Why did you decide to bring The Juniors<\/em> to Colgate?<\/strong> What was it like working with students at your alma mater?<\/strong> Why did you pursue a career in theater?<\/strong> My cousin at that point was the University Theater stage manager and invited me to be her assistant. I instantly became hooked, partially because theater has a very particular type of community and I was coming from a place where I didn\u2019t have any friends or family. I remember listening to the stories that were being told in a rehearsal room as I was sweeping the floor, seeing how people were relating to each other, and thinking \u2018This is it for me.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n How would you describe your directorial style?<\/strong> The Juniors<\/em> works in a very similar way, starting in this sort of reality: these actual teenagers in high school who have real relationships with each other and with the teacher, start forming deep relationships with their flour sack babies. And then, very quickly, this investment in the flour sack babies spirals into violence and chaos. I really love this description I\u2019ve heard around campus of the show: \u2018It felt like a fever dream.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yen will direct Marisol<\/em> by Jose Rivera at the University of Rochester this spring.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kat Yen \u201909 directed students in the fall performance titled The Juniors. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1222,"featured_media":8744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[354,115],"coauthors":[168],"class_list":["post-8283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scene","tag-alumni","tag-theater"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-29B","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2022\/02\/KatYenHeadshot.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8283"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8866,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8283\/revisions\/8866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8283"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
In my first year of graduate school, I made really good friends with the playwright. This was the first play he wrote there and I\u2019ve been obsessed with it since then. It\u2019s been such a wonderful experience getting to direct this production five years later \u2014 it feels like a dream come true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I absolutely loved working with these students. When you\u2019re working with young adults who are learning how to do a lot of this for the first time, or having these special experiences for the first time, it\u2019s really inspirational. It allows me to enjoy what I do more because I see their excitement and joy. For example, the first day they learned fight choreography, several members of the cast expressed that it was the coolest thing they\u2019ve ever done. That kind of enthusiasm is just so infectious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was actually homeless before I came to Colgate; I was literally applying while I was living in Central Park. My cousin, Doris Yen \u201908, was a year above me, so I knew about it. I was in a really messed-up life situation and thought, \u2018I know of the school, I know someone there, let\u2019s apply.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The type of work I\u2019m really interested in, I would very lightly define as magic realism. In theater and literature, that\u2019s almost becoming an old-fashioned term, but I still think it best describes what I do, which is plays that are based in reality. We have real human relationships or traumas, or histories, or whatever else, but we elevate from that and explore them across time and space in a more abstracted way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2022\/01\/111021_juniors_MDD0000399-1024x764.jpg\")