a racialized play that requires a large cast

This is an interactive story originally written as the Final Paper for the University of Guelph's Creative Writing MFA program.

The story is based mainly on two things: my experiences writing a large- casted Chinese theatre play that has yet to be produced, and the video game Hades, where you spend life after life trying to escape literal Hell. Honestly, the story pretty much wrote itself.

I received most of the inspiration for this piece from Carrianne Leung’s Coming to Voice, which is overtly referenced throughout the story. Specifically, this collection of text from one of her frames was an organizing principle for me:

“My grandmother was a writer.
“She died on my 30th birthday.
“Confucius says at 30, one must take a stand.
“My grandmother was sending me a message –  the most important one, and so this gold thread is what knits my spine together.”