In case you missed our May show with City Lights Theatre, here’s your chance to listen to Melinda Marks perform “Not a Gardener” by Melissa Flores Anderson, followed by a lively conversation with Rebecca Wallace. Thank you City Lights!
While the kids at Keiko O’Leary‘s school ate McDonald’s hamburgers, her mom made teriyaki hamburgers at home. We love her poem, “Recipe for Hamburgers, 1985,” and look forward to performing it on June 17 at Our Stories, Ourselves, as part of San Jose Museum of Art’s Third Thursday series.
Keiko first tried non-teriyaki hamburgers in fourth grade. She writes short pieces, including poetry, fiction, and marketing copy. She is also involved in a new online writing community, Prolific Writers Life. A fellow writer from San José, Lorraine Haataia, started the initiative with the vision of a writing community that’s always there when you need it. Writers can share their expertise by offering workshops and events, and they can benefit from the expertise of others by attending.
POWSJ fans will remember Keiko from our New Year, Nouveau show, in which Alex Draa performed her piece, “The Golden Beauty of Carlina Johansen, Author of Milliner’s Dreams.” She was kind enough to answer a few questions for us in advance of our June 17 show.
Wow, it’s been so long. I feel like you’ve always existed. I’ve been involved in San Jose’s literary community for many years. Maybe I heard about you through the Flash Fiction Forum, or the San Jose Poetry Slam, or the Santa Clara County Poet Laureate program, or Poetry Center San Jose … It’s wonderful that we have so many vibrant literary organizations, including ones focused on performance.
I’ve experienced a deep change during the pandemic. I still do mostly the same activities, but my relationship with them is completely different.
I used to view my creative practice as something I needed to force myself to do more of. I was forever trying out new routines and challenges in an effort to conform to some ideal work level that I could never reach.
During the pandemic, with my kids at home, I lost all my professional time. At first, I tried to make the sacrifice gracefully, but I failed.
I came to realize that the only way I could be a good parent was if I made time for self-care. I’m not talking about baths and pedicures. For me, self-care is writing, teaching, making art, giving workshops. Now I view my creative activities as vital to my health and my family’s happiness.
I still do challenges and try new routines, but I approach them with joy instead of with a whip.
I’m fourth generation on both sides: all eight of my great-grandparents were immigrants to the United States. But they didn’t all come from the same place.
I grew up in a multicultural family, so switching from culture to culture seems normal to me. But when I was a kid explaining sushi to my friends at school, I hoped that one day I’d experience being part of a group where everyone was the same. This turned out to be impossible. Even within groups I have chosen, I always find myself to be a voice of diversity: a poet among engineers or an engineer among poets. As an adult, I’ve come to accept this as normal and good, and to understand that I’m not alone in being different.
Everyone has something unique to offer in any group they belong to.
I met Sandra Cisneros when her novel Caramelo first came out, and she gave this advice for writers: think of a group you belong to, say women or actors, and write down ten ways you are different from other people in that group. Do this for ten groups you belong to. Multiply all those differences together, and that’s the place you write from.
I believe our differences are valuable, and we should not deny our heritage — any of our heritages.
I claim my heritage in every line I belong to, not just as a person of Japanese descent and Irish descent, but also as an American, a writer, an artist, a computer scientist, a linguist, a woman, a queer person, a human being, a life form of the planet Earth.
I love sending real mail, especially postcards and handmade pop-up cards. I also have an email list where I send (digital images of) handwritten letters. I write letters of encouragement and practical tips for creative people who want to improve their craft, organize their life, and see the big picture while taking meaningful action today. People can sign up at http://keikooleary.com/list/signup.html.
“I taught myself to U the O’s, fizz the TH’s and water down the R’s. San Fernando. Los Gatos. San Hosey. Love and fear made this place real, like the vaccine scar on my arm,” writes Sebastian Gomez Biggeri, a Latino visual artist living and working in San Jose.
We were mesmerized by Sebastian’s turns of phrase in both English and Spanish and are delighted to perform a series of his short pieces on June 17 in partnership with the San Jose Museum of Art. He is currently exploring a series of vignettes comprised of short writings, drawings, and digital art, and will be participating in the Cultura Power Fellowship through Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA).
Sebastian Gomez Biggeri, photographed by Juliana Rico.
Sebastian was kind enough to answer a few questions about himself and his work in advance of the show. We are providing his answers in Spanish and English.
My partner may have forwarded it to me, or perhaps I learned about it through the SJMA.
Siempre he percibido el presente como algo muy precario, y la pandemia hasta ahora no ha catalizado ningún cambio fundamental. Al contrario, parece ser otro estertor más de la gran pesadilla que se devora a sí misma con nosotros adentro.
Pero si me ha ayudado a desprenderme de ciertas pretensiones que me demoraban creativamente. Hay cierto consuelo en la melancolía de las escalas geológicas, la certeza de que el plástico y las penas eventualmente serán otra capa sedimentaria. Un proceso mucho más lento pero no muy diferente al régimen de una cultura curada algorítmicamente, donde todo es novedad e inmediatamente sepultado para siempre bajo el flujo de información.
Sumándole a esto un momento de verdadera crisis material donde mi interés se enfocó más en la solidaridad comunitaria y la acción política, mi práctica artística logró reconciliarse con lo efímero. El mío es un acto insignificante pero universal, como regar las plantas o caminar con una piedra en el zapato.
Our present always felt utterly precarious, and the pandemic so far hasn’t catalyzed any fundamental change. On the contrary, it only has exacerbated the ongoing conditions, one more gasp of the great nightmare that devours itself, with all of us in it.
Nonetheless, the sudden direness made obvious for me that certain pretensions had become creative obstacles.
There’s solace in the melancholy of geologic time scales. The certainty that plastic waste and sorrows eventually will be just another rock layer. A process much slower but not that different from the regime of a culture algorithmically curated where everything is novelty and immediately buried forever under the flow of information.
In a moment of true material crisis where my focus and energy turned into mutual aid and political involvement, I was able to reconcile my artistic practice with the transience of its fruits. An insignificant but universal act, like watering the plants or walking around with a stone in my shoe.
Herencia es una palabra pesada para alguien que siempre vivió de paso, pero con los años he descubierto cosas de mi origen que atesoro. No sabría decir cuánto se debe a la nostalgia del expatriado y que otro tanto a la erosión que va revelando nuestros rasgos más fundamentales. Cualquiera sea el caso, es parte de una conversación continua con los demás que me obliga a ser honesto conmigo mismo. La complacencia de estetizar las afecciones regionales nos termina transformando en caricaturas. Me tomó tiempo entender que el exotismo es una dinámica colonial, es la sintetización benigna e inoculada de lo foráneo. El rol que me hacía sentir especial es un viejo yugo imperial. La verdadera herencia son las costumbres con las que entendemos la justicia, el amor, y la soledad.
Heritage ended up being two faces of the same coin for me, depending where I am. As an immigrant, I can’t tell how much of it is nostalgia and what’s due to our fundamental characteristics contrasting against the foreign landscape. However it may be, it is part of a continuous dialogue with others that compels me to be honest with myself. Indulging in exotic affectations turns us into caricatures, for exoticism is the synthesis of a colonialist dynamic that inoculates what’s foreign and processes it into something benign. Partaking in the role that made me and others feel special but void is an old yoke. I see my heritage as the elusive customs through which I understand justice, love, and loneliness.
I was born and raised in Argentina, and I’m a graphic designer by trade. Since last year I’ve been intermittently working on vignettes and short stories @gunsgermsandmemes. I’d also like to plug a new podcast by Juliana Rico that focuses on conversations about art with BIPOC creatives, @artinmotionpodcast.
What would you do if you discovered a jar of bullets in your family home?
We were taken by the voice and language in Julian Parayno-Stoll’s “The Jar,” which describes a young protagonist witnessing his father adding bullets to a peanut butter jar. We’ll be performing this short piece at Our Stories, Ourselves on Thursday, June 17, with the San Jose Museum of Art.
Julian (he/him) is a mixed/mestizo Pilipinx American whose writing has been performed at De Anza College’s virtual Euphrat Museum, Flash Fiction Forum, San José Poetry Center’s Bauchhaar, and Play On Words San José. He received a BA in Philosophy from UC Santa Cruz. Raised on Kumeyaay land (San Diego), he currently resides on the unceded ancestral lands of the Tamien Ohlone people (San José, California).
He answered some questions for us in advance of the show.
I was invited to submit to Play On Words by a wonderful creative writing mentor, Lita Kurth, who saw potential in my (very) short story. For that, I am very thankful.
In a sense, my creative writing practice began during the pandemic. Although I have l always enjoyed reading and (to a smaller extent) writing out my thoughts, I became more invested in creative writing last summer when I was settling into a kind of despair over the pandemic, the hypermilitarization of the police, the massive climate change-fueled wildfires, and the realities of surviving under capitalism. At that time, writing felt like both an extremely frivolous activity and an essential practice for me to process these things. I feel immensely grateful for the work done by writers such as Ocean Vuong and Gina Apostol, because their books have shown me how the act of making art can be a means for engaging with the world from a new, more thoughtful angle. Despite much trying, I haven’t been able to maintain any kind of writing schedule during the pandemic. But when I do write, that’s the intention I now want to bring to my desk.
To me, being someone of “immigrant heritage” means multiple different things. On the one hand, my specific position as a mixed/mestizo son of a Pilipina immigrant beautician and caregiver and a white former sheriff’s deputy demands that I recognize my Pilipinx heritage in the context of the incredibly violent systems of white supremacist, patriarchal settler colonialism and American imperialism. On the other hand, as is common for many second generation children of immigrants, it means that there is a certain feeling of “disconnection” from this heritage. For example, I still have never been to the Philippines, cannot speak any Philippine language, and have not met many of my own family members. So in this sense, recognizing my “immigrant heritage” means grappling with the ever-present need to learn more about where I come from and to decolonize myself by engaging with these histories. But in the final and most important sense, my “immigrant heritage” means that I am a present manifestation of a long lineage of beauty which has persisted despite great hostility. In this sense, it is about the love I have for my mother and her family, which is my foundation for trying to bring into fruition, in slow steps, day by day, a different and better kind of world.
Thank you Play on Words! I’m very excited to see “The Jar” reimagined with someone else’s voice!
Imagine a modern-day Hamlet in which the protagonist’s son is a Black Korean-American man living in LA. Intrigued? Yeah, so are we — which is why we are delighted to perform an excerpt of Muse Lee’s “Minutes” at Our Stories, Ourselves, our June 17 virtual show in partnership with the San Jose Museum of Art.
Muse Lee (he/him) is the writer and co-executive producer of ARISTOS: the Musical, a pop/rock Iliad adaptation featuring an international cast and crew collaborating remotely during the pandemic. An artist and educator, he taught writing and performance behind bars as a member of the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women/HIV Circle, and taught a novel writing course at a court school to youth involved in the juvenile justice system.
At Los Angeles Opera, he founded and led the Opera 90012 Ambassador Program, a training program for teens interested in arts administration. In 2019, Muse graduated with a B.A. in English from Stanford University, where he served for three years as a teaching assistant in the Theatre and Performance Studies Department. He is currently writing the textbook Acting for Non-Majors with noted Stanford theatre lecturer Kay Kostopoulos.
During the pandemic, Muse has been been producing the album of my musical Aristos (www.aristosmusical.com), a pop/rock Iliad adaptation that sings the love story of Achilles and Patroclus. Slated for release in summer 2021, the crowdfunded project features an international ensemble, production team, and fanbase, all creating and connecting remotely from our own homes.
The musical proudly tells Homer’s immortal story — one that has come to symbolize Western culture —through the voices of a majority queer, BIPOC cast, comprised of earnest aspiring performers, professional actors, beloved music teachers, retired opera singers, renowned stage directors, and everything in between. Our artists range from ages 13-70 and hail from seven different countries. The show can be found on Instagram as aristosmusical and on Youtube as ARISTOStheMusical!
Muse answered a few questions for us in advance of the June show.
I met Melinda Marks (POW co-founder and casting director) when I auditioned for a show she was directing! While an Aristos conflict meant that I didn’t get the chance to work with her at the time, she reached out to me some months later about performing in “Play on Words: Beyond Boundaries.” I’d grown woefully used to a certain stiff-necked atmosphere in university theatre spaces, and I was enchanted by the energy of the rehearsal: a gaggle of artists bringing life to stories in a cozy apartment on a Saturday morning. I knew that this was a group I wanted to be a part of as long as they would have me!
It’s actually become more extroverted! My practice used to be very cloistered, but the pandemic pushed me to find new ways of creating and connecting. I’ve held Zoom readings with my friends, where we showed up in hilarious costumes fashioned out of whatever we could find in the closet. I’ve attended virtual performances and tuned into audio dramas, joyfully reacting over chat with other audience members in real time. I’ve worked with artists all over the world, our tenuous, wonderful connections flickering at the mercy of our WiFi.
These are all ways I had never really engaged with storytelling before. Sure, there’s nothing like live theatre, but there’s something to be said about how not having that option gives you the opportunity to reimagine theatre entirely. The productions I’ve seen over the last year involved artists of all levels of experience, of diverse ability statuses, and from all over the world. People could pop in and take part after school, or before their evening shift, or during their lunch break. While the pandemic delivered a devastating blow to the theatre industry, I was also humbled by how it forced me to reexamine my preconceptions about what performance could be, who could participate, and who it could reach. So much of what I had taken for granted about the world of performance had vanished in a blink of an eye — including its gilded barriers.
It’s the way I was alone in New York and thought I was doing just fine, but then I walked into a Korean restaurant and felt a weight lift off me that I didn’t even know was there.
I knocked out the first draft of my featured PoW piece, “Minutes,” at the end of my senior year of college, but I’d actually been trying to write this Korean-American Hamlet for three years. I was going to write from the perspective of the Ophelia parallel character, Jiyun, exploring her heartbreak and grief at losing her boyfriend. I tried and tried, but it just wasn’t working. Which was incredibly frustrating, because I loved the premise so much and really wanted to do something with it!
Then, in my last quarter before graduating, I was in a course about adapting Shakespeare. The final had two options: you could either write an essay about an existing adaptation or you could make your own. I leapt at the chance to make my own. By then, I had realized that I was transmasc and gay. Within just a few months, I would also finally embrace that I was on the aromantic spectrum. I sat down to take another shot at my Hamlet. This time, I wrote from the perspective of the Horatio parallel, Hoseung, who quietly watched his friend fall apart as he swallowed down the feelings he didn’t understand and wasn’t allowed to have. I wrote in one night what I hadn’t been able to write in three years.
The piece that became “Minutes” was my very first queer work, and I cannot express how much it liberated me to write the kinds of love stories I had yearned to tell my whole life. I think this piece was, to paraphrase Greta Gerwig, me trying to explain myself to myself.
At Play On Words, we believe that the stories we tell reveal truths we may not have recognized otherwise.
That’s why we were drawn to Selma Tufail’s “Self-Portrait,” an excerpt of a memoir-in-progress that she is writing with her sister (and fellow Playonwordsian) Anniqua Rana. We’re delighted to perform this piece at Our Stories, Ourselves, our virtual performance with the San Jose Museum of Art on June 17.
Selma, an artist, has always navigated through the worlds of literature, art, and education. Life’s journeys have taken her around the world where she has taught, written, and created art — in Spain, Qatar, the U.A.E., the U.S. and Pakistan. Throughout, she has continued her pursuit of creativity in all its forms. She was awarded the Order of Civil Merit, the highest civilian award of Spain.
She is the author and illustrator of Con Yanci: When Chickens Fly and Other Tales, a children’s storybook. Her writings on gender, art and mysticism have appeared in The Dollhouse, Pakistan Daily Times, Article in Shards of Silence – An Anthology, The Arabia Review: TESOL Arabia, UAE among others. Selma is currently co-managing a blog, Tillism.com طلسم – Magical Words from around the World, with her sister Anniqua. Tillism means magic, and this is where they both share their fascination with creativity in all its forms.
Selma was kind enough to answer a few questions about herself in advance of the show.
I was told about Play on Words by a previous participant, my sister, Anniqua. Then, when the opportunity came up again, and the theme fitted me perfectly, I knew I wanted to participate. My contribution, “Self-Portrait”, is an excerpt from a joint memoir I am writing with Anniqua.
I have reached out and connected virtually with others a lot more. I used to be quite content working alone, but during the restrictions of the shelter-in-place phase, I suddenly felt the need to connect with others for inspiration. My favorite people to work with are the online Shut Up & Write groups. Working with multinational groups of writers adds a really interesting dimension to my own creative process.
My family and I have been fortunate to live in and experience the cultures of Pakistan, United Kingdom, United States, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. At the moment we are in Spain and continue to enrich our lives through friends we have made here, and our new way of life.
I have always immersed myself completely in the places where I have lived, making them my primary home for as long as I was there. I carry my experiences with me, the people, the food, the lifestyle and pull out of my treasure chest whatever I need, when I need it.
I am an artist and my work for the past 10 years has focused on the unity that exists within the universe. It is my attempt to restore the feeling that we are all part of a complete whole so as not to feel isolated even as we live on this overcrowded planet. My inspiration comes from the poetry of mystics past and present, from all religious backgrounds and cultures, and my preferred medium is oil on canvas but I dabble in watercolors and pencil drawings too.
While many past Play On Words shows have explored origin stories, family histories and questions of place, we have been wanting to host a show specific to immigrant heritage since 2018, when Donald Trump introduced some of the cruelest immigration policies in the United States to date. Of course, immigrant heritage does not have to center only the experience of crossing borders, but in many ways those narratives are so fundamentally human.
When planning our Our Stories, Ourselves show, we were moved to read Patty Somlo’s short story, “How He Made it Across,” which appeared previously in Common Boundary: Stories of Immigration (Editions Bibliotekos) and in Somlo’s book, From Here to There, (Adelaide Books). We are looking forward to performing it June 17 as part of our virtual show with the San Jose Museum of Art.
Patty was a journalist for ten years before focusing on fiction and memoir. Her most recent book, Hairway to Heaven Stories, was published by Cherry Castle Publishing, a Black-owned press committed to literary activism. Weaving together the real and the fantastic, the 15 linked stories in Hairway to Heaven Stories introduce a diverse cast of characters living in a once predominantly African American neighborhood, now in the midst of gentrification.
Hairway was a finalist in the American Fiction Awards and Best Book Awards. Two of Somlo’s previous books, The First to Disappear (Spuyten Duyvil) and Even When Trapped Behind Clouds: A Memoir of Quiet Grace (WiDo Publishing), were finalists in several book contests. She received an honorable mention for fiction in the Women’s National Book Association Contest, was a finalist in the Parks and Points Essay Contest, and had an essay selected as Notable for Best American Essays.
Patty answered a few questions about herself in advance of our June show.
A local author who knew my work told me about Play On Words and suggested that I submit something for the focus on immigrant heritage.
During the pandemic, I have found myself writing longer pieces and doing considerably more revisions. I am thinking – and hoping – this will result in better work that is more emotionally resonant.
My grandmother, who immigrated to the United States from Hungary with my grandfather, would get up at five o’clock in the morning to start rolling out dough, to make dumplings for my favorite of her dishes, Chicken Paprikash. When she visited us, she arrived on the Greyhound bus with bags of cooking supplies. She would meet people in the grocery store, come home and make batches of stuffed cabbage, and then deliver the meat and tomato-filled cabbage to her new-found friends. She baked elaborate cakes, with thin layer upon thin layer of fruits, nuts and cream, because she didn’t believe that saving time with pre-made anything was worth it. Immigrant heritage to me means memorable food shared with others and the hard work that makes life better.
I grew up in a military family that picked up and moved nearly every year. That upbringing has had a significant impact on what I write. Home – or the lack thereof – is a frequent focus of my work, including writing about immigrants, as well as the homeless.
We had such a fun time last week performing Melissa Flores Anderson’s work with City Lights at their Next Stage show. Big thanks to Rebecca Wallace for sharing the recording of their show:
After a year of hibernation, Play On Words is finally emerging from the fog of the pandemic to share stories of our community. On June 17, we’ll return virtually to the San Jose Museum of Art for Our Stories, Ourselves, an evening of stories and poems inspired by individual and collective immigrant heritage. In the weeks to come, we’ll be offering a peek inside contributors’ brains to learn what their heritage means to them and what has kept them going this year.
We are delighted to start with Melissa Flores Anderson, a native Californian, award-winning journalist, former speechwriter and a current communications professional in Silicon Valley. She has had news articles and features published in the Gilroy Dispatch, the Hollister Free Lance, BenitoLink and the California Health Report, and was the city editor of the Weekend Pinnacle for seven years. She has a bachelor’s in psychology and media studies from Pitzer College, and a master’s in print journalism from the University of Southern California. Her story “Redemption Songs” is forthcoming in The Ice Colony.
Melissa’s story, “Not a Gardener,” follows Teresa, who doesn’t think she inherited a green thumb even though her grandfather maintained a thriving garden beyond his duplex for most of her life. When she moves into a new house with her husband and young son, Teresa discovers an affinity for it and a connection to her heritage.
There will be two opportunities to hear Melissa’s great story. On Thursday, May 13, Melinda Marks will perform this piece as part of City Lights Theatre Company’s Next Stage program, which will also feature a brief Q&A with POW co-founders and City Lights Marketing Director Rebecca Wallace. Register for this free event on the City Lights website.
Melissa agreed to answer a few questions in advance of our May 13 show.
My friend Julia Halprin Jackson is one of the founders so I’ve heard her talking about Play On Words for years, and know some people who have had pieces featured in shows before. I’d been working on a story inspired by my grandfather when I learned the theme for the virtual show was immigrant heritage, and decided to submit for the first time.
In a weird way the pandemic gave me space to be creative. I used to write stories and poems back in high school and college, but haven’t had the energy to write in the last decade or so. Then when I had insomnia over the summer because of the pandemic and the wildfires, I returned to some of my half-written stories in the middle of the night. A story I started maybe 15 years ago turned into the first draft of a novel. I worked on some other old stories and then started to be inspired with new ideas.
I’m back to sleeping at night, but I do some writing on my lunch break, in the evenings or on weekends.]
Three of my grandparents moved to the United States as young children, two from Mexico and one from Italy. They came between 1910-1920 at a time when most people left behind their language and culture so there were only scraps of their heritage left for my sister and I by the time we came along. The one thing I do have is the family recipes—or impressions of flavors might be more accurate. My father’s mother never wrote down her tamale recipe and my mother’s sisters don’t have one for the gnocchi they make, but we have moments in the kitchen together when we make these dishes that tie us back to places we have never seen
As I started to write again, I also started reading for leisure for the first time since having my son nearly four years ago. I’ve read plenty of board books and early readers in recent years, but in January I started making my way through a stack of books on my nightstand that followed me unread through two moves in three years. My favorites include Love by Roddy Doyle, Normal People by Sally Rooney and a short story collection curated by David Sedaris called Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules.
Play On Words is going virtual with the San Jose Museum of Art at 7. p.m. on Thursday, June 17. Tickets are free but registration is required. Sign up to save your space!
Play On Words 