Racebending.com

Kristina Wong is a solo performer, writer, actor, educator, culture jammer, and filmmaker from out of Los Angeles. Her third full-length solo show, Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explored the high incidence of suicide among Asian American women. Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is now used by social workers, mental health professionals, and universities around the country to help reduce stigma around depression and mental health issues. The show is now a concert film that just recently came out on DVD.

In addition to her solo performance works, Kristina has also created subversive real world and online installations, like her mail order bride site, Big Bad Chinese Mama. She has performed at Comedy Central’s South Beach Comedy Festival in Miami and was the 2008 UCLA Department of English Commencement speaker. She has written for Jezebel.com and Playgirl and done pieces for public radio. Also, her cat sprays a lot, which has lead to the development of her latest project…

Kristina Wong performs in Cat Lady. Photo credit to Mark Francis.

This year, Kristina Wong premiered Cat Lady, a full length, ensemble multimedia theater piece abotu the psychology behind hoarding, pick up artistry, and loneliness. Cat Lady opened in Houston, Texas in March 2011 and wrapped a run this month in San Francisco. The next stop for Cat Lady? Sunny Tampa, Florida in December 2011!

Racebending.com caught Kristina Wong via email in between runs of her San Francisco show!

RACEBENDING.COM: So why performance art?

WONG: I kind of loosely refer to what I do as “performance art” because my projects don’t neatly fit into the categories of theater or writing. Plus, who wouldn’t want to be associated with a genre synonymous with public pap smears, feces eating and animal sacrifice?

RACEBENDING.COM: Performance art is about as far away as you can get from commercialized, big box office Hollywood productions. Is there more room for performers of color in this genre?

WONG: Which genre? Hollywood or performance art? I’d say yes in either genre. Performance art allows for more critical interpretations of race issues, and almost demands making audiences uncomfortable. Whereas Hollywood is more about entertainment and coddling the masses, and less about making big social statement.

Performance art allows for more critical interpretations of race issues, and almost demands making audiences uncomfortable.

RACEBENDING.COM:You’ve done everything from internet sites to radio shows to commencement speaking, and now you are writing a novel! How do you do it all (and without a car)?

Eh, well, the novel is been on the backburner forever because of the SIX shows I’ve made in the last ten years. But aaah yes, the carless in LA thing. It helps that I work from home. And am on tour a lot. But I manage to get around by foot, bus, bike, friends and hitchhiking for rides on Facebook. I have my eye on a pink Vespa though. I’m hoping I’ll have the guts to buy and ride one by next year.

A work-in progress showing of Cat Lady

RACEBENDING.COM: A lot of the issues you’ve tackled have been about Asian Americans, including “>Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (mental illness in the community) and Big Bad Chinese Mama (don’t eff with us). Why present those themes in your art? Will Cat Lady tackle some of these similar themes, too?

WONG: Cat Lady is a lot like an unofficial follow up of Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I think Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the proudest thing I’ve ever made. But damn! It so nearly killed me making that show because I literally threw myself into it.

I play a character named “Kristina Wong” and oh man does that screw with your psyche and love life to have a show about depression and suicide where the character of the show has your same name. Some of the stuff in that show is real, and a lot isn’t. And when you throw yourself into a theme for a show, its like you meditate on that theme for a long time during the creation and performance process. So I had suicide and depression on the brain for five years— despite the show being funny, was totally incredible, but so hard. I was literally trapped in a show, while the rest of the world seemed to move on with life, love and procreation, I was still doing the same show
about depression and suicide every year.

Into the second year I began to have an existential crisis about what was the next step. How could I top this show? Would I be able to make any good work after it? Did I hit the peak of my career?

The trailer for Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

WONG: I got into following the lives of professional pick-up artists because in ways, they were so similar to me. They were performing versions of themselves night after night. They were good at evoking empathy and emotion from their “audiences” and they perfected the art of getting intimately close to women without ever having to be vulnerable. And many of them pursue their craft with the same obsession as I was. In this odd way, I looked at how they dealt.

RACEBENDING.COM: Much of your work is also about gender, such as Cuckoo’s Nest (gender and mental illness), and you’ve written for Jezebel.com and Playgirl. How does Cat Lady address these themes?

In Cat Lady I look at two subcultures— cat ladies and male pick-up artists. To me they each symbolize loneliness and an inability to fully connect to humans. Both “hoard pussy” and have found ways to satisfy their primal need for human connection without really connecting full to a human being.

For pick-up artists, the objective is to learn to pick-up a woman and the culture doesn’t really teach how to have a sustainable (more than one night) human relationship. I basically studied pick up artists and hoarders for the last three years. I went to pick up artist seminars and meetings, and I incorporate their language, terminology, and interactions in the script. The result is a constant “script within a script” affect where nothing ever feels quite genuine and is always trying to be real.

Kristina Wong in Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next

RACEBENDING.COM: Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is about depression and suicide, Cat Lady is about hoarding. Mental illness is often sensationalized or treated with stigma. When mental illness is addressed in performance, it is often sensationalized. Why use performance art to explore and challenge this?

WONG: Cat Lady is not just about hoarding, but people genuinely trying to connect. Hoarding is one way people hold onto things when they can’t emotionally control parts of their life— they try to control other things until it overwhelms them. The show is also a lot about people like myself or pick-up artists make theater (my shows performed for audiences, their shows performed in bars) and why it can be comforting.

Performance is often the most comfortable way for people to talk about a hard issue because it’s not totally honest.

Performance is often the most comfortable way for people to talk about a hard issue because it’s not totally honest. Its a “play.” It’s both vulnerable and not. It’s honest and a lie at once. For the schools that brought Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, for example, it was much easier for them to present a show about depression and suicide than just have “discussion forums on suicide” and expect people talk openly and honestly about suicide because that would be too vulnerable for everyone involved.

Kristina Wong is former Miss Chinatown second runner up Fannie Wong. From her flickr account.

RACEBENDING.COM: Themes like objectification (BigBadChineseMama), depression (Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), and loneliness (Cat Lady) resonate with many people, but also have marked connections with the Asian American community. Asian American women (and Asian men who are gay) often face objectification from non-Asians. Asian American women have high rates of suicide and mental illness is stigmatized in our community. Some Asian American men look to pick up culture to combat negative stereotypes about Asian American men. How do you use performance art to explore, and perhaps heal, these wounds?

WONG: Mental Illness, suicide, and depression are extremely difficult to talk about in the Asian American community. I have a show on the subject matter, and even I have a hard time speaking honestly about those issues in a setting that isn’t a theater. I’m going to sound self congratulatory, but the beauty of having this show, and touring it at schools, is that it gives a safe space for people to talk into.

I remember in college, I didn’t want to be caught walking near a counselor’s office because I didn’t want people to think I was seeing a counselor and that I was “crazy.”

I remember in college, I didn’t want to be caught walking near a counselor’s office because I didn’t want people to think I was seeing a counselor and that I was “crazy.” My show is not a substitute for
getting professional help, but it is a way for people to talk about the highly stigmatized issues of depression and suicide without feeling”outed.”

Because my show is a “play” there’s more license to say things to people that you can’t in the “real world.” In Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest I pick on a “white guy” in the audience and turn the tables of cultural objectification on him, I pet his hair, speak to him in very slow loud English as if he can’t understand me. Obviously, I can’t do this in the real world, but in the space of the theater, it’s permissible and allows to comment on what I can’t anywhere else.

When I first toured the show I didn’t realize how many people would be coming up to me and sharing some pretty intense stories about their depression and even, their suicide attempts with me. I think they felt safer to tell me about it than to tell a professional. However, I’m far from a mental health professional. So I started to have mental health professionals and even non-traditional healing practitioners speak at my post show Q&As. I think this dialogue is the start of how we can tackle the issue of depression and suicide among Asian Americans because there is so much silence around the issue.

RACEBENDING.COM: What can fans do to support artists of color in performance art and other forms of entertainment?

WONG: I think fans need to want to see good work and not just support ANY work by artists of color just because they are an artist of color. What defines “good” work is another issue as everyone has their own tastes. I think that cheerleading any mediocre-in-execution-or-bleh-themed project just because it’s by an artist of color doesn’t push artists of color to evolve in their craft.

I think that cheerleading any mediocre-in-execution-or-bleh-themed project just because it’s by an artist of color doesn’t push artists of color to evolve in their craft.

Artists should be constantly pushing themselves to do something more innovative and fans should support the evolution of their favorite artists and not want to see them crap out the same old thing each year.

Be sure to follow Kristina Wong’s exploits on her official website, KristinaWong.com!

Racebending.com would like to thank Kristina Wong for her insights and this interview.

Categories: blog, Featured, Interviews