By Linda Chin
Endlings – Written by Celine Song; Directed by Sammi Cannold; Scenic Design by Jason Sherwood; Costume Design by Linda Cho; Bradley King, Lighting Designer; Sound Design by Elisheba Ittoop. Presented by American Repertory Theater. At Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St. Cambridge through March 17.
Like the Manhattan millennial Ha Young muses in the second act of Endlings, I love theater. After seeing Endlings, by playwright Celine Song, I love theater even more. And as a lifetime theatergoer and arts advocate who is Asian American, I admire the American Repertory Theater (where Endlings runs through March 17) even more than ever. Song wrote an “Asian play” she considered “unproducible” – with extensive technical and casting demands (beach and underwater scenes, talking clams, three elderly Asian actresses who could swim – and spoiler alert – could rap), and an inscrutable title (what exactly are endlings, anyway?). Not only did ART give Endlings its world premiere less than a year after its development during the 2018 Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, it was produced with all creative hands on deck. If the response of the audience on opening night (diverse in age, ethnicity, as well as students and long-term subscribers) was any indication, I was not alone in being moved by this work – at times funny, at times painfully poignant, and clever throughout.
Endlings (I looked up the word on Wikipedia before the production, and the definition was projected on-screen at the start of the play), are the last known individuals of a given species. For those asking “What’s the play about?” this question sometimes feels akin to “Where are you from?” It’s complicated (and sometimes the response depends on my interpretation of who’s asking and why they want to know). Song has described her play as the story of three older women wanting to die and a younger woman wanting to live. The older women are haenyeos of her native Korea, sea divers facing occupational extinction from machines in the fishing industry, and attrition from the cumulative effects of natural aging and repeated dives to depths of over 65 feet without an oxygen tank. The younger woman is a Korean-Canadian playwright named Ha Young (Song’s Korean name) with a white husband who is also a playwright. In the intimacy of their marital relationship and tiny Manhattan apartment, Ha Young reveals her insecurities and struggles around identity, her deep fear that she will “sell her skin” and write a white play to appease the theater decision-makers who have traditionally held the power – predominantly white and wealthy producers and ticket purchasers.
Endlings is not a white play. It is also not a “Broadway-style” play, American play, Korean-Canadian-American play or an Asian play. It is an authentic play with universal appeal. We connect with the characters because they are not defined by a single identifier. The haenyeos (brilliantly portrayed by veteran actresses Wai Ching Ho, Emily Kuroda, and Jo Yang) are widows, mothers, daughters, sisters, with complex personalities and active fantasy lives. Jiehae Park, who plays the Celine Song-analogue is a playwright in real life (her play Peerless was produced by Company One in 2017) and an expressive and engaging character actor. Endlings spawns thinking and dialogue about our multi-faceted identities, how we are all immigrants, the benefits of generational diversity, the desire to be seen and understood, and about the power of the arts (“Theater! television forever! Hollywood rocks!”) to provide oxygen essential for humans to survive.
Like humans, Endlings is not a perfect play. Whereas most of the lines resonated with me, I found the repeated references to the playwright not liking David Henry Hwang’s work and not understanding why Young Jean Lee writes about what she does disturbing. I worried for the audience members who didn’t know who they are (Tony-award winning playwright of M. Butterfly, DHH’s most recent work, Soft Power premiered in CA and is opening in NYC soon, and YJL has the notoriety of being the first Asian American female playwright to have a play, Straight White Men, produced on Broadway). My urge to leap to DHH’s defense is similar to my protectiveness of Amy Tan, who got a lot of flack for how Asian-Americans and their immigrant mothers were portrayed in Joy Luck Club. When there are so few Asian stories produced on stage and screen, the burden of responsibility of representation can’t fall on their shoulders, and as one might imagine, the journey from page to stage is long and winding and not always in the author’s control. And while I loved the underwater scenes, I couldn’t help but think about the artistic constraints of theaters in NE with less financial capacity. Overall, the ripple effects of ART giving oxygen to Celine Song’s Endlings are affirming (including roles for younger and older Asian actors and artists), opportunities for which I and many others are grateful.
My wishes for Endlings are multi-fold: that like other ART productions it might transfer to NYC and receive a world stage. But Broadway doesn’t need to be the venue, what about the Perelman Center (the new theater opening on the site of Ground Zero under the artistic direction of Bill Rausch, who directed Othello at the ART) or Ellis Island (where Endlings director Sammi Cannold staged Ragtime – and no swimming pool needed). These sites symbolize and celebrate diversity and inclusion and authenticity. And tickets could be low-cost or free so more people could have access to these stories? A young girl (okay, an older woman) like me can dream, can’t she? For tickets and more information, go to: https://americanrepertorytheater.org/shows-events/endlings/
