Interview: Kathy Ng of BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS DISORDER at Catastrophic Theatre

Kathy Ng is a playwright, director, teacher, and crafter(!) from Hong Kong. Her work attempts to create stretchy human-adjacent spaces that are also construction sites for new alien languages. Recent works include KINGDOM, SKY RATS, and now BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS DISORDER. happy life received its world premiere production from The Hearth and was mounted at Walker Space in NYC during the summer of 2022. Kathy is a New Georges Affiliated Artist, an alum of Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writers’ Group, and a Friend of The Hearth. BA and MFA in playwriting from Brown University. BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS DISORDER makes its world debut at the MATCH complex, November 21st through December 13th! BROADWAY WORLD writer Brett Cullum had the opportunity to speak with Kathy about her work and this incredible premiere. 

Brett Cullum: Well, I don't even know where to start. BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS DISORDER. I love the name, but what is the show about?

Kathy Ng: Well, the show is set in what we're calling the parking lot of heaven, or at least that's what the triangle person who's the main character in the play calls it. And the triangle Person is a humanoid, but not fully human, and they're also a thought baby. So, in the script, they're meant to be wearing a very geometric, triangle-shaped head and a no-nonsense navy blue swimsuit. They're one of the inhabitants of the parking lot of heaven, kind of waiting. There's an intercom where the angels are like, “Oh, you will be processed soon, sort of playing with the gates of heaven type of thing. Presumably, there are more inhabitants waiting at the parking lot of heaven, but the other characters are Mother Teresa and Tilikum, the infamous, murderous SeaWorld orca. He killed three of his trainers! Wait! Three people, but two were trainers and one wasn't.

Brett Cullum: Okay. So pretty normal run-of-the-mill stuff here. Like, a very straightforward thing.

Kathy Ng: Yeah.

Brett Cullum: This is not your first play that you've written. You've had works published before. What got you into writing plays?

Kathy Ng: Mmm, I think it was because I really wanted to do more theater, and realized that if I wrote plays that people wanted to do, then I could be a part of making them. And also, I love language. Language is one of my favorite mediums, even though I like to work in a lot of different modes, and there's sort of that kind of excitement of the play as a blueprint for… well… there's lines and there's stage directions, but it's a series of prompts for artists you hope to collaborate with in the future, directors, actors, designers, and I love the excitement of preparing a unit or a package to exciting artists and see what comes out of it. Even though I am the one writing, it's never how you imagine it in your head.

Brett Cullum: Never! And with the Catastrophic Theatre, anything can happen. They have no boundaries whatsoever. How the heck did you get hooked up with them?

Kathy Ng: Oh, so I feel so lucky, because Lisa D’Amour is a playwright who Catastrophic just produced Frozen Section, which is a new play of hers. She has been my playwriting teacher and mentor for a decade. We've known each other and we recently reconnected a couple of years ago because she was helping lead the Brown Playwriting MFA program, while Julia Argo, the head, was on a sabbatical. My first semester, I was taught by Stacey Karen Robinson, who's an amazing solo artist and playwright, whose workshop was what generated BEATIFUL PRINCESS DISORDER. I was also writing it while Lisa D’Amour was there. We got to reconnect, and she was talking to Jason Nodler [artistic director of the CATASTROPHIC] about some of my plays, while they were working together. Jason read some of the plays, and that's how we got connected and started chatting.

Brett Cullum: Lisa D’Amour is amazing. CATASTROPHIC THEATRE has a long-standing relationship with her. Lisa has a huge national reputation, but you do too! I mean, when I was digging stuff up about you, the NEW YORK TIMES talks about you.

Kathy Ng: Oh, yes. Well, that was from a production of a play called happy life in 2022, produced by The Hearth, which was a really great, crazy adventure. It feels weird in terms of, like, I also came out of school, too, so I feel so lucky to be enmeshed in getting to know better, sort of, like, the network of American experimental theater makers currently still making stuff, trying to connect people, and mentoring younger artists. There is a definite network of people, and Lisa is an integral part of that. I feel like a beneficiary of both her kindness and her insistence on ensuring that younger people can become experimental American theater makers, and I'm truly grateful for it.

Brett Cullum: Now, you're originally from Hong Kong, correct? But where do you live now?

Kathy Ng: I live in Providence, Rhode Island. I grew up in Hong Kong, I went through the international school system, and we had an American-based education, and a lot of what my life revolved around was trying to get into, American college, and then so I ended up at Brown. That's where I first fell in love with theater and started doing it, and ended up majoring in writing for performance. And then I had kind of a long journey trying to figure out ways to stay in the country to keep making art. That took me to my first graduate degree in musical theater writing at Tisch [NYC], and then I worked for a couple of years at Club Thumb, which is a really awesome experimental, new work-focused theater in New York City. But then COVID hit, and my partner and me, we just got married after the first Trump administration. We felt that we couldn't really afford the city. We felt burnt out. And we said, “Oh, maybe we just need to get out of the city, and kind of start somewhere that we both kind of knew, because we met there, so we moved back to Providence. I applied to and was accepted into the playwriting graduate program at Brown, which I completed, and graduated this past spring. So, that's kind of how I've ended up in Providence. It's a long road, yeah.

Brett Cullum: The long and winding road. Now, when I read the New York Times, they said that you have a queer sensibility, and I noticed that you use she-they pronouns. So, how do you identify as queer? I wanted to just ask you about that, too.

Kathy Ng: I identify as queer in the sense that I am constantly trying to figure out. Even though there are so many benefits, and helps with categories and labels. I'm trying to figure out, especially in the space of my plays, how to exist outside of those categories of normal, everyday life. To see what else we can we can be. Many of my plays feature hybrid creatures. In happy life one of the characters is a cat mermaid; she's a corpse that exploded out of a Hello Kitty doll, which is based on a real-life murder. That stuffed doll component clings to her in that world. She's neither fully ghost nor human. She kind of bonds with another ghost called Herman. It was deeply inspired by my own journey with body dysmorphia and especially having female parts that I really felt like were traumatizing as a child, and I wanted to change my body, and Herman is a ghost who is a trans masculine ghost who first thing he does in the afterlife, is slice off his boobs. There's a queerness in the hybridness of my characters, or, like, the non-humanness. I find a lot of queer joy and creativity in language, because I really like language as both a prison and a liberating tool.  I find it interesting in a play that by the end of it, it's like you've all almost created a new language together with both the creative team and also every audience that comes to see it.

Brett Cullum: So, Beautiful Princess Disorder, November 21st through December 13th at the match. Going back to that, obviously, you've got a great cast. Who is this Triangle Person? 

Kathy Ng: The actor playing Triangle Person is T. Lavois Thiebaud. They're an amazing non-binary poet and graphic designer, and actor! They're just incredibly, incredibly cool! I also have Amy Bruce as Mother Teresa, and Kyle Sturdivant as Tilikum! 

Brett Cullum: This cast is amazing! I am so shocked that you found three folks who are basically typecast as geometric, a killer fish, and Mother Teresa. They are all powerhouse performers!  Yeah, so you've got all these superstars at the Catastrophic Theater, you've got Jason Nodler directing, you've got The MATCH, which is a great space to be in. I am really excited about BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS DISORDER! 

Kathy Ng: The Adventures of Triangle person in the parking lot of heaven. In the parking lot of heaven, absolutely, yes! 

Brett Cullum: Yeah, and are you gonna be here for the opening night?

Kathy Ng: Yes, I'll be here, so I'll be at opening night. Maybe we can meet in person, which would work.

Brett Cullum: Yeah. Yeah, we totally will. I live at the MATCH! Seriously, I hide in the shadows and just emerge to see plays. We'll have a glass of champagne and everything to celebrate the opening of this wonderful play, and thank you so much, we are so excited to see you. And see your work!

Kathy Ng: Yeah, I'm really excited to share this play with Houston, and have this be my first foray into the city. I feel really lucky.

Houston Awards - Live Stats

Best Musical - Top 3

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7.5% of votes

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