Duped

I’m no one’s dummy and yet I’ve been duped

The facade maintained for so long;

Didn’t see that the guise 

was a veil at my eyes

That the story had grown to be strong.

This slow, quiet message of holier than thou,

A model, the good ones: why not?

For one growing up, 

it all covers up

Suspicion of what’s truly been bought.

And then all the attention, 

The comments, the smiles,

That have always been cringy but “fine”,

There’s no innocence there 

It’s a costume to wear 

for a show I’ve been in for a while.

And now is the fear that the line is quite near

Between licking of lips and a gun

That if not their snack, 

It can illicit attack

But the fault’s with the targeted one.

With the trigger finger pointed at the now lifeless eyes

And the world looks around and says “what a surprise!”

The violence has grown right under your nose

But you chose to say “it’s imagination, I suppose”

A benevolent hand’s out for another nice pat,

On the head, on the cheek, 

Here’s your place, that is that,

Well done, little one, look this other way now

Shall I remind you of your exceptional mathematic know-how?

But the hand still reeks of a fresh, smoking barrel

And it holds up the same exoticized apparel

Put it on one more time, it’ll all be just fine...

But the thread of the fabric is peril.

A Different Fetter

I’ve always known I didn’t understand. 

A forced ignorance out of my hands.

But through my tears, the weight, and the worry,

all I can think of is: “I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry to Black siblings who I didn’t stand by,

listen enough, give space to cry.

I give myself grace in that I did my best,

but this reality is a fetter different than I guessed.

And while empathy is all about “standing in shoes”,

you can’t presume to know what truly ensues.

Give space to say “I know I don’t know”

and from that vulnerability love will show.

We can’t move forward if we don’t pursue change

and the way things have been it’s deaf ears that engage.

Be brave and resist, strive to listen not explain -

it’s one small step if equality is to be gained.

Take a breath and be honest of where you stand.

If you’re at advantage on the playing field, don’t deny your upper hand.

Reach that hand out and raise others up 

and know there is JOY if we’re brave enough to DISRUPT.

Faith over Fear

Are you brave enough to witness other people’s pain and give space for it with zero explanation or defense?

If not, ask yourself, what hinders you from making that space? Is it from a place in your psyche or emotional maturity that can’t make space for your *own* pain so you then project that lack of grace onto others? 

How hard is it for you to not interrupt others when they’re speaking? Not just when listening about pain, but always?

Just like racism and white supremacy these are systemic issues and they begin within each and every one of us. 

We break the cycle by breaking out of the isolated shells of our own victim mentality and self-absorption and seeing that our strength is in the acknowledging of others. It is in the vulnerable validation that experiences different from our own are just as legitimate and deserve voice. You don’t have to make yourself less, you don’t have to deprecate, you just have to allow equality which, yes, may mean a change for you. 

But you are stronger than change. 

You can choose to not be manipulated by the fear of change and instead channel that fear of uncertainty into faith that it can usher in something better. It is an active decision.

YOU are more powerful when you make space for others. You are immediately leading because compassion inspires without rhetoric and the movement you’re paving is not one for you to rise to acclaim but for others to follow and lead within and around themselves. 

Light begets light. 

Radius

We don’t see eye to eye,

they think “China flu” is fine,

but it doesn’t change the fact 

that their safety’s on my mind.

The women who raised me,

My sister and my mom,

Within the radius of violence -

leaves me reeling, feeling numb.

Six women with their lives robbed

as if they’re the ones to blame -

whether it’s a virus or mental health, 

it’s the “others” who are framed.

Are we ready to speak of exoticism?

Why these women were attacked?

Or was it just a “bad day” for a white guy,

Thanks, Captain Baker, you got my back.

All it takes is the wrong place, the wrong skin, the wrong eyes,

And sometimes those you love don’t see the violent, racial ties.

With pain and disbelief I watch my hands and knuckles curl:

It doesn’t change how I proceed to show up in the world.

The Slow Unlearn

This was part of my college education in Southern Virginia:

“Lisa Johanson was the standout of the cast as the pugnacious, charming, cynical,and naive Bloody Mary. Last year her solid performance in the middle-American setting of The Music Man seemed a bit exotic, but she unquestionably belonged here as she sang “Bali Ha’i” and “Happy Talk”, wheedled customers, or yelled obscenities at the MPs.”

~a review from the local arts paper 

The saddest thing about this was that, at the time, being so deeply whitewashed for so long, I was proud enough of this review to excitedly send it to my parents. 

I had desperately wanted to be Marian Paroo in the Music Man the year before. I was a double voice and theater major (the literal only one because I worked my ass off my freshman year to prove to both departments that I had the drive to successfully do it), so my legit soprano was there. I was prepared. I knew I could do the role and do it well. But I didn’t even have a callback and instead was an “exotic” pick-a-little lady. God only knows what that reviewer would’ve said if I had been Marian. 

The rest of college, the only significant role I was cast in that wasn’t specifically *Asian* was by the only female director in the program who cast me as Thomasina Coverly in Arcadia and thank God she did. Because auditioning for the (well-meaning) white men of the program I didn’t get callbacks for Marian Paroo, Celcily Cardew in The Importance of Being Earnest, was Bloody Mary in South Pacific because the imaginary conversation of my assumptions (that are probably not too far off) of “well, we should figure out a way to be able to include Lisa - what Asian show can we do [with only one other Asian person in our entire department]?”. I should mention how small this department was and how there was one other Asian girl and one (God bless him) black guy. My senior year, we did Urinetown. Again, my fire of wanting to be the lead in the subject I was graduating in was of palpable passion. I wanted to be the romantic lead, Hope Cladwell. I was called back for Hope and Penny Pennywise, a role that, in hindsight and actuality, is fantastic but it wasn’t the LEAD. So I intentionally botched my callback for Hope. I leaned into what I knew their concern would be in casting me which was that my high notes in Penny’s main song would be too legit and I ran with it to take myself out of running to be the SIDEKICK yet again. I wanted so desperately to not. Be. The Sidekick. For Once. My plan backfired. I got an even smaller role as my last show in college. Hope was a blonde white girl.

Gratefully, I was at least Dido in the opera program’s Dido and Aeneas that year but I didn’t get into grad school for opera when I first applied and pursued a career in theater instead.

And for over ten years, I have had to unlearn the messaging from my higher education that all I am in this industry and world is a sidekick. I had to keep listening to the God-given fire in my heart that I knew I could be a lead. But guess what? It’s pretty hard to be a lead in professional settings when you’ve had no training in it, so when casting and directors, etc. say “we can’t find a BIPOC person who’s quite as good…” what they don’t realize is that so many of us are showing up and stepping into a brand new pair of shoes we’ve never worn before in high pressure settings that our white colleagues have had the luxury of breaking in. Do you understand the level of courage that takes? To show up when you know you’re an underdog in multiple categories and still try? No. You don’t. And so the headshot moves from one pile to the next. There is a “glimmer” of potential but we are passed by for “experience”. Experience that I was begging for in college.

Thank God I play instruments. They’re the only thing that got me into not specifically white roles because I had a special skill. 

Though I can’t tell you how many times I went in for Once Off-Broadway, Broadway, and then regionally to keep not getting cast. I told my agents I had to stop auditioning for it because it had broken my heart so many times and no one was going to cast me [donning either Czech or Irish dialect I’m pretty sure I was “too Asian” looking for the role - even though women in actual Eastern Europe literally look like me because they are also mixed Asian blood]. And while I absolutely admit the amount at which I have grown over the years as an actor, I wonder, if I had “looked” the part more, would I have been given a little more chance to learn? Because that’s part of privilege too. But I digress. 

It took me ten years of trying and failing to be lead roles before getting cast in them. Thankfully, I had the experience of being a female cover in Avenue Q so I did regularly go on for the romantic lead role in that show in NYC which was a dream but I’ll also point out that it took it being the final year of that show running for them to cast a BIPOC actor as a principal in a lead role - as a *puppeteer* - and it was literally once, in one role, the sixteen years it ran so…

I reflect on taking the role of Cynthia in Priscilla Queen of the Desert and sometimes ask myself why I accepted a role that perpetuated not only Asian stereotypes but also misogyny...and I remember that I took that role because I was dual cast as a Diva, which was a role no one ever saw me for, and I was cutthroat in getting roles that were not originally “meant” for me. I now regret it. Did I help perpetuate to thousands of people the narrative that Asian women not only don’t speak English well, but they are angry, crazy, to be laughed at, and “naturally” hyper-sexual? I’ve seen this show differently for years but last week shifted the paradigm painfully yet again.

It took Into the Woods to both build me and break me. Being Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel at the highest level an Asian actor had ever portrayed those roles in our country meant everything to me. But even while in rehearsals, my directors saw that there was more authenticity in me that just wasn’t quite there yet. They coached me but I just didn’t know how to trust myself yet, not that I knew that was the issue. 

I had lived a career that could succeed to a degree by my sheer will but it had zero trust in my worth in receiving the roles I was cast in. In my mind and body, I had only gotten those roles because I had proven that I was enough. And at the end of that amazing but physically gruelling tour, part of my voice disappeared. It disappeared for many reasons but fundamentally because I had been speaking with a voice that was not my own for my entire life. For people who knew me before this contract, you probably remember a person who spoke in a high-pitch, almost cartoony voice a lot of the time. Or, like, all of the time. It was my manifestation of “model minority”. My worth had only been affirmed to me as a growing child, teen, and young adult that my “cuteness” was what I had to offer the world, it’s what got attention. So I had learned to strangle away the depth of my voice that didn’t fit that bill and only present the part people wanted to see. Cute Lisa. Isn’t she cute. Don’t you just want to put her in your pocket. What a great little spunky sidekick.

But this time, I had intervention. I was diagnosed with laryngeal spasming and got into voice therapy and voice lessons with women who are now angels to me. And the mic dropped. I had the crashing realization that the person I had been and tried to be for so long was not the full depth of who I authentically am. And I went through...hell. And I had a lot of people who saw me through, most of all my incredible husband. But the grace I was given, the light I had to hold on to through so much darkness was the shift in my career. After two sessions of voice therapy, I got my first callback for a lead in a play. And then another one for the lead in a different play. And then another lead for another play, and then another play, and then a callback for tv. And then I booked my first episode of television. Ever. And then I booked three lead roles at three extraordinary theaters back-to-back: the romantic lead of badassery, Tong in Vietgone, the ingenue experience of all of my dreams as Hope Harcourt in Anything Goes (where we were fearlessly led to subvert the anti-Asian sentiments of the show), and then Afong Moy in the excruciatingly relevant play, The Chinese Lady. 

I wouldn’t be who I am without those shows or without the female BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ directors who cast and cultivated me. Each of those plays had words I was meant to say, words that were meant to be spoken to me, and experiences I was meant to have to help me through my personal shero’s journey. The one where I learned that I am capable of what I always dreamed I was capable of: being a lead in America. But I have also learned that I can bring my depth and authenticity into “sidekick” roles now and still move in my own power - now that I know how to make them truly my own. And that’s not to say remotely that I’ve learned to settle for less but rather have learned that I have less to prove and more space to accept. To myself and the world. So I show up and I have more trust. And when it’s my time to shine, I do.