AMERICAN HWANGAP Opens at Magic Theater 4/11, Previews Begin 4/4

It has been said that home is that place where when you knock on the door they have to let you in. "Come home." These two words catapult into action Lloyd Suh's world premiere comedy, American Hwangap, opening April 11 at San Francisco's esteemed Magic Theatre.

Previews begin April 4 and the play is slated to run through May 3. Directed by noted Off-Broadway wunderkind Trip Cullman, American Hwangap makes fresh the homecoming structure with a heartbreaking Korean American experience set against a canvas of highway 80, desert, and mythic cowboy lore. As a recipient of the Lark Play Development Center's "Launching New Plays into the Repertoire Initiative" supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, American Hwangap will follow its production at the Magic with performances at the Denver Center Theatre Company, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, The Play Company in New York, and Tanghalang Pilipino in the Philippines.

"The quirky family of American Hwangap is instantly and hauntingly familiar," said Magic Artistic Director Loretta Greco who selected the play. "As Jodi Long, the Broadway wonder who plays Mary in our production, said to me, ‘this play is like Sam Shepard for Asian people.' And she is right; the similarities are notable and very much a part of what drew me to this work. Suh explores the American Landscape - both the romance and price of super-sized American dreams - but as experienced by two generations of immigrants. Like Shepard, he is suspicious of urban types. Suh's characters' hearts reside in backyard trees, fishless waters, endless desert and mountains just beyond reach. The lure of American swagger is irresistible."

American Hwangap tells the tales of a Korean immigrant who returns home to the United States 15 years after he abandons his family there. The momentous occasion is his 60th birthday. As the birthday celebration unfolds, his wife and three grown children expose the family's troubled history and its promise for the future.

"Like Shepard's first Pulitzer Prize winner, Buried Child, Suh's American Hwangap is quintessentially a homecoming play," Greco continues. "A man returns to find he is a stranger and insists on his own identity and rightful place in his family. Suh's play, however, is a comedy: it manages miraculously to dissect both the poignancy and ridiculousness of the cultural collision that is Korea meets Texas; the task of assimilation; and the American social consciousness as seen through the lens of our most fertile and dysfunctional unit, the family."

An apt student of history, Suh notes that the catalyst for American Hwangap was the 60th birthday of Korea in 2005 -- hwangap [pronounced hwon-gap] being the word for a 60th Birthday celebration and considered in Asian cultures to be especially significant as it is the day one has completed his or her zodiac cycle.

"Because of the division that still exists within the Korean peninsula, that celebration became a very different thing than it would have been had it been a unified Korea," said Suh. "Had it been a unified Korea, it would have been a wonderful and celebratory moment. But it wasn't what it otherwise would have been and I was very interested in that. From that seed came the notion behind American Hwangap -- of a fractured individual wanted to be whole in the same way that Reunification is a palpable yearning."

In Korean culture hwangap is a family-run celebration in which sons and daughters demonstrate symbolically their devotion with wine and food. It can also mark, for those who seize it, an opportunity for moral reflection. Here lies one of the most enduring of Suh's themes: the reminder that it is never too late to seek redemption - making things once broken, whole. However, American Hwangap's creative team is quick to stress, that this is very much a comedic endeavor.

"This most definitely a funny play," says Hwangap director Cullman. "We think the play will resonate with Korean Americans, and most especially young professionals who are the children or grandchildren of immigrants."

The play's creator concurs: "Oh, I just can't write anything that isn't gonna' be funny," Suh laughs. "It just isn't worth it to me. I can't even imagine a play without a joke...I honestly believe that things are funnier when they're deeply felt, and when things are deeply felt, they're felt even more deeply if there's humor within that world as well."

Founded in 1967, Magic Theatre is one of the preeminent theatres in the nation solely dedicated to development and production of new plays. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Loretta Greco, Magic Theatre operates with a budget of $1.5 million in San Francisco's historic Fort Mason Center. Magic Theatre's plays and playwrights have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, Kennedy Center Award, NAACP Image Award, Obie Awards, Pen-West Awards, Bay Area Critics' Circle Awards, and Los Angeles Drama-Logue Awards. The list of playwrights whose works have premiered at the Magic reads like a "Who's Who of American Theatre": David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Paula Vogel, Nilo Cruz, Charles Mee, Anne Bogart, and Rebecca Gilman among many others. For more information, visit the Magic Theatre website at www.magictheatre.org.

Founded in 1994, the The Lark Play Development Center is a laboratory for new voices and new ideas, providing American and international playwrights with indispensable resources to develop their work, nurturing artists at all stages in their careers, and inviting them to freely express themselves in a supportive and rigorous environment. By reaching across international boundaries, the Lark seeks out and embraces new and diverse perspectives from writers in all corners of the world. With the aim to integrate audiences into the creative process from its initial stages, the Lark brings together actors, directors and playwrights to allow writers to learn about their own work by seeing it - and by receiving feedback from a dedicated and supportive community. The Lark is lead by producing director John Clinton Eisner, managing director Michael Robertson, and artistic program director Megan Monaghan.

American Hwangap performs April 11 - May 9, 2009 (previews begin April 4) at Magic's Northside Theatre (Bldg D, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, CA - parking lot entrance at Marina Blvd. and Buchanan St.). Tickets are $25-$45 (with student, senior and educator $10 Rush Tickets available one-hour hour prior to curtain) and are available at (415) 441-8822 or www.magictheatre.org.

Photo by Emily Gilley