Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics

At Dolly Parton's Dollywood theme park, a lesbian woman was asked to turn around her shirt that said, “Marriage is so Gay.” She complied, but the news was picked up by Yahoo! and other outlets. Soon after New York legalized gay marriage, Olivier Odom and Jennifer Tipton visited the Tennessee amusement park with friends. A spokesman of the park is quoted as saying, “We try to provide an environment for families of all shapes and sizes to enjoy themselves.” Except for those whom they want to make conceal themselves.

Societal norms and fears are some of the issues tackled in the new play Sun Sisters, which has its world premiere in Los Angeles on July 29, 2011, at the Company of Angels Theater. Written by Chinese-Desi Vasanti Saxena, the play focuses on the last days of a cancer-stricken mother whose waning health transports her into an plane where past and present collide. This convergence forces her to recount and re-examine her life choices, many made to conform to cultural mores. As her daughter returns home to nurse her, the mother has to grapple with the murkiness of reality and her own fears, to come to terms with her daughter’s lifestyle before it is too late.

Angie, the mother, sacrificed her own true feelings long ago, and though a new generation is more accepting, fear still compels one to make unforgiveable choices. With her lesbian daughter’s possible pregnancy, Angie acts on her perceived threat of potential societal castigation. But is it the threat from her past and one that Angie herself experienced? Or is it imagined?

Producer of the play Joyce Liu has been working with the project for more than a year. A feature film is in the beginning stages. Angie experienced one true love in the 1960s, she says, but the Civil Rights movement failed to move Angie out from the shadows. Liu wonders about the different outcome had the gay and lesbian rights movement progressed simultaneously in the 60s. Stonewall occurred in the 1970s, yet we are now celebrating only the sixth state to legalize gay marriage. While the Obama administration seeks to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the fight to fight ending it goes on. Liu reminds us of a recent occurrence at a baseball stadium where a lesbian couple was kicked out of the park for sharing a kiss because someone complained that she did not want her son to see “that gay smut.” What is more profane, Liu asks, a kiss or a lack of humanity and rationality?

It seems that one shrill voice of dissent can cause an avalanche of fear. We’ve become so conditioned to “threat levels” in the better part of the last decade and that fear is no doubt reflected in the microcosm. In the play, Angie struggles with passing fear onto her daughter. She also fears that her and her daughter’s sexuality will be passed onto the baby. As her world gets smaller and smaller, there’s no telling what that constriction might incite.

Adding to the conflict is the adherence to Chinese cultural customs by which the characters are constrained. Liu believes that traditions that shield the focus on the individual allows homophobia to manifest; a mask. To stand out is to invite ostracization. “When kids in Euro-American families get in trouble, they get grounded. When Chinese kids get in trouble, they get locked out of the house with the threat of being disowned.”

Sun Sisters
July 29 through August 28
Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 7 pm
Company of Angels. companyofangels.org
The Alexandria theater, 501 S. Spring Street, 3rd Floor, Downtown L.A, CA 90013.