East Meets West

Nothing sets the stage for adventure and drama like the tight confines of a car on a road trip. Taking a quintessential American experience and inserting an Asian perspective into it, Durango, which runs September 20 through October 19 in the Shelterhouse, promises to take you on a ride across country and across cultures.

Widowed Korean immigrant Boo-Seng Lee finds himself at a loss after being let go from the corporate job he has held for over 20 years as part of company-wide layoffs. It's not a job he loved, but one that was part of his vision for achieving the American dream and ensuring his two sons achieve happiness and success, which, as it did for many first-generation immigrants, meant sacrificing his personal desires.

To the outside world, the Lee brothers look like the perfect Korean American sons: 21-year-old Isaac plans to be a doctor and has just come home from Hawaii, where he traveled for a medical school interview. His younger brother, Jimmy, 13, is a champion swimmer with a bright future.

Boo-Seng doesn’t tell his sons about his job loss when he returns home from work. Instead he decides to take them on a spur-of-the-moment weekend road trip to Durango, Colorado, to ride its historic railroad. Along the way, all three find themselves grappling with old memories and unhealed wounds. As tempers flare and secrets break open, the difference between who they are and who they’ve pretended to be threatens to tear the family apart.

Playwright Julia Cho, like many of her characters, is Korean American. Born in Los Angeles, she grew up in Arizona after moving when her father’s employer relocated. The only theatre productions she saw growing up were school productions of Shakespeare and the occasional touring company of a Broadway musical. Her epiphany came the year she turned 16 and was attending summer school on the East Coast. On a class trip to New York, Cho attended the acclaimed original Lincoln Center production of John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, and her love of theatre began to blossom.

In a recent interview, Cho expressed an anthropological interest in the audience's reactions.

"I see American stories all the time where I put myself into the character's shoes, even when there isn't an Asian American in the narrative. With Durango, I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted people who are not Asian to step into another skin," said Cho.

It’s unusual for a female playwright to script a drama whose five roles are male. Her other plays have been female-heavy. According to Cho, she doesn’t see her work as a vehicle for equal opportunity representation, but instead she tries to fully embrace the spirit of the characters.

“The trick is to care about the characters you write and to fully inhabit them — or feel that they’ve fully inhabited you. It’s a matter of empathy, of sliding into someone else’s skin. And you can’t do that unless you love them. I can honestly say I love the guys in Durango. They’re as real to me as people I know. Maybe even more real,” said Cho.

Cho has received a New York Foundation for The Arts grant, residencies at Seattle Rep/Hedgebrook’s Women Playwrights Festival and The MacDowell Colony and was a finalist for a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her play BFE won the 2004 Weissberger Award. She has received commissions from Ma-Yi Theatre, New York Theater Workshop, South Coast Repertory and the Mark Taper Forum. Cho is a graduate of Amherst College and has degrees from UC Berkeley, NYU and The Juilliard School.

Wendy C. Goldberg, who directed last season’s suspense-filled drama Doubt, will return to the Playhouse to helm Durango. Other members of the creative team include set designer Kevin Judge, costume designer Anne Kennedy, sound designer/composer Ryan Rumery and lighting designer Josh Epstein.

Durango promises to be a compelling and extraordinary tale of self-discovery. Buckle your seat belt for a journey you won’t forget.