Stage director Desdemona Chiang on Bound

Desdemona Chiang is a Taiwanese-born American director and writer based in Seattle, Wash., and Ashland, Oreg. She works in a variety of genres, including new plays, Shakespeare, and musicals. Chiang is known for her visceral, no-nonsense approach to theatre, with her distinct point of view as an immigrant and Asian American woman and an interest in using storytelling to spark social discourse. Chiang will direct Bound at Seattle Opera, June 9–18, 2023.

Seattle Opera:
How did you get started in theater? When did you know you wanted to become a stage director?

Desdemona Chiang:
I came to the theater a little by accident. As it is with many Asian households, I was expected to be a doctor or a lawyer—something “respectable”—so I went to college at UC Berkeley for a degree in biology. In the first semester of my freshman year, I had signed up for all these science classes and my advisor said to me, “You can’t take only science classes. You have to be a well-rounded human, so please take one arts elective.”

I asked around and my friends in biology told me about this class in the drama department called “Intro to Acting,” which they all called “clapping for credit” because all you did was stand in a circle and play clapping games. No papers, no lectures—it’s the easiest “A” ever. So I thought, “I’ll just take that and skate my way through this arts class.”

That class was surprisingly liberating for me. I was a very serious kid growing up; I was in my head, a bookworm. But in this class, I got to play, I learned to be vulnerable, I was making friends. By the end of my college career, I had taken enough drama classes to double major in biology and theater. My parents were terrified at that idea, but I was just not cut out for medical school.

I decided at some point I would do the theater thing for real, which for me meant going to grad school. I applied to MFA programs in directing and was accepted into the University of Washington, which is what brought me to Seattle in 2006. I’ve been based here since then, directing regionally in new plays, Shakespeare, musicals, and now opera.

Chiang’s adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter premiered at Book-It Repertory Theatre in June 2022. © Anthony Floyd.

Seattle Opera:
You’re also a playwright: you just opened your adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter last summer. When did you start writing?

Desdemona Chiang:
I’m actually fairly new to writing. I was always a director in my career trajectory—more like a midwife of new plays and a sounding board for playwrights. But I’ve broken many scripts and been in development for a lot of new pieces, so when Book-It came to me and said, “Do you want to adapt something?” I was like, “Hey, why not? I certainly have the training for it.”

It’s only in the last two years that I have been truly calling myself a writer. There’s a moment where you go from saying that “I’m someone who writes,” to “I’m a writer.” It was the same thing when I started directing. For a while, I was like, “Oh yeah, I kind of direct sometimes,” then at some point I just said, “I’m a director.” I’m going to call myself the thing.

Seattle Opera:
You have extensive experience with both new works and repertory works. How does your approach differ when you’re working with a new piece versus when you’re working on, say, Shakespeare?

Desdemona Chiang:
When I’m doing a new piece, I usually have the luxury of having the writer as a resource, someone I can go to and ask, “What did you mean by this?” But there is also an obligation to the writer when it’s a new piece. When you’re directing a world premiere, what you make is perceived as the “original” version. The audience comes in as a blank slate, so there’s a pressure to be true to authorial intent in a way that I don’t feel with classical pieces.

You can put Shakespeare underwater, or put him on the moon, and he’ll be fine. He’s been done so many times that there’s no risk of damaging the material. But at the same time, there’s baggage with a classical piece. Audiences are going to compare what you do to previous versions they’ve seen and whether or not you fulfill their expectations and deliver what they want to see onstage.

One of Chiang’s early forays into musical theater, And So That Happened... at The 5th Avenue Theatre. © Mark Kitaoka.

Seattle Opera:
What kind of experience do you have with opera or musical theater? Have you directed an opera before?

Desdemona Chiang:
I recently finished a workshop last week at Opera Delaware: Derrick Wang’s Fearless, a new opera about Hazel Ying Lee, the first female Chinese American pilot to fly for the US military. But Seattle Opera will be my first true opera production. It’s interesting timing, though, because for the longest time, I wasn’t even directing musical theater, which is odd, given the fact that I read music and used to play the piano. But when you’re freelancing, you end up going wherever the work takes you. And when I was first starting as a director, I was only doing new plays: mostly ones written by women and people of color. But as my career got further along and I started to build a reputation, someone asked if I was interested in Shakespeare. Of course the answer was yes (my name is Desdemona, after all), and it was something that people didn’t realize that I was good at.

Once I directed my first Shakespeare, all the Shakespeare offers started pouring in. Then several years ago, the 5th Avenue Theatre reached out and said, “Hey, are you interested in directing musicals?” And, coincidentally, the Village Theatre called, and the next thing you know, I’m doing four musicals that year. So when Seattle Opera reached out about Bound, I thought, “Opera? Sure, I can do that.” And two months later, Opera Delaware reached out and asked me to do this new piece for them. It’s a weird zeitgeist feeling, like something’s in the water.

The door to opera is opening for me in an exciting way, as an opportunity to work in a different space. It feels like I’m an athlete being asked to play a different sport: I’m fit and I’m trained, but I need to learn some new rules. I know how to talk to actors, I know how to stage, I know how to talk to designers. I know how to see the show, but I need to learn the rules of how opera culture works.

Seattle Opera:
What was your experience with opera as an audience member? Did you listen to opera much as a music student?

Desdemona Chiang:
I never attended the opera growing up. The first production I saw was of La traviata at the LA Opera when I was 25, and I clearly remember being told I had to wear a dress that went down to my ankles—which felt so pretentious at the time, because I was a young director doing scrappy theater in basements of pizza parlors. But when I dressed up in a gown and was having a glass of champagne in the lobby surrounded by chandeliers, I suddenly felt mature in a way that I didn’t feel with the theater. Maybe that’s the barrier we all keep talking about…how do you make that kind of moment accessible? How do you make it not feel like this exclusive thing that is reserved for the elite? But I have to admit, there was something very elevating about that experience. I was glad I went, and it was a beautiful production.

Seattle Opera:
How do you think opera could learn from the theater world in terms of making the art more accessible? Is there a way we can combine the pleasure of that luxurious experience with the access to the art form in a way that allows more people to have that experience?

Desdemona Chiang:
I’m torn, because ideologically, I do believe that theater and opera should be for everybody. But at the same time, there’s something to be said about maturing into a genre or a certain kind of culture you consume. There’s no way you could have taken me to an opera at 16 and expected me sit down, pay attention, and actually enjoy it. It would’ve been like medicine. But now I feel like I’ve lived enough and matured enough that I can appreciate it.

I don’t want to assume that young people don’t have the capacity for that kind of consumption. But I also find value in things like a rite of passage. Something changed for me when I was 25 and I went to the opera that first time. I always knew the opera existed, but I didn’t care until I went on a whim when my then-boyfriend’s rich father had tickets he couldn’t use. I wouldn’t have gone on my own—there’s no way I would’ve thought that that was a place for me. But once I went, it was transformative.

Ultimately, I feel like there’s a challenge here: how do you preserve the integrity of the work and still make it popular? Maybe there’s something inherently contradictory about that. Perhaps there’s a version of opera or Shakespeare that is for the masses, and another version that is about growing into the art form. And there’s room for those two to coexist.

Seattle Opera:
Let’s talk about Bound, because I think it gets at some of these questions really nicely. How did you first react when you read Diane Tran’s story, the true story that this opera is based on?

Desdemona Chiang:
At first, I was in disbelief that this was even a true story. Factually, the premise was so absurd that I had to google it. But once I read up on the incident, it was obvious that there was nothing complex about what happened. It’s clear the system was flawed. Even though Diane technically broke the law, she had done nothing morally wrong. So where is the friction between good and bad, right and wrong? It was just so black and white to me, so cut and dry.

At the same time, the story hit a lot of my interests—it had a young Asian woman as a protagonist, and an immigration narrative that also dealt with the legal system. I’m interested in stories about people who have to survive inside systems, whether it’s a family system, a financial system, or a sociopolitical system. So the question became, “How do I weave in all of these things that interest me about this piece and make it a complex story?”

I started thinking—maybe this is a story about a girl who comes in with one point of view about her life and then ends with a different one. The piece is called “Bound,” and Diane is shown to be bound to all the competing obligations in her life. How we can draw a trajectory where this young woman, in the end, liberates herself? By the end, Diane has to find a way to undo all these attachments and be accountable for her own life.

In Buddhism, attachment is the root of all suffering. And the major attachments in life are your family, your mentors, and your enemies. If this is a story about Diane finding a way to detach herself from her mother, from her legacy, and from this “crime” that she’s committed, maybe this is the beginning of a more self-realized way of living for her.

Vanessa Võ plays the đàn tranh, one of two Vietnamese instruments in Bound.

Seattle Opera:
What do you think music adds to a story like this? Why set this as an opera as opposed to a straight play?

Desdemona Chiang:
A key part of the show is the instrumentation, because there is a clear cultural aspect to the piece. To be able to hear sounds of Vietnam [played by Vanessa Võ on the đàn bầu and đàn tranh] is key to contextualizing Khanh, the mother character, whom we have a hard time finding compassion for. It’s difficult for western audiences to find sympathy for a mother who leaves her child. But the music helps defend her emotional arc and presents her as a mother who feels as though she has abandoned her homeland to come to America. Hearing the sounds of the old country draws out those feelings of longing, of guilt, of shame, of obligation. It’s a big step toward the audience feeling some sense of understanding for her character.

Seattle Opera:
What else do you hope that audiences will get out of this story? What do you want them to take away from it?

Desdemona Chiang:
I think this gets to your earlier question about opera being accessible. Being able to see this story as an opera is something that some audiences might not be accustomed to. It stretches our perception of what can be worthy of an operatic gesture, where you can create something that is deep and epic and intimate at the same time. Just because it’s a chamber piece doesn’t mean that it’s not worthy of greatness. I hope this piece can be a bridge for building a new community of opera-goers in Seattle.

Bound runs at Seattle Opera June 9–18, 2023. Tickets and info at seattleopera.org/bound.