Shinshin Tsai has been one of my favorite So Cal directors since we first met at Chapman University, when he was slated to direct one of my plays for OC-centric New Play Festival. He’s director of Lloyd Suh’s “The Chinese Lady,” a play about Afong Moy— the first Chinese woman to set foot in America — at the Chance Theater in Anaheim Hills. I asked Shin to give us an in-depth look at the play, which opens May 24 in its regional premiere and runs through June 8.
Q: What drew you to the play, apart from the fact that the protagonist is Chinese?
What first drew me in was how The Chinese Lady captures the emotional texture of displacement—the loneliness, the longing, the hope. I deeply relate to the immigrant experience of leaving behind extended family, cultural roots, and everything familiar, all in pursuit of something uncertain but full of promise. The play doesn’t just recount history—it invites the audience into it, asking hard questions not in a pedantic way, but through poetic, philosophical reflection. I was especially taken by the way Afong Moy describes America with such wonder and lyricism. It reminded me how beauty and heartbreak can live side by side—and how both are part of the immigrant story.
Q: What do you feel you bring to the project, other than your shared ethnicity?
I bring a deep curiosity about the inner lives of characters, especially the ones history has flattened. As a director, I’m constantly asking: “What is being said—and what is being hidden?” I also love crafting intimate, theatrical moments that allow the audience to lean in and reflect. My goal is always to make space for both the heart and the intellect—to guide the audience through feeling, not just facts. I also know what it feels like to live between cultures, and that in-between space is where this play lives.
Q: What was the most difficult aspect of telling the story?
Balancing beauty with brutality. Afong Moy’s story is steeped in sorrow and erasure, but it’s also filled with dignity, humor, and a refusal to disappear. The challenge was honoring the painful truths without letting them define her completely. How do we show her agency in a world determined to strip it away? That emotional balancing act was the tightrope we walked every day in rehearsal.
Q: What do you want people to take away from the play?
I hope people leave thinking not just about Afong Moy, but about who gets to be remembered, and who gets left behind. I hope they consider how much of our present still echoes the past—and how much empathy and curiosity it takes to truly see someone across time, culture, or perceived difference. If the play stirs a question that lingers longer than the applause, then we’ve done something worthwhile.
Q: People seem to forget how important Chinese immigrants were to the early history of America.
Chinese immigrants were vital to building the physical and cultural foundations of this country, from railroads to agriculture to urban communities. But history often remembers only what it finds convenient. The Chinese Lady reminds us that visibility doesn’t guarantee understanding, and that we still have work to do in telling a fuller, more honest American story—one that includes all the hands that built it.
Michelle Krusiec in “The Chinese Lady” at Chance Theater. Photo by Doug Catiller.
Info: chancetheater.com.
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