Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig is a playwright whose trilogy The China Plays: Three Parables of Global Capital was recently published by Methuen Drama. The plays in the trilogy, The World of Extreme Happiness, The King of Hell’s Palace, and Snow in Midsummer, have been produced in the UK at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Hampstead Theatre, and the National Theatre, and in the US at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theater Club, Classic Stage, and the Goodman Theatre. Cowhig was born in Philadelphia and raised in Northern Virginia, Okinawa, Taipei, and Beijing. Her work has been honored with the Wasserstein Prize, the Yale Drama Series Award (selected by David Hare), an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, the Keene Prize for Literature, and a United States Artist Fellowship. She lives in Southern Appalachia.
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Snow in MidsummerA Play
DOU YI
My hands were packed in dry ice
Flown across the Pacific and
Stitched onto a man who lost his overseas.
My palms open doors to
Rooms my feet haven't walked through and
Caress a woman my eyes will never see.
It doesn't snow there but my
Nails ache when they touch ice and
Scratch strange characters onto that
Soldier's skin while he's sleeping.
His doctors call it post-traumatic stress but
He knows they're words from a
Language his tongue never learned
Justice.
Justice.
Justice
Across the East Sea a yam farmer
Uses my corneas to see.
She dreams of snow but thinks
It's ashes from a childhood fire bombing.
On the far side of the Atlantic my stomach digests
Food that never passed through my lips
Food my teeth didn't chew
Food my tongue hasn't tasted
Food that could have made this spirit stronger
And act sooner if someone offered it to Dou Yi.
But my heart--
My heart beats in this town,
Pumping blood through a man
Loved by the son of an official,
A son who moved Heaven and Earth for
His Happiness.
His Future.
His New Harmony.
These offerings have given me strength
I feel my spirit reviving!
Justice.
Justice.
Justice.
Justice and burial for the widow Dou Yi
Justice.
Justice.
Justice.
But how can you bury a woman whose butchered body's still living?
Justice.
Justice.
That is my heart. It should beat inside me.
(Dou Yi thrusts her hand into Rocket's chest and retrieves her heart.)
Snow in MidsummerPremiered in2017- Print Books
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The King of Hell's PalaceA Play
KUAN
I’ll call out the license plate. Don’t settle for less than ninety thousand.
(Kuan steps onto the highway-----then is yanked back, as Wen lunges forward and pulls him to safety. The sound of the truck passing. Headlights fade. The brothers fight.)
WEN
I’d rather die a death of a thousand cuts than outlive my wife. I thought I could face it but I can’t. She wants me to be the strong one, but I can’t be. I can’t watch her die. Please don’t make me shame myself. Let me be a hero. If you go, I’ll wait for the next truck and follow you out of this world. Let her remember me as the man who fought for her until his last breath. Alive I’m worth nothing. Let my death buy my son medicine. Let my flesh feed our flowers. Some people have meaningful lives. Let my death have a meaning. Please, brother. Give this to me.
(Kuan steps aside. Wen stands on the edge of the highway and faces the approaching truck. He tries to step onto the road. His knees buckle. His body’s frozen in fear. Wen pounds on his legs with his fists.)
WEN
MOVE!
KUAN
You have life in you still. This isn’t your end.
(Kuan steps into the blinding headlights of an oncoming truck. LOUD, LONG HONK.)
KUAN
In the next life we’ll be a family again.
The King of Hell's PalacePremiered in2019- Print Books
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Mary and the MonstersA Libretto
(Enter News Sellers.)
NEWS SELLERS
Three thousand Memphians fight for their lives
Blame the Black and Irish if you don’t survive
Epidemic’s ravaging our Bluff City
Death Cart wheels rattle through every street
In ghetto Pinch-Gut
Each house has caught the Stranger’s Disease
Caught the Stranger’s Disease
Extra extra come read all about it
Read all about it---
(Music darkens. The DEATH CART DRIVER enters.
He pulls a cart stacked high with DEAD BODIES
HIDDEN FROM VIEW by an oil cloth.
As he approaches the news sellers, they HOLD
SPONGES to their NOSES and FLEE.
The driver pauses outside Mary & George’s home.)
DEATH CART DRIVER
(Spoken)
Knock Knock
Mary and the MonstersPremiered in
“Some playwrights have a gift to amuse; Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig has a darker gift. Anyone with romantic notions of Chinese culture will be unsettled by the jagged, unsentimental portrait of modern urban China.” —Chicago Reader [on The China Trilogy: Three Parables of Global Capital]
“Cowhig speaks bitterness and makes us sit up and listen.” —Lyn Gardner, The Guardian [on The World of Extreme Happiness]
"The final three scenes slam into place like heavy doors, turning the funny, brutal show into something red with real fury." —Helen Shaw, Time Out New York [on The World of Extreme Happiness]
Selected Works
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Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig is a visionary talent whose meticulous and politically acute fables bring the histories of nations, of capital, and of censorship to life. Striking and propulsive, her plays examine the distance between ideology and reality through her characters’ brutally transactional relationships, crafting unforgettable and strangely tender shapes on the stage and in the mind. This is an artist of remarkable ambition and integrity, unafraid to paint on a broad canvas.