV room: we do all the story together, we lay the foundation for everything that’s going to happen in the piece together, and then we split book and lyrics. Melissa is the true triple threat as the person that does all the music. But of course, there is a music team on all our projects, a team much larger than ourselves, helping on music and story. We might be working with producers or executives that also have dramaturgical thoughts and are integral to the process.
SM:
Kit, you mentioned you identify as Chinese from Hawaii and trans. As Melissa said, you started doing trans, queer, people of color kind of work and I was wondering if that’s a conscious decision. Also, how do your particular ethnic backgrounds factor into the types of work you produce?
KY:
We write about queer and trans things because we often write inspired by our lives and our communities: families, relationships, friendships, complex relationships, and journeys.
ML:
I think when we started we weren’t like, “Oh, we’re going to be musical theater writers and this is what we’re planning on doing.” It really was in processing our own story and wanting to tell that and then starting from that place. Everything we write is basically what we would want to see as well, as queer people, as people of color. . . everything that we do is stuff that we care about and that we’re interested in.
SM:
I’ve been looking at your work as it moves across media platforms. I noticed, for example, a song in May Day was done as a music video at one point, and then there’s the actual performance online. Can you talk a little bit more about the musical as a form and what kind of limits and affordances it has for you?
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Melissa Li (left) and Kit Yan (right). Photo by Joey Stocks
KY:
Like Melissa said, we had no idea we were going to write musicals as our full time jobs someday. But here we are. I grew up here in Hawaii where song, dance, oral tradition are a real part of our upbringing. Every year in school we celebrate May Day; every single kid growing up here does this and they do a song and a dance. You spend all year learning it. It’s a really big deal. I didn’t even know that until I was older because it just feels like a part of how we move through the world here. But also I’m Chinese: my family grew up in China and then moved here when I was a newborn. And I watch my mom do traditional Chinese dance here in Hawaii. But she didn’t get to do anything artistic until she was in her fifties. I realized I hadn’t thought of what I did as a privilege. But it really is. I get to imagine and I get to sing, I get to dance, I get to share my imagination with other people as my job. In my mom’s experience, individual expression meant persecution and death. And she lived in Hawai’i for 30 years before she decided she could do that for herself. And so I find musical theatre really beautiful because there’s so much freedom in expressing yourself.
ML:
We talk about this a lot, actually, and about how there’s something really magical about witnessing our communities singing and dancing on stage. There’s nothing quite like sitting in a theater with other people watching real live humans there, performing for you. There’s definitely a level of magic that can’t really be replaced. In terms of your question, Sean, there are also limitations. It’s expensive to put on. It’s not always accessible. A lot of times [when] you go to a Broadway show--doesn’t matter if it’s about folks of color--you look in the room and [the audience is] typically older and they’re typically white. Those are the folks that get access to theaters. Kit and I are always discussing how theater [can] change in a way that makes it more accessible to folks who really need to see it and should see it.
SM:
What happens when the medium--the musical--crosses into online performance?
ML:
For us, it’s not the same [as live performance]. But especially in the context of [the online performance] May Day, what was great was that during a pandemic we were able to do that on Zoom. The fact that we could have folks do a live reading with music--it’s pretty tricky technically, to be totally honest, it’s really tricky to sing. A lot of these things have to be pre-recorded, so there is a tech element to it that complicates things a bit. But it really was inspiring during that year to see so many folks come out and have digital productions.
KY:
Until the pandemic, we only wrote for the stage. What’s beautiful about the stage is that it’s live. There’s a real magic when you do something live. The theatre actually forces you to say, “In this in this story, these people are human. They’re real humans that I have seen with my own eyes.” And that’s particularly important for us in telling trans, queer, Asian American, POC, female stories, feminist stories. When something is on a screen or maybe even in a book, it feels very far from your own life. But if you’re sitting there, the people’s humanity is just undeniable.
We probably ended up doing Zoom as just a byproduct of the pandemic. People in the theater were like, “We still want to make theater. We don’t know how to do that. Let’s try Zoom.” And we’re like, “Okay, we’ll say yes to this experimental form.” Are we going to keep doing it? Probably not. It doesn’t serve the form very well. It’s far more effort to do a Zoom production or reading than it is to do a live reading. There isn’t as much of the magical element of being in conversation with an actor, being a collaborator in the room, being a collaborator with your director or your choreographer or the musicians.
Sean, if we wrote Mayday and it was for the theater, you would have never have found out about it because all of our development is incredibly private. We mostly do closed readings of invite-only for family and friends. We mostly hide the project all the way until a decade later, maybe five years at the least, for any outside person to see it. But Zoom sort of forced us as an intermediate step to say, “Okay, we’re going to be a little bit brave and show people our stuff that’s totally undercooked and half baked”, which, one, made us push ourselves artistically, but two, was a little bit scary. The thing about online [performance] and screenwriting is once you put it out there, you don’t get to do another version of it. It’s there forever. In the theater, you can do as many versions as you want until you put it on stage for the public. So there are real pros and cons of those things.
ML:
It’s not so much that there’s anything bad about digital theater. I think it is its own form.
KY:
Totally. I think the important question is, does the form serve the story? And if the answer is yes and Zoom is the answer, absolutely.
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Jupiter Lê (L, he/him) as “Dash Koi” and Jaya Joshi (R, they/any) as “Henry Ahuja” in INTERSTATE at East West Players. Photo by Steven Lam (he/him).
SM:
In terms of the content that you offered in May Day, can you talk about the questions it raised for you and what drew you to that particular story? For me, the trans [aspect] comes out like a trans generational thing as well, which I thought was interesting in transhistorical moments of violence.
KY:
Generally we do write a lot of trans main characters into our stories, but I don’t think any of our stories are about being trans.
ML:
We’re not just one thing. We’re not just queer or trans. We’re full-fledged human beings with issues--other issues like family issues, romantic issues, financial issues, whatever it is. And I think those things sometimes are more interesting than the struggle that we’ve seen again and again that’s particular to sexuality or gender identity. So in May Day, it’s like, “Yeah, this person is non-binary, but that’s not the focus of this particular story.”
KY:
For that story, in 2018 I was in Hawaii, and was going to eat at the farmer’s market with friends--one who is an elder, [Uncle Wally]. He’s much older, in his eighties maybe. While I was driving to the farmer’s market to eat breakfast, I got the text message that said, “A missile is coming to strike the island in the next ten minutes, seek shelter. This is not a drill.” And I was like, “Okay, well, maybe the last moments of my life are going to be this right here: this farmer’s market.” And we had to make a decision in those ten minutes. Me, my old high school classmate, and my best friend are all similar age--we’re in our thirties. But we’re young compared to Uncle Wally, who was also eating breakfast with us. And the three of us younger people were really freaking out. But Uncle Wally was not freaking out at all. He was just like, “Okay.” And then he started talking about the bunkers people built after Pearl Harbor. And we were all just following his lead because culturally over here, we definitely look towards the wisdom of our elders. And we were freaking out, but we were thinking, “Okay, well, if Uncle Wally is not freaking out, I guess we should buy breakfast and eat. And if this is going to be the last moments of our lives, that’s it.”
SM:
For my next question: I’m not trying to reduce your work to [simply] trans politics, but I do think it’s important because there are not a lot of people doing a theatrical or media production and centering the voices of trans folks and trans of color folks. So for me, that’s one of the things that draws me to your work: I find it very moving and important. And I wonder if you could discuss the creative choices that you make in regards to casting and things like that.
KY:
I’d say oftentimes our stories will center on queer families and queer relationships in some way. We try our very best to cast authentically to the character whose story we’re telling. That’s really important to us. I think that when you have some life experience that matches with some of the stories we’re telling, you can add a really unique lens to the show. With that said, I truly believe that there is a real spectrum to gender and sexuality. And so, we are not artists who will police other people’s identities. I think our general rule of thumb is if you identify with the role, then please audition for the show because your gender and sexuality is a real journey and everyone is going through their own version of that journey. And if their journey brings them to a point where they feel like they want to explore the world that we have built, I think that’s the right person to be auditioning.
ML:
Yes. In terms of casting, we don’t write parts that only one type of person can play. We also treat music that way as well. If you feel like you relate to the piece and you fit the character, then we often will transcribe for your vocal range as much as we can. Sometimes there are some limitations, especially when there’s an ensemble, but in general folks have different voices and they don’t adhere to the standard: a lot of that is very limiting and gendered. And so we typically like to have a more fluid approach to that, and it’s more of a conversation.
SM:
I really appreciate your answer. This issue of Theatre Journal deals with different aspects of the #MeToo movement and the re-energized BLM movement. I am wondering if and how those two kinds of movements inform your thinking about your work and the creation of stories that you want to tell.
KY:
I do think Melissa and I as artists--and I think a lot of artists do this--we tell the stories of the world around us and we’re inspired by the world around us. So certainly those two movements are very, very important in the time we’re living in. It’s something we really need to be talking about. And certainly Melissa and I in our lives participate, support, uplift, or step back in the ways that are appropriate, taking the lead from the leaders of the movement. In our own work, I very, very much believe that the revolution starts at home. I feel highly inspired by the discourse and by the activist communities around as to how we can change ourselves on an individual level to reflect the changes that we want to see [in the world]. And so when Melissa and I are making art, particularly in the live space, it’s not always right the first time. We have a lot of drafts for that reason. It’s a collaborative art form, so we learn from the people in the room and then we adjust and then we do our new version. We try on a project by project micro-level to reflect the world that we want to live in. So we hope to cast our shows as diversely as possible to reflect the world of the show and the world that we live in today. We try to have consciousness around gender and sexuality, age and ability and access. We try our best, and we definitely learn some lessons along the way as we collaborate with many people from lots of different communities.
Something that I’ve been trying, to take the pressure off of ourselves, is focusing our job on telling incredibly specific stories that have universal themes. And so we try to tell the story we’re trying to tell and hope that it sparks conversation and hope and creativity--or even conflict. We invite accountability, we invite questions, we invite discussion after the show. I think that is the power of art; it’s to say, “Okay, this is the story we’re telling.” And then if you’re an audience member, what is your story? What is your reaction? What is your response? What will you make in reaction or in relationship to what we’re making? And so we’ve tried to take the pressure off ourselves to represent everybody or to water down our stories. And I think oftentimes that’s the best thing you can do, but with a consciousness of the world around us. Because our shows do not operate in isolation, or if we’re telling a specific story, we have a responsibility to the audience, the space, the time, the movement, the moment to say, “We have a responsibility to read the room. We’re not in a bubble.”
SM:
That’s a good transition to my next question. In 2016, The New York Times published an article with three trans playwrights titled, “Trans and Transgender Playwrights: We should get to tell our own stories first.” And I was curious if it is useful or not to think of trans theatre as a kind of movement. And if it is, why might it be useful?
ML:
Do you think that it’s a movement, Kit? I don’t know if I would [call it that]. I feel like there’s always been trans stories and trans playwrights, right?
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Krystle Simmons (L, she/her) as “Carly” and Kristian Espiritu (R, she/they/siya) as “Adrian Tong” in INTERSTATE at East West Players. Photo by Steven Lam (he/him).
KY:
We never really set out to be a movement for our work or our issues. But I think oftentimes we are looked upon with that responsibility and rightly so, because we’re telling we’re telling very specific stories about our lives. We do have a responsibility to our community in the way that our shows get executed. There are things that we do, sort of like extracurricular [activities] that are part of these kind of movements. For instance, that article featured my good friend MJ Kaufman. MJ and I started Trans Lab together, where we tried to make a fellowship so that we could have more transgender playwrights in the field. And then also there’s this new organization called Breaking the Binary that George Strus is doing that centers and uplifts trans and non-binary voices in the theater. But Trans Lab doesn’t exist anymore. It was a huge responsibility. MJ and I are very busy working artists and we were trying to run a program and that was a lot of responsibility for the two of us to take on. It was basically like running a theater full-time--fundraising, logistics, management--on top of our jobs that we actually did to make money. And that probably speaks towards the lack of support that we feel from the institution of theatre, because the onus is on us to go and make our own thing. But then it’s just so hard to do that when you actually need to like make a living and you’re also trying to do that work yourself. Ultimately, I think the best thing that I can do as a transgender artist is just to keep making art. Trans artists should tell whatever story they want to tell in their own terms.
ML:
One thing I do want to clarify also is that we’re not the only people out there now or in history to be making trans art. There are so many folks. There are more folks that are being mindful, more gender consultants on shows, more trans characters, which is great. Kit and I always talk a lot about how in TV and film, oddly, they’re further along in terms of trans representation and having trans writers in the writers’ room and having characters on screen. The stage and theater is a little bit behind, but it is further probably than it’s been before, despite still having some harmful content out there and harmful representation. But in terms of a movement, I don’t know. I think Kit and I are hyperaware of folks who have come before that have been doing this for many, many years. And so in that sense, maybe the movement’s been going on for a much longer time than we’re even aware of.
SM:
I just have two last questions. Is there anything that you would like to share in terms of doing Interstate with East West players in particular?
ML:
Getting to do it with East West players was great. We learned so much through that process. I think they are the oldest theatre of color in the United States. So that’s pretty magical. In a lot of ways it just felt like being in community and that was wonderful. We got to learn so much about the show, we did a bunch of rewrites…and for me personally, from a musician’s standpoint, I got to do something special, where our orchestrator Macy Schmidt was able to come out to LA and sit with us and the band and just have more time than usual to try out new orchestrations and change things on the fly. There’s always a bit of magic when you see the actors singing with the band and hearing the full orchestration for the first time. So for me, that was one of the loveliest moments of that production.
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The cast of INTERSTATE at East West Players. Photo by Steven Lam (he/him).
KY:
Yeah, and our show is still in development, so we’re still working on it. In terms of doing it again, we want to dive a little bit deeper into the story of Dash. And we want to maybe even dive a little deeper into the time period when we went on tour and reflect on our own stories and lessons and infuse that into the show.
SM:
So what’s next for you?
KY:
What’s next for us is that we have another musical. It’s a big eighties dance aerobics musical that’s in development right now. We’ll do a workshop production of it in Seattle, and then we’re doing a workshop of it at a major New York theatre. And then we’re doing a lot of TV and film--we’re doing TV and film development at the moment. In terms of our next theatrical project, we’re not in a hurry. We’re looking for something that inspires us, and we’re going to let that come to us when it does.
ML:
Thanks so much for sparking this conversation and giving us a chance to be able to have it.
KY:
I will say, Sean, just on a personal level, I highly believe with all my being that we really need each other. I so appreciate what happens in academia because you all really ask us questions and push us to think about our work in a way that we don’t when we’re actually making it. And so I’ve always thought that activists, artists, academics, workers and people out in the world are all different parts of the wheel that really makes change happen and makes society what it is. It’s always nice to chat with somebody like you who’s asking us these kind of questions.
SM:
This has been great and I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time.