March 22, 2022 • 31 mins
Sanaz Toosi channeled her anger about the Muslim travel ban into comedy. Her play “English,” set in Iran, explores the lives of an English teacher and her students. She talks to Roxane about the experience of so many immigrants–imperfectly speaking a second language, never fully fitting in. Plus, Roxane reflects on her own parents’ accents.
Mentions:
● “English” at the Atlantic Theater Company. https://atlantictheater.org/production/english/
● Eleven Madison Park https://www.elevenmadisonpark.com/
Credits: Curtis Fox is the producer. Our researcher is Yessenia Moreno. Production help from Kaitlyn Adams and Meg Pillow. Theme music by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is incredibly bougy. But we recently had dinner at
eleven Madison. It's this fine dining restaurant, and over the pandemic,
they decided to shift to a plant based menu. You know,
I wasn't really sure what to expect from menu, but
the meal was outrageously good. There were just so many courses,
and they had lots of different components, and there was
(00:22):
always this little presentation ritual. The food was whimsical and
interesting and sometimes delicious, no often delicious when you have
that many courses being served to you. There were a
few dishes I didn't care for, but even then I
recognized that the fault lay with me and not the food. Now,
about halfway through the meal, we were invited back into
(00:42):
the kitchen, which is eerily quiet, and it was immaculately clean,
stainless steel, these huge refrigerators filled with beautiful, beautiful vegetables.
We were fed this maple snow candy and I said,
oh my god, this is like a little house on
the prairie. And then of course I had to explain
what I meant by that. Anyway, if you have a
lot of extra money line around and you're feeling adventurous.
(01:06):
You will not regret an evening. I to love Madison,
and they did not pay me to say that. From Luminary.
This is the Roxanne Gay Agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast
of your Dreams. I am Roxanne Gay, your favorite bad
feminist on this week's agenda, English with an Accent. Growing up,
(01:28):
I didn't know my parents had an accent. They were
just my parents. Their voices were home. It was only
when my brothers and I went to school and our
peers met my parents that we understood there was something
different about them. American ears can be so very unkind,
and children can be very unkind. They would tease us
(01:49):
about our parents accents. They would pretend they couldn't understand
what they were saying, and it was infuriating. It only
made me love my parents more. Once we did start
hearing their accents, we couldn't unhear them. But I always
found their voices beautiful. They were warm, and their words
were pleasantly rounded, and we also found the way they
(02:09):
spoke incredibly funny. At times, they spoke fluent English, but
trying to shape their mouths into certain pronunciations was an
ongoing challenge. My dad in particular would add an h
before most fouls, so we would ask him endlessly to
say American airlines, and then we would walk around the
house singing American hairlines. Kids are the worst, are just
(02:32):
the worst. But my dad was always amused. He would say,
you make fun, but you understand me perfectly, don't you,
And we would NodD because of course we did. We
always had. During summers when I was much younger, my
parents would sometimes take us to Port of Prince and
in Haiti we saw a completely different side of them.
It wasn't that they were different people. Instead, they were bolder,
(02:54):
brighter versions of themselves. We certainly heard them speaking French
and Crayole at home in the state, but in Haiti
there was a lightness to their conversations and all they
spoke were their native tongues. More than once, I realized
I was seeing them as their truest selves. I thought
about this when I recently saw the play by SNAs
Tussi at the Atlantic Theater in New York. It's a
(03:17):
comedy but also not about in English as a second
language class in Iran, and it tells the story of
the teacher and her students, all with very different relationships
with the English language. It's very funny, it's incredibly moving,
it's painful at times, and the writing is so very
elegant and intelligent. The English playwright is my guest today.
(03:39):
SNAs Tussie, at the age of thirty, has not one
but two plays opening this year in New York. The
second play is Wish You were here. And if you
missed seeing English and you're in New York, you should
be able to see this production at Playwrights Horizons. SNAs
Tussi joins me via zoom from her home in brook
(04:00):
and Sona's Welcome to the Roxanne Gay Agenda. Hi, Roxanne,
thank you so much for having me. This is such
an honor on my part. Thank you. I really loved
your play. I did not know what to expect because
I try not to do too much reading about a
show before I see it. I just want to go
and enjoy myself or not same totally fair. It's the
(04:20):
best way. I find. It's the only way. It's the
only way. When I read too much criticism before I
play a movie a book that tends to shape my
experience of the thing. Now afterward, I will absolutely go
and make sure the critics got it right, absolutely say yeah,
but before I have no business. That's not you know,
it's not of my business what other people think. So
(04:42):
I understood that you kept the fact that you were
a play right from your mother. As a Haitian American,
I totally get it. Why did you do that? You know?
I was I'm only and I think I saw how
incredibly hard my parents worked growing up like that was
never hidden from me, the hustle, and I thought the
(05:07):
only way to make them proud was to do something correct,
like a doctor or a lawyer. I knew I was
never going to be a doctor, but um, I thought
I could be a lawyer. I was going to go
to law school. And I still think, like there's a
world in which I would have been a very happy lawyer.
But I really had no idea that people could be writers.
(05:27):
I was like, how does one do such a thing?
Like where does one go? It's funny, like, I'm Irany
and we have a deep appreciation for poetry and art
and we're deeply like mystical people. And I you know,
there's something about immigrant culture that says, you gotta make money,
you gotta have a nice house, and you only do
(05:48):
these things through um accepted practices, such as like law
and medicine. Yes, I used to call law, medicine, and
engineering the Haitian trifecta of like the three acceptable pathways
for a good Haitian daughter. And for a time I tried,
I did. I was premed during my first year of
(06:10):
college and that was a disaster. And then it was
an architecture major because I thought, oh, that's sort of
engineering adjacent and it never worked out. Of course, It's
so funny, like in Iranian culture, we have where I
should say, I'm you know, Iranian diaspora culture, we have
the same, like you, three options doctor, lawyer, engineer, and
(06:32):
the fourth option is absolute failure. So how do you
break the news to your parents that, guess what, I
did find a career path, but I'm going to be
at playwright in New York. Um, you know, I applied
to grad school, applied to m f A programs. Secretly.
I told only a few people, and I got an interview.
(06:56):
At that point, I was like, if I don't tell
my mom, I'm lying. I'm so close with my mom,
close with both of my parents. But I think at
that point I was like, all right, you got to
tell her. However she reacts, you have to go to
the interview and you can't lie to her anymore. And
she was so happy for me, Roxanne, she was like thrilled,
(07:16):
I think mostly because I wasn't pregnant, and I think
that was amazing news. You know, that's all that that's
sometimes that's the goal. Sure didn't get knocked up. You know,
did you eventually get an m f A And what
was that experience? Like, you know, I think people who
do get m f as in any creative field have
(07:37):
a range of experiences and thoughts about that experience. So
how was the m f A experience for you? I
did get my m f A from n y U,
from Tish, And I think part of grad school is
like you have to be in a little bit of
crisis because I think you have to fail kind of
spectacularly to like get the most out of it. Absolutely,
(08:01):
So I wrote some terrible plays like Embarrassed, so embarrassed,
like I can't even I think about them, and I'm like,
that is horrifying. It will forever. So what I hear
you saying is that they're never going to see the
light of day. And if you know, if you knew
me then, now you didn't, you know? So I know
(08:26):
that COVID changed a lot of people's plans, and its
certainly affected the plans of people who were going to
be presenting theater because we could not gather on mass
and that meant that theaters really did have to shut
down or innovate. So what was that experience like of
seeing the delayed production of something that you're anticipating so much.
(08:48):
I don't know. It was really hard and having it
all happened now, honestly, like, this is my first production,
this is my first round at getting reviewed. That was
hard for me and I don't know that I could
have done that two years ago. So what was hard?
And because as a writer, I do find I do
(09:09):
read reviews and I do find them challenging. I know
that it's part of the process, and I actually know
that it's especially given the limited amount of review space
there is for art. I know that it's a privilege
that critics will engage with my work, right, but it's
still challenging. So what is difficult for you about the
process of being reviewed? And do you read your reviews? Wow? Okay,
(09:31):
well I want you to talk about this too, because
I was like, going into this, I was like, you know,
maybe Roxanne has wisdom to offer here. I do. I
honestly have really struggled with it, and we've been lucky
enough to be met with English. We've been lucky to
have been met with fairly positive reviews. I'm kind of terrified,
(09:57):
Like our first preview, the first time we had to
let an audience in, I was like, you guys, like,
is this a good idea? Like are you sure we
should let them in? What if we didn't, wouldn't that
be interesting? You know? So let's keep it intimate, Let's
just keep it crew. And my stage manager was like,
we have to let them in, and I was like, fine,
all right, we'll let them in. New York theater is tricky.
(10:21):
If we had received bad reviews, like it makes me
one feel like my play would never have existed. And
I don't know if that really makes sense, but I
am so proud of what we put up on that stage,
and just because we got a good review, like doesn't
change any of that. But it's weird because you you know,
(10:43):
you know, like you right, and you pour like your
body into what you write literally and one day you
know the press embargoes lifted, and everyone is talking about
your play, and you're just left there with like all
(11:04):
the things people are saying about you, and even the
there are positive reviews that I didn't like, you know,
because I was like that, but that wasn't it, you know,
that wasn't it, and that made me feel I don't
know how that made me feel. I think it will
take me probably years to process all of this, and
(11:26):
I think you're right. I'm like, this is a part
of what we do, has to be a part of
what we do. But I don't know that I'm ever
going to be a writer that really embraces this part
of it. But you read your reviews, right, I do,
but I only read I don't read good Reads. I
don't read Amazon, like those reviews are none of my business.
(11:48):
But I do read like the reviews from professional critics.
For my first few books, it didn't matter. I had
a day job, so like, whatever, if the book flops,
that's okay, right, and now it's still okay. But I
kind of read through like two fingers, like I put
my hand out my face, like just waiting for the
(12:09):
bad part. And I also sometimes just have someone like
read it first so that I can be prepared for
whatever terrible might be in there. And I've never actually
had that many bad reviews. I've had critical reviews, and
that's actually good, Like, don't just swallow what I have
to say without questioning it, you know, engage with it.
But I do have problems when it depends on who's
(12:33):
doing the engagement, because my writing isn't for everyone, and
I don't know that if you don't understand my subject
position that I don't know that you can understand anything
I wrote in the way that I intended it. And
that's challenging. That's attention, I think, and I live with it.
It's fine, but it does concern me. So, you know,
(12:56):
thinking about the critical reception to your show. I read
an interview with Few where you worried about or we're
concerned about people laughing in the wrong places or laughing
at things that were funny but not for them. I
felt that both when I was watching the show and
also when I was watching UM fair View. Yes, sometimes
(13:18):
I would look around at the white people around me
laughing and think, are you laughing with the show or
are you laughing at the character? And you never know,
and I think I love that you force the audience
into that dilemma and like implicate them there. I just
thought that was such a clever, clever turn. I don't
(13:41):
know that I have a question, but just I saw
that and I really appreciated that because it brought an
added dimension to the show. Thank you for saying that
that part of the show. There's a lot of tension
there for me, and I wonder. I think like every
week I sort of give a different answer. But I know,
like a few weeks ago, when el Ham is called borat,
(14:06):
I mean there was like there were like four people
in the second row who were like besides themselves with laughter,
like billy laughing, you know, and it wasn't uncomfortable laughter.
It was truly like gut laughter. And that laughter has
haunted me a little bit because you and I know
(14:29):
how awful people can be towards people with accents. Absolutely,
that part has never been funny for me. That's like
the peak pain of the play. I wrote the play
for people who don't laugh there, you know, so like
it has to how that part is for them. There's
this line in the play and I try never to
(14:51):
do this, but it is a line to the audience really,
I mean, it's not directed at the audience, and it's
when Goldie says, I think you come here to laugh
at us two. Isn't it so funny how we cannot
pronounce the words? That line is so important to me.
I think I invite people to laugh. I don't want
(15:11):
to trick them. But I also hope that laughter turns
on itself, and I hope it becomes clear in the
play that like that laughter, that like mockery, is something
that is eroding and it can destroy a person. So
I tried to kind of cover my bases there, but
there will always be attention there. Part of theater, part
(15:34):
of art, like part of writing, is like a release,
and that release is terrifying and something I'm learning very quickly.
Maybe I'll never be okay with it. And you know,
like the the whole conceit of the play is sort
of an invitation for everyone to like take part in
all of their struggles. And I hope that at the
(15:56):
end of the play that pain is really really clear
it is. I was incredibly moved. I have not stopped
talking about the place since I saw it, and I
think partly I was moved as the child of immigrants,
and I understand what it means to have to force
your way of thinking and seeing the world into an
unfamiliar tongue. And in the play, there are so many
(16:17):
different ways where you bring out the sort of pain
of that, and we see that all the time, especially
because we have the teacher Marjon, who is hell bent
on teaching English, and you know, she keeps herself from
(16:37):
speaking in Farsi. And then we have Goalie who is
so enamored with English and um, I'll come, is just
so resistant to English, and right so, and then we
have this guy who's just like we later, I don't
want to give away the twist, but there's this man
who's taking the class who has a real facility for
(16:59):
English but has a real affinity for his Iranian culture.
And so the mix of those people in perspectives, I
think really did a great way of showcasing the different
relationships people have to English as a second language. So
I would love for you to talk a bit about
what these characters are trying to grapple with in terms
(17:21):
of identity and language, and like the sense of necessity
that they have to learn English for one reason or another.
But then they have to think through what that means
for who they are. Yeah, I grew up bilingual. For me,
it's always been so clear the privilege of being able
to like express yourself in the language spoken where you are,
(17:45):
and the immense cruelty when your accent is one that
is historically laughed at, and it's just easy. I think
I grew up seeing people treat my parents, you know,
as if they were like a little bit less of
a person, just because of that accent because English was
(18:06):
their second language. And I never have been able to
like understand that because for me, I'm like, hold on, now,
they speak to language as well. They created something here,
They created beauty where there was none a whole life,
and I have lived with that anger for a really
(18:26):
long time. And it all really really came to a
head after the Travel Band, because just the disrespect to
me was like I just had I just had a
I just white knuckled it, and I was like bursting
with anger throughout all of that, and I think I
still am in many ways. But I wrote this play
out of like a really really intense, visceral anger for
(18:50):
the way people think they can talk about immigrants, for
just the sheer disrespect the privilege of like never knowing
what it's like to start new, you know, to have nothing,
to feel like an outsider all the time. That really
does something to a person. And I needed people to
(19:11):
know that, and I needed people to like hear these
characters be able to express themselves fully so that the
audience had access to the fact that they're about to
lose something. And I say, like, I really wanted to
talk to you about this too. I've said that I
don't write trauma plays. I've had a little bit of
(19:35):
a change of heart about that because I think to
lose your ability to express yourself, to be treated like
a stranger constantly is trauma. I agree, I agree, you know,
I think oftentimes when we hear the word trauma, we
conjure up like surviving a war or an assault, are
(20:00):
like a horrific childhood. But I think displacement, even when
it's voluntary, you know, not only abandoning the only home
you've ever known and the only culture. It's not even abandoning,
but separating or being separated from the only home you've
ever known and the only culture you've ever really known,
and then having to adapt to a new one and
(20:22):
then having them not recognize that you were not born
the day you reached American shores, and that you have
a whole history and perhaps education and career that you're
bringing with you that is oftentimes completely erased because we choose,
this country chooses not to recognize it. You know. I
think that's a profound trauma, and I felt like that
(20:43):
was conveyed in so many different ways in the play,
and with al Ham, I felt it so viscerally, like
that was just my favorite character her story. I was
like gripped by her particular story because she was saying
what no one else was saying, and she was really
forcing Marjian to look into a mirror that Marjan was
(21:04):
not ready to look into. And you could see the
trauma playing out across every single person in that class,
even though they all responded to it differently, And to
show the range of responses, in the range of ways
that people deal with that sort of evolution that is
required by immigration, I thought was really beautifully handled. Thank you.
(21:28):
I think a lot about trauma. I'm actually teaching a
class on writing trauma this semester. It's my second time,
and I think that humor can be a really effective
tool for dealing with trauma. And I even in my
own work, I use humor quite a lot. So how
do you think about humor and trauma or just humor
in general in terms of your plays, Because this one's funny,
(21:49):
but you're dealing with actually a very profound subject. Thank you. Yeah,
I think about this a lot, like I can't not
write something that's funny, or I can't write something that's
not funny. God also losing my English. As we've done
this play more and more to me, you know, I
(22:09):
think what I mean when I say I don't want
to write a trauma play is that I think with
Middle Eastern narratives, it's so easy to look at that
part of the world and say that place is all trauma,
no humor, no kindness, no joy. And I think it's
(22:30):
really easy to distance ourselves from Middle Eastern people, and
that has been the predominant narrative. When I think about
stories set in the Middle East, I think, both English
and with Wish You Were Here, they're really sad and
they are actually about trauma in a way. Trauma, separation
(22:51):
from a culture, from a language, separation from your friends.
These are deeply traumatic events, but leaning into sadness is
not the truth. To me. The truth is in the
Middle East, we have there's so much laughter, there's joy,
there's kindness, there's silliness, there's crassness, like this is actually
(23:13):
the truth, And for some reason, I think audiences have
a harder time digesting that truth than like a story
in the Middle East that centers on a sexual assault.
You know, that is the story I think a lot
of people are comfortable with. I'm not here to say
like there is not oppression in the Middle East. I'm
(23:34):
just saying sometimes the truth is a lot harder. And
I think a lot about what it means to put
a story about the Middle East on an American stage
at this point, and I think it's really dangerous to
lean into that trauma story. I think it is incredibly flattening,
and I think we owe it to ourselves to tell
(23:55):
the story in a more truthful wife. Absolutely, you know,
I think about representation a lot and the narratives people
expect when you're writing about black people, queer people, Haitian people,
people in the you know, the diaspora. How do you
handle the burden of representation in your own work. I
(24:15):
have thought about this a lot, and I think, what
can I really do for my community? Like what can
I do for like Manossa writers? How can I be
a part of theater and open a door for other
people and not be tokenized and not let people off
the hook, you know, like, oh, we did a Middle
Eastern place and we don't have to do another one
for We're good for a decade. Yeah, totally, We're good
(24:39):
until the next travel van um. As of right now,
I think the best thing that I can do for
like our representation is to actually just treat myself like
an individual and an artist with extremely specific and particular taste.
(24:59):
Like I would love to be at a point where
I could like commission other Middle Eastern artists, but I'm
I'm not yet, and so I'm just trying to like
write the thing that I like knowing. You know, we've
had like walk out to our Iranian you know, like
not every Middle Eastern or response to this play. It
it hurt my feelings. Of course, it hurts my feelings.
(25:21):
I want every Iranian to love this play, and but
it's okay for all of us to have taste, like
specific taste. I make you sit through a secure song
for like a really long time if you're not into it, like,
that's your right, although why don't you like it? You know,
so like what's wrong there? What who hurt? You? Appreciate
(25:44):
the fact that the hips don't lie? Don't If you
don't want it, there's nothing I can do for you.
One of the things that struck me in the show
was the way you managed accents, because you knew that
the audience was not going to understand Farsi. And so,
for those of you who who have not seen the show,
(26:06):
when people are speaking in Farsi, they speak English, and
when they're speaking English, they speak English with an accent.
And after about four or five lines into the show,
you start to realize that this is the device that's
being used to convey the difference between English and Farsi.
And I loved that idea. So who came up with
(26:27):
that idea? Because it works so well on so many
different levels? Thank you? It was not me. A lot
of people have referenced translations by Brian f Real. I
have not read that, but I think that play does
exactly that. And I also think it's a weirdly this
idea is something where like we're we actually do all
(26:47):
the time, like an Anna Karenina, you know, and the
and the last remake, like they're all speaking British English,
but it's very obviously you know that that is a
Russian novel and they would be speaking in Russian, and
so we understand. I think when we are watching a
film or when we're in a theater, like you're you're
(27:08):
entering a portal, and there are things that were translating
for you that don't operate in full naturalism, but that
is what we're doing. And I think, you know, like
I have had, I have changed how I think about
accents a lot. I used to think if I did
if I wrote my family drama, would I would use
the same device so that the audience would would would
(27:31):
know the lives of these bilingual people. And now I
feel that I won't do that at all in my
next play because I think it has value. Yeah, I
think that they're an audience. Like I've always known. When
I watched things, I was like, well, there are things
not for me, Like there there's there's a part of
every play that's written for a specific experience and that
(27:53):
may not be yours. I've always I think a lot
of people of color understand that and their experience engaging
with art, and I would like my audience is to
learn how to engage with art in that way as well.
Not everything is for you, But in a play about
learning a language and letting a language go, we had
to know, we have to know absolutely, Yeah, yeah, you know,
(28:17):
And I too believe sometimes the audience has to work
for it and not everything is for you, and maybe
there are things that you're not going to get. When
my students ask should I translate if I'm going to
write something in a different language, and you know, nine
times out of ten, the answer is no, you don't
need to translate it. And it's just not for that
person who doesn't speak that language. And they'll be okay
(28:40):
because if you put enough context around it, they'll get
the gist of what's going on there anyway. But it's
always an interesting creative choice, no matter how a writer
chooses to deal with language and accents and difference. And
so I was really interested in the way that this
show handled that. Thank you, We've for it. Let you go.
(29:00):
Tell us about the new play that's opening in April.
Wish you were here now, This one I have not
yet seen, but I do know that it's also set
in Iran. Yes, please come see it. We would love
to have you. Um Wish you were here is about
a group of friends in Iran who become separated after
the events of the Iranian Revolution. It's again about separation
(29:23):
and loss, and it's also about a group of women
being together as things happen outside the walls of their
living room. I talk a lot about my period, and
that's also a big yeah. And again it's sad, but
it's funny, you know, and I just wanted to hear
(29:43):
laughter on stage. I wrote it as a love letter
to my mother. Yeah, please come Have your parents seen
English Ship? Yes, they came to opening night. My mom
loved it. I think my dad liked it. I mean,
I'm not really shure. I've never really I can't really
catch read on himself. I think he thinks for a
(30:04):
lot of Dad's like he was there, Yes, he was there.
And all I can tell you is that he was there.
I remember, like my dad like after he saw the Martian,
you know, like he like leaned back in his chair
and he was like, I was like, Dad, did you
like it? He was like that would never have happened?
And I was like, all right, all right, thank you
(30:26):
for that takeaway. Yeah, it's called the Martian. We know
it's not real. Yeah, so found it to be very convincing. Though.
I was like, I liked it. What's not to like?
But you know, like I think it was real for them.
It was really meaningful for me to have them there.
Dad doesn't maybe have to like it, but he hope
(30:46):
he does. Well, they showed up, which I think is
they showed up Wilson's thank you so much for joining
me and I cannot wait to see wish you were
here and everything else that you write. You have a fan.
Thank you. You can keep up with me and the
podcast on social media on Twitter at our Gay and
Instagram at Roxanne Gay seventy four. Our email address is
(31:09):
Roxanne Gay Agenda at gmail dot com and we would
love to hear from you from Luminaire. The Roxanne Gay
Agenda is produced by Curtis Fox. Our researcher is your
Signa Morena, and production support is provided by Caitlin Adams
and Meg Pillow. I am Roxanne Gay, your favorite bad feminist.
Thank you for listening.
This is incredibly bougy. But we recently had dinner at
eleven Madison. It's this fine dining restaurant, and over the pandemic,
they decided to shift to a plant based menu. You know,
I wasn't really sure what to expect from menu, but
the meal was outrageously good. There were just so many courses,
and they had lots of different components, and there was
(00:22):
always this little presentation ritual. The food was whimsical and
interesting and sometimes delicious, no often delicious when you have
that many courses being served to you. There were a
few dishes I didn't care for, but even then I
recognized that the fault lay with me and not the food. Now,
about halfway through the meal, we were invited back into
(00:42):
the kitchen, which is eerily quiet, and it was immaculately clean,
stainless steel, these huge refrigerators filled with beautiful, beautiful vegetables.
We were fed this maple snow candy and I said,
oh my god, this is like a little house on
the prairie. And then of course I had to explain
what I meant by that. Anyway, if you have a
lot of extra money line around and you're feeling adventurous.
(01:06):
You will not regret an evening. I to love Madison,
and they did not pay me to say that. From Luminary.
This is the Roxanne Gay Agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast
of your Dreams. I am Roxanne Gay, your favorite bad
feminist on this week's agenda, English with an Accent. Growing up,
(01:28):
I didn't know my parents had an accent. They were
just my parents. Their voices were home. It was only
when my brothers and I went to school and our
peers met my parents that we understood there was something
different about them. American ears can be so very unkind,
and children can be very unkind. They would tease us
(01:49):
about our parents accents. They would pretend they couldn't understand
what they were saying, and it was infuriating. It only
made me love my parents more. Once we did start
hearing their accents, we couldn't unhear them. But I always
found their voices beautiful. They were warm, and their words
were pleasantly rounded, and we also found the way they
(02:09):
spoke incredibly funny. At times, they spoke fluent English, but
trying to shape their mouths into certain pronunciations was an
ongoing challenge. My dad in particular would add an h
before most fouls, so we would ask him endlessly to
say American airlines, and then we would walk around the
house singing American hairlines. Kids are the worst, are just
(02:32):
the worst. But my dad was always amused. He would say,
you make fun, but you understand me perfectly, don't you,
And we would NodD because of course we did. We
always had. During summers when I was much younger, my
parents would sometimes take us to Port of Prince and
in Haiti we saw a completely different side of them.
It wasn't that they were different people. Instead, they were bolder,
(02:54):
brighter versions of themselves. We certainly heard them speaking French
and Crayole at home in the state, but in Haiti
there was a lightness to their conversations and all they
spoke were their native tongues. More than once, I realized
I was seeing them as their truest selves. I thought
about this when I recently saw the play by SNAs
Tussi at the Atlantic Theater in New York. It's a
(03:17):
comedy but also not about in English as a second
language class in Iran, and it tells the story of
the teacher and her students, all with very different relationships
with the English language. It's very funny, it's incredibly moving,
it's painful at times, and the writing is so very
elegant and intelligent. The English playwright is my guest today.
(03:39):
SNAs Tussie, at the age of thirty, has not one
but two plays opening this year in New York. The
second play is Wish You were here. And if you
missed seeing English and you're in New York, you should
be able to see this production at Playwrights Horizons. SNAs
Tussi joins me via zoom from her home in brook
(04:00):
and Sona's Welcome to the Roxanne Gay Agenda. Hi, Roxanne,
thank you so much for having me. This is such
an honor on my part. Thank you. I really loved
your play. I did not know what to expect because
I try not to do too much reading about a
show before I see it. I just want to go
and enjoy myself or not same totally fair. It's the
(04:20):
best way. I find. It's the only way. It's the
only way. When I read too much criticism before I
play a movie a book that tends to shape my
experience of the thing. Now afterward, I will absolutely go
and make sure the critics got it right, absolutely say yeah,
but before I have no business. That's not you know,
it's not of my business what other people think. So
(04:42):
I understood that you kept the fact that you were
a play right from your mother. As a Haitian American,
I totally get it. Why did you do that? You know?
I was I'm only and I think I saw how
incredibly hard my parents worked growing up like that was
never hidden from me, the hustle, and I thought the
(05:07):
only way to make them proud was to do something correct,
like a doctor or a lawyer. I knew I was
never going to be a doctor, but um, I thought
I could be a lawyer. I was going to go
to law school. And I still think, like there's a
world in which I would have been a very happy lawyer.
But I really had no idea that people could be writers.
(05:27):
I was like, how does one do such a thing?
Like where does one go? It's funny, like, I'm Irany
and we have a deep appreciation for poetry and art
and we're deeply like mystical people. And I you know,
there's something about immigrant culture that says, you gotta make money,
you gotta have a nice house, and you only do
(05:48):
these things through um accepted practices, such as like law
and medicine. Yes, I used to call law, medicine, and
engineering the Haitian trifecta of like the three acceptable pathways
for a good Haitian daughter. And for a time I tried,
I did. I was premed during my first year of
(06:10):
college and that was a disaster. And then it was
an architecture major because I thought, oh, that's sort of
engineering adjacent and it never worked out. Of course, It's
so funny, like in Iranian culture, we have where I
should say, I'm you know, Iranian diaspora culture, we have
the same, like you, three options doctor, lawyer, engineer, and
(06:32):
the fourth option is absolute failure. So how do you
break the news to your parents that, guess what, I
did find a career path, but I'm going to be
at playwright in New York. Um, you know, I applied
to grad school, applied to m f A programs. Secretly.
I told only a few people, and I got an interview.
(06:56):
At that point, I was like, if I don't tell
my mom, I'm lying. I'm so close with my mom,
close with both of my parents. But I think at
that point I was like, all right, you got to
tell her. However she reacts, you have to go to
the interview and you can't lie to her anymore. And
she was so happy for me, Roxanne, she was like thrilled,
(07:16):
I think mostly because I wasn't pregnant, and I think
that was amazing news. You know, that's all that that's
sometimes that's the goal. Sure didn't get knocked up. You know,
did you eventually get an m f A And what
was that experience? Like, you know, I think people who
do get m f as in any creative field have
(07:37):
a range of experiences and thoughts about that experience. So
how was the m f A experience for you? I
did get my m f A from n y U,
from Tish, And I think part of grad school is
like you have to be in a little bit of
crisis because I think you have to fail kind of
spectacularly to like get the most out of it. Absolutely,
(08:01):
So I wrote some terrible plays like Embarrassed, so embarrassed,
like I can't even I think about them, and I'm like,
that is horrifying. It will forever. So what I hear
you saying is that they're never going to see the
light of day. And if you know, if you knew
me then, now you didn't, you know? So I know
(08:26):
that COVID changed a lot of people's plans, and its
certainly affected the plans of people who were going to
be presenting theater because we could not gather on mass
and that meant that theaters really did have to shut
down or innovate. So what was that experience like of
seeing the delayed production of something that you're anticipating so much.
(08:48):
I don't know. It was really hard and having it
all happened now, honestly, like, this is my first production,
this is my first round at getting reviewed. That was
hard for me and I don't know that I could
have done that two years ago. So what was hard?
And because as a writer, I do find I do
(09:09):
read reviews and I do find them challenging. I know
that it's part of the process, and I actually know
that it's especially given the limited amount of review space
there is for art. I know that it's a privilege
that critics will engage with my work, right, but it's
still challenging. So what is difficult for you about the
process of being reviewed? And do you read your reviews? Wow? Okay,
(09:31):
well I want you to talk about this too, because
I was like, going into this, I was like, you know,
maybe Roxanne has wisdom to offer here. I do. I
honestly have really struggled with it, and we've been lucky
enough to be met with English. We've been lucky to
have been met with fairly positive reviews. I'm kind of terrified,
(09:57):
Like our first preview, the first time we had to
let an audience in, I was like, you guys, like,
is this a good idea? Like are you sure we
should let them in? What if we didn't, wouldn't that
be interesting? You know? So let's keep it intimate, Let's
just keep it crew. And my stage manager was like,
we have to let them in, and I was like, fine,
all right, we'll let them in. New York theater is tricky.
(10:21):
If we had received bad reviews, like it makes me
one feel like my play would never have existed. And
I don't know if that really makes sense, but I
am so proud of what we put up on that stage,
and just because we got a good review, like doesn't
change any of that. But it's weird because you you know,
(10:43):
you know, like you right, and you pour like your
body into what you write literally and one day you
know the press embargoes lifted, and everyone is talking about
your play, and you're just left there with like all
(11:04):
the things people are saying about you, and even the
there are positive reviews that I didn't like, you know,
because I was like that, but that wasn't it, you know,
that wasn't it, and that made me feel I don't
know how that made me feel. I think it will
take me probably years to process all of this, and
(11:26):
I think you're right. I'm like, this is a part
of what we do, has to be a part of
what we do. But I don't know that I'm ever
going to be a writer that really embraces this part
of it. But you read your reviews, right, I do,
but I only read I don't read good Reads. I
don't read Amazon, like those reviews are none of my business.
(11:48):
But I do read like the reviews from professional critics.
For my first few books, it didn't matter. I had
a day job, so like, whatever, if the book flops,
that's okay, right, and now it's still okay. But I
kind of read through like two fingers, like I put
my hand out my face, like just waiting for the
(12:09):
bad part. And I also sometimes just have someone like
read it first so that I can be prepared for
whatever terrible might be in there. And I've never actually
had that many bad reviews. I've had critical reviews, and
that's actually good, Like, don't just swallow what I have
to say without questioning it, you know, engage with it.
But I do have problems when it depends on who's
(12:33):
doing the engagement, because my writing isn't for everyone, and
I don't know that if you don't understand my subject
position that I don't know that you can understand anything
I wrote in the way that I intended it. And
that's challenging. That's attention, I think, and I live with it.
It's fine, but it does concern me. So, you know,
(12:56):
thinking about the critical reception to your show. I read
an interview with Few where you worried about or we're
concerned about people laughing in the wrong places or laughing
at things that were funny but not for them. I
felt that both when I was watching the show and
also when I was watching UM fair View. Yes, sometimes
(13:18):
I would look around at the white people around me
laughing and think, are you laughing with the show or
are you laughing at the character? And you never know,
and I think I love that you force the audience
into that dilemma and like implicate them there. I just
thought that was such a clever, clever turn. I don't
(13:41):
know that I have a question, but just I saw
that and I really appreciated that because it brought an
added dimension to the show. Thank you for saying that
that part of the show. There's a lot of tension
there for me, and I wonder. I think like every
week I sort of give a different answer. But I know,
like a few weeks ago, when el Ham is called borat,
(14:06):
I mean there was like there were like four people
in the second row who were like besides themselves with laughter,
like billy laughing, you know, and it wasn't uncomfortable laughter.
It was truly like gut laughter. And that laughter has
haunted me a little bit because you and I know
(14:29):
how awful people can be towards people with accents. Absolutely,
that part has never been funny for me. That's like
the peak pain of the play. I wrote the play
for people who don't laugh there, you know, so like
it has to how that part is for them. There's
this line in the play and I try never to
(14:51):
do this, but it is a line to the audience really,
I mean, it's not directed at the audience, and it's
when Goldie says, I think you come here to laugh
at us two. Isn't it so funny how we cannot
pronounce the words? That line is so important to me.
I think I invite people to laugh. I don't want
(15:11):
to trick them. But I also hope that laughter turns
on itself, and I hope it becomes clear in the
play that like that laughter, that like mockery, is something
that is eroding and it can destroy a person. So
I tried to kind of cover my bases there, but
there will always be attention there. Part of theater, part
(15:34):
of art, like part of writing, is like a release,
and that release is terrifying and something I'm learning very quickly.
Maybe I'll never be okay with it. And you know,
like the the whole conceit of the play is sort
of an invitation for everyone to like take part in
all of their struggles. And I hope that at the
(15:56):
end of the play that pain is really really clear
it is. I was incredibly moved. I have not stopped
talking about the place since I saw it, and I
think partly I was moved as the child of immigrants,
and I understand what it means to have to force
your way of thinking and seeing the world into an
unfamiliar tongue. And in the play, there are so many
(16:17):
different ways where you bring out the sort of pain
of that, and we see that all the time, especially
because we have the teacher Marjon, who is hell bent
on teaching English, and you know, she keeps herself from
(16:37):
speaking in Farsi. And then we have Goalie who is
so enamored with English and um, I'll come, is just
so resistant to English, and right so, and then we
have this guy who's just like we later, I don't
want to give away the twist, but there's this man
who's taking the class who has a real facility for
(16:59):
English but has a real affinity for his Iranian culture.
And so the mix of those people in perspectives, I
think really did a great way of showcasing the different
relationships people have to English as a second language. So
I would love for you to talk a bit about
what these characters are trying to grapple with in terms
(17:21):
of identity and language, and like the sense of necessity
that they have to learn English for one reason or another.
But then they have to think through what that means
for who they are. Yeah, I grew up bilingual. For me,
it's always been so clear the privilege of being able
to like express yourself in the language spoken where you are,
(17:45):
and the immense cruelty when your accent is one that
is historically laughed at, and it's just easy. I think
I grew up seeing people treat my parents, you know,
as if they were like a little bit less of
a person, just because of that accent because English was
(18:06):
their second language. And I never have been able to
like understand that because for me, I'm like, hold on, now,
they speak to language as well. They created something here,
They created beauty where there was none a whole life,
and I have lived with that anger for a really
(18:26):
long time. And it all really really came to a
head after the Travel Band, because just the disrespect to
me was like I just had I just had a
I just white knuckled it, and I was like bursting
with anger throughout all of that, and I think I
still am in many ways. But I wrote this play
out of like a really really intense, visceral anger for
(18:50):
the way people think they can talk about immigrants, for
just the sheer disrespect the privilege of like never knowing
what it's like to start new, you know, to have nothing,
to feel like an outsider all the time. That really
does something to a person. And I needed people to
(19:11):
know that, and I needed people to like hear these
characters be able to express themselves fully so that the
audience had access to the fact that they're about to
lose something. And I say, like, I really wanted to
talk to you about this too. I've said that I
don't write trauma plays. I've had a little bit of
(19:35):
a change of heart about that because I think to
lose your ability to express yourself, to be treated like
a stranger constantly is trauma. I agree, I agree, you know,
I think oftentimes when we hear the word trauma, we
conjure up like surviving a war or an assault, are
(20:00):
like a horrific childhood. But I think displacement, even when
it's voluntary, you know, not only abandoning the only home
you've ever known and the only culture. It's not even abandoning,
but separating or being separated from the only home you've
ever known and the only culture you've ever really known,
and then having to adapt to a new one and
(20:22):
then having them not recognize that you were not born
the day you reached American shores, and that you have
a whole history and perhaps education and career that you're
bringing with you that is oftentimes completely erased because we choose,
this country chooses not to recognize it. You know. I
think that's a profound trauma, and I felt like that
(20:43):
was conveyed in so many different ways in the play,
and with al Ham, I felt it so viscerally, like
that was just my favorite character her story. I was
like gripped by her particular story because she was saying
what no one else was saying, and she was really
forcing Marjian to look into a mirror that Marjan was
(21:04):
not ready to look into. And you could see the
trauma playing out across every single person in that class,
even though they all responded to it differently, And to
show the range of responses, in the range of ways
that people deal with that sort of evolution that is
required by immigration, I thought was really beautifully handled. Thank you.
(21:28):
I think a lot about trauma. I'm actually teaching a
class on writing trauma this semester. It's my second time,
and I think that humor can be a really effective
tool for dealing with trauma. And I even in my
own work, I use humor quite a lot. So how
do you think about humor and trauma or just humor
in general in terms of your plays, Because this one's funny,
(21:49):
but you're dealing with actually a very profound subject. Thank you. Yeah,
I think about this a lot, like I can't not
write something that's funny, or I can't write something that's
not funny. God also losing my English. As we've done
this play more and more to me, you know, I
(22:09):
think what I mean when I say I don't want
to write a trauma play is that I think with
Middle Eastern narratives, it's so easy to look at that
part of the world and say that place is all trauma,
no humor, no kindness, no joy. And I think it's
(22:30):
really easy to distance ourselves from Middle Eastern people, and
that has been the predominant narrative. When I think about
stories set in the Middle East, I think, both English
and with Wish You Were Here, they're really sad and
they are actually about trauma in a way. Trauma, separation
(22:51):
from a culture, from a language, separation from your friends.
These are deeply traumatic events, but leaning into sadness is
not the truth. To me. The truth is in the
Middle East, we have there's so much laughter, there's joy,
there's kindness, there's silliness, there's crassness, like this is actually
(23:13):
the truth, And for some reason, I think audiences have
a harder time digesting that truth than like a story
in the Middle East that centers on a sexual assault.
You know, that is the story I think a lot
of people are comfortable with. I'm not here to say
like there is not oppression in the Middle East. I'm
(23:34):
just saying sometimes the truth is a lot harder. And
I think a lot about what it means to put
a story about the Middle East on an American stage
at this point, and I think it's really dangerous to
lean into that trauma story. I think it is incredibly flattening,
and I think we owe it to ourselves to tell
(23:55):
the story in a more truthful wife. Absolutely, you know,
I think about representation a lot and the narratives people
expect when you're writing about black people, queer people, Haitian people,
people in the you know, the diaspora. How do you
handle the burden of representation in your own work. I
(24:15):
have thought about this a lot, and I think, what
can I really do for my community? Like what can
I do for like Manossa writers? How can I be
a part of theater and open a door for other
people and not be tokenized and not let people off
the hook, you know, like, oh, we did a Middle
Eastern place and we don't have to do another one
for We're good for a decade. Yeah, totally, We're good
(24:39):
until the next travel van um. As of right now,
I think the best thing that I can do for
like our representation is to actually just treat myself like
an individual and an artist with extremely specific and particular taste.
(24:59):
Like I would love to be at a point where
I could like commission other Middle Eastern artists, but I'm
I'm not yet, and so I'm just trying to like
write the thing that I like knowing. You know, we've
had like walk out to our Iranian you know, like
not every Middle Eastern or response to this play. It
it hurt my feelings. Of course, it hurts my feelings.
(25:21):
I want every Iranian to love this play, and but
it's okay for all of us to have taste, like
specific taste. I make you sit through a secure song
for like a really long time if you're not into it, like,
that's your right, although why don't you like it? You know,
so like what's wrong there? What who hurt? You? Appreciate
(25:44):
the fact that the hips don't lie? Don't If you
don't want it, there's nothing I can do for you.
One of the things that struck me in the show
was the way you managed accents, because you knew that
the audience was not going to understand Farsi. And so,
for those of you who who have not seen the show,
(26:06):
when people are speaking in Farsi, they speak English, and
when they're speaking English, they speak English with an accent.
And after about four or five lines into the show,
you start to realize that this is the device that's
being used to convey the difference between English and Farsi.
And I loved that idea. So who came up with
(26:27):
that idea? Because it works so well on so many
different levels? Thank you? It was not me. A lot
of people have referenced translations by Brian f Real. I
have not read that, but I think that play does
exactly that. And I also think it's a weirdly this
idea is something where like we're we actually do all
(26:47):
the time, like an Anna Karenina, you know, and the
and the last remake, like they're all speaking British English,
but it's very obviously you know that that is a
Russian novel and they would be speaking in Russian, and
so we understand. I think when we are watching a
film or when we're in a theater, like you're you're
(27:08):
entering a portal, and there are things that were translating
for you that don't operate in full naturalism, but that
is what we're doing. And I think, you know, like
I have had, I have changed how I think about
accents a lot. I used to think if I did
if I wrote my family drama, would I would use
the same device so that the audience would would would
(27:31):
know the lives of these bilingual people. And now I
feel that I won't do that at all in my
next play because I think it has value. Yeah, I
think that they're an audience. Like I've always known. When
I watched things, I was like, well, there are things
not for me, Like there there's there's a part of
every play that's written for a specific experience and that
(27:53):
may not be yours. I've always I think a lot
of people of color understand that and their experience engaging
with art, and I would like my audience is to
learn how to engage with art in that way as well.
Not everything is for you, But in a play about
learning a language and letting a language go, we had
to know, we have to know absolutely, Yeah, yeah, you know,
(28:17):
And I too believe sometimes the audience has to work
for it and not everything is for you, and maybe
there are things that you're not going to get. When
my students ask should I translate if I'm going to
write something in a different language, and you know, nine
times out of ten, the answer is no, you don't
need to translate it. And it's just not for that
person who doesn't speak that language. And they'll be okay
(28:40):
because if you put enough context around it, they'll get
the gist of what's going on there anyway. But it's
always an interesting creative choice, no matter how a writer
chooses to deal with language and accents and difference. And
so I was really interested in the way that this
show handled that. Thank you, We've for it. Let you go.
(29:00):
Tell us about the new play that's opening in April.
Wish you were here now, This one I have not
yet seen, but I do know that it's also set
in Iran. Yes, please come see it. We would love
to have you. Um Wish you were here is about
a group of friends in Iran who become separated after
the events of the Iranian Revolution. It's again about separation
(29:23):
and loss, and it's also about a group of women
being together as things happen outside the walls of their
living room. I talk a lot about my period, and
that's also a big yeah. And again it's sad, but
it's funny, you know, and I just wanted to hear
(29:43):
laughter on stage. I wrote it as a love letter
to my mother. Yeah, please come Have your parents seen
English Ship? Yes, they came to opening night. My mom
loved it. I think my dad liked it. I mean,
I'm not really shure. I've never really I can't really
catch read on himself. I think he thinks for a
(30:04):
lot of Dad's like he was there, Yes, he was there.
And all I can tell you is that he was there.
I remember, like my dad like after he saw the Martian,
you know, like he like leaned back in his chair
and he was like, I was like, Dad, did you
like it? He was like that would never have happened?
And I was like, all right, all right, thank you
(30:26):
for that takeaway. Yeah, it's called the Martian. We know
it's not real. Yeah, so found it to be very convincing. Though.
I was like, I liked it. What's not to like?
But you know, like I think it was real for them.
It was really meaningful for me to have them there.
Dad doesn't maybe have to like it, but he hope
(30:46):
he does. Well, they showed up, which I think is
they showed up Wilson's thank you so much for joining
me and I cannot wait to see wish you were
here and everything else that you write. You have a fan.
Thank you. You can keep up with me and the
podcast on social media on Twitter at our Gay and
Instagram at Roxanne Gay seventy four. Our email address is
(31:09):
Roxanne Gay Agenda at gmail dot com and we would
love to hear from you from Luminaire. The Roxanne Gay
Agenda is produced by Curtis Fox. Our researcher is your
Signa Morena, and production support is provided by Caitlin Adams
and Meg Pillow. I am Roxanne Gay, your favorite bad feminist.
Thank you for listening.
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