When director Ellen Sebastian Chang came across the script for the upcoming Magic Theatre premiere of “the boiling,” it was a screenplay her former restaurant partner Sunhui Chang began conceiving during the 2020 COVID lockdowns.
While Ellen was in Portland, Sunhui (no relation to Ellen) was in Seattle translating his cabin fever experience into a screenplay for a road film. After presenting it to Ellen, who had spearheaded Campo Santo company readings over Zoom, inspiration struck.
Ellen liked the screenplay. But she also told Sunhui, “I think this would be really good onstage.”
Though skeptical about the prospect at first, he was won over by concept art by videographer Joan Osato, which appears in the show.
So began the process of developing Campo Santo’s live production of Sunhui Chang’s “the boiling,” running April 2-20 in San Francisco.
Drawing inspiration from memorable 2020 headlines, the story begins amid a new pandemic, an illness known as “the boiling.” Though most citizens adhere to safety measures, one man traveling the country is infecting countless people with no regard for the consequences. A Korean American medic and a Black private investigator are determined to find him.
Ellen says the play wears its cinematic pedigree on its sleeve, particularly considering Osato’s videography.
The three decided on including “little short films,” Ellen explains, and using them sparingly. The production has several breaks in the action where the activity stops for pre-filmed flashbacks.
Ellen says she and Sunhui had fun creating little Easter eggs in the show, or “little nods and winks and homages to certain films, really subtle, we won’t say what the film is.” But she says film buffs may notice homages to “Psycho,” “Clueless” and ‘Battleship Potemkin.”
“We’re just trying to stay really true to the story that Sunhui has written. At the end of the day, if it was seen as a film, you’d be like, ‘This is a really fun chase movie!’ But here we are staging it.” She adds, “The thing that I did trying to direct is, [how in] really good theater, you’re trying to lean in, but in really great films, you want to lean back.”
Despite the play’s origins in 2020’s shutdowns, Chang says script —which has not been altered after five years, except for film-to-stage changes—is timeless.
“Part of that was to have a floating world time format and not try to anchor it in any particular moment [just] because that’s what we’re all going through. What COVID did to all of us, it’s hard to keep up with linear time now. We’ll say, ‘When did that happen? Oh, right! That was two years ago—oh, God! That felt like it was decades ago!’ Our nervous systems have all been changed by COVID, then just the onslaught of technology getting everyone toward Zoom as a way to work together.”
But Chang herself already is looking ahead. After “the boiling,” she heads back home to Oregon before heading to Portland, Maine to direct the opera “Post Pardon” by Arissa White and Jessica Jones.
But keeping her cinematic focus locked on opening night of “the boiling,” Chang shares that the show, despite heavy material and the circumstances leading to its creation, is a rollicking good time.
“The lesson I’ve learned from this play is ‘Wow, this is really challenging!’ and ‘Wow, this is so much fun!” she says. “We are having so much fun figuring things out and working with the actors. People have said to me ‘What sort of audience do you want?’ and I go ‘curious!’ Curiosity is in short order these days. I want someone who looks at the [post]card and says, ‘Huh, a Korean adoptee and a Black woman? I’m gonna check this out!’ Not because of anything other than ‘I’m just curious.’ That’s always the best audience in the world. The audience that comes open and curious.”
Magic Theatre and Campo Santo’s “the boiling” runs April 2-20, 2025 at Fort Mason Center, Building D, third floor, 2 Marina Blvd., San Francisco. Tickets are $35-$75 at magictheatre.org.
Charles Lewis III is a San Francisco-born journalist and performing artist. He has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED and more. Dodgy evidence of this can be found at The Thinking Man’s Idiot.wordpress.com.
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