“I guess all artists do this,” says playwright Christine Hoang. “We create something because we're kind of going through something and so it's our way of processing whatever it is in the moment. And now that I've written it and we're about to open, I think I was processing how hard it is to make friends as an adult. “My marriage with my husband is pretty secure. We're pretty stable. Everything's happy and boring. Going out and making friends as an adult is what's challenging and risky. And [it] can be kind of heartbreaking and painful and can also be really, really rewarding and meaningful.”
What Christine wrote as a subconscious reaction to the difficulty of creating adult friendships is Wanna Play, the new play-with-songs from Hoang’s Color Arc Productions, which is running now at Hyde Park Theatre.
“It's two video gamers [Gemma and Ethan] playing games, in different parts of the world,” Hoang explains. “They get zapped into a mysterious realm called The Here, where they meet a mysterious guide named Cappy. And in The Here, they have to play old school analog games to win enough points to get home. So it's like The Wizard of Oz meets Squid Game.”
Hoang says, despite creating a play centered on the world of gaming and playing Gemma in the play, she’s not really super into video games. “Yeah, I wasn't really a gamer,” she admits. “I mean, I did play arcade games, when I was really young. Back when, you know, people actually went to the mall and [they] had the arcade in the mall and everything. I played Mappy, remember that one? There was a mouse detective. It’s a very niche deep cut arcade joystick game.”
Travis Owens, who plays Ethan, has a little more gaming experience, but only a little. “You know, I'm the weirdest gamer in the world because I will unproductively buy a system for one game,” he says, “and I'll finish that game and turn the system off for like 3 years. And now… I wanna play the new Indiana Jones game and I have to buy a new system for this game, so like I'm gonna end up buying a new system for this [one] game. But as a kid, I was a Nintendo kid, but… I mean, I grew up on a farm, so I was just outside like stealing my dad's lumber to build forts all the time, you know what I mean?”
For Hoang, creating the world of The Here was a challenge, but one that she embraced. “I never stepped into a world like this and It challenged me,” she says.” because my first play was set in a living room. My second play was set in a coffee shop, and this one… I wanted to push myself, but I wanted the emotions and the characters to be very grounded and authentic and to have that bring out something real… but be really fun because it's colorful and it's playful and it's interactive and childlike, but also like really challenging, emotionally challenging. Ethan brings in the energy of a golden retriever and Gemma has the personality of a black cat and they are put together and they have to be teammates. And eventually, like, will they become friends? And in real life, I am not a black cat. I am a recovering people-pleasing golden retriever puppy, you know, and I'm working on that. And I think that's challenging when you make friends as an adult because you want everyone to be happy and that's not in your control. And that's something [that] this late in life, I'm still figuring that out.”
“It's a cool little play,” Owens says. “It's a blur, it moves really quick. There's no intermission. You walk into an environment, you're clearly part of The Here when you're there. I'm not gonna give anything away, but the audience is and isn't a part of the show to the nth degree.”
“And in the end, if you come to the play by yourself, I think you'll look at your neighbors and then feel connected to them too,” Hoang says. “I don't think you'll feel alone. And so if you're looking for a place to get out of that loneliness and isolation, maybe just sit among other people, and at the end of 90 minutes, you'll feel that you're part of the community. I really believe that. That's why I wrote this.”
