Interview: Keiko Green of EXOTIC DEADLY: OR THE MSG PLAY at San Francisco Playhouse

What would you do if you were an Asian American playwright and your grandfather had happened to work for a major manufacturer and distributor of MSG? I’m pretty sure you’d be inclined to use that little nugget of family history as the impetus for creating a new play, and that’s exactly what Keiko Green did. Now that work, an anime-infused adventure comedy called Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play, is about to have its Northern California premiere at San Francisco Playhouse. The company has a impressive track record of presenting work by emerging playwrights whose careers are about to hit it big (Lauren Yee being just one recent example), which is exactly the position Green seems to be finding herself in right now.

A prolific playwright who is used to having her plays receive “one-and-done” productions, Green is suddenly seeing markedly increased interest in her work. Just weeks after Exotic Deadly starts performances in San Francisco, she has two world premieres set for two prominent SoCal regional theaters – Empty Ride at San Diego’s Old Globe in February, followed by You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World! at South Coast Rep in April. Clearly, she is on a roll.

I spoke with Green by phone last week shortly after she’d flown to San Diego following a week of rehearsals in San Francisco for Exotic Deadly. She seemed energized from her experience in the rehearsal room and was understandably excited about the amount of attention her work is now receiving. We discussed how she came up with the idea for Exotic Deadly, what it was like to be the lone Asian kid in school with a an ostensibly “stinky” lunchbox, what's the best thing about being a playwright and why she feels she’s better suited for it than working as the actor she originally set out to be (and occasionally still is). Green is one of those people who is naturally fun and interesting to talk to, open and forthcoming with an offbeat sense of humor. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

When I saw that Exotic Deadly was about a Japanese American teenager on a "whimsically wacky time-travelling romp to save the world from MSG,” I thought, “Wow, I’ve never seen that play before!” How did you come up with the idea?

My grandfather, my Ojichan, was actually a food scientist at Ajinomoto, the MSG manufacturing and distributing company in Japan. He was also a professor and my mom always talked about that aspect of his life a little bit more. I grew up in suburban Georgia, like there were no Asians around, and so I didn’t really grow into myself and my racial identity until probably college.

Growing up, I was always – I don’t know, not embarrassed, not ashamed, but something close to that. It really felt like there was a parallel to my mom and how she talked about MSG, even in our household. No one really knew the science of it, but it felt like “I think this might be bad because everyone keeps saying that.” And the way she would kind of hide it away, looking back on it later I was like “Oh, those two things actually feel really parallel.”

I wondered if there was a way to make that really clear, and what would it look like to just connect those things? But I never wrote it, and I didn’t really quite know how, didn’t know what the tone of the play would be. Then COVID hit years later and we also had a major death in the family, my mother-in-law passed away. My husband and I were living in her house, packing up her stuff and we were on lockdown and the theater industry seemed like it might be dead. It just felt really kind of hopeless so I gave myself a little challenge, which was to sit in front of my laptop and make myself laugh, out loud. If I could write a play that made me laugh out loud while writing it, then that would be a success. I wouldn’t worry about what theaters wanted to produce or what audiences wanted, I would just write something that I wanted, something that would entertain me and make me laugh, and I started to write the first few scenes of the play.

And somehow, out of the lockdown, this was my first play to get national recognition. It got into the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and through that got picked up by The Old Globe for a reading and then off the reading got picked up for production. So it’s had an interesting life.

As a Japanese American kid growing up in Georgia, were you confronted with the “stinky lunchbox” situation?

Yes!

I’m fascinated by that partly because I had the opposite experience. As a white kid from the Midwest, I was embarrassed because my lunches were always so bland and uninteresting.

Oh, wow! I went to a private Japanese language school from preschool until 5th grade. My mom just basically wanted someone she could speak Japanese with, so they had me in Japanese language school until 5th grade, and then they were like “OK, she’s mostly got it so we’ll transfer her to the school down the street.” [laughs] At that school everyone brought in, you know, a Japanese bento and that was the norm.

Then from 5th grade pretty much all through high school, my mom would still try to pack these really nutritious, wonderful lunches (as I realize now), but they were so, so, so different from what everyone else was having at the time. And you know we make jokes about this, but like my high school boyfriend I remember would only eat chicken fingers and fries, and that was his lunch every day. And I was bringing – even when I begged my mom to make me something more Western - it would still be like pasta or something. Everything was very pungent, and I was begging her to make me turkey sandwiches, so you and I should have traded lunches! [laughs]

But in the Japanese culture, just making sure your kids are having a nutritious meal is so the priority. And the smell is something that I think was commented on a few times, but all it takes is one comment or two and you’re just so aware of it. I think I was probably more aware of it than any of the other kids were after that.

Fifteen years later I ended up doing a show in Portland and there was a fight choreographer, who’s this tiny Asian American gal and had no idea I was thinking one day of writing this play. She mentioned that the last show she’d worked on, the artistic director and the director of the play walked through while she was eating her Asian food, and they were like, “Aw, man, that really smells.” They kind of made fun of it, laughing it off, but ultimately she was so mortified and just felt so othered.

And so for me the play starts off with that. It’s not a play about racism, really. It’s more a play about microaggressions and internalized racism, I’d say, and how something as seemingly innocuous as just commenting on someone’s lunch ends up doing kind of a number on them as they’re growing up, in their confidence and their identity.

I don’t mean to minimize that experience, but I was probably the white kid sitting next to you saying to himself, “Ooh, I want what she’s having.”

Yeah, and you know it’s so funny because I remember growing up in Georgia when sushi was first becoming a thing and the amount of times I heard the phrase “Where I come from we call that bait.” And then within ten years it was the trendiest thing [to eat] and I was like “Oh, when did this happen?”

Are you the type of playwright who likes to attend rehearsals of their work?

Yes, I am. This is the second production of Exotic Deadly, and it was so cool to get to do this show at The Old Globe almost two years ago now. You learn so much during previews, but it’s still quite a quick process. And so Jesca Prudencio, the director, and I were like “Oh, there’s little things that were coming out in previews. It would’ve been nice to have a bit more time.” When San Francisco Playhouse first contacted me about the play, they asked if it was something I still wanted to work on, and I was like “Omigosh, yes, if you will give us the time!”

One thing about me as a playwright is if you give me time to workshop a play, I will use every second. So we workshopped the play again in August and made some big changes in the script, then they started rehearsals at the end of December. Just because of the actors’ scheduling, we decided to have me come in the second week of rehearsals. We were still doing some rewrites and clarifying some things. Some things were like “I can’t believe that made it through the whole first run and no one noticed this giant, glaring issue!” [laughs] But that’s the joy of a living document, you know?

Did Jesca direct that first production as well?

Yes, and our first production was in the round, so there were a lot of little changes to be made just from that. I think that the play works much better in a proscenium house, and we’re really utilizing the turntable that SF Playhouse has. Because it’s kind of this “impossible play” in that it constantly changes locations and actors are playing a million characters and it’s such a fast-paced show, we are utilizing every single thing that SF Playhouse is giving us.

Didn’t you originally set out to be an actor?

Yeah, I really thought I was mostly going to be an actor and I went to school at NYU. Jesca and I were actually there at the same time. The way that NYU works if you’re an actor, you audition with a monolog and then they place you in a studio, because the acting school is actually made up of several smaller acting schools. I had selected the strangest British pieces, like as a 17-year-old I did a monolog from Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis [laughs] and these really kind of experimental pieces, and so they unsurprisingly put me in the experimental theater wing. A huge part of that program is creating your own work, and at the time I was just like “Oh, cool, I like creating my own work.”

I went to school there with people like Maya Erskine who created PEN15 and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Rachel Bloom from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and did shows with both of them. So there were a lot of people who performed and created their own work, and I always kind of loved it, but I was like “Oh, wait. I think I’m a performer maybe.”

How did you decide that you were better suited to being a playwright?

It wasn’t until moving to Seattle for seven years and working as a regional theater actor out there. I’d always thought that everybody hated opening because that was when the director and designers and everyone left, and then the actors are kind of left on their own. I always felt like “Oh, this is a bummer.” You know, this is where the most exciting part of the work stops, where we’re role-building and actively creating. Now it’s still growing, but it doesn’t quite feel as exciting and thrilling in that same way. And then talking with other actors, I realized I was in the minority. Everyone else was like, “Why I do this is for the audience part.” And I was like “Omigosh!” It was a sobering moment.

I also realized my favorite shows to act in were new plays. I did the world premiere of Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap, that was one of my favorites that I got to act in. And I always was still writing, too, and so that’s when I was like “Oh, you know I think the writing is actually where my heart lies mainly.” I thought if I applied to one of these fully-funded schools, if I got into a free program that pays you to go and where you can get teaching experience and everything , then maybe I’d really focus on this playwrighting thing. I was able to make it into UC San Diego, which Lauren Yee actually also went to - and here I am.

Are you still acting at all?

I performed in three shows in 2023 but haven’t done any recently. I’m not done with acting; I think I just need it to be the right project. I guess I can be a little more selective about what I want to do now, which is wonderful.

It’s great that we're getting to see so much more work by Asian American Playwrights these days.

Yeah!

There are so many of you out there doing really interesting work and actually getting your plays produced. Do it feel that way to you? Do you feel like part of a community?

Yes. The Asian American theater community is really tight. Like I said, I was in one of Lauren’s plays and she’s so great. Weirdly, I find out about a lot of announcements, like I’m a finalist or I got into a conference or something, because in my in-box is an email from Lauren Yee congratulating me. My first TV job was for the show Interior Chinatown that came out last year, and she and I just missed each other because she was about to have her baby. She left and I had just gotten the job and she was the first person to email me like “They are so lucky to have you,” just hyping me up because I’m sure she knew how nervous I was.

I think what’s really cool about playwrights right now, and this is not just for Asian Americans but I would say for anyone who used to be considered “marginalized,” is for a long time people were kind of asking us to write plays that were specifically just about trauma, that felt like the only aspect of our identity is race or sexual preference or gender or whatever. Now, I feel like we’re at this really cool place where it’s like given this one aspect of your identity, what else do you have to say?

I would say about a third of my plays right now, maybe half, have to do with Asian American identity at all. And within that, they’re all wildly different from each other and are saying different things. I think we’re finally at this cool place where we’re getting to pick at the scabs of the other things we’ve been wanting to say. So, yeah, I think it’s a really exciting time.

As a working playwright, what is the best thing about your job?

Omigosh, the dumb answer is that I get to work from my bed. [laughs] I get to lie around and my husband will go, “You’re so busy, but the way you’re busy looks so lazy!” But actually, telling stories as your job is just the coolest thing in the world. I think it’s so exciting to not only be like “I get to write these stories,” but I get to go out and be like “Oh, do you know what I wish there was more of in the world? This.” I get to just put it out there, and that just feels like such an incredible privilege.

Also, for so long as an actor, I worked with great directors and difficult directors, and I’ve also worked with playwrights who would bring a kind of cool-kid vibe into the room where you feel like you’re being judged, or as the audience watching that play it makes you feel stupid because you’re not getting it or something. I think what’s so cool about getting to do what I do is we create these really joyous, awesome, work environments. Jesca talks about this all the time, how just because we’re having a lot of fun doesn’t mean the work isn’t also really good. We work vigorously and with a lot of joy, and I feel really, really just so proud of the fact that I get to be a part of creating a new kind of culture in our industry.

(all photos by Jessica Palopoli)

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Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play will perform January 30 – March 8, 2025 at San Francisco Playhouse 450, Post Street. For tickets and more information, visit sfplayhouse.org or call the box office at 415-677-9596.

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