Towards a Hapa Consciousness: Understanding Blended Identities Through David Johann Kim's Pang Spa

On a warm Sunday in May, the courtyard of the Atwater Village Theatre buzzed with more festivity than usual. A food truck parked on the curb advertised sushi burritos and bulgogi fries, while strings of colored paper cut-outs of miniature clothes fluttered between entryways. Today was Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Day for the concurrent runs of David Johann Kim’s two new plays, Pang Spa produced by Chalk Rep and Two Stop produced by EST/LA, where audience members could catch the matinee of the former and roll into the evening performance of the latter. I had already seen and critiqued Two Stop on its opening night, but Pang Spa was different—not just because of what it was about, but because of my relationships to the creative team and the city of Los Angeles itself. Pang Spa was personal.

I entered the theatre and placed my notebook on a center seat, third row. A moment later, David strolled down the aisle. “Amanda,” he said with a smile, “we’re sitting next to each other.”

“Oh my god,” I laughed, jumping up. “I’m going to move down. I don’t want to make you nervous with my writing.”

Maybe it was more projection on my part. I’m a critic and journalist—but also a playwright—and David and I were both in the same playwright group with Los Angeles company Circle X. We both have multiracial Asian heritage—sometimes called “hapa” or “mixed”—and characters in our respective plays reflect similar multiracial backgrounds and struggles. While our work has similar overarching themes of multiracial Asian experiences, our stories diverge across geographies, origins, and styles.

Pang Spa also repositioned and altered those identities, spotlighting how the blended, peripheral perspective of being hapa can illuminate social dynamics onstage and off.

The conversation about the artist/critic is not new, and each critic may have their own personal rules about when to recuse themself from a show. If I were the playwright, I wouldn’t want a critic/friend writing next to me during a performance. So I shifted a few seats down the darkened theatre row, feeling my own personal, professional, and artistic roles shifting along with me. As it turns out, Pang Spa also repositioned and altered those identities, spotlighting how the blended, peripheral perspective of being hapa can illuminate social dynamics onstage and off.

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The term hapa originates from the Hawai’i Creole English word for “half” and has become a shorthand for people of “mixed” Asian descent, i.e., one parent has Asian descent and the other does not. Hapa identity is a shape-shifting one, often destabilizing notions of race and ethnicity, and by correlation, power and intimacy. In Race and Role: The Mixed-race Asian Experience in American Drama, Rena Heinrich presents the idea of “double liminality,” formed by belonging to two or more racial groups where a mixed-race person develops a “hapa consciousness” that allows the person to easily cross transitory spaces and move through multiple perspectives that may seem at odds with each other. As Heinrich explains, “At the threshold of more than one racial group, but perhaps never fully accepted therein, [the hapa person] negotiates each concrete social interaction through a different cultural consciousness, whereby she employs two (or more) worldviews that constantly give way to each other.” And while “hapa” may be the preferred term for some folks, its use outside of Hawai’i has been disputed. Other people with similar ancestries may use a variety of terms, descriptors, and stories to share their ethnic identities in addition to or instead of “hapa.” 

Because this identity isn’t just about being half or a fraction. It’s about being double, multiple, voluminous, taking up space in surprising ways that sometimes threaten the status quo. A person is Korean and Black and hapa. A person is white and Asian and hapa and third culture and… Hapa grammar promises to be endless.

This sense of open-endedness and multiplicity abounds in Pang Spa. Directed by Reena Dutt, the dramedy unfolds in the courtyard of an LA Koreatown apartment complex, a threshold space—both public and private—where elders shout through their windows, a neighbor parks his bike between jobs, and secrets about bloodlines spill into open knowledge. It’s been twenty years since the LA riots, and memories of them haunt the Pang family: Daniel Pang (Ben Carroll), a white and Korean hapa out-of-work actor who serves as the caregiver for his aging parents; his white mom, the sweet yet timid Mrs. Avy Pang (Christopher Callen); and his Korean dad, the capricious and aggressive Mr. Tae Pang (Hahn Cho). They are neighbors with the bubbly elder Mrs. Weiss (Dian Kobayashi) and the hardworking Yong (Edward Hong). East Coast stranger Dora (Jasmine Kimiko), a recently discharged Army soldier, interrupts their community routines with a hostility that seems misplaced—until she reveals her real connection to the Pang family.

Here's where things get more liminal and tangled for me beyond the story onstage. Not only do I share overlapping spaces with David through different playwrights’ groups, but I am also friends with Edward Hong, an actor who I have known since our undergraduate days in Virginia. We share a similar domestic migration story of moving to Los Angeles in search of more resources for our art, as well as a larger Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) community. Back in college, I directed him in Anna Deveare Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 and worked with him in AAPI activist efforts in the region. With another BIPOC friend from Virginia, we used to meet at Aloha Café in Little Tokyo. Over sizzling plates of grilled char siu and gravy-soaked loco moco, we would discuss recent theatre we had seen or made. Eddy is one of my oldest friends in LA. To encounter him here in this city as a character in another play touching upon the LA riots feels circular and liminal, a spiral of time and space crossing over itself, a collapse of identities between friend, theatremaker, audience member, migrant.

In short, it feels very hapa. The convergence of these identities and experiences makes seeing and writing about Pang Spa irresistible because hapa consciousness is at work on multiple levels. This specific production prompts reflection not only on the larger AAPI community, but on the interwoven roles of artist/critic/friend/community member and the expansion of an AAPI dramatic canon that is rich with multiracial stories.

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Recurring situations and character choices in Pang Spa involve Dora being hit on by both Daniel and Tae, who we later learn are her blood relations, as well as the repeated motif of militarization (e.g., Dora as a discharged soldier, Tae dealing with dementia that places him back in World War II memories), which builds upon a peripheral language, a hapa system of communication. In particular, a scene where Daniel makes a move on Dora felt off-putting due to the abrupt shift of Daniel as a friendly neighbor suddenly leaning in for a non-consensual kiss. The ick factor increased when Tae, Daniel’s father (and therefore, Dora’s grandfather), hits on Dora. Even though the elder suffered from memory loss and neither man knew their blood relations to her, the entitlement of the men in approaching this young woman, a new member of the community, felt repellent. Understandable, perhaps, but not inexcusable.

Despite my revulsion with their motives, I was fascinated by the way the philandering actions mimic an unfortunate real-world experience of some hapa folks, particularly those who identify as women or femme. Watching Dora’s reactions to these men brought to mind conversations with other hapa women about how strangers in public would think that their monoracial father was a romantic partner. Or how men would ask us, “What are you? You’re so beautiful,” a conflation of ethnicity and beauty for the purposes of romance, lust, or power. In the act of being hit on, our identities and relationships become exposed through unwanted sexual advances: we are peppered with questions about what we are, where we are from, why we look the way we do (i.e., “exotic” in these strangers’ perspectives). In Pang Spa, there’s a twist—the misguided pass divulges Dora’s identity as a daughter and granddaughter. Because of migration and movement, kinship bonds become hidden or distorted, revealing another hapa experience. 

Furthermore, identity as tied to militarization—whether through occupation of land or as a chosen identity such as Dora joining the armed forces—brought to mind the legacy of “mixed” children arising from military bases around the world, not just male soldiers with local women, but also nurses and healthcare workers forming relationships with locals, as well as refugees displaced by war migrating and putting down new roots. Hapa origins can often expose the geopolitical relations between countries. Mixed race children can be the living reminders of conflict and lost homes. In Pang Spa, Dora’s birth discloses three major pain points: Daniel’s lost dreams of being an actor, his absence from Los Angeles during the uprisings, and Dora’s yearning for family.

Hapas, it turns out, last longer than battles do.

*****

Strictly speaking, the 1992 LA uprisings were not battles, but rather one of the greatest civil disturbances in American history, awakening the public to multiethnic, racial, and class injustice. No wonder they haunt not only the Pang family’s dreams, but their waking moments as well. In their states of dementia, the elderly Avy and Tae are transported back to the chaos of 1992, so much so that at one point we slip into Avy’s mind as red lights and frenetic city sounds engulf the stage (lighting designed by Xinyuan Li, sound by Austin Quan).

The allure of LA for those of us constantly traveling through liminal spaces—hapa and artist and more—is in its promise of resources for the imagination. Find your family and your people, and hopefully, you find yourself.

Yet the apartment courtyard where the Pangs’ memories bleed into reality remains the same one where the “spa” is set up. Moments of delight, refreshment, and humor can be found here. Justin Huen’s veristic set maintains an added layer of do-it-yourself aesthetic (prop design by Dana Schwartz) in the form of kiddie pools, a picnic bench turned bodywork table, and exfoliating hand cloths, as the Pangs enjoy an outdoor neighborhood spa day in the style of Korean spas with their specialized pools and massage areas. Though I find myself wishing for real water onstage, the steam coming from the showerhead feels like the most creative use I’ve seen of a fog machine onstage, and the lack of water feels oddly appropriate given LA County’s perpetual state of drought.

The set up of the spa is another visual image of double liminality that ties into the City of Angels’ reputation as a myth maker, global cultural exporter, and dream factory. Except the Pangs aren’t creating this fantasy for profit or influence, but rather for care of the elders and community. It’s a moment that strikes a chord as something that I also recognized in Two Stop and is uniquely LA: how the hapa characters’ revelation and transformation of personal and collective identity is possible only through arriving and confronting it in Los Angeles. It resonates with the reason I came out here, even if I couldn’t quite articulate what relationship I hoped to have with the city. The allure of LA for those of us constantly traveling through liminal spaces—hapa and artist and more—is in its promise of resources for the imagination and making art. Find your family and your people, and hopefully, you find yourself.

In that imagined promise, this city becomes a chassis for change.

“I was overwhelmed—especially in Koreatown—and when I was in Hollywood for the first time,” admitted Edward as we reflected on being Asian Americans who moved to LA from the mid-Atlantic:

You have these images—the [Hollywood] Walk of Fame and all that—and then you see what it’s really like, especially when it comes to disenfranchisement and the houseless situation. And especially being a minority, trying to make it in the industry has made many interesting journeys, both good and bad. I would meet amazing people who would inspire me or open my mind. Then the bad, you find out the immense in-fighting that happens not only in your own community, but also historically underrepresented communities.

Pang Spa articulates a hapa consciousness that makes me think beyond the boundaries of race and ponder my own roles as a writer in this city of creative possibilities.

The in-fighting reminds me of the way Pang Spa took on intra-community racism, such as when Tae spouts off anti-Asian rhetoric. It’s within the context of a Korean soldier reacting to Japanese invaders, and it serves to highlight intergroup conflict that emerges under the umbrella of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Furthermore, just like Tae’s memory loss and insomnia, the angry language comes from a place of militarized occupation.

“I think that’s one of the best parts of Pang Spa,” Edward shared, emphasizing how its portrayal of historical invasions resonated with contemporary turmoil:

There were some audience members who had no idea about the Japanese occupation [of Korea]. Younger people were asking, what’s that about? And I was like, it sounds a lot like what’s going on right now, like in Palestine. There’s a line—and David wrote this over ten years ago, but lines can have more relevance when a certain time comes—one character says, “The story of occupation is everywhere.” I really applaud David talking about that.

*****

In the final moments of Pang Spa, Daniel lies on the picnic-now-massage table, Dora applying her hands to an acupressure point on his body. From my side of the stage, I couldn’t see their faces, only their backs. Seeing only their bodies reminded me of all the times I have been in a similar position, feeling the pressure of a healer’s hands or the pinch of the thin needle to unblock trapped qi. It’s an incredibly vulnerable moment for both the giver and the receiver, allowing pressure to give way to the flow of energy.

Because vulnerability is open-endedness. And the play ends on this note, an uncertainty around what will happen to the Pang family now with this member of a new generation, how Dora will reckon not only with her Korean/hapa/Asian identities, but the way her presence has altered the whole family and neighborhood’s structures of power and intimacy. Blended, overlapping, and shape-shifting identity can do that.

Pang Spa articulates a hapa consciousness that makes me think beyond the boundaries of race and ponder my own roles as a writer in this city of creative possibilities. The more I think about it, along with its coincidental casting and my relationships to the creative team, the more I see how the roles of artist and critic can strive after the same thing. What if we thought of the artist and the critic not as enemies, but as stewards co-creating our own narratives? We long for our stories to tap into our invisible histories and give shape to our intricate identities so that we can gain better insight into who we are, who our families are, and what places we inhabit. In particular, Pang Spa makes possible the ability to hold—just for two hours, in a small courtyard with kiddie pools and promises—the double, the multiple, the voluminous.