For Ins, it was much more difficult to choose an artistic life than it was for others in the Academy. He arrived in this country from South Korea as a very young child, and grew up in a tight-knit Korean community with a pastor father and an extended family that did not include professional actors or poets or musicians or playwrights. I don’t remember exactly what I said during our discussion, but I know the gist: You have great talent; there are so many opportunities in front of you right now; give it at least another year. Six months later I was handed the first draft of Kim’s Convenience. A year later I am writing a Foreword to a play that is now breaking box-office records at Soulpepper, where it launched our fifteenth-anniversary season.

Kim’s Convenience is an astonishing debut play. That said, there is nothing original about the form of this play (it does not stray far from the neoclassical unities of time, place, and action), and its subject matter is extremely familiar (literally). What is remarkable about the play is that despite this familiarity, it feels so original. And it feels very Canadian. Ins has managed to take the most mundane (dare I say, convenient) institution of our daily life and show us its beating heart. For anyone who has watched this play, it will be impossible to pick up a litre of milk at the corner store without wondering what story is unfolding behind the cash register. Every time we hear the electronic doorbell announce our departure, we will think about the lives we have left behind.

Kim’s Convenience is a textbook example of Mark Twain’s maxim “Write what you know.” Ins has written from a very personal and specific place, giving us a picture of one family in one community. The magic depth to which he has taken this specificity is the same depth from which the play’s universality is sprung. This play, on hearing, becomes our story about our family in our community.

As a classical actor, Ins has been around great plays and he has learned from them. We feel the ghosts of Willy and Biff Loman in this play, and it is interesting to note that Ins was rehearsing and performing Death of a Salesman while writing Kim’s Convenience. Ins’ ability to capture cadence and humour reminds us of the great Mercer family trilogy of David French.

But the play that Kim’s Convenience reminds me of the most is Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Like Hansberry’s great breakthrough play, Kim’s Convenience arrives as both an artistic triumph and a major cultural event. Ins Choi has opened a door through which many will follow. Ten years from now there will be a new generation of first- and second-generation Canadians who will know, with confidence, that they can make a meaningful contribution to the well-being of their community without a uniform and a gun. For many of this generation, the first step of that journey to cultural confidence will be through the door that Ins Choi has opened. (Cue sound of doorbell)