Interview: Writer and Playwright Rehana Mirza

MIXED ASIAN MEDIA - January 5, 2022

By Matt Park

Rehana Mirza has been writing her whole life. With years of experience under her belt, this accomplished Pakistani and Filipina writer continues to persevere after the pandemic theatre shutdowns, and quarantining at home with a family of four! It was both enlightening and inspiring talking to Rehana about how her years at NYU and Ma-Yi Writers Lab shaped her perspective on the writing community, the writing process, and how adding a racial lens on projects can lead to new, interesting narratives.

Her longest project has been book writing the new musical Bhangin’ It, alongside her husband Mike. Within it, they’ve been able to address the mixed race identity, and the show is set to premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2022. I’m excited to share Rehana’s writing experiences with you, as well as explore what defines her mixed identity.

When did you start writing, and was there a specific moment in your life that inspired you to write?

I started writing at a fairly young age. My earliest memory was (and this is going to definitely date me) at one of those manual typewriters with a ribbon, getting tangled up in it, pounding out the letters, and thinking, “This is great!” I kind of followed that path all the way through high school. I took a playwriting class at a nearby college, and that got me hooked into the theatre world. I ended up going to NYU Tisch and pursued playwriting relentlessly, for better or worse, and really focused on the community collaborative aspects of it. I think that's what really drew me into writing. Growing up, I had spent so much time writing all alone. Then, as I got older, I realized you can actually do this for other people — and have a community of actors, designers, directors, and other writers — and I got really excited by that possibility. That’s what led me and my sister, Rohi, to form Desipina. It was an Asian American theatre company that was very DIY in the early aughts.

What was the most difficult experience you had with writing, and how have you used that experience to improve your creative process?

It's interesting because writing feels simultaneously easy and difficult. I really enjoy getting the first “vomit draft” out, but it’s really difficult when you hear it for the first time and realize the thing that you want it to be is not quite what it is just yet, and you have to work through that. So, what I've implemented into my process is a safer first read. Like a closed circle read where I can absorb what I'm seeing in a secure environment and have eyes on it that get my voice, what I'm trying to do, and have faith that I’ll get there. I then build steps along the way where I can continue to hone, build, and expand — so that the circle grows wider and wider, and I get more feedback on it as the piece grows.

What was the easiest experience you had with writing, and how have you used that experience to improve your creative process?

The easiest? Is there an easy experience?

You’re right! Maybe a positive experience that you had and how you used it to improve your process? 

I would say that the easiest is when actors come in, because then a lot of the building lands on them, especially when they're very good at what they do. And it's kind of tricky, right? Because suddenly the line that you were struggling with, it's like, “Oh, that line's actually perfect!” And in reality, maybe it's not. It’s just that the actor is so good and charismatic, you're like, “Wow. So much better than I thought it was.” I've tried to implement actors into the process so that they come in and make me feel better. Then I’ll go and work on it some more and feel bad. Then I need the actors again to make me feel better about it. I think that's probably been the most enjoyable aspect and makes it easier, or makes my job seem easy.

Do you have a favorite piece of yours?

I can't pick favorites amongst my babies. It’s hard. I will say what I'm actively engaged with is like my Moby Dick. I tend to have obsessions. It's interesting because I'll put aside a piece and sort of lose the obsession with it and then maybe, for whatever reason, three or four years later, something sparks in it, and I'm like, “Why did I ever lose sight of you?”

I think the longest project that I've been working on has been Bhangin’ It, the musical that my husband Mike and I are co-writing a book to. It was based on a screenplay that I had written in my 20s. It's taking on a different form, and we've been working on it as a musical for the past seven, eight years. So that's kind of been the longest running story.

That leads into my next question. You co-wrote the book for Bhangin’ It, which is premiering at La Jolla Playhouse in 2022. What was the experience like writing a book for a musical versus writing a play?

Honestly, I didn't know what the differences were going into it. It's definitely been a learning experience for us because it was the first time Mike and I were co-writing something. I think in terms of the differences, there's not a lot of space. In musicals you have to be so ruthlessly efficient, in both building character and having the scene work. Something our composer kept saying over and over again is this moment can only be about one thing, or the song can really only be about one thing. And for us, as playwrights, we were like, “Yeah, but no, there's like so much going on. The characters feel this and then this and then this.” Then we realized there’s just one moment in the song. For us, that's been a really interesting experience. Also, bringing our cultural viewpoints into musical theatre, which has traditionally been considered such a Western form. When you put a sort of cultural, racial lens on tropes, how that shifts and affects the narrative has been a really interesting experimental process for us.

Can you talk a little bit about writing for theatre versus film? Does writing for film inspire you to write differently for theatre and vice versa?

I call in a different part of my brain when I'm writing for a film versus for theatre. When I'm trying to think of ideas, I inherently think of the idea, and it just feels like a gut instinct in terms of what medium it’s going to manifest as. In theatre, you’re all in a room together. You're moving through an experience together. For me, that visceral aspect of it lends itself to what story it’s going to be, versus writing for film. In film, you always ask the question, “Why film?” And part of it is the idea of scope and being able to jump around in terms of the magnitude of the story in some ways. I think of a play as a breath and film as a year.

You were co-director and member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab for 10 years. Can you talk a little bit about that experience and how it’s impacted you creatively?

I think for me, the Ma-Yi community has been really instrumental in my growth as a writer. It comes out of the idea of the Asian American experience and being united in that, yet being so culturally different as well, and finding ways to both connect and acknowledge our differences. I think that came out, in terms of style of writing, cultural identity, nationality, and gender identity. Having that built in diversity pushed all of us to be our most authentic selves. Building that community with them as the co-director was really insightful. It taught me what writers need and how it differs among individuals. Having a safe place like Ma-Yi, that's completely supportive, was incredibly freeing as an artist and nurturing as an individual. Co-running that was really a highlight of my writing career.

What was your experience like being part of ALLARTS' new documentary, The First Twenty: 20 years of Asian-American Playwriting?

Mike and I joke about it, like we were the sixth man on a NBA bench. We were with these legendary icons, in terms of Asian American playwrights. They’re in the same green room as you. It feels like you're part of history. It makes you feel like what you're doing matters in some small way, which is mortifying and also frightening, but you know that you have that mantle of responsibility, to try to live up to the footsteps that you follow in. It's great to have it documented because I feel like so much of what we do happens in the shadows a lot of the time, because mainstream media tends to forget about Asian American experiences, or tends to not really understand them. Especially the multi-racial experience. I think it's much easier to focus on one thing rather than hybrid identities. For me, it feels great to say, “No, we're here, and this is what we've done.”

How does having a mixed Asian heritage play into your creative process?

I think most of my work tries to focus on intersections of identity and how that plays out. You know, being half Pakistani, half Filipino... I guess we're trying to move away from half and half. Because it fragments identity. Scratch that.

Oh no. I still say that. Half white, half Korean

I'm so accustomed to it. I'm so accustomed to saying biracial, and I know there’s a movement away from that because it tends to cleave someone in two, which can make one feel like, “Hey, you're just half a person” sometimes.

Wait, what are we supposed to say? I'm so out of the loop.

I was told, mixed. Or if I’m describing my identity, it would be: I'm Pakistani and Filipina. Just so that you’re whole. It's just a matter of retraining my brain and my mouth to say what it should be. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of it.

How do you define your mixed identity?

I think I have to evaluate what people are talking about and doing and why, and see if it makes sense within my own ethos. Some of it does and some of it doesn't. I adopt the things that I think will be helpful for my children so that I can start getting into that habit and the pattern and be able to pass it down to them. And then the things that I don't necessarily agree with, I just kind of pocket, veto, and I move on with my life.

With Bhangin’ It, we deal with mixed race identity and how it fits into a larger cultural landscape. I realized in the writing of it that everyone is very ready to identify you for you. Even with Kamala Harris, I noticed how very quickly everyone was like, “She can only be one thing, and I'm going to choose that for her.” So, I want to make sure that I'm putting forth a whole self and that it's a complicated and very multilayered identity.

I'm going to stop saying half, starting today. Last question. What inspires you these days?

It's been an interesting few years. Usually I would get my inspiration from being out in the world, but my family and I have literally been hunkered down in like 600 square feet all together. A family of four! I think that inspiration comes from the little things now. Just the chaos of our lives. I've noticed a lot of my stuff has started to become almost stream of consciousness. I don't know if that's through lack of sleep or just through the need to lose logic because it's not happening anymore. I think we find a lot of joy in one another as a family, which is great.

Matt Park is a songwriter, guitarist, poet, and actor. He co-wrote music for Ma-Yi's production of Peer Gynt and the Norwegian HAPA Band at ART/NY in the winter of 2016. He played lead guitar in Diana Oh's My Lingerie Band and performed in My Lingerie Play at The Rattlestick Theater in the fall of 2017. He is 1/2 of the band CUTE with Diana Oh and co wrote 24 Punk with her which was performed at The New York Musical Festival, Joe's Pub, and The Bushwick Starr. He is currently working on orchestrations for Rebecca Lee Lerman's Heartbreak Hotel which is being works shopped at the Tank and Gallery Players in the winter/spring of 2019.