Excerpt from Water & Bone, a play by Soriya Chum

a4 & Collaboration

My first encounter with the Asian American Arts Alliance was a podcast of Brainstorm- Produce it Yourself: Plays! in 2010, where playwright, Anna Moench, discussed her own process of play development with other seasoned professionals.  As a playwright, I took immediate interest in the subject, but it was really the peer-learning model of Brainstorm that captivated me the most. 

a4 seeks to create a space where information sharing is essential among artistic communities.  Particularly during such challenging economic times, finding ways to develop your career and talents means that you have to be willing to ask, "how did you do that?" or "how can I do this more efficiently?--more practically?".  Now that I work at a4, I stand behind my initial perspectives about the organization even more than that first interaction.  a4 fosters collaborative conversations among Asian American and Asian American arts communities.

In the spirit of collaborative dialogue, I share with you a little bit about my own process as a writer and an excerpt from a play I've written.  I invite your feedback, and I welcome you to share your work with me as well!

Old vs. New

In my plays, I am interested in capturing a current world and its violent negotiation with an old, spiritual world—the dilemmas that manifest when we quickly ascribe to the notion of “out with the old and in with the new”.  My exploration of how obsolete identities become replaced by more fashionable ones seems to be an enduring theme in most of my writing.   I attribute this to the type of stories I am most compelled by: stories about the determined, inventive self and an unrelenting past self.   Necessarily, it is transmitted into my writing, revealing my own struggles with deep personal histories that find their way back into newly conditioned spaces. 

My writing process often begins with an experience that conjures something familiar—a vague memory of a powerful encounter or unresolved rumination.  Once, I remember seeing a Cambodian man and his mother sit down at a coffee shop to eat some rice porridge, which they had clearly packed from home.  The mother went on and on in Khmer about her disappointment with her son’s diminishing respect for his ancestors, now turned spirits that haunt.  The son pulled out a deck of cards from his trench coat and went on and on about the power of magic and how he only believed in a reality constructed by man.  Meanwhile, across from them sat a Caucasian man and woman in their twenties.  The siblings were very stylish and very crude.   He went on and on about their unhappy childhood.  She went on and on about his “unrelenting past-turbation” and inability to cope.  I felt so deeply connected to the juxtaposition of these two seemingly disparate realities— reverence for past lives at odds with modern mechanisms for living.     From observing these people, I was reminded of my own struggles with negotiating past and present, and I began writing Water & Bone. 

This is a play about people who have lost their sensibility, not the modern 'sensibility' as we know it (i.e. taste, manner, tang), but a more archaic version of 'sensibility':  a trust for the cosmos, a trust for the vital mysticism that truly belongs with mortality.  In Water & Bone, an unprecedented family relic from the past bounces back into the Welsh family's new and careful world.   With the help of their neighbors, Azeem and Tisa, the Welsh family encounters this long-lost family heirloom via memory (a tricky thing). 

Excerpt from Water & Bone by Soriya Chum

Act 1, Scene 2

(6:00 p.m.  New Year’s Eve.  Tisa’s apartment.  The space hardly resembles the newness of the Welsh loft: A decrepit table covered with stacks of mail, chairs, tiny stove, and oven.  Incense burns on the table.  A bathtub sits center with a red bucket floating in it.  Water runs in the bathtub.  Tisa, a woman in her 60's dressed in a sarong and cardigan sits on a chair by the bath, swishing the water gently.  She speaks to future versions of herself.) 

TISA

(to the bathtub)

Alright bath.  (Pause.)  You scared me with that boney bird.  That wasn’t me…I was sure of it.   (Pause.)  Now, what do we see?...A graceful horse…a princess from centuries ago…a monkey swinging happily from tree to tree?  (Beat.)  I know I’ve been punished for my mistake.  That swelling feeling in my belly’s gotten worst—Azeem—his daddy and I never blessed him with lucky red string around his wrists when he was born and so we’ve been doomed ever since, but if he gets his bath…I will be a better animal once I go.  (She goes to the table and sorts through the Welsh family's mail.) It is comforting reading about other traveling souls…Hate mail for Emily Welsh…Hate mail for Max Welsh.  (Picking up the “Dallas Morning News”.)  “The house has remained virtually untouched since the slaying of oil tycoon-Martin Welsh by his wife, Leslie Welsh and the slaying of Leslie Welsh by her children, Max and Emily Welsh”- Those poor children.  They are your animals that shape shift into animals with no consciousness of what they were before.  And so they unhappily exist as those animals they were before.  Go figure.  Trapped…Children trapped.  Max- still 14.  Emily- still 17.   Azeem too…17 when I to had to kick him out…A reckless boy. He wouldn’t take the bath when his daddy died so I sent him to live with his uncle…I’d almost given up on the two of us, but now that he’s back—we’ll change into better animals.

(Azeem enters with a snappy change of clothes on a hanger.)

AZEEM

I’m gonna have dinner with the Welsh family...They gave me this to change into.  (He begins to change.) Or I could stay and we could—

TISA

Azeem.  Take your bath.  You’ll get your bath now that I have you again, and you’ll be all the better for it—A better animal for you and a better animal for me! 

 AZEEM

I don’t need a bath. 

(He sits by the bathtub and throws water onto his head and smoothes it over with cream.) 

TISA

We have to correct the mistake—                    

AZEEM

There’s no mistake, ma— 

TISA

You’re unlucky!  Take the bath—

(Knocking.)

EMILY

(through the door)

I want to take a bath Tisa.  Our water is cold! 

(Incessant knocking.)

TISA

(hovering over Azeem)

When you were a baby, your daddy and I, we didn’t get to tie you up in red string…This is why you are like this, this is why your daddy died, and this is why I am like this— (Looking over Azeem’s shoulder and into the bath.  She shudders.) Azeem!—That bird!  It’s come back!  Such a stubborn bird!  Look! Look how she flaps her wings so arrogantly!

AZEEM

You can’t do this all day.  Sitting and waiting to see what you’ll become in the next life…Get away from the bath—

TISA

(slapping the water in the bath)

Look, son… Look at me.  I am that bird.  I am changing quickly…quickly into something bad.  And so are you.  Take this bath and save us. 

AZEEM

What’s inside of you…can’t be saved by a bath.  It won’t change you for the better. 

(Tisa grabs Azeem’s new blazer, examines it, and throws it into the bath.)     

TISA

Go and get it.

AZEEM

I’m never taking that bath. 

(He goes to the bathtub to retrieve his very wet blazer and puts it on.) 

TISA

Always trying on bad animal skins! 

(He leaves.  Emily knocks at her door repeatedly.  Tisa ignores her knocking.)

EMILY

(through the door)

Ransom.  I have your son for ransom.  Turn off the water, and I’ll give you the boy. 

TISA

They don’t see how unbelievably long this life is—

EMILY

He’s having so much fun without you.

TISA

But we get to try and try again until things get better.  (She looks into the bath again, a large shadow of a boney bird casts over her.  The lights flicker.)  Now where did you go now birdy—

(Tisa looks up away from the bath and out to the audience.  She is suddenly still.)

TISA

Hello…I see that you’ve jumped out of the bath and into my home…Slowly…Flap your wings slowly.  (Slowly flapping her arms.)  You might break a bone and drop to the ground just when you think you’re flying.  Such a sleek and reasonable animal you think you are.

(The knocking suddenly stops.  Lights out.)