Once in the Countryside

Discover the work of 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist Lloyd Suh, whose work contests the pastness of the past, revealing the unexpected ways that history reverberates across the present to shape the future.

Through his plays, Lloyd Suh has been documenting 150 years of Asian and Asian American experiences, exploring forgotten and ignored pivotal moments in Asian American history. His plays draw on a variety of forms and aesthetics to re-tell, re-discover, and re-invent the past. Unique in scope and perspective, these history plays offer a powerful metaphor for the ingenuity and endurance of Asian American communities.

Alongside these five plays - The Chinese Lady, The Far Country, Bina's Six Apples, Charles Francis Chan Jr.'s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery, and The Heart Sellers - this edition is rich with additional resources. Not only is each play accompanied by a preface by a theatre scholar and a postscript by a creative collaborator, but the collection opens with an introduction by editor Christine Mok and closes with a conversation with playwright himself.

Taken together, the plays, along with their context, criticism, and collaborative insight, offer an expansive view of Suh's vision in an inaugural collection to inspire theatre makers, actors, and students alike.