<Begin Segment 18>

TI: And so, eventually, so when did, when was the play first produced?

WY: As... oh.

TI: By the East West Players? This must have been, what, late '70s?

WY: Not quite late '70s...

TI: Was it '77?

WY: I don't really know. I think it was more like, I think the book came out...

TI: The book came out in '74.

WY: Was it?

TI: Yeah. So a few years after.

WY: So he read that, uh-huh, and he told me. Frank Chin and Shawn Wong came over and visited me one day and said, "Let's go to the East West Players and see the January 1st show." And I said, "Okay," we went there, and they said, "Mako wants to talk to you." So they went somewhere else and I talked to Mako, he said, "I want to see the story in play form." And he helped me along.

TI: Okay. So when the play was first, the premier, when you first saw it, what did you think when you saw it?

WY: Well, there were so few characters. They had two casts. And once something is a success, boy, you got trouble on your hands. They fight like animals trying to get the part, you know. That's what I thought. Success is really terrible.

TI: And so what you saw was...

WY: I liked one group better, and it didn't include Mako's wife. And the other party kept pushing me, and so I said, well, the party that wanted to do it at KCET didn't want Mako to be the director. He wanted it because he's white.

TI: Oh, but going back to that very first play, what was your role? Wasn't Mako the director, so wasn't he in control? What role did you have in that first...

WY: I saw that, and then sometimes we would disagree. One time he threw his beer can down on the floor, he was so mad at me. [Laughs]

TI: And what would you guys argue about?

WY: One of the actors was not doing what I wanted him to show in the play. And I told Mako -- and he said, "God damn." [Laughs]

TI: But then that was your role, was to make sure that that feeling...

WY: Yeah, 'cause I don't want --

TI: ...that feeling that you wanted, you wrote about.

WY: I don't want, if it was going to be a flop, I want to be the one that flopped it, you know. 'Cause I want my message through, not somebody -- 'cause I did it from my experience. That's why when you get a screenplay from a book, you get a totally different picture sometimes.

TI: This is where your obsessive-compulsive side comes out? [Laughs]

WY: Right, right. [Laughs]

TI: So I want to go to the first time it was played to a live audience. And what was the reaction of the audience when they saw the play?

WY: They didn't know when the play was over. [Laughs] There'd be ten people in the audience, and I'd have to start clapping. And then when the Times premier critic saw it, he could not stop talking about it. Because they'd never seen a play in the... see, this is Japanese-style writing.

TI: And when you say Times, it was the Los Angeles Times?

WY: Yeah.

TI: So this was the big daily newspaper in L.A...

WY: Yeah, he loved it. He couldn't stop talking about it. He called it one of the ten best plays of the year. Because they'd never seen anything like that. This is Japanese-style writing. That's why I call it Songs My Mother Taught Me.

TI: So this is kind of interesting, because up to this point, you were really not known other than published in Aiiieeeee, which, the readership wasn't that large, to all of a sudden being sort of rave reviews from the L.A. Times, which is a subscription of millions of people. So how did that change your life?

WY: Change my what? Life?

TI: Yeah, how did it change your life?

WY: Oh, I got a little more respect. [Laughs] But then, you know, I'm old. I was old then. I was in my fifties then.

TI: Well, how did it change your relationship with, say, the community?

WY: Oh, well, gee, you'd be surprised at how many people keep flocking around you. I'm not a very social person. I talk like I am, but I'm not. And it was hard for me. It's hard for me -- once I get talking, you can't stop me, but it's hard for me to meet you. I'm obsessive-compulsive. "God, what does he want from me?" [Laughs]

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.