{"id":6166,"date":"2017-09-14T11:50:44","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T18:50:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=6166"},"modified":"2017-09-14T11:51:20","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T18:51:20","slug":"2016-election-changed-playwrights-direction-tale-autumn-brandon-yu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/09\/14\/2016-election-changed-playwrights-direction-tale-autumn-brandon-yu\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;2016 election changed playwright\u2019s direction on \u2018A Tale of Autumn\u2019&#8221; by Brandon Yu"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"header\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"page-content entertainment \">\n<div id=\"content\">\n<div class=\"article-wrap\">\n<div class=\"zone zone-1\">\n<div class=\"article-body\">\n<div class=\"article-text\">\n<div class=\"asset_gallery\" data-config-asset-position=\"1\">\n<div class=\"hst-resgallery-container three-wide\">\n<div class=\"hst-resgallery-wedge\">\n<ul class=\"hst-resgallery\">\n<li class=\"hst-resgalleryitem\">\n<div class=\"img-wrap landscape\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"landscape\" src=\"http:\/\/ww1.hdnux.com\/photos\/65\/60\/35\/14092112\/3\/920x920.jpg\" alt=\"Playwright Christopher Chen at the Crowded Fire Theater. Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle\" \/><span style=\"font-size: 12px;\">Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle. \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12px;\">Playwright Christopher Chen at the Crowded Fire Theater.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"control-panel\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>September 13, 2017 (SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n<p>For his first work as playwright-in-residence at Crowded Fire Theater, San Francisco playwright Christopher Chen was tinkering with the classic power struggle tale, in the vein of Shakespeare and TV shows like \u201cGame of Thrones.\u201d Then, as with seemingly all art created in 2016, the presidential election came, and the work demanded a shift.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sync-inline-overlay\">\n<p>\u201cIt was a huge kind of watershed moment,\u201d Chen says during a recent Saturday afternoon rehearsal. \u201cI kind of had to stop writing. That just didn\u2019t seem fun anymore. I felt like something needed to change course a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The sociopolitical has often been a fixture of Chen\u2019s work. His recent play \u201cCaught,\u201d which won him an Obie Award, dealt with issues of censorship, politically controlled truths and cultural appropriation.<\/p>\n<p>But what ultimately became Chen\u2019s upcoming work, \u201cA Tale of Autumn,\u201d opening Monday, Sept. 18, and running through Oct. 8 at Crowded Fire Theater, might be at once his most overt commentary \u2014 this time of America\u2019s increasingly corporate soul, of capitalism \u2014 and his most personal play.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the one where I\u2019m kind of most putting myself out there in a way, putting my own heart on my sleeve,\u201d Chen says.<\/p>\n<p>This is not to say that the production\u2019s events are in any way based on Chen\u2019s own life, which has been deeply rooted in the Bay Area. A San Francisco native, Chen discovered a love for theater after entering UC Berkeley as an intended music major. Out of college, he worked the box office at the Magic Theater before eventually going to San Francisco State University for his master\u2019s degree in playwriting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA Tale of Autumn\u201d takes place in an unspecified setting, where a large farming corporation undergoes a power struggle following the death of its founder. Questions of corporate control and the pursuit of the common good arise in ethically murky circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>The stage here is instead more an arena of self-assessment, which became necessary amid the anger and hysteria following the election.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the core, though, the question which bubbled up for me, that has now become the core of the play for me, is (how) Trump in my mind must be a logical extension of common values that we tacitly accept,\u201d Chen says. \u201cSomehow his ruthless quest for power and narcissism \u2014 it felt like that is this clownish, buffoonish and horrifying version of values that we all kind of tacitly accept.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a result, the play became an interrogation of those shared values, of our complicity, Chen says. The drama of the play shifted away from the rise-to-power plot and instead to the ideological convictions the competing characters espouse.<\/p>\n<p>None of \u201cA Tale of Autumn\u201d is directly Trumpian in reference. But its themes, like the dubiousness of corporate psychology and its definitions of the greater good, are a reflection of ideals both inherently Trumpian and capitalist \u2014 and in turn, deeply American.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven just the will to succeed \u2014 that\u2019s something to interrogate as well, because that is what Trump is doing,\u201d Chen says. \u201cHe has a diabolical will to succeed, and yet I can understand to some extent because I have ambitions too. But maybe I need to interrogate those as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Progressively, Chen says, his plays \u201chave to challenge myself in some way, not as an artist but as a person\u201d \u2014 and it shows.<\/p>\n<p>Chen\u2019s voice often carries a light tremble, or perhaps vibrates with an energy, as if he\u2019s either nervous or excited. He\u2019ll trip over his own words that sometimes seem to struggle to catch up to his mind. But then he\u2019ll pause with long silences, untangling in his mind the questions that the show provokes, ones he freely admits he might not have answered for himself.<\/p>\n<p>For Chen, whose work has busily populated stages across the country for the last few years, the pull of New York is inevitable and present. But here, Chen says, his creative impulses are cultivated with a freedom from questions of commercial viability or \u201cthe specter of Broadway.\u201d And as a native, his work in the Bay Area can take on a closer, more fruitful dialogue with his surroundings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA Tale of Autumn,\u201d for instance, might speak more directly to no place more than San Francisco and Silicon Valley. \u201cIt\u2019s a very interesting intersection between commerce and altruism here,\u201d Chen says. \u201cThe two are really intermingled.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The conception of the shadowy, omnipresent corporation has perhaps shifted to a sort of cultism, traced back to Steve Jobs, says Chen, in which a company\u2019s products and its brand are fervently haloed as \u201cmorally good,\u201d for progress and humankind. Startups and tech giants like Uber and Amazon adopt this ostensibly righteous paradigm of \u201cdisrupting the big guys.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a product,\u201d Chen says. \u201cThere\u2019s no real altruism connected to this, but it has the language of morality. And I think that attitude has infused our tech-driven society here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We ultimately buy into it, and in Chen\u2019s play, reckonings of good and bad, right and wrong are as muddied for the audience as for the characters. Indications of time and place are stripped of specificity so that preconceptions cannot become shields, and all that\u2019s left of the stage is a space for debate, a \u201cbattle of ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s fascinating. We\u2019ve read this play aloud in front of an audience a couple times now. Every single person identifies with a different character,\u201d says director Mina Morita. \u201cIt\u2019s very unusual for that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The qualities Chen\u2019s characters represent, ones we might detest, ought to be recognized as potentially part of ourselves. \u201cSometimes the flaws of the system seem so overwhelming,\u201d Chen says, \u201cbut the knowledge that starts from within, I think, is both challenging and inspiring \u2014 and hopeful too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Brandon Yu is a Bay Area freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>A Tale of Autumn:<\/strong>\u00a0Written by Christopher Chen. Directed by Mina Morita. Opens Monday, Sept. 18. Through Oct. 8. $15-$35. Potrero Stage, 1695 18th St, S.F. (415) 523-0034.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.crowdedfire.org\/\">www.crowdedfire.org<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12px;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"hdnce-e hdnce-item-14555\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle. \u00a0Playwright Christopher Chen at the Crowded Fire Theater. September 13, 2017 (SFChronicle.com) For his first work as playwright-in-residence at Crowded Fire Theater, San Francisco playwright Christopher Chen was tinkering with the classic power struggle tale, in the vein of Shakespeare and TV shows like \u201cGame&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/09\/14\/2016-election-changed-playwrights-direction-tale-autumn-brandon-yu\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6166"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6168,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6166\/revisions\/6168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}