Past Livesis in theaters June 2.
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It was the waypeople were looking at us.
But Nora is married.
In the opening scene, she sits between the two men in the Hopper-esque amber light of a bar.
In real life, Song found herself at just Dont Tell, a Manhattan speakeasy.
She felt the eyes of patrons on them and imagined their thoughts.Which one is the husband?
would lack the intricacy of the truth.
you could feel the desire to know, she says.
And if Im gonna tell you, Im gonna tell you for real.
Who we are can determine who we love, and vice versa.
Its an adult love story about people who are trying to be mature, Song says.
I dont want the arguments to be lopsided.
I want them to be even.
Celine was 12when she made the trip from Seoul to Canada.
In one part of the world, Im a nepo baby, she jokes.
Her parents ran a crafts and accessories shop in Markham, Ontario, leaving behind their former professions.
Celine was an energetic student.
Her public high school had a Classics Club for which she wrote plays.
In college, she threw herself into activities, trying to find out what my heart was really in.
Then she saw a production of Bertolt BrechtsDrums in the Nightat her university.
Can you blame the mother for that?
Or the society that makes that a necessity for her to even provide for the child?
When she arrived in New York in the 2010s, that scene was dying.
Spaces that used to show experimental work were closing down every year or becoming corporatized.
I met Edward there.
I met my white husband there too, she wrote in an essay marking Albees death in 2016.
Right away, its so cringey, but we showed each other each others plays, she recalls.
Were either going to kill each other or were going to get married.That was the feeling we had.
His first novel,Famous People,takes the form of a memoir by a pop star.
His 2017 playAssholeimagines a doctor obsessed with the smell of his own asshole.
But she saw a thread between them.
I knew we were aligned in what we wanted to pursue.
In her work, Song hoped to force engagement with existential questions that felt urgent to her.
That play involves incest.
Another,The Feast,deals with the nature of desire and diminishing natural resources and involves cannibalism.
Her plays landed in boutique studios and theaters, often for meager pay.
One show netted her as little as $500 for its entire run.
She worked at a matchmaking agency for one six-month stretch.
Her clientele were young professional women in New York.
Song half-jokes that she was so hooked the experience almost derailed her writing career.
She was given psychological insights on a platter candid confessions of racism, for instance.
People tell amazing things to a matchmaker, she says.
I think you have more access than therapists because they know theyre not there to be judged.
She and Kuritzkes married in 2016.
By then, she had arrived at a conclusion: She had to leave the theater.
It features a classic construct of the genre: two people in a couple work out what went wrong.
In her version, Tom hoards books, Eliza burns them.
Why not ID him, too?
I decided to write this play because I was trapped, her character says in a monologue.
I first told some white people abouthaenyeoand how amazing they are.
She wrote it because she had been bribed by white peoples attention, the playwright character says.
Endlingsbecame the highest-profile production of her career, with a premiere at the American Repertory Theater.
Then, accusations ofdecades-longworkplace abuseled to the severing of his deal with the company.
Hinojosa and two other A24 stalwarts, Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, came onboard.
Song says Rudin ultimately wasnt involved with the production.
Songs script is built on the Korean concept ofinyun,or destined connection.
The term gives shape to the largest and smallest aspects of Korean life the way karma might for Hindus.
In its logic, interactions indicate relationships in past lives.
You may love someone now because you hated them in an earlier life, or the opposite.
And lives run thousands deep.
Hae Sung later asks her, Who do you think we were to each other?
Maybe an impossible affair?
As they trade hypotheses, Songs elegantly spare dialogue reveals the subtle possibilities contained in the concept.
Maybe we were just sitting next to each other on the same train.
Maybe we were just a bird and the branch it sat on one morning.
We tried, and of course it was impossible, she recalls.
They lost touch, she got married, and two years later, he decided to visit.
She was interested to see him, but whatever she felt was platonic now.
Theirinyunwasnt strong maybe only 7,000 layers, she jokes.
Today, he has a girlfriend, she tells me.
He knows about the film, and hes proud and excited for her.
Unlike in a tidy rom-com, the tension between them cant be easily erased.
In another story, Song says, they would venture to resolve it by sleeping together.
Here, they probe through speech.
They are together and say nothing at all.
Song told Greta Lee, who plays Nora, to think of herself as a host.
She must care for the men to confirm they are okay, as a host does for a guest.
Arthur, Noras husband, can seem preternaturally understanding of Hae Sungs arrival.
Magaro points to Songs own relationship as his template for the films liberated vision of love.
Kuritzkes is an understanding, caring, smart, creative partner, he said.
Theres a lot of modern men like that.
Song tells me Kuritzkes is the first reader of her writing.
When I ask whether there were any discussions overEndlings WHITE HUSBAND placard, she seems almost confused.
But, she says, she met him.
And thats not how life works.
Thats who they are.
I dont think I knew many Korean or Asian American straight men in theater.
The culture is white supremacist.
So its going to be built into us.Past Livesoffers a humane vision of how racial hierarchies can ensnare us.
Song tells me she assigned her whole team to find her ideal block.
But also it has to feel dreamy.
Like the whole film.
A crew member asked Song which direction Lee should walk in.
The direction would echo her choice in a way.
Song told him the direction, then said, as if it were obvious: Of course.
And then shell end up right here.
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