Julia Cho

Photo by Zack Dezon

Playwright Bio

Julia Cho was born in 1975 in Los Angeles to Korean parents. She grew up in Mesa, AZ. She grew up in, "a very porous household. For me to say that being of Korean origin influences my work is the same as saying being a woman or being American influences my writing.” At age 14, she saw Six Degrees of Separation at Lincoln Center. This was the moment when the seed of becoming a playwright was planted. Cho attended Amherst College for English where she began taking playwriting classes and then went on to receive a master’s degree from New York University in playwriting. She is also a Julliard alumna. There she studied with Christopher Durang and Marsha Norman. She currently resides in Santa Monica, CA with her husband and children.

Her work has been produced in New York at Roundabout Theatre Company, The Public Theater, The Vineyard Theatre and New York Theatre Workshop, and regionally at theaters such as Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, South Coast Repertory and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Honors include the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Barrie Stavis Award, the Claire Tow Award for Emerging Artists and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award for Playwriting. She has also been the recipient of a New York Foundation for The Arts grant, a Van Lier Fellowship from New York Theatre Workshop and residences at Hedgebrook, the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Sundance Theatre Lab and the MacDowell Colony.

-Playwrights Horizons

Highlighted Play

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Synopsis

Julia Cho endured six years of writer’s block after her father’s death. This was broken when she wrote Aubergine. In the play, Ray, a Korean-American chef takes care of his dying father who raised him as a single parent. Food is central to this touching and lyrical play about identity, love, and loss. Through beautiful monologues, we learn about various characters in relation to their favorite dishes. Lack of understanding is a recurring theme in the play whether it be in a father-son relationship or literal language barriers. This play is a meditation that leads to self-discovery through being confronted with one’s own history.

Sample Activity

Since Aubergine is a play about how food is closely tied to our identity I suggest the creation of an interview-based play about the students' own families and their memories that center around food.

Target Audience: This activity is designed as a lesson for a high school or college-level class that is for students that speak English as a Foreign Language.

Students will each interview a family member about their favorite dishes growing up in their mother tongue. (i.e. What was your mother's best recipe? Why did you love it? What memories do you have of eating that meal?)
Students will each transcribe excerpts from their interviews in the language that they were spoken in as well as into English. This is in an effort to work on write, translating, as well as to honor the mother tongue.
In groups, students will arrange their interviews and the languages they are written in to make a cohesive play.
Students will then perform the play for one another to work on confidence in speaking English.
There should also be discussions throughout about identity and language. How do we feel about switching our languages? Who are we in each? What do we say, feel, and think, and do those things change when we speak a different tongue?

Discussion Questions

What are your initial thoughts and feelings about Aubergine?
Cho says, "I suppose I should someday force myself to write a play where I don't rely on monologuing at all." Each character gets a monologue about food that is important to them. Does the use of monologues in Aubergine add to or detract from the story Cho is telling?
"I think it would be really great if Asian Americans could have access to the space of not have to explain or recognize difference. Just saying, 'this is the world', and they will be who they are without any thought of explanation." What are we able to glean about the characters in this play's cultures and identities simply by them being presented as themselves.
"I was shocked at how little I knew of death before it happened. I felt almost angry that I knew so little. And I wanted to write a play that recorded what death is like so that someone else might be more prepared that I was." Was she successful in this pursuit? Why or why not?
What do you think about the use of Korean and English in this play and how the language was dealt with by the playwright?
What food is your monologue about?

Annotated Plays

Photo by Debora Robinson

Office Hour

This play was written as a reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings. Office Hour is set on a university campus, where one student, Dennis sits in the back of the classroom, wearing dark glasses, a baseball cap pulled down low, he never speaks. The play is about a potential mass shooter and his teacher. Cho experiments with various ways their conversation could happen. Dennis's creative writing teacher, Gina, wants to address issues he has and stories that are coming up in her class. He scares the other students. He scares the teachers. Gina is the only teacher willing to get close. But at what risk?

Photo by Sara Krulwich

The Language Archive

George is a man consumed with preserving and documenting the dying languages of far-flung cultures. Closer to home, though, language is failing him. He doesn’t know what to say to his wife, Mary, to keep her from leaving him, and he doesn’t recognize the deep feelings that his lab assistant, Emma, has for him.

Comprehensive List of Plays

Photo by Dani Smotrich-Barr

Plays

99 Histories (2002)
BFE (2003)
The Architecture of Loss (2004)
Durango (2006)
The Winchester House (2006)
The Piano Teacher (2007)
The Language Archive (2009)
Office Hour (2016)
Aubergine (2017)

Promotional Photo HBO

Television

Big Love- Story Editor and Executive Story Editor
Betrayal- Producer
Halt and Catch Fire- Producer

Additional Resources

Julia Cho's Interview with Playwrights Horizons: https://www.playwrightshorizons.org/shows/trailers/julia-cho-artist-interview/

New York Times Review of Aubergine: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/theater/aubergine-review-julia-cho.html

On History, Ideals, and Asian American Theatre-Jane Jung: https://howlround.com/history-ideals-and-asian-american-theater

Bibliography

Gates, A. (2006, September 23). An Asian-American Playwright turns a new page. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/24ctprofile.html.

Isherwood, C. (2010, October 17). A Linguist at a Loss for Words Regarding Love. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/theater/reviews/18language.html.

Isherwood, C. (2016, September 13). Review: 'Aubergine,' a Stew of Regret and Impending Loss. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/theater/aubergine-review-julia-cho.html.

Julia Cho - Prayer. 3Views on Theater. (n.d.). https://3viewstheater.com/julia-cho.

Kiley, B. (2019, April 30). Four questions for playwright Julia Cho about 'Office Hour' and staging gun violence. The Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/theater/four-questions-for-playwright-julia-cho-about-office-hour-and-staging-gun-violence/.

Mika. (2016, March 1). Digging in with "Aubergine" Playwright Julia Cho. CAAM Home. https://caamedia.org/blog/2016/03/01/digging-in-with-aubergine-playwright-julia-cho/.

Press Release - Julia Cho's Office Hour. South Coast Repertory. (n.d.). https://www.scr.org/press-room/press-releases/15-16-season-releases/press-release---julia-cho's-office-hour.

Quintanilla, M. (1996, January 12). The 1.5 Solution : They came here as children, growing up with one foot in Korea and one in America. Now, this generation has a mission: To solve the problems of its community. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-01-12-ls-23725-story.html.

Repertory, S. C. (1970, January 1). The literary secrets of a playwright. http://southcoastrep.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-literary-secrets-of-playwright.html.

Sahasrabudhe, A. (2020, April 12). Julia Cho on her Windham-Campbell Prize win, 'feeling' Korean-American, and theatre in the time of lockdown - Living News , Firstpost. Firstpost. https://www.firstpost.com/living/julia-cho-on-her-windham-campbell-prize-win-feeling-korean-american-and-theatre-in-the-time-of-lockdown-8219941.html.

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