Theatergoers who missed Theater J’s sold-out production of How to Be a Korean Woman in January will have a second chance to see it when the playwright, Sun Mee Chomet, returns to Washington next week to perform in her own story.
The play — originally staged as part of a trio of solo performances — is about a Korean American Jewish woman who embarks on a search for her birth parents. Finding them leads her to question who she is.
It’s a fascinating story, and a timely one, since people with multicultural identities are increasingly visible today.
“Look at Kamala Harris — a woman who is both South Asian and Black — even though some politicians can’t grasp that!” Chomet exclaimed.
“Every person’s story is compelling and complicated,” she added, as we settled down for a lively Zoom conversation about the play and how it came about.
How to Be a Korean Woman, she explained, is the story of how she — a well-known actor, playwright, and feminist — was able to track down her birth family, only to find that they, like most of their compatriots, were still bound by the rules of a highly patriarchal society.
She was stunned. Korean women, she learned, have few legal rights.
“Single mothers are stigmatized,” she said, still amazed that this could be true in the 21st century. “Women who get divorced are ostracized and often denied the custody of their own children.”
The discovery — movingly portrayed in the play — was more than a shock. It forced her to question her own identity.
“I’m the product of two mothers,” she said. “My American mother is a feminist. She’s brilliant and strong, and a wonderful role model for me.”
Her Korean mother is also brilliant and strong, but she is the product of a patriarchal society that has created many barriers for women, and especially for those who have children out of wedlock.
At the time that she found all this out, she was playing Antigone at the Guthrie Theater in Seamus Heaney’s Burial at Thebes. She began to question who she was.
“As an actor, you draw from your own experience, from who you are. But suddenly, I didn’t know who I was. I was completely discombobulated.
“Writing this play was a way out, a way to navigate my way back to who I am.”
How to Be a Korean Woman was first staged in Minneapolis in 2013. For this production, Theater J asked the playwright to elaborate on the role of Judaism in her adoptive family. As a result, two scenes have been added.
Theater J has also commissioned a new play from Chomet, scheduled for the 2025/26 season. That play will delve into her relationship with her adoptive grandfather, a Holocaust survivor who emigrated from Nazi-controlled Vienna in 1938.
Chomet, who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, describes the city as a mecca for actors.
“I do more acting in Minneapolis/St Paul than I would living anywhere else,” she laughed, adding that there is plenty of work on stage. And the cost of living is low.
Before the pandemic, there were more theaters per capita in the Twin Cities than in either New York or Washington. Today, there are many Asian American theaters located there.
“That means there are more roles for Asian American actors,” she said.
St. Paul is also home to a lot of Korean adoptees, drawn, in part, because of the many social-service organizations based there serving multicultural families.
Although Chomet moved there originally to attend the University of Minnesota, she dropped out during graduate school, then continued at New York University, where she graduated with a master’s degree in acting.
She returned to St Paul and settled there for good in 2005, finding a community in which she felt completely at home.
Although she started out as an actor — credits include the New York Public Theater (Suzan-Lori Parks’ premiere of Sally & Tom), Lincoln Center (brownsville song: b-side for tray), and the Broadway Tour of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses — Chomet has gradually shifted to playwrighting.
The reason? “There are too few roles for Asian Americans,” she said ruefully.
Hopefully, that will change. Her first play, Asiamnesia, was voted “Best New Script of 2008” by the Minneapolis Star Tribune and is included in the anthology Asian American Plays for a New Generation (Temple University Press, 2011).
Looking back, Chomet reflected on the fact that both feminism and Judaism were important in her upbringing. Although her mother was — and still is — Protestant, her father and grandparents were Jewish, and the family was part of the Jewish community in Detroit.
“This play, among other things, focuses on a dichotomy that exists throughout the U.S. and Europe,” she said.
“The dichotomy is that we, as Korean adoptees, are being asked to expand our Jewish identity, while within the Jewish community we’re seen as outsiders.
“For example, when I was in Vienna doing research on my father’s family, I was introduced by a dinner host as someone who was ‘not really Jewish.’
“Can you believe that?” she asked. “People actually question whether I am really Jewish!” She shook her head in disbelief. “We forget that many Asian babies were adopted into Jewish families, and then brought up within the community.
“I want to challenge the Jewish community worldwide to accept the fact that adoptees are as Jewish as those born within its realm, not only as cute children under the protective wings of their parents, but as adults who navigate the world on their own, facing discrimination and challenges to their own identities.
“This is an opportunity for Jewish communities to look at who we, the adoptees, are, now and in the future,” she concluded. “It’s a chance to expand and embrace our complex identities as a vital part of Judaism!”
Running Time: 85 minutes with no intermission.
How to Be a Korean Woman plays from September 12 through September 22, 2024, presented by Theater J at the Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater in the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th Street NW, Washington, DC. Purchase tickets ($50–$70, with member and military discounts available) online, by calling the ticket office at 202-777-3210, or by email (theaterj@theaterj.org).
To read the program online, click here.
To read the Audience Guide, click here.
SEE ALSO:
A daughter aches to connect with her birth mother, in ‘How to Be a Korean Woman’ at Theater J (review by Lisa Traiger, January 8, 2024)
