The East-West Quartet

by Ping Chong

  (Mrs. Beautiful begins to plant.)

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Voice-over): You, me, Ba My!

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): My means “beautiful” and, ironically also, “America.” Ba Means “Mrs.” and also “woman.” “Ba My” could mean “Mrs. Beautiful,” naming the woman who grasped my elbow with such urgency, or it could refer to me as an American woman.

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Voice-over) You, me, Ba My! You are coming to my house for lunch. You are going to stay with me. You are NOT going to the hotel.

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): I had no idea then what gave Mrs. Beautiful the power to single-handedly overturn the collective decision of the entire welcoming committee. But she had done it. I could feel the passion surging through her fingertips as she propelled me down a narrow path between high stucco walls and through the gate surrounding her house.

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Voice-over): When my mother was ten years old, she came home to find her maternal grandfather shot to death by French soldiers. Right here. She found him lying on the floor, bullet holes through his hands, bullet holes through his eyes, do you understand me, child?

  Oh yes, I grew up to work for the revolution. Can you catch my words in time? Then the Germans invaded France! (Sets down the bundle of seedlings) Imagine! In 1940 France became a colony! Just like us! But then the French became even more vicious masters. They increased our taxes to pay for their war against Germany; they drafted our men to be their soldiers against Hitler. We were starving because of French taxes. We couldn’t stand it anymore. Can you catch my words in time? Oh yes, I grew up to fight the French. When I was young I got to go to school, but you know what the French taught us? That our ancestors were the Gauls and on their maps of Vietnam they wrote “France Overseas,” and it was King Louis this and Marie Antoinette that! And it was the firmest principle of French colonialism that the lowest ranking Frenchman must receive a higher salary than a higher-ranking Vietnamese employed by the same government. Can you catch my words in time? (Rises from her labor and heads upstage on a diagonal path toward the table altar) When I was eighteen years old, we had both the French and the Japanese as masters. The Japanese forced us to grow jute instead of rice to make rope for their war industry. By early 1945 there was no rice. Two million people died during the first six months. One out of six. One morning I saw a dead woman leaning against my neighbor’s door. The woman’s dress was open. The baby at her breast was still alive, sucking at the corpse. Can you catch my words in time, child? (The sound of crickets is heard)

  (Mrs. Beautiful arrives at the table altar. She lights two candles, then lights some joss sticks, waves them ceremoniously, and plants them in an urn. She bows to the picture on the altar. Then she lights a baby kerosene lamp and crosses back downstage on the diagonal with the lamp. She lifts her hat. It is the first time we see her face.

  As Lady Borton’s voice-over begins, a square frame of red light is projected behind Mrs. Beautiful. This represents mosquito netting, under which Lady Borton lies. Mrs. Beautiful examines the American until the end of the voice-over.)

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): On my first night in Mrs. Beautiful’s house, I awoke to the strong smell of kerosene. I lay motionless, shoulders against a reed mat, eyes closed. A light glanced across my face. It was Mrs. Beautiful holding a baby lamp over me, as if to examine every feature on my face. Then she left as quietly as she had come. Mrs. Beautiful appeared twice more that night. Each time she checked the mosquito net; each time she stared into my face. With every examination, my awareness grew: Mrs. Beautiful had rescued me from the provincial guest house for some compelling reason I didn’t yet know. I began to feel as if I were living in the house of a woman haunted by some deep sorrow.

  (Mrs. Beautiful leaves Lady Borton, puts the baby lamp on the bench. During the following, she starts to undress, removing her red pajama suit to reveal a black pajama suit underneath. She folds the red pajama suit carefully.)

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Voice-over): Did you sleep sweetly, child?

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): Sweetly, Mrs. Beautiful.

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Voice-over): Always drink rainwater! Do you hear me, child? Never drink from the river!

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): Yes, Mrs. Beautiful.

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Voice-over): Always begin your day with tiger balm. Go ahead, go on now, begin your day! Top of your throat, back of your neck, top of your spine. How can a house of thatch withstand American bombing?

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): At meals she sat next to me chewing betel nuts as she plied me with tofu and eggs, peanuts and rice. She never ate more than a bit or two herself, then the familiar refrain would begin:

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Voice-over): Eat!

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): But I’m full!

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Voice-over): Two bowls of rice are not enough! Eat!

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): But I’m full.

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Voice-over): You must finish four bowls of rice! We must fatten you up! How can a house of thatch withstand American bombing?

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): Each night I’d awaken to frail, golden light glancing across my face.

  (Sound of a hand scooping up water from the river.)

  One night I stirred, shifting toward Mrs. Beautiful. She scurried away. I rose and sat in the darkness at the table. Shortly she returned and set the baby lamp before me. She poured hot water into tiny teacups. Then she sat next to me. We didn’t speak. All around us there were thick walls: regulations forbidding conversation with strangers, the U.S. embargo, bombs, mines, death. Between us there was green tea and silence.

  (Mrs. Beautiful takes off her red cone hat and places it on top of her folded pajamas. A light slowly comes up on the hat. She then goes to the bench and slowly raises the demitasse cup as if to give it to someone. She sets it down, then raises the second cup and offers it. She repeats this gesture throughout the next speech.) (Voice-over) It was two in the morning of my last night in Mrs. Beautiful’s house. I was dreaming about riding a bicycle alongside the rice paddies. I was dreaming that the paddy crabs were smiling at me when Mrs. Beautiful appeared at my bedside, as she had every night. Her lamp cast a pool of yellow light, illuminating a tiny cup. She held it up to me. I sat up, assuming she had brought tea, and took a sip. Suddenly I was wide awake. Mrs. Beautiful had given me a dose of her health tonic, made from deer antler and tiger bones. Its raw taste of whiskey seared my throat.

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Spoken live for the first time): I can’t sleep.

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): Yes, I know.

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Spoken): I miss my son. My son was with the army. My son took leave to come home to see me.

  The night before he was to return to the army he went to visit friends. They’d found a baby bomb in a pond, but my son’s friends didn’t know what it was. Maybe you’ve never seen a baby bomb. It’s bright orange like a Malaysian sarong, pretty like a child’s toy. (She takes a deep, long breath) When a baby bomb hits the earth, it bursts into hundreds of darts, the size of straight pins, but with flanges of steel. That night, when my son returned with his friends, the baby bomb was sitting at the edge of this table. (She points to it) Before my son could say anything, the baby bomb rolled off the table.

  (She draws her knees up to her shoulders and hugs herself. The words “THAT OF GOD” fade from the image of the rice field. Lights come up on the photograph on the altar.)

  It killed my son. It killed his friend’s grandmother. Four people killed. Five wounded. Do you think Americans understand?

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): Not yet.

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Spoken): You’ll leave soon. I’ll never see you again.

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): If you agree I’ll come back.

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Spoken): I agree.

  (She puts on the plain straw cone hat from the bench, crosses to her pile of seedlings and slowly picks them up. She crosses upstage right and begins turning in a circle, as at the beginning.)

  It’s late. We should rest.

/>   LADY BORTON (Voice-over): Mrs. Beautiful?

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Spoken): Yes?

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): Tomorrow will you eat?

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Spoken): Tomorrow I will eat. I will eat.

  LADY BORTON (Voice-over): Tonight will you sleep?

  MRS. BEAUTIFUL (Spoken): Tonight I will sleep.

  (The sounds of the river increase. We hear a boy singing. The rice field image fades out and is replaced by:)

  PROJECTION: A black-and-white image of Ping’s visa with passport photo

  (This image fades to a color image of the same visa, then to a negative image.)

  PING (Voice-over): In 1925, my mother went to French-occupied Vietnam or France Overseas. She was only sixteen years old, a member of a traveling Chinese opera company and she was having the time of her life. I asked her what she remembered of Vietnam. Her eyes lit up and she said excitedly that an entire roast duck was only twenty cents, and “if you want to keep mangoes fresh, you must keep them in a basin of cold water under your bed.” That’s what my mother said. Time passes. The sixteen-year-old girl is eighty-three years old now.

  In 1996, I followed my mother’s footsteps and went to Vietnam.

  (Mrs. Beautiful stops turning and begins sowing. She is silhouetted, a timeless image of Vietnam. The lights change to reveal that, while some of the rice is orange, other plants are now green.)

  The most significant encounter I had in Vietnam was with a boy who rowed me down a river. He did not speak a word of English and I did not speak a word of Vietnamese. We spent two hours together on the river. Two souls on a river. The next day I hired him again, and when it was time to say good-bye, he took off a clear plastic ring from a finger and gave it to me. He didn’t have any shoes, so I sent him a pair—Reeboks. It was an unequal exchange; the ring was without price.

  (A flute pierces the air. A lyrical and melancholy traditional Vietnamese melody follows. The projection of Ping’s visa cross-fades to an image of a boy.)

  PROJECTION: Photo of boy on a river

  (Lights remain on the photograph, the candles and the red cone hat. Rice planting is complete. Mrs. Beautiful exits. The image of the boy fades out. A new image appears:)

  PROJECTION: A person, his back to us, framed in a clearing of trees, looking out toward water and mountains

  (The image gets smaller and smaller as the next projection appears alongside it:)

  PROJECTION: AFTER SORROW

  THE END

  Pojagi

  For Susan E. Kennedy

  Production History

  Pojagi premiered at La MaMa E.T.C. in New York City on February 24, 2000. It was conceived, written and directed by Ping Chong, the set design was by Watoku Ueno, the lighting design was by Darren McCroom, the costume design was by Stefani Mar and the sound design was by Brian Hallas. The dramaturgs were Dong-il Lee and Sandra Weathers Smith, the stage manager was Courtney Golden and the managing director was Bruce Allardice. The performers were: Esther K. Chae, C. S. Lee and Shin Young Lee.

  Pojagi was commissioned and developed by Harvard University’s Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1999. It was performed on December 31, 1999 at the DMZ Festival in South Korea. The audience welcomed the new millennium at an outdoor performance in sub-freezing temperatures, and the costumes that evening were hooded white snowsuits. Pojagi received its American premiere at La MaMa E.T.C. in New York City with support by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

  Excerpts from Homes Apart: Korea, a film by J. T. Takagi and Christine Choy (1991); Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History by Bruce Cummings, New York: Norton & Company (1998); and Corée Korea, by Hendrik Hamel (1704) are used by permission.

  Introduction

  Pojagi is an exploration of Korean history from the sixteenth century to today in the form of a shamanic evocation. Inspired by traditional Korean shamanic rituals, Pojagi was devised as a theatrical rite of discovery and longing, a summoning of the dead to give witness to the present.

  Pojagi is collaged from the detritus of history to draw a portrait of the soul of modern Korea. Eyewitness testimonies of early encounters between Europeans and Koreans, a succession of Japanese occupations, the assassination of Korea’s Queen Min, the arbitrary partition of the peninsula at the dawn of the Cold War, and reflections on the delicate ecosystem of the demilitarized zone combine to tell the tale, little known in the West, of an indomitable people and embattled land.

  The title is taken from the name for traditional Korean cloths which were used for centuries in Korea to wrap, carry and store things. Pojagi (“po” for short) are square or rectangular cloths of any size traditionally brightly colored and used by all strata of society for a range of purposes, including book bags, laundry bags, purses, gift wrap and ceremonial uses. In the twentieth century, pojagi were replaced in general use by ready-made carriers, such as bags and suitcases. “Pojagi” then represents a container, or vessel, for carrying the history of the nation, and also the traditions that have vanished into the modern world.

  The physical production for Pojagi is stark. The only set element is a large light table in the foreground of a vast empty stage. The table serves as a no-man’s zone, which separates the two speaking performers. The choreography, so important to the first three plays in The East-West Quartet, is distilled to a simple movement vocabulary based on Korean shamanistic movement and American Sign Language. Visual projections (so integral to the first three plays of The Quartet) are limited to key words illuminated by the light table.

  Much of Korean history is about conflict and division. Through stage poetry, Pojagi seeks to create a neutral ground and a ceremony of recognition and reunification for the divided Korean soul.

  An open dance stage. The floor is black and the stage is surrounded by black drapes. Down front is a giant light box: the entire table, including its legs, lights up, and can turn white, blue or red. The front edge of the table is constructed so that cards can be slid into the frame. The cards are then held in place and lit from behind. They are translucent, and made of the same material as the top of the light box table. They have various words written on them.

  On the upstage center of the table, there is a stack of “mountains” —pieces of white poster board folded in half to make triangles, stacked in a pile. Hidden under the mountains is a small dish of powder. A few other small props are set on the table: two square pieces of matte cardboard (one painted tan, one blue), two small cups, and two stacks of cards (one for each actor). The props are small enough and placed in a way so that the table does not look cluttered.

  Next to the table, on both sides, is a stool, with a music stand in front of each, and a small low table to the side of each stand. These small tables are used to hold various props (the stage left table has a fan on it, the stage right table has a pipe on it), and the cards are placed here once they are used.

  The cast is clad totally in white, which is the traditional color for shamans in Korea. They wear body microphones. The gestures and signs they make are a combination of American Sign Language (ASL) and some Chinese opera gestures.

  The show starts in darkness. We hear the recorded sound of a vocalization of a Korean traditional rhythm. The lights slowly fade up to reveal the Woman and the Man, lit in silhouette, crouching. They slowly rise and turn to face the audience. They wear Korean masks. They hold a kind of Korean ritual pom-pom in each hand. The actors perform a movement/dance sequence, which is a variation on Korean folk dance movements. At the end of the dance, the actors turn upstage and throw the pom-poms on the floor. They cross upstage and crouch. The lights dim. They turn the masks to the back of their heads. Then they cross downstage to the stools, and sit facing upstage, the masks on the back of their heads facing the audience.

  The sound of crashing waves.

  MAN: On the 14th, we still had not sighted land, the violent storm still not subsided.
On the 15th,

  WOMAN: the wind blew so boisterously

  MAN: that we could not hear one another speak

  WOMAN: nor durst we let fly an inch of sail

  MAN: and to add to our misfortunes

  WOMAN: the ship took in so much water

  MAN: that there was no mastering of it.

  WOMAN: Besides

  MAN: the waves every moment broke in upon us in such manner

  WOMAN: that we expected to perish every minute.

  MAN: This was our condition

  WOMAN: when the second glass of the second watch being just running out,

  MAN: he that looked out ahead cried: “Land,”

  WOMAN: adding we were not above a musket shot from it;

  MAN: the darkness of night and rain having obstructed our discovering it sooner.

  WOMAN: We endeavored to anchor

  MAN: but in vain