During Kat Yen’s first year at Colgate, she found her “theater parents.” Professor April Sweeney, Professor Adrian Giurgea, and Senior Lecturer Simona Giurgea had also just arrived on campus, and Yen credits their care and teaching wisdom with her success today. “Without them, I would’ve never discovered this thing I’ve dedicated my life to.”
Now a New York City-based theater director, Yen returned to Colgate to direct the fall campus production The Juniors, written by her Yale School of Drama classmate Noah Diaz. The story of high school juniors undertaking a “flour sack baby” project in their home economics class, the play examines the struggles of parenting and coming of age through satire and comedy. Learn more about Yen and her work on The Juniors.
Why did you decide to bring The Juniors to Colgate?
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’ve been obsessed with it since then. It’s been such a wonderful experience getting to direct this production five years later — it feels like a dream come true.
What was it like working with students at your alma mater?
I absolutely loved working with these students. When you’re 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’s 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’ve ever done. That kind of enthusiasm is just so infectious.
Why did you pursue a career in theater?
I was actually homeless before I came to Colgate; I was literally applying while I was living in Central Park. My cousin, Doris Yen ’08, was a year above me, so I knew about it. I was in a really messed-up life situation and thought, ‘I know of the school, I know someone there, let’s apply.’
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’t 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 ‘This is it for me.’
How would you describe your directorial style?
The type of work I’m really interested in, I would very lightly define as magic realism. In theater and literature, that’s 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.
The Juniors 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’ve heard around campus of the show: ‘It felt like a fever dream.’
Yen will direct Marisol by Jose Rivera at the University of Rochester this spring.