Experimental play “If Words Could Talk,” written by Tisch sophomore Jenn Amelia Martin and directed by Tisch junior Stéphanie Stowers, opened to a full audience at Theater For the New City as part of this year’s Dream Up Festival.
The play explores love, cyclical grief and the mother-daughter relationship between characters: Ali (Tisch sophomore Maya Gelber), who has passed away, and Mama (Tisch alum Juyeon Song), who survived. Its title reflects the characters’ struggle with communicating, especially in moments of grief. Ultimately, they express monologues through poetry, which Martin describes as “a foreign language to us all.”
“‘If Words Could Talk’ is not only very poetic, but it captures exactly what the characters struggle with,” Martin said. “What if these words could speak for themselves when I can’t speak for myself? If only words could talk, then maybe grief wouldn’t have to do all the talking.”
She originally wrote the play for a homework assignment in the Playwrights Horizons Theater School. After being selected as part of a Final First-Year Students Showcase, it was shown at NYU’s Black Box Theatre at the end of April.
“My playwriting professor Max Reuben gave us all a prompt, and his prompt for mine was ‘your play as a poem is personal,’ and it’s the shortest prompt I’ve ever seen for a play,” Martin said. “I ended up making it pretty personal to my identity as someone who’s half-Chinese and struggled with how to navigate mixed heritage.”
Even though Martin is a monolingual playwright, her script explores and contrasts the differences between the United States and China, especially through the use of color symbolism. In one of her monologues, Mama compares the bridal white worn in Western weddings with the white that mourners wore during her father’s funeral in China, emphasizing the differences she grappled with as an immigrant mother. This exploration of cultural duality extends further in the play’s use of red, a motif that features prominently in the set.
“In Chinese culture, red is fortune, but in our play, red is death, red is blood, red is stop, red is danger, as it is in America,” Martin said. “The double meaning that exists in poetry is something that really needs to be explored more in contemporary theater.”
Around six weeks after the April performance, “If Words Could Talk” was selected for the Dream Up Festival, an annual off-Broadway event dedicated to “new authors and edgy, innovative performances.” In preparation for five showings at Theater for the New City, Martin and Stowers transformed the play from their original direction and recruited an all-new cast and crew over the summer.
“I’m so proud of what we created,” Stowers said. “We didn’t have the luxury of casting accurately for Playwrights and that was something that was very important to me and Jenn, to have her story accurately represented. When we posted the casting call, we were looking for East Asian actresses, and without that it would not work the way that it did.”
Song said that the play challenged her as an actress, but also helped her gain a greater understanding and appreciation for motherhood, especially as a 24-year-old portraying a mother of a young adult.
“At certain times, I just wanted to give up,” Song said. “I didn’t even want to memorize — I did not know how to remember a poem. But after we spent two weeks straight on analyzing the relationship of Mama and Ali, and almost transcribing each line to a moment or an emotion, each monologue was a whole world for me. Even now, when I’m performing it, I feel like I’m jumping around different universes of emotion.”
Her co-star Gelber described the play’s script as “almost Shakespearean” and is looking forward to the final two showings of the play on the weekend of Sept. 7 and 8.
Contact Krish Dev at [email protected].
