Death And Cockroaches plays through December lst Atwater Village Theatre 3269 Casitas Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90039
By Dale Reynolds
Eric Reyes Loo
America is just full of mysterious race-mixing – humanity’s future if it survives the catastrophic climate changes ahead of it – that can only deepen life’s awareness of those who are so charmed and who surround the rest of us.
So, when a bright, attractive playwright is able to explore his Chinese/Latinx Americanisms, contradictions and all, then you will want to meet Eric Reyes Loo and see what he has written.
Loo currently has a dark comedy opening soon at the Atwater Village Theatre, Death and Cockroaches, about a young playwright who moves back home to take care of his dying father, running from his sadness into what Loo calls “a Wall of Dicks.” It’s an irreverently honest story, told from the point-of-view of a playwright commenting on his own play.
The author of over a dozen works for the theatre, Loo is a California native (the L.A. County City of Downey), a graduate of Loyola High School/L.A., and in a committed relationship (not yet married) to a fellow who works in real estate.
With a mother who is Mexican-American and a father who is Chinese-American, and with him gay to boot, he has certainly hit most of the registered hate-crime categories in this country. His mom grew up in Northern California but moved with her family to Chicano-heavy East Los Angeles when she was fifteen. His dad is Hawaii-born. They met in SoCal when his dad was in the U.S. Navy, a meet set-up by friends. His younger brother having married a Russian-Jewish woman makes his family so very American!
“Because of our backgrounds, we were raised to be assimilated; that being American, nothing should stand in our way. But it’s taken me years searching my identity to become comfortable in my own skin.”
“My dad used to say, ‘You’re American and nothing should stand in your way.’ Part of searching my identity allowed me to recently be on a panel dealing with Latinx issues, including those of us who identify as bi-cultural, and I became more aware of how often I don’t feel assimilated – living in some kind of in-between space. Those times when I’m most comfortable, interestingly, is when I’m eating. Hot dogs, Menudo, Chow Mein – y’know, cultural markers.”
As is true with most LGBTQ folk who want family and societal approval of one’s sexual or gender orientation, he’s had it easier than most. “My coming-out process was more difficult on my mother, ironically, than on my father. She was most worried about safety and mistreatment, while my Dad was pragmatic about it:
You’re in the arts, so being gay might be an advantage, as people, generally, like to help their own.’
Amazingly, he has a chill perspective on it. “Also, I was a creative, flamboyant kid, so it’s not like they didn’t already suspect. Besides, my brother has now given them grandchildren.”
Loo wrote his first play while at Santa Clara University, under the tutelage of Professor Erik Ehn, “who encouraged me from the very beginning. I wrote and produced several plays there, while I also studied modern dance; my creative interests, not so surprisingly, include theatre, poetry, and dance. But when I graduated at age 22, I didn’t feel I had much to write about. So I worked a year in Portland, Oregon, with the Jesuit Volunteer Corp, with runaway youth, which was eye-opening and at an after-school arts program there, working with kids 11-17,” which included several gay kids, along with some who were trans-identified. “I wrote a play about that, which got me into my Master’s program at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts,” on a scholarship for Dramatic Writing.
So what does a career in The Arts offer him?
“As a kid, I felt the world was different from me. Now, I can understand things – permanent feelings, a record of my experience. I was a voracious comic book reader. X-MEN, for instance, because they were mutants, feeding us storylines about racial and sexual inequality. I was entranced by those super-hero subjects, giving me a way to express to myself what I was feeling.”
And Theatre? What’s with that?
“Well, actually, I’m a playwright transitioning into TV (he writing on a one-hour comedy/drama for Netflix, A.J. & the Queen, starring Ru Paul, premiering next year).
“As a writer, I’ve always wanted things to be said out loud. I wanted to watch people performing life’s experiences. Especially as a gay-Latino-Asian person, I have a perspective that is unique. Death And Cockroaches is a family drama, the kind of family you seldom see as they talk bluntly to each other while dealing with grief and those complicated issues that exist within families.
“There’s an imaginary cockroach who takes the form by a hot white dude, on how one man deals with the imminent loss of a patriarch. We’ve workshopped it for a couple of years, and found that nearly everyone sees themselves [reflected] in this play.”
Excitedly he continues, “We’ve been given an incredible cast, including people of color as well as a WASPy cockroach. Jen Chang is our director, a woman who is Chinese/Philippino/American, which has given her a great vision for what’s up on the stage. There’s plenty of salaciousness, but no nudity – kinda what you’d expect in a play about grief and dying. It’s deeply silly, irreverent, at only 90-minutes.”
Currently on a sabbatical from three years teaching writing for theatre, film and television at San Diego State University, Loo intends to keep on writing for whichever medium wants him next. The handsome man is amusing, thoughtful and excited about teaching us what we need to know about his bi-cultural/bi-racial experiences.
“I’m truly honored to do it.” And, presumably, so are we in knowing it.
Death And Cockroaches plays through December lst at the Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90039.
Tickets: 323.379.9583 or at chalkrepboxoffice@gmail.com
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