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Kathy Hsieh (John Ulman)
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Kathy Hsieh is all things arts-related, really. She knows
virtually anyone/everyone in the theater community (at minimum) and has headed
up her own theater company (SIS Productions), written many plays, directed
plays, acted in scores of productions on stage, and been an employee of the
City of Seattle in the Office of Arts and Culture for 17 years!
She’s also a delightful and thoughtful conversationalist and
a deep-thinker on subject matter. She has presented talks about aspects of
arts-and-communities-of-color all over the world.
So, I thought it would be fascinating for me, and hopefully
also for my readers, to discuss various aspects of the arts during COVID-time.
We’re all going to be making huge changes in how, when, and where we experience
the arts. None more particularly than theater, dance, and other live in-person
events.
For our first conversation, we took on the explosion of
theatrical events that are being presented either on Zoom or the free streaming
opportunities from theaters like National Theatre Live, Lincoln Center,
BroadwayHD, and local events (many on YouTube channels).
The question: Is it theater?
KH: Theater is its own experience and Zoom is its own. Film
scripts (for instance) are very different from stage plays and you can’t take
film and plop it on stage or vice versa. A lot of writers, when they’re
writing, envision the arena it might be best done and the Zoom platform needs
to be thought of as a specific place to write to and a way to take advantage of
the unique aspects it provides.
