National Asian American Theatre Company's Co-Founder Mia Katigbak on OUR TOWN

Tappan Wilder speaks with NAATCO Actor-Manager and Co-Founder Mia Katigbak about her experiences in Grovers Corners in 1994 and today, as the company rehearses for a one-night-only reading of Our Town in celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month on MAY 19, 2021 @8pm EST.
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Tappan: Thank you so much for joining me on Zoom today.  You are preparing for an important benefit reading of Our Town on May 19.   But this won’t be the first time you’ve directed the play. Would you tell us about your theatre and about your first encounter with Our Town?

Mia: Of course! NAATCO was formed in 1989.  We do the Western classics with all-Asian American casts without changing the setting to an Asian one—as a way of saying that this is what the world looks like now.  

The first time we did Our Town was back in 1994. I was granted the rights, but I was prepared to put up a fight because I had encountered resistance from other playwrights and Estates. The Tennessee Williams Estate, for example, wouldn’t let us do an all-Asian American cast. It was very head scratching. These plays are done around the world, in translation. I thought: we’re American and we’re Asian, but we can’t do it in English?

As it was, I came to direct Our Town by accident because the person who was supposed to be directing it got a gig on Broadway. So I stepped in at the very last minute. 

Tappan: That’s just before my family took over management of the Estate. How was that production received?

Mia: Everyone was very happy with it.  Yumi Iwama, who played Emily, told us a wonderful story about how she had invited her boss from her day-job at a Wall Street firm to come to see it. He kind of rolled his eyes, and said, “Oh no, we had to read that in high school! Do I really want to see that?  But for you, Yumi, I’ll go.”  And then after the show, he wasn’t there. So she thought he hated it and left. Days later, she received a 3-page letter from him about how his perception of the play had been forever changed by the production. He went on and on. He said, “I never expected to be moved to tears. I was moved to tears.” She thought, here was this tough finance executive “I never see plays” type who was waxing poetic about OUR TOWN.

Another quick story: We set the play at the turn of the century, with New-England garb and a more abstract set. One of the reviewers wrote that he found it totally jarring at first to see a plump little Asian woman playing Mrs. Webb. But it took all of five minutes to forget about that and just appreciate the play. And I thought, there’s something I like about that.

Tappan: Let’s hear about how you are all doing today. The papers are full of not terribly nice news.

Mia: No. Which is why it’s particularly meaningful to do this reading this month.

The cast of NAATCO’s OUR TOWN set for May 19th at 8:00pm ET.

Tappan: Yes tell us about that. How did you come up with the idea for your reading of OUR TOWN this month.

 Mia: It came about because Yumi Iwama, who’d played Emily back in 1994, was contacted by the NY Times for an article about actors who had done the role through the years. Yumi then wrote to me proposing that we do a virtual reading of the play. 

This was back in January after the Georgia senate elections.  By that point, we’d been through the November elections, the rioting at the Capitol, and after the Georgia elections, I thought a reading of OUR TOWN would be a great way to celebrate what NAATCO is devoted to—demonstrating what we have in common amongst all of our different cultures, rather than continuing to be so divisive.  We had started the process of casting when anti-Asian violence escalated.

I am generally not a vocal protestor.  I have always reacted by doing something in the theatre.

So we decided to do Our Town in celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month.

Tappan: And now I have to ask: How did the company react when you proposed OUR TOWN?

Mia: What’s fascinating –and unexpected on my part—is that when I announced that we were doing this reading, so many people responded by saying, “That’s my favorite play.”  For that to be the common thread through all of these people, across the range of age, taste and practice I thought was pretty amazing.

 For example, the young woman who is our video consultant said “I’m swamped, but I will do this!  It’s my favorite play.”

 And particularly moving to me were all of the actors who said, “Yes, please. I never thought, because I’m Asian, I would ever get to do this role.”

 Our Emily for this reading, Midori Francis Iwama (who is Yumi’s niece) warned me that she might do large portions of the play off-book. She’s been dying to do this role and figured she’d never get a chance to do so.

NAATCO Artist-Manager and Co-Founder, Mia Katigbak

 Tappan: In a way, the play has caught up to what you did in 1994.  We’ve had the Cromer production and other significant professional productions that have opened it up. It was an international play from the beginning—that’s what Wilder intended.  He It was surprised that it became widely viewed as a portrait of a small-town American community. As I see it now, Our Town has finally emerged as the world play it was conceived to be.

Mia: I think the play was ahead of us and the world has caught up to it.  And I think with all of our current cultural conversations about how theatre should be done, we’re catching up to what Wilder has always had available for us.

Tappan: I agree! And that’s true more generally of many  of uncle’s other plays and  novels. Tell me about George. Who’s going to play George?

Mia: George will be played by a young actor called Trevor Salter. He’s been lovely to work with--immensely sensitive and talented.

The drugstore scene is just wonderful. In the beginning of that section when he’s asking Emily why she’s mad at him, for example, the line, “Why are you mad at me?” is not, “Why are you mad at me now?!?” The tricky and wonderful part of these kinds of interactions in the play is how they capture the delicacy of communication, especially with young people. I suggested to Trevor that this could be George’s way of asking, “What did I do wrong and how did I hurt you and is that why you’re avoiding me?”  The economy of language is extraordinary.  All of that in 5 words.  You just give Trevor that note and he wonderfully delivers.

And then later in the script, when Emily tells George that he’s become self-centered and arrogant, George’s response is “I…I’m happy you told me that.” And I said to him, “You know, something happens in those three dots. Mr. Wilder gave you an opportunity to fill in those three dots.  You can make a decision. You can make that first “I” a protest. And then you decide, “I’m happy you told me that, Emily.” It’s such a long journey in those three dots, but this young man thought for a second and said, “I got it!” and then he did it. This is the joy of working with actors like this!

Tappan: One of the subtle points that students and scholars discuss is the realization that even if our eyes were always open to the every day, the moment you appreciate something, it’s over.  So memory becomes very important in the play because once that moment is over, memory is all you have left. The quality of those memories is important.   

Thornton Wilder’s Literary Executor and nephew, Tappan Wilder

Mia: Right, for example, the importance of Emily’s flashback in terms of how she remembers her 12th birthday. Our actor, Midori, had a very interesting question about that moment. She asked, “When I go back to the past, am I supposed to be playing it as the 12-year-old or am I supposed to be playing it as me now?”

Interesting.  I thought about the transition from her time with the dead when everyone is telling her to rest, so it must have been a hard transition from life to death. And you’re still in that kind of liminal space. When she says, “Thank you” when her mother gives her the gift: As a 12-year-old you would have said “thank you” to be polite. The Emily of now would feel that gratitude in a way that she probably didn’t feel back then. So that kind of flashback—your memory of what that interaction may have been—lives differently in where you are now. I think that functions generally in all of us. It is a delicate thing.

Tappan: How about trends in terms of Asian American actors being able to play any character regardless of their race? How has that changed since you started the theatre?

Mia: I would say woefully little. I have always said the theatre is the realm of the imagination. If we can’t imagine that someone who looks like me can play Lady M. unless the rest of the cast is Asian, yet we accept easily enough that there’s a castle on stage, it’s an insult to the imagination.  It’s also an insult to audiences. People think that wont’ sell tickets.

Tappan: So it’s still a very real problem?

Mia: Absolutely.

Tappan: It’s not for Our Town. It’s not for almost any play Thornton Wilder wrote, which is one of the reasons why I think his search for universality in his work is extraordinary and proven over and over again to be true.

Have you directed any of his other plays?

 Mia: Well, no. I’m not really a director. Directing petrifies me. I think it’s probably the only thing that I hesitate to do in the theatre. But I’ve been involved in many readings of his other plays as an actor.

Tappan: How has it been working in this new online medium?

Mia: All of us are saying how much we wish we could be in a studio working on this play live.   In Zoom it’s so difficult to convey the every day rhythms, because there are delays, but we’re doing what we can. 

I recall reading an essay saying that so many of Thornton Wilder’s minimalist design directives were influence by Japanese theatre that he’d seen.  

Tappan: Yes, that’s true.

 Mia: So to honor his vision for this play, we’re not going to do any fancy Zoom techniques in this reading. We’re setting it in a Zoom town with no digital backgrounds, accepting the fact that we’re in living rooms all around the country. We’re just going to go with what I think was Mr. Wilder’s directive and keep it simple.

And I also decided that I’m not going to use doubling. Productions usually can’t afford it, but for this reading I wanted as many Asian faces as possible. We’re working with 27 actors! Actually there is one actor who doubles: Izaac Wang will be playing both Joe Crowell, Jr. and his younger brother, Si.

Tappan: We’re getting ready to celebrate Wilder’s 125th birthday next year and we’d love to hear from you as to why you think his words still speak to us in 2021.

Mia: Well, think about when you first read Our Town. I was born in the Philippines, and I came here when I was 12 years old. I first read the play when I was in high school in Waldwick, NJ in Bergen County.  And I thought I completely understood it. And then next time I encountered it was when I was going to direct it, 20 years later. Your context of the world is different, but when you read the play, it doesn’t sound old fashioned.  It actually felt more current to me in ‘94 than it did in 1970 when I first read it.  And reading it now, 26 years later, it actually feels of the moment. If I were to wonder why that is, I would say it’s because it speaks so much to ‘the eternal’ that he talks about—that you can find the eternal in everyday life.

But also, when you think of the play in the context of the pandemic, it resonates even more: everything has slowed down, and so we understand that message in Our Town that happiness and joy can come only if you take your time to look and listen and receive and absorb.

It is very moving to me, how appropriate and topical the play is.