By Frank Chin
(Editor’s Note: Pioneer actor Wood Moy was the first to join Frank Chin’s Asian American Theatre Training Program at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco in 1972. Moy died this month at the age of 99)
Wood has me to dinner and asks me if I have read The Water Margin, when I have not. Like everyone else, I have heard and can’t figure out what The Water Margin is. He’s the only yellow actor to ask about where the Yellow River slows to maze of slow moving smelly marsh of rot and fat and the hideout of the 108 outlaws who displaced the cowardly emperor in the people protected by the outlaws, in Shantung Province.
I read the cartoons of Chinese comic books POW! And ARRRRRGGH! Water Margin and three translations and from the Shapiro trans of Outlaws of the Marsh published by the Chinese Foreign Languages Press- verified by children’s stories.
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RELATED: Pioneer Asian American Actor Wood Moy is Dead
I realize Wood Moy asks me if I have ever read a book called Three Times I Bow. Wood Moy wants to be an actor in 1939 and organizes the Ching Wah Players in Chinatown. The Ching Wah Players want to perform Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, set in Chinatown. Glick and Mrs Glick get WPA grant to direct Our Town, that is turned into a Chinese opera and Carl Glick writes a fake Wood Moy as a China born with ambitions to fight for China in his Three Times I Bow Wood Moy and all the players are New York, American born.. The book does not win Carl Glick a chair at Pearl Buck’s tale at the Russian Tea Room. There’s so much to write. Who speaks for the theater of Wood Moy? Not TCG. Not AAS . Not any Yellow art or theater or culture critic. Not any….you get the idea. Until we deal with our demons we don’t seriously exist except as grateful rescued refugees, not detestable sub-human waste products – in both cases, a White mind, cheapening the coloreds to rescued cattle and pets.
He’s been thru AA Theater from the Ching Wah Players of New York Chinatown 1939 rewritten as Chinese patriots anxious for Chinese opera directed by the author of Three Times I Bow. He hits the road heading across state to state for San Francisco. He starts a printing company – The theater needs print to start the people talking – a pocket sized mag of culture like Quick Mag – printing menus and zodiac placemats – the movies come calling for the actor to show himself. Only the Shadow knows Wood’s wife Mamie’s secret of flakey pie crust: Fluffo instead of Crisco.
The test of the Yellow directors that worked with Wood Moy, would be a movie of his life from 1939 on thru time till now.
(Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed Moy’s age. We regret the error)
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RE: Frank Chin Remembers Wood Moy: RIP Woody. A good man. A fun person. Strong and rooted.
RE: Frank Chin Remembers Wood Moy: Where would chan is missing be without woody???