By Rachel Lu
Michi Barall grew up in Toronto, a city which she describes as “official multiculturalism.” As a child in the 1970s and 80s, she recalls getting a youth “passport” designed to encourage exploration and going around to cultural centers around the city, collecting stamps, eating different foods, and picking up goldfish in plastic bags that inevitably died on the way home.
When considering the complex discussions around culture and identity today, Barall thinks back to the “official multiculturalism” from her upbringing, which serves as a reminder that diverse communities have always uplifted and navigated bridging these differences.
Barall’s imaginative new play, Drawing Lessons, transports younger audiences back to 1995 Minneapolis, where the 12-year-old protagonist Kate discovers her own identity in a community full of differences. Commissioned by Children’s Theater Company (CTC) and Ma-Yi Theater Company, the young adult play Drawing Lessons will be directed by Jack Tamburri and is set to premiere at CTC this October.
In the play, something magical changes in Kate’s inner world when she discovers manwha, Korean comics, from her great aunt who comes to visit. For a young artist, manwha opened Kate’s eyes to comic books that fully embrace that represent her aesthetics and her heritage.
Tamburri, the play’s director, came of age in the 1990s, similar to Kate in the play, and recalls witnessing this previous era of multiculturalism – defined by gestures like celebrations of food, for example – that remained at surface level forms of cultural representation.
Compared to the highly sophisticated conversations of identity that young people are engaging in now, and like Barall, Tamburri is interested in how middle schoolers navigated that earlier era where the concepts of multiculturalism were just beginning to emerge.
The play is a “look at the ways in which people were able to shape alliances and create solidarities with each other based on similarities, but also with an acknowledgement of difference,” Barall explained.
Minneapolis, with its vibrant groups of immigrant communities, is a fitting location for such a story to unfold. Drawing Lessons draws on the diversity of the city, featuring cast members that include a Somali American boy and a Hmong American girl. Through these characters, the play explores the differences and commonalities between each of their experiences.
“[The play explores] the notion that embracing diversity is something that there’s a space for, that people can then lay claim to their backgrounds, and then move forward with them in some really creative and interesting ways,” Barall told AsAmNews.
For young people coming to see the play in Minneapolis, the theatrical performance is also a unique reflection of the city they live in.
Barall, who is also a professor of Asian American theater at Purchase College CUNY, believes that positioning the play in 1995 Minneapolis speaks to the specificity of individual Asian American experience. As a Japanese Canadian playwright herself, Barall is sensitive to the fact that she is representing a Korean American girl.
The genesis of the character Kate comes from Barall and Tamburri’s close collaborator and actor in the play, Matt Park, who is a bi-racial, Korean American who grew up in Minneapolis. Throughout her creative process, Barall relied on her circle of Korean American confidants and consultants, to bring the protagonist alive through her social and generational contexts. This sharing of culture is equally reflected in the play.
“I think there’s a lot of Asian American drama that is about conflict or trauma, and this really aims to be a play that helps people think about what it is that we all have to share and teach each other within our respective positions, and the fact that there is a future, that’s big enough for all of us,” said Barall.
While dealing with big topics such as cultural heritage and identity, the play also invites the audience into a multidimensional experience that brings visual art alive through performances on stage and projections on screens.
“I’m always interested in stories about artists,” Tamburri told AsAmnews. “If you care about who the people are and what they want, and you can see what they’re drawn, how long can we sit there and watch them draw and be compelled by it?”
Drawing Lessons is working with Blue Delliquanti, a comic artist who will create more than 100 unique images that are digitally projected on stage. Actors will also be drawing on stage as part of the performance, which will also be projected live.
Through these drawings, the play also seeks to portray a young Asian American artist finding herself artistically. There are so many incredible Asian American authors, in fact, Barall’s daughter reads one Asian American graphic novelist per week, “which I found striking,” she said.
When looking through her daughter’s collection of comic and graphic novels, she began to wonder: “How did these artists emerge? Who did they read and who inspired them to become graphic novelists?”
The play traces these questions to Kate, who navigates living as an American girl in 1995 Minneapolis while grappling with the discovery of her own identity through manwha, these projected drawings will create an immersive experience that both represents the background of the play as well as Kate’s rich inner world of imagination.
Drawing Lessons opens October 8 at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis and runs through November 10. You can get tickets here.
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