Photo: Billy Hathorn
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Kitchen Table is a haiku of a play. It says much, with very little—a family, a friend, a dinner table. This powerful drama follows the heartbreak of Nicky Wong, a young Corvette-crazy Chinese American man, through the demise of the family’s traditional Chinese before dinner grace. When Nicky’s obsession with his ‘Vette and the white mechanic who helps him fix it gets in the way of the family dinner, a battle between son and father ignites, as Nicky struggles to carve out his version of manhood—in and outside the tradition.
Why I Wrote this Play: My paternal grandparents always favored boys. At Christmas, Chan boys always got twice as much money gifts than Chan girls or Lee boys, since we wouldn't carry the family name when we married. Sons were included in wills; daughters, not at all. We always knew that first-born sons, like my brother, had it made. Or did they? I always wondered what it really must be like to be the Son. So I set out to find out in Kitchen Table. What else comes with the benefits of being a good Chinese American boy? Especially one who likes boys. Development History: New Dramatists (dir. Jose Zayas) 2014; Playwrights Horizons (dir. Ken Rus Schmoll) 2008; Lodestone Theatre (dir. Chil Kong) 2007; Ma-Yi Theatre (dir. Loy Arcenas) 2007. Workshops: Bay Area Playwrights Festival (dir. Christine Young) 2006; Magic Theatre (dir. Rob Melrose) 2005. |
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The Chinese Historical Society of America toured their in-depth exhibit on the historical impact of racial restrictions in housing on Chinese and other people of color in the Sunset. I contributed an oral history about my parents struggle to live there. My parents tried to buy their first home in the Sunset in the early 1960s, but covenant laws prevented that from happening. Doors were slammed in their faces. "We don't sell to your kind," they were told. The Sunset is also the setting for Kitchen Table, the third play of the Gum Saan Trilogy. Thanks to the activism of our forbears, San Francisco has changed. You can read about the exhibit in Chronicle writer Carl Nolte's 2018 Native Son column, "Lee the face of a new, enlightened SF". |
"Chinese in the Sunset"an exhibit by the Chinese Historical Society of America
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