Kim's Convenience

Copyright © 2012 Ins Choi

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This edition published in 2012 by
House of Anansi Press Inc.
www.houseofanansi.com

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Choi, Ins, 1974– Kim’s convenience / Ins Choi.

ISBN 978-1-4870-0224-4 (epub). ISBN 978-1-4870-0225-1 (kindle).

1. Korean Canadians—Ontario—Toronto—Drama. 2. Convenience stores—Ontario—Toronto—Drama.
3. Family-owned business enterprises—Ontario—Toronto—Drama.
4. Debt—Drama. 5. Reconciliation—Drama. 6. Toronto (Ont.)—Drama. I. Title.

PS8605.H63K54 2012 C812’.6 C2012-901109-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012932693

Cover design by Erin Mallory (based on the original Soulpepper poster illustration for Kim's Convenience)
Cover illustration: Brian Rea

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

My father grew up in North Korea. From the time of his birth until the end of the Second World War, the country was occupied by the Japanese. Soon after the Second World War, the Korean Civil War broke out. During that time, he and his family walked south, across the mountainous Korean peninsula, with thousands of others in search of freedom. My mother grew up in an orphanage in war-torn South Korea, raising her younger brother from the age of five. After graduating from high school, she worked as a secretary for the government, at which time she met my father. They arrived in Canada in 1975 with two hundred dollars, three kids, and a lot of hope. My father worked at my uncle’s convenience store by day and went to ESL classes by night, while my mother took care of me and my two older sisters.

After a performance of Kim’s Convenience at the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival, my parents came up to me, hugged me, and said, “We are very proud of you. Thank you.”

Kim’s Convenience is my love letter to my parents and to all first-generation immigrants who call Canada their home.

FOREWORD

Two years ago I had a very important conversation with Ins Choi, who had proven himself in the previous year to be a gifted actor — who was also a gifted musician, who was also a gifted poet. No one yet knew that Ins was also a playwright. He was halfway through a two-year residency as a member of the Academy at the Soulpepper Theatre Company, where I am artistic director. The conversation was about life choices, and particularly about one that Ins was not sure he could make: dedicating himself to an artistic life. Ins had been to a family funeral recently, and had had a conversation with a policeman friend who had nearly convinced Ins that the steady employment, pension, and community status of an officer of the law were just the answer to his future.

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)

Albert Schultz
Artistic Director
Soulpepper Theatre Company
Toronto, Ontario
February 2012

INTRODUCTION

In the late nineteenth century, Canadian missionaries began working in South Korea. They built churches, hospitals, schools, and universities, while developing close relationships with the people. In 1948, a mission-sponsored medical student named Tae-Yon Whang arrived in Canada to continue his studies. After completing his education, he decided to stay and inadvertently became the first Korean to officially immigrate to Canada.

In 1965, there were seventy Korean immigrants in Canada. In 1967, the first Korean church was established at St. Luke’s United Church on the corner of Sherbourne Street and Carlton Street in downtown Toronto. Originally named the Toronto Korean Church, it was renamed the Toronto Korean United Church after becoming a part of the United Church of Canada. In 1973, the Ontario Korean Businessmen’s Association (OKBA) was established. The organization offered group purchasing to small businesses through its wholesale outlet, and serviced mainly Korean convenience store owners.

With the Korean church and the OKBA established, Koreans could come to Toronto, make friends, gain support, purchase a store, fill the store with products, and make a pretty good living without ever having to learn English. Korean convenience stores spread all over Toronto, as did the Korean churches. In 1980, there were 20,000 Koreans in Canada, and in 2011, that number rose to 200,000. I’ve always considered the church and the store to be the Umma and the Appa of Korean communities in Canada.

When I graduated from the acting program at York University in 1998, there were few Asian actors to look up to. In fact, there was a lack of roles for Asian males in plays, TV shows, and movies. The only roles out there were two-bit parts in three-bit movies-of-the-week, involving silent-on-camera Asian gang members. Was this my career? There were the plays of Rick Shiomi, Jean Yoon, Marty Chan, and M. J. Kang, which inspired me, but that was about it. Something needed to change.

Then, in 2002, fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company was launched under the leadership of Nina Lee Aquino, Richard Lee, David Yee, and Leon Aureus. Through fu-GEN, the Asian theatre community in Toronto was being nurtured, award-winning shows were being produced, and new plays were being written. In 2005, Nina invited me to be part of their third playwriting unit. That was the beginning of Kim’s Convenience. Over the next five years, I received writing grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council, and was given workshop opportunities to finish this play from fu-GEN, Diaspora Dialogues, and Grace Toronto Church. It was a gruelling process. I gave up many times and celebrated the work’s completion on countless occasions. And although I didn’t think the play was finished, in 2010, I submitted it to a few theatre companies in Toronto, just to see what feedback I’d receive. All of them were encouraging, but none of them were interested. It was then that I realized I would have to birth this play myself. In my research of independent theatre festivals in Toronto, I came across the New Play Contest held by the Toronto Fringe Festival. The winner would automatically have his or her show in the festival, the eight-hundred-dollar entrance fee would be waived, and the title “Winner of New Play Contest” would be plastered all over promotional materials. I entered. It won.

Renowned theatre director Weyni Mengesha had agreed to direct the show, but due to scheduling conflicts, she couldn’t. So I took on the Herculean task of producing and directing the play I had written, which I was also performing in. I had no money, so I began raising funds through donations from friends and family, and selling ad space in the playbill. Soon after, actor and playwright Leon Aureus came on board as co-producer. We knew that we could count on the Toronto theatre-going crowd because of the quality of the cast and because the play had won the New Play Contest. What would prove to be a challenge was reaching the Korean audience, which was vital to me.

We went to every Korean store in K-town south (Christie and Bloor) and K-town north (Yonge and Finch), putting up posters and talking up the show. We sent posters with a cover letter to every Korean church in Toronto. We were interviewed by all the Korean media outlets and even ran a “Win Free Tickets: Korean Trivia Contest” through our Facebook page. Leon posted trailers on YouTube, which a lot of the Korean media picked up and ran on their programs. Later, Sojeong Choi came on board and did an incredible job in helping us publicize the play to the Korean community. Even cast members were tweeting, posting on Facebook, doing whatever they could to help the show gain exposure. That was the producing side of it. That was the hard part.

The show itself proved to be the easy part. I already had the cast in mind from doing workshops in the past, and they were all willing to be in the play for pretty much nothing. Actors Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Jean Yoon, Esther Jun, Andre Sills, and I, along with stage manager Kat Chin and designer Ken Mackenzie, met whenever we could, rehearsing, free of charge, in the basement of Grace Toronto Church and in the sanctuary of Toronto Korean Bethel Church. Rehearsals were highly collaborative. We ate out together a lot and got to know each other very well.

By the time we opened, all of the advance tickets (50 percent of the run) had been sold and there was an incredible, euphoric buzz surrounding the show, especially after it had been featured on the cover of NOW Magazine. People were lining up for tickets two to three hours in advance and many were turned away. One Korean family came all the way from Parry Sound at the request of their friends, who told them to “close the store and come see this play; it’s about us.” The audience was about one-third Korean, one-third Caucasian, and one-third every other ethnicity under the sun, young and old. All seven performances at the two-hundred-seat Bathurst Street Theatre had sold out. The play then went on to win the Patron’s Pick Award, selling out an additional show in three hours. It was invited to be part of the Best of Fringe Uptown Festival, where it sold out an additional seven shows at the two-hundred-seat Studio Theatre at the Toronto Centre for the Arts.

It was then that I began receiving emails from commercial producers and artistic directors of Toronto theatre companies, who were interested in mounting my play. Soulpepper was the best fit. Soulpepper’s founder and artistic director, Albert Schultz, wanted the play to open the company’s 2012 season. Everybody was available except Andre Sills, who had to honour a previous contract for another show. So we auditioned all the available amazing black actors in Toronto and arrived at Clé Bennett. When I was asked about a director, I immediately proposed Weyni. This time, her schedule was open.

On December 19, 2011, we began rehearsals for Kim’s Convenience at Soulpepper Theatre Company. Weyni began with a ritual: each of us would share a personal object and the story of what had got us into theatre. (Those objects are hidden in our set.) We rehearsed six days a week, eight hours a day, for three weeks. Every Wednesday night, we ate Korean, Ethiopian, or Jamaican cuisine, and on Saturdays we brought sweet treats to the rehearsals. The show opened at Soulpepper on January 19, 2012.

It’s Thursday, February 2, 2012, 7:30 p.m. I’m sitting on a couch in the green room at Soulpepper Theatre. Nancy, the stage manager, just gave us the thirty-minute call. I’m tired . . . I should get ready . . . Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, who plays Appa in the show, is sitting beside me playing some game on his iPad. Esther Jun, who plays Janet, walked in and asked something about hosting our closing night party. Jean Yoon, who plays Umma, just sat down. Actor Clé Bennett, who plays four roles in the show, came in and dropped a bunch of sweet potato chips that he discovered recently, and which we all love. (Everybody gets up to hug Clé. He just brings that out in all of us.) Natalie, the dresser, is doing a crossword puzzle at the table. Kat, the assistant stage manager, walked by tweeting something. Nancy is now knitting a baby blanket for the soon-to-be-born baby of Ken Mackenzie, the set designer. Everyone has now vacated the room to get ready for the show . . . I’m alone in this room writing on my laptop now. I’ve been alone in some room writing on my laptop for the past six years, dreaming of this. Chipping away at this unrelenting script, wrestling with these characters, laughing and weeping as I find myself in the story, can’t help but feel sad knowing that the Kim’s Convenience file titles on my laptop end here.

kc.2006.05.FinalDraft2.cwk

kc.2006.fugenPotluck.cwk

kc1.2007.now.cwk

kc2.2007.09.27.DiasporaDialogues.cwk

kc3.2008.06.28.fugen.megapotluck.cwk

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kc6.2009.05.20.GraceChurch.cwk

kc.2010.Autumn.Fringe.NewPlayContest.pdf

kc.2011.04.01.Fringe.cwk

kc.2011.07.03.Fringe.cwk

kc.2011.12.07.soulpepper.postreading.rtf

kc.2012.01.12.soulpepper.rtf

kc.2012.02.11.anansi.doc

In our opening week, Kim’s Convenience sold out its entire thirty-eight‒show run in the two-hundred-seat Michael Young Theatre. Soulpepper is bringing the show back in May, and we plan to tour it across Canada and around the world . . . honoured and humbled. As if a pack of wild rhinos trampled a path before me, knocking down all the barriers and smoothing every rocky place . . . I should get ready . . . Not many people in the arts have faith in God anymore. But I do and I thank God for having faith in me. Enough faith to let me play . . . I should get ready . . .