Read Trying to Find Chinatown: The Selected Plays of David Henry Hwang Online

Authors: David Henry Hwang

Trying to Find Chinatown: The Selected Plays of David Henry Hwang (35 page)

BOOK: Trying to Find Chinatown: The Selected Plays of David Henry Hwang
4.68Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
MARK: No, you can’t just—what about your hatred of men? Are you really going to just throw it all away when it’s served you so well?
TERRI: I’ve been a man. I’ve been a woman. I’ve been colorful and colorless. And now, I’m tired of hating myself.
(Pause.)
 
MARK: And what about me?
TERRI: That’s something you’ll have to decide.
MARK: I’m not sure I can leave you. Not after all this time.
TERRI: Then stay. And strip. As lovers often do.
(As Terri removes her costume, Mark turns and looks away.)
 
MARK: I worry when I think about the coming millennium. Because it feels like all labels have to be rewritten, all assumptions reexamined, all associations redefined. The rules that governed behavior in the last era are crumbling, but those of the time to come have yet to be written. And there is a struggle brewing over the shape of these changing words, a struggle that begins here, now, in our hearts, in our shuttered rooms, in the lightning decisions that appear from nowhere.
(Terri has stripped off her costume, except for her hood. She wears a simple bra and panties. Mark turns to look at her.)
I think you’re very beautiful.
 
TERRI: Even without the metal and leather?
MARK: You look . . . soft and warm and gentle to the touch.
TERRI: I’m about to remove my hood. I’m giving you fair warning.
MARK: There’s . . . only one thing I never managed to achieve here. I never managed to defeat you.
TERRI: You understand me. Shouldn’t I be a lot more frightened? But—the customer is always right. So come over here. This is my final command to you.
MARK: Yes, Mistress Terri.
TERRI: Take off my hood. You want to—admit it.
MARK: Yes. I want to.
TERRI: The moment you remove this hood, I’ll be completely exposed, while you remain fully covered. And you’ll have your victory by the rules of our engagement, while I—I’ll fly off over the combat zone.
(Terri places Mark’s left hand on her hood.)
 
 
So congratulations. And good-bye.
 
(With his right hand, Mark undoes his own hood instead. He takes it off. He is an Asian man.)
 
You disobeyed me.
MARK: I love you.
(Terri removes her hood. She’s a Caucasian woman.)
 
TERRI: I think you’re very beautiful, too.
(Mark starts to remove the rest of his costume.)
 
 
At a moment like this, I can’t help but wonder, was it all so terribly necessary? Did we have to wander so far afield to reach a point which comes, when it does at last, so naturally?
MARK: I was afraid. I was an Asian man.
TERRI: And I was a woman, of any description.
MARK: Why are we talking as if those facts were behind us?
TERRI: Well, we have determined to move beyond the world of fantasy . . . haven’t we?
(Mark’s costume is off. He stands in simple boxer shorts. Mark and Terri cross the stage toward one another.)
 
MARK: But tell the truth—would you have dated me? If I’d come to you first like this?
TERRI: Who knows? Anything’s possible. This is the 1990s.
(Mark touches Terri’s hair. They gaze at each other’s faces as lights fade to black.)
 
END OF PLAY
TRYING TO FIND CHINATOWN
 
(1996)
 
Production History
 
Trying to Find Chinatown
received its premiere at the Actors Theatre of Louisville (Jon Jory, Producing Director), as part of the 20th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays, in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 29, 1996. It was directed by Paul McCrane; the set design was by Paul Owen; the costume design was by Kevin R. McLeod; the lighting design was by Brian Scott; the sound design was by Martin Desjardins; the original violin music was composed by Derek Reeves; the dramaturg was Michael Bigelow Dixon; and the stage manager was Julie A. Richardson. The cast was as follows:
 
BENJAMIN
Richard Thompson
RONNIE
Zar Acayan
 
 
Characters
 
BENJAMIN, Caucasian male, early twenties. RONNIE, Asian-Amerian male, mid-twenties.
 
 
Time and Place
 
A street corner on the Lower East Side, New York City. The present.
 
 
Note on Music
 
Obviously, it would be foolish to require that the actor portraying Ronnie perform the specified violin music live. The score of this play can be played on tape over the house speakers, and the actor can feign playing the violin using a bow treated with soap. However, in order to effect a convincing illusion, it is desirable that the actor possess some familiarity with the violin or another stringed instrument.
Darkness. Over the house speakers, sound fades in: Hendrix-like virtuoso rock ’n’ roll riffs—heavy feedback, distortion, phase shifting, wah-wah—amplified over a tiny Fender pug-nose.
Lights fade up to reveal that the music’s being played over a solid-body electric violin by Ronnie, a Chinese-American male in his mid-twenties; he is dressed in retro-’60s clothing and has a few requisite ’90s body mutilations. He’s playing on a sidewalk for money, his violin case open before him; change and a few stray bills have been left by previous passersby.
Benjamin enters; he’s in his early twenties, blond, blue-eyed, a Midwestern tourist in the big city. He holds a scrap of paper in his hands, scanning street signs for an address. He pauses before Ronnie, listens for a while. With a truly bravura run, Ronnie concludes the number and falls to his knees, gasping. Benjamin applauds.
BENJAMIN: Good. That was really great.
(Pause)
I didn’t . . . I mean, a fiddle . . . I mean, I’d heard them at square dances, on country stations and all, but I never . . . wow, this must really be New York City!
(Benjamin applauds, starts to walk on. Still on his knees, Ronnie clears his throat loudly.)
 
 
Oh, I . . . you’re not just doing this for your health, right?
 
(Benjamin reaches in his pocket, pulls out a couple of coins. Ronnie clears his throat again.)
 
Look, I’m not a millionaire, I’m just . . .
 
(Benjamin pulls out his wallet, removes a dollar bill. Ronnie nods his head and gestures toward the violin case as he takes out a pack of cigarettes, lights one.)
RONNIE: And don’t call it a “fiddle,” OK?
BENJAMIN: Oh. Well, I didn’t mean to—
RONNIE: You sound like a wuss. A hick. A dipshit.
BENJAMIN: It just slipped out. I didn’t really—
RONNIE: If this was a fiddle, I’d be sitting here with a cob pipe, stomping my cowboy boots and kicking up hay. Then I’d go home and fuck my cousin.
BENJAMIN: Oh! Well, I don’t really think—
RONNIE: Do you see a cob pipe? Am I fucking my cousin?
BENJAMIN: Well, no, not at the moment, but—
RONNIE: All right. Then this is a violin, now you give me your money, and I ignore the insult. Herein endeth the lesson.
(Pause.)
 
BENJAMIN: Look, a dollar’s more than I’ve ever given to a . . . to someone asking for money.
RONNIE: Yeah, well, this is New York. Welcome to the cost of living.
BENJAMIN: What I mean is, maybe in exchange, you could help me—?
RONNIE: Jesus Christ! Do you see a sign around my neck reading “Big Apple Fucking Tourist Bureau”?
BENJAMIN: I’m just looking for an address, I don’t think it’s far from here, maybe you could . . . ?
(Benjamin holds out his scrap of paper, Ronnie snatches it away.)
 
RONNIE: You’re lucky I’m such a goddamn softy.
(He looks at the paper)
Oh, fuck you. Just suck my dick, you and the cousin you rode in on.
BENJAMIN: I don’t get it! What are you—?
RONNIE: Eat me. You know exactly what I—
BENJAMIN: I’m just asking for a little—
RONNIE: “13 Doyers Street”? Like you don’t know where that is?
BENJAMIN: Of course I don’t know! That’s why I’m asking—
RONNIE: C’mon, you trailer-park refugee. You don’t know that’s Chinatown?
BENJAMIN: Sure I know that’s Chinatown.
RONNIE: I know you know that’s Chinatown.
BENJAMIN: So? That doesn’t mean I know where Chinatown—
RONNIE: So why is it that you picked
me,
of all the street musicians in the city—to point you in the direction of Chinatown? Lemme guess—is it the earring? No, I don’t think so. The Hendrix riffs? Guess again, you fucking moron.
BENJAMIN: Now, wait a minute. I see what you’re—
RONNIE: What are you gonna ask me next? Where you can find the best dim sum in the city? Whether I can direct you to a genuine opium den? Or do I happen to know how you can meet Miss Saigon for a night of nookie-nookie followed by a good old-fashioned ritual suicide? Now, get your white ass off my sidewalk. One dollar doesn’t even begin to make up for all this aggravation. Why don’t you go back home and race bullfrogs, or whatever it is you do for—?
BENJAMIN: Brother, I can absolutely relate to your anger. Righteous rage, I suppose, would be a more appropriate term. To be marginalized, as we are, by a white racist patriarchy, to the point where the accomplishments of our people are obliterated from the history books, this is cultural genocide of the first order, leading to the fact that you must do battle with all of Euro-America’s emasculating and brutal stereotypes of Asians—the opium den, the sexual objectification of the Asian female, the exoticized image of a tourist’s Chinatown which ignores the exploitation of workers, the failure to unionize, the high rate of mental illness and tuberculosis—against these, each day, you rage, no, not as a victim, but as a survivor, yes, brother, a glorious warrior survivor!
(Silence.)
 
RONNIE: Say what?
BENJAMIN: So, I hope you can see that my request is not—
RONNIE: Wait, wait.
BENJAMIN:—motivated by the sorts of racist assumptions—
RONNIE: But, but where . . . how did you learn all that?
BENJAMIN: All what?
RONNIE: All that—you know—oppression stuff—tuberculosis . . .
BENJAMIN: It’s statistically irrefutable. TB occurs in the community at a rate—
RONNIE: Where did
you
learn it?
BENJAMIN: I took Asian-American studies. In college.
RONNIE: Where did you go to college?
BENJAMIN: University of Wisconsin. Madison.
RONNIE: Madison, Wisconsin?
BENJAMIN: That’s not where the bridges are, by the way.
RONNIE: Huh? Oh, right . . .
BENJAMIN: You wouldn’t believe the number of people who—
RONNIE: They have Asian-American studies in Madison, Wisconsin? Since when?
BENJAMIN: Since the last Third World Unity hunger strike.
(Pause)
Why do you look so surprised? We’re down.
RONNIE: I dunno. It just never occurred to me, the idea of Asian students in the Midwest going on a hunger strike.
BENJAMIN: Well, a lot of them had midterms that week, so they fasted in shifts.
(Pause)
The administration never figured it out. The Asian students put that “They all look alike” stereotype to good use.
BOOK: Trying to Find Chinatown: The Selected Plays of David Henry Hwang
4.68Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Past Praying For by Aline Templeton
Predator by Terri Blackstock
Trance by Meding, Kelly
Prince Incognito by Rachelle McCalla
Thorn by Joshua Ingle
The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes by Beatrix Potter
The Manga Girl by Lorenzo Marks