Re: RAT Han Ong

[KSTUARTXX@aol.com]

Actually Han was produced, just never here, outside of the Taper's New Works 
Festivals.  Which, I'd say is pretty typical for an L.A. playwright (ex 
actually he now lives in New York).  Han's play "THE L.A. plays was done in 
the U.K.  ... I'm thinking, the Donemar Warehouse... and well received. He 
did a couple shows at the Public as well. He's a good playwright, and 
whatever he says at T.C.G. (I preferred his comments to those of some of the 
other TCG potentates)  he has actually continued to write plays, along with 
novels and screenplays. All he does is work.  He has a particularly wonderful 
play called "Middlefinger"-- a sort of adaptation of Wedekin's Spring 
Awakening that people should read. Maybe I'll get a copy to hand out at Rat. 
If Han's not produced much in the TCG circuit, it's because he has a caustic 
tone that doesn't make people walk out of the theatre humming.   And he 
writes plays that though they have non white characters, don't mine the 
"Identity" politics of a lot of multicultural work.  --- That is, they're not 
some sickeningly sweet   medicine meant to make you a better person. As for 
the "genius grant" who can ever say why these things are given out or who 
would've been better (well, I'm sure you all have an opinion) but for once, 
it was someone who needed the money and didn't get it because of hype.