Snehal Desai

The views and opinions expressed by speakers and presenters in connection with Art Restart are their own, and not an endorsement by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and the UNC School of the Arts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In 2016, director Snehal Desai was named artistic director of the renowned theater company East West Players in Los Angeles, only the fourth person to lead the nation’s premier Asian American theatre since its founding in 1965. East West Players was created by nine Asian American artists and ever since has been a bedrock of Los Angeles’ vibrant theater scene. Under Snehal’s leadership the company has focused on new work, producing plays by some of the country’s most admired artists, including Qui Nguyen, Lauren Yee and the writer after whom the mainstage is named, Tony Award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and opera and musical librettist David Henry Hwang.

East West Players was in the news this past spring when during a livestream of its annual Ovation Awards, the Los Angeles Stage Alliance, or LASA, not only mispronounced nominated actor Jully Lee’s name but also showed a photo of another Asian American actor. This final act of sloppiness and cultural erasure was too much for Snehal, who along with other artistic directors of color in Los Angeles had for years petitioned the organization to recognize all partner theaters involved in a co-production, not just the larger and predominantly white institutions. The next day he wrote an impassioned statement on social media succinctly stating why East West Players was immediately withdrawing its membership in LASA. A host of other theaters soon followed suit, and LASA’s board quickly decided to fold.

In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti and Rob Kramer, Snehal discusses how questioning and reinventing fundamental practices in the American theater could change the culture of the artform to be welcoming to a broader range of artists and audiences alike. He also places his post-Ovation Awards statement within the context of the summer of 2020 and the commitment of artists of color to wrest power from institutions that have long been content to ignore them.

Choose a question below to begin exploring the interview:

Rob Kramer: It’s hard for us to imagine how challenging the last 14 months must have been for you, for East West Players, for the Asian American community as a whole. What did this past year make clear to you about any systems that need to be reinvented in your field?

I effect change through storytelling, because I think that’s what drives my passion for theater and the arts.

Snehal Desai: At East West Players the thing that we’re really reflecting on, particularly during this time, is that we are very much just as much a social-justice organization as we are an artistic theater company, in that we have a very visible platform from which we can effect change. I effect change through storytelling, because I think that’s what drives my passion for theater and the arts. A lot of what we’ve been thinking about now is empowerment through storytelling. How can we, moving forward, empower our community? And I’m talking not only about audiences but also about those folks on the creative side. How can we give them agency from experiences that they’ve endured of racism and discrimination and things like that? I think that has been very much top of mind for us.

We just did a show with Christina Wong where she worked with a number of folks who have been formerly incarcerated who are AAPI or have immediate family members who are incarcerated. To hear their stories about how in prison the guards either call folks black, white or other. Or sometimes they’d call some groups Hispanic. But if you’re Asian, you’re basically just known as other. You’re literally called other.

And you feel also the monolith of Asian and Asian American. When you’re suddenly thrown together, they think all the Asians are clumped together, but we know that means being Vietnamese American and Korean American and Thai American. Not everyone speaks the same language or has the same background. Then inextricably tied to that are oftentimes issues related to immigration.

The experience for those individuals to tell their story was such a humanizing experience for them from where they were coming from — this is what they have talked about — as well as empowering them to take control of their own stories and their narratives, post their time in prison. That’s just been top of mind for me as we move forward, particularly as the Asian American community continues to be under attack.

The other thing that is coming into play is decolonizing practices and the hold of capitalism on our artform in this country. To me, that is where there is a ton of work to be done, because we have a model where the apex of theater in America is Broadway, which is for-profit theater, right? That is still the culminating thing where we say, “This is the best of what we do.”

It’s almost like we have to cut it off at the head, because we’re worshiping a for-profit capitalist model and that’s just driving everything, this idea of bigger is better, the larger the institution the more prestigious it is somehow automatically, it seems. But you know, at the heart of it artists work hard for what they’re doing and they want to get paid, and oftentimes those bigger venues also provide the biggest paycheck. So I’ve been thinking about, are there ways to disrupt that system?

Then the other thing is in the not-for-profit model, the 501(c)(3) structure creates a certain hierarchy of being, particularly with the Board. How does that impact the way we create the art we do? How have we been programmed to gather so that when we enter a theater our job is to be quiet and to sit back in our seat? You know, why can’t we eat in most theaters? Why is there not a celebration or a party feeling versus this very, like, you’re afraid to make a move because someone’s going to shush you?

To me, it’s just taking a look at how communities and folks gather. What are ways that ritual and tradition are celebrated in our communities and in our towns and in our societies, culturally and ethnically, and how have those practices not necessarily translated or been brought into a theatrical space?

Particularly what’s interesting about Eastern traditions of theater practices is that they tend to be tied to religion. It tends to be religious-based storytelling, when you think about South Asian dance forms, Kathakali or Bharatanatyam and stuff like that. There is a religious intersection with the storytelling and a mythology that you also are creating the craft around. For me it’s looking at a little bit of that kind of stuff and saying, “What is missing? What is very, very different? What are these barriers of accessibility that we’ve created?”

I think it’s OK to sit down and dream and say, “If we start from a blank slate and build up, what does that look like?” That means deprogramming the way I think about theater or I think about producing and I think about the headaches of dealing with unions and payrolls and insurance and letting that stuff take a secondary seat.

I think it’s OK to sit down and dream and say, “If we start from a blank slate and build up, what does that look like?” That means deprogramming the way I think about theater or I think about producing and I think about the headaches of dealing with unions and payrolls and insurance and letting that stuff take a secondary seat. I love this book called “Salsa, Soul, and Spirit” by Juana Bordas. I really, really love it, and where she takes the lens of looking at Native American, Black, and I believe it’s Latino cultures and those traditions of how they gather, how a lot of what they do is centered around food but it’s also centered around just bring your friends, bring a couple people with you, or if someone’s hanging out at your house, you bring them with you. It’s not like, “Oh did you reserve a ticket or a seat?” And you make room for that person.

I love how she connects to ancestry and legacy, the idea of Sankofa, of looking seven generations ahead and seven generations back.

Pier Carlo Talenti: If there was one thing that you could completely dismantle and reinvent, what would be the first thing that you would change about the way we bring theater to our communities?

Snehal: I can start with East West Players. The first thing that I would change is our space. I love our space. We are in a historic building in Little Tokyo. It’s a church that’s been converted, but the space dictates and restricts so much of the way we gather, of the stories that we tell, versus for us to be in a much more fully flexible venue, I think, would very much change not only what we produce as work but also the experience. We have this wonderful courtyard that I love that I think is actually the heart of our organization because that’s where folks can freely gather. Particularly being in a historic building, in a church, we’re not accessible to the degree that we would love to be. It’s virtually impossible to be able to get, say, a wheelchair up on our stage. We want to, we’ve tried, there’s things that we’ve put in, but it’s just very hard. Those accessibility factors are also top of mind. We’re looking at changing building structures potentially for COVID protocols and regulations, and so are there other things that we can add in there? So the space is one big thing for me.

The thing I can do is create the space in the room for artists, but ultimately it’s artists moving into that space and them creating the worlds that they want us to inhabit and experience and to help us envision forward. So ultimately for me it’s about creating as free and open and loose a structure of a space and getting out of the way, but it’s really making sure that we center the artists and are responsive to them ...

The other thing is frankly — and I don’t want to go on the record as someone who’s anti-union or anything like that — the unions dictate a lot of how we make art rather than the artist and the art and the storytelling dictating them. The thing I can do is create the space in the room for artists, but ultimately it’s artists moving into that space and them creating the worlds that they want us to inhabit and experience and to help us envision forward.

So ultimately for me it’s about creating as free and open and loose a structure of a space and getting out of the way, but it’s really making sure that we center the artists and are responsive to them when they are like, “What needs to happen is this show needs to not happen in your space for these reasons.”

Pier Carlo: So you must have had to deal with unions during the pandemic. How did that go?

Snehal: Let me flip it a little bit, and let me talk about some of the positive things that I think are coming out of the pandemic, particularly for theater. I’ll hit it in three ways.

One, I think moving forward there will be much more emphasis, I’m hoping, on new work, because with new work we can put in rights for streaming and digital and things like that. Moving forward, that’s where I’ve been putting our emphasis at East West Players. I love doing “Assassins,” but I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stream my production of “Assassins.” The three other new plays we’re doing in the season, yes, we’re putting it into the contracts that we’re going to record this and that we will air them during the run or afterwards.

I think that the emphasis on what we end up producing because it wants to be multi-platform-accessible is one positive thing.

Pier Carlo: I see. And the creators have been open to that and excited about it?

Snehal: Yes, for the most part, I would say so. I think those who aren’t are going to be ... you know, it’s a conversation to bring them along. What I think we see is that if we do your show, particularly now as we get to in-person, I’m not going to oftentimes stream it before a run. But after a run is there any reason we couldn’t stream the show for a week or two weeks for folks who are outside of our town? Because now we have national and international audiences who have seen our work, and it doesn’t mean that just because I do this a theater in Portland isn’t going to do your show, you know what I mean? Because sometimes I think that’s at the top of mind. I think that is one thing.

I think a second big thing is that theater and live performance is a hyper-local form. Now that’s going to become even more localized in terms of talent. I think it’s going to be very hard and costly to bring in actors from other cities or to tour productions. I think there are just so many safety things and stuff like that. The companies that have done it and are on a certain scale will continue to do it, but I think otherwise, particularly if we have outbreaks again and have to open and close — which everyone’s saying we should always be prepared for moving forward — that means hiring locally, because you’re not going to be able to indefinitely house folks or bring them into town for contracts. I think that’s interesting. What’s interesting is we’re going to become more localized in the talent we use, but our reach is now much greater, is national or international because of virtual.

And the third thing is time. I think the interesting thing that has happened now is time and duration of work. Now we can watch pieces that are five minutes, or we can watch pieces that are six hours. The work and the artist and the storytelling are dictating the duration of time that they need. I think this is also what we’ve seen with streaming services, right? If a show wants to be three episodes and that’s a season, it can do that. That’s what we’ve seen in the virtual space, and I’m hoping that that will continue and translate as we get into the in-person phase so that every experience is not 90 minutes or two hours with intermission but it can be 30 minutes if that’s what the artist wants. Or it can be … I don’t know about you but I love long durational experiences, so it could run all night.

I think folks are very much open now to that, and I think it’s bringing the rest of our institutional infrastructure along with them.

Pier Carlo: I wonder if we can talk about what happened with the L.A. Stage Alliance’s award show, the Ovations? Can you describe all the decisions you had to make? It felt like an inflection point. How did you decide to grab and run with it?

Snehal: I’m happy to talk about it. I think the interesting thing is I actually had no idea how things were going to land.

But what I want to do is I want to take it back in time, because what really fed that moment goes back to June of last year, May and June of last year. After George Floyd’s murder, we saw a lot of folks make a lot of statements, right? And to me at first it was like, “That was the least you could do. It doesn’t cost you anything to make a statement.” It was very interesting to see how long it took folks to make statements, and I was hearing from artistic leaders how long it was taking them because they’re having to wordsmith with their boards, and their staffs and all this stuff.

Rather than release a statement, if you want to do this, you have to change your system of operation and your business model. And if you do that, you could transform whole towns and cities and millions of lives. So to me then the statements meant nothing without, say, timelines and accountability built in.

Then what really changed for me personally was when I started to see, say, Walmart and Nike and Amazon and all these corporations start to put statements out. I was like, “They mean nothing, because if you actually want racial justice and equity, what you can do is pay a living wage and you can transform society.” That is what Walmart can do, that is what Amazon can do, right? Rather than release a statement, if you want to do this, you have to change your system of operation and your business model. And if you do that, you could transform whole towns and cities and millions of lives. So to me then the statements meant nothing without, say, timelines and accountability built in. I think that is where we were last year in the summer after George Floyd.

We at East West Players have kind of slowed down, because you were doing statements around every shooting, you were doing statements around COVID. And it was great to express that you were out there and for folks to know, but why were you doing that? Was it to feel better? Was it to be patted on the back? Was it because everyone was doing it and you were being called out if you weren’t? It felt so performative to me.

So that when the LASA show happened ... I had seen the show actually the morning of, so I didn’t see what was happening live. Then I started to see folks make some comments and stuff like that. And I was like, “Yes, we can release a statement, and we can say, ‘This was not a great representation of the Asian American community.’” It really affected Jully Lee, who just a few months before then I had had on a panel, talking about the racism she had experienced in the industry and in life in general up until this point. So it came to, “What am I going to do that’s more than a statement, and what are we going to do to empower ... ?”

The other thing I’m always thinking, as I’ve mentioned, is how can we empower ourselves? Why are we feeling disempowered, and how can we take power back? And what I realized was, a) We’re paying this organization to diminish us, right? We’re paying this organization to not respect us. The thing about all of the LASA stuff was a lot of this stuff was brewing for a long time. A lot of these issues were systemic and long-term, so it wasn’t one of those things where we had not tried for many years to work with this organization that itself was struggling and having challenges. For me, it was like, “Well, why do that? We don’t need to pay into that system. We can take our money and take power back for ourselves and do something else if we want.” Just because clearly this is a system, an organization that is not listening to us or hearing us over multiple years of trying and attempts. And it doesn’t share our values. That was one way I felt like we could take action as an organization.

And then the second was, I started to see other folks post things on social media, and it was one of those things where actually if you really believe this, if other folks want to take action, you can join us. That is one step you can do to join us to show solidarity. And it’s also because, as we know, in all systems money talks, and to me it felt like until we could affect the stream of income to this organization that they weren’t going to necessarily change. That was where some of the initial thoughts came that led to crafting the statement.

The interesting thing is I have learned the power of a good hashtag, like literally a good hashtag. Yes, I see how it can change the world! Because the hashtag #LeavingLASA was ... I am not a big social-media person; I am not the one. I didn’t think we would be starting something that would trend or anything like that. It was kind of the afterthought. After we crafted the statement we wanted something that encapsulated what we wanted, that encapsulated what we were going to do. And then I had a really wonderful marketing manager who took that last little thing at the bottom of my message and made that the top of the asset that went public.

The other thing was we were kind of the small domino. The awards were a part of a much larger set of issues, and we then saw those dominoes fall. For us it was also lifting up our friends at Deaf West. They had artists nominated and they had requested that the show be accessible to them, and they were ignored in their request. It’s also one of the things where, as a member theater, they shouldn’t have to request it every year, which is what they had to do. Again I understand that LASA was struggling, it was a small team, but they also didn’t really reach out for volunteers or help on a larger scale.

And that’s the thing with virtual and digital. That was the thing about the response: Had it been live, I don’t know if it would have been what it would have been. Sometimes when things like this happen live you can’t rewind, and oftentimes you’re sitting there going, “Wait, did I hear that they called her Jelly instead of Jully [pronounced like the name Julie]?” And you might confirm around you. But here when it’s virtual or digital, we can see it over and over again. So that’s where you have to be that much more on point.

The two big ripple effects that we’ve seen nationally are a) I think everyone is looking at awards again. I think awards have pros and cons. Yes, I think you want to recognize amazing work and artists. And yes, awards provide visibility and also just an opportunity for celebration, right? Folks work very hard in our field. But also the structure of awards is so inequitable and has been for so long.

That is one thing that I’m hearing throughout the country in terms of awards of all scales in theater, really looking at their practices and what a better or more equitable system could be there. And then I think these umbrella organizations are really looking at how they serve their membership and what role they want to play in terms of accountability for their membership. Is it pay-to-play? Anyone who pays a fee can join, which already is problematic? Or are we going to make it so that people can join but there’s accountability if they are not living up to the standards that have been mutually agreed upon by the community?

Rob: We’ve talked about your leadership and management style. Let’s end this interview by talking about your own artistry. What projects or challenges are you looking forward to tackling next?

Snehal: Getting more site-specifically with work. And then the role of technology. I think theater artists are slow to embrace technology oftentimes, or there’s a fear or there’s financial barriers, and we are going to have to up our game to continue working virtually and digitally. But to me it’s also, how can we engage folks site-specific and utilize our iPhones?

We’re working with Rogue Artists Ensemble on a sequel to “The Kaidan Project,” which we did. It will be an app through which you take a journey and it’s GPS-triggered. And there’s a virtual-reality component so that you can be at the center of it, it can start to snow in your living room, and then you can get up and parts of the story unlock as you also wander.

We operate in such a limited spectrum oftentimes in our field, and there’s so much. How can we break out of the naturalism and the kitchen-sink dramas and all of that stuff to embrace new forms? I think more and more, audiences want to be at the center of experiences. That’s what’s happening at theme parks and places like that, and I think that’s great. I think that’s wonderful to be able to do.

Banner Photo by Mike Palma

June 28, 2021