Once Upon a (Korean) Time

A new play by Daniel K. Isaac.

Or: Bridge of Sparrows

What endures? Through war and diaspora and the press of ages, what can a soul turn to that keeps eternal. One is the families that they make, the other is stories. Daniel K. Isaac weaves a long thread of folk tales and family stories, linking from Korea’s earliest history to his own queer community.

I am almost grateful I got to see Ma-Yi Studio’s production over Zoom Theater because Isaac’s imaginative staging seems impossible to realize in flesh. Liquor stores are consumed in flames, girls ascend to heaven on lotuses, bridges of sparrows link the long lost. I would have adored to see it realized in person but under Yee Eun Nam’s projections the same sense of wonder blooms behind the sternum.

Isaac winds the folktales through a trellis of generations, beginning with two soldiers (Jon Norman Schneider and Isaac) comforting each other in the midst of the Japanese occupation, followed by three “comfort women” (Diana Oh, Jenna Yi, and Shannon Tyo). These are bracketed by personal stories from the cast, running from personal narratives to systemic racism, to reclamations of queerness from the age old stories.

The retellings are gripping and the setting hilarious (three Airline Attendants share a “family friendly” folk tale about why you ought not to bury your mother near a river) and the actors dive in with a will (particular note is David Shih as a hapless Blind Shin, and Norman Schneider as the quivery kind Huang-Bo, and Diana Oh excels in every character she dons). It’s unclear whether the long link of family is true (the actors share the names with Isaac’s friends “The Queer Adopted Korean American Society”) but the story is so neat it doesn’t matter if it is true in fact. It is true enough in the heart. By the end, the company has fashioned a moment of hope that settles on the audience and ushers them in a new, brighter direction, lit by the lights of ancient tales.