Each month on The Subtext, Brian speaks with a playwright about life, writing, and whatever itches we are scratching.

This month he talks with Chloé Hung about her journey to playwriting, acting, and directing from her early childhood in Toronto. Drama class was mandatory, and at age 7 or 8 she found it “clicking.” Still, she never saw an Asian face onstage at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, which is why her parents were concerned about her desire to explore theatre professionally. But she persevered. Her early play Issei, He Say, which has been produced at New Jersey Rep, was based on interviews with her grandmother, who immigrated to Canada from China and moved next door to a Japanese family in the post-WWII period, when relations between China and Japan were adversarial.

Hung talks to Brian about the essence of Canadian-ness, feeling pressure to write immigrant narratives, evaluating life, and how turning 30 during the pandemic in 2020 motivated her to find ways to nourish herself through friendships, family, and romantic relationships.

Her other credits include Three Women of Swatow (Tarragon Theatre, Centaur Theatre) and All Our Yesterdays (Toronto Fringe Fest). She has workshopped plays and been in residence with IAMA Theatre, Geffen Theatre’s Writers room, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Stratford Festival of Canada’s Playwrights Retreat, Moving Arts’ MADLab, Banff Playwrights Lab, NNPN’s MFA workshop at the Kennedy Center, Circle of Missé, and Tarragon’s Playwrights Unit. In TV and film, Chloé has written for Queen Sugar, Cherish the Day, and The Watchful Eye. She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch.

This episode can also be found here. It can also be found on iTunes and Spotify.