LR: Where does a poem/play begin for you? What propels you from one play to the next? Where did Prometheus Nguyen find its genesis?

TR: Recently, I was privileged to watch an amazing conversation between David Henry Hwang and Philip Gotanda, two of the great titans of Asian American theater. [Hwang] was asked this question, and he said something to effect of: “I have a question that I need answering, and I sense that I have some kind of answer but it’s hard to say it directly, so I write a play to figure it out.” I operate from a similar mindset. When I wrote Goliath, I was wondering about gender, sexuality, and human nature. When I wrote R&L, I was contemplating the question of what “Asian America” really meant in that day and age. And when I wrote Prometheus Nguyen, I was just starting grad school after having left my job at the YWCA Rape Crisis Center in San Jose. Switching from social services to academia was both welcome and jarring not just from a lifestyle perspective, but a moral perspective, and I wanted to figure out what my choice meant, particularly by being hard on myself. Prometheus is arguably my most deeply personal play to date, in that regard. For educated, “progressive” people to figure out one’s way of contributing to the world, decisions for the future are never really simple. Furthermore, Prometheus was tangentially related to the fact that my grandfather passed away halfway through the writing process; it is as mournful and melancholic as it is preoccupied with futurity.

LR: You’re currently working on a PhD in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. How has your scholarship affected the political concerns of your writing? On a more practical level, does it affect the craft, and if so, how?

TR: Oh geez, I could go on for way too long about that, especially since grad school has taken over my life. To keep it short, I’ll just say that PhD work in any sector of something like cultural studies makes you problematize and refine every iota of political or social understanding you have. It also makes me far humbler; no longer am I certain of anything, particularly in regards to what the “right course of action” is, or what “people should do.” Hence, both my prose and my poetry have become more about questioning, wondering, exploring the hard questions rather than countering the “obvious” injustices. On a practical level, it means one, less time to write “creative” work, but also that the creative work is informed by an academic’s critical eye. At times that makes the creative process paralyzing. Other times, it’s quite generative, leading to new questions. However, I’d say that my academic work has definitely gotten a boost from my poetry sensibilities—infusing my essays with creative energy simply helps the writing.