The last show I saw at InterAct’s Proscenium Theater at the Drake was Moreno. I appreciated its pacing and seamless production. The play walked a fine line between moralizing and engaging entertainment, relying on the audience’s awareness of current conversations around race and sports. We are experiencing a return to a political climate that suggests concentration camps as a tool. Now enters Quixotic Professor Qiu. This play aims to explore the slippery slope of unintended but deeply entrenched consequences of systematic racism aimed at those of Asian descent.
Billed as a satirical play inspired by real-life cases of Chinese Americans targeted for espionage, the play centers on a mathematics professor working with prime numbers described as Quixotic primes – at an unnamed US academic institution. The professor’s department chair is also of Asian descent, although not Chinese, and they come under increased scrutiny as the play progresses. The set design struck a balance between brutalist prison and chic institutional modernism.
Watching with a sold-out audience, the crux of the story is the professor’s attempt to exonerate himself while his boss fights to maintain his (own) position. The interaction between the two academics felt less Kafka-esque and more like a farce wrapped in a stereotype. The department chair, Dr. Krishnan played by Tamil Periasamy, resists the prejudice of racial stereotypes but fits the masculine tropes.
I was particularly dismayed by the desire of the playwright to explain everything to the audience. Immediately Professor Qiu, played by Justin Jain, broke the fourth wall. The character would step back and forth between monologuing with the audience giving them everything they needed to know, which felt monotone. Had only the professor done this, I might have accepted it as his heuristic or at worst, pedantic. The other character that broke the fourth wall was Anna Zeng, performed by Bi Jean Ngo who I interviewed last year after her performance which I also greatly enjoyed in the Big Friendly Giant at the Arden Theater. Zeng is the childhood friend of Professor Qiu. Her presence shifted the entire tone of the show. She floated onto the stage and flowed smoothly in and out of the “Real World” fourth wall interview transitions. Her performance showed she was carrying two personas, one shared with the world and the other intimate that was just for the audience.
Madeleine Garcia played Valeria, a graduate student in mathematics and Professor Qiu’s TA. Valeria is written as simplistic and suggestive, expressing anxiety at a dinner, which may or may not have been a date with Professor Qiu. Professor Qiu is unable to see the female characters with any complexity and is only able to express hubris and contempt for their world in an effort for self-preservation. Yet, when given an opportunity to take advice from a male bartender played by David Pica, the professor readily accepts, leading him to make a consequential decision. The women in his life are afforded no such consideration.
Marketing framed the play as a struggle between Professor Qiu’s birth country and his adopted homeland, but perhaps that description was written before the final production took shape. The professor early on says America is his home and he never wavers from that, only doubling down throughout the play. The screws tightening “between loyalty and self-preservation” were specifically on Anna Zeng. This is an area left unexplored so we can stay with the masculine exploration of contempt for a racist system while leaving any understanding of the female experience on the cutting room floor.
Quixotic is a reference to Don Quixote which is regarded as the birth of the modern novel. Though referenced a few times in this play, I found no connection to it whatsoever. There’s nothing chivalrous in the professor’s behavior which I would describe as closer to chauvinistic. There is no quest and no display of valor beyond personal exoneration.
Despite its satirical aim, the narrative ends up echoing entrenched fears and stereotypes rather than dismantling them. Professor Qui does not evolve into the ubermench that society hopes for. The resolve of this play left me wanting. I can accept ambiguity, but the play’s conclusion left me confused. Given how much time the professor spends monologuing, I expected resolution, not silence.
Quixotic Professor Qiu runs through February 23. There are two talk back dates, February 15 with Tamil Periasamy and February 22 with the playwright Damon Chua. There are also Speaker Sundays series dates remaining, February 16 and 23.
https://www.interacttheatre.org/quixotic-professor-qiu
