The First Prime-Time Asian Sitcom is a genre-bending dark comedy that’s set to transform the theatre into a live TV studio – complete with canned laughter, trash talk, and jokingly posed questions on what “pan-Asian representation” truly means. The debut play from Tāmaki Makaurau-based writer, filmmaker and producer Nahyeon Lee, it premieres at Q Theatre Loft this week from November 4.

As the name implies, the production is about a fictional sitcom that follows a group of friends – similar to the actual show Friends, but all the characters are of Asian descent. Directed by Ahi Karunaharan, it stars Dawn Cheong as the sitcom’s (unnamed) showrunner and follows her perspective and decision-making process after she’s given the impossible task of pitching stereotypical characters “the cool Asian”, “the bougie AF Asian”, “the awkward Asian”, “the smart Asian” and “the bossy Asian” for mainstream television.

The play opens with the sitcom itself, starring Uhyoung Choi as Joshua Lee, Jess Hong as Angela Xu, Ariadne Baltazar as Ana-Marie De La Cruz and Jehangir Homavazir as Dev Singh. Then, we go behind the scenes and more is revealed about the compromises and questions that arise for the creatives involved.

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By deploying an array of painfully common Asian tropes found in mainstream media, Lee prompts the audience to consider the internal conflict faced by Asian creatives when representing their communities. It also raises the question of whether imperfect representation does more harm than good. This commentary is particularly salient now, following the spike in Sinophobia and anti-Asian sentiment during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The play itself is inspired by Lee’s own experiences as a screenwriter, having reached a boiling point over the systemic barriers, gatekeepers and hierarchies she encountered in the creative industries. “I think the insidiousness of these incremental barriers [is] more terrifying than a singular event,” Lee tells Broadsheet.

Just like the characters in her play, she’s had to deal with the tension of trying to bring to life more marginal identities while being asked to make them “palatable”.

“In creative work, there is a scarcity of opportunity and your work often has to compromise in its process – especially in Aotearoa, where you are always burdened with speaking to a mysterious ‘mainstream’ audience,” she says.

While Lee sees a little of herself in each character, she’s also aiming to challenge existing power structures in race and gender through her work – and this requires her to take a wider viewpoint. “It’s a tricky tightrope to walk between truth and exaggeration.”

Before embarking on her playwriting debut, Lee was already a successful early-career filmmaker. Her feature Kāinga was part of the official selection at NZIFF 2022, and she’s directed multiple shorts – including Myth of the Model Minority (2019), Sixteen (2021) and My Mother Told Me (2021) – exploring some of the complexities, struggles and diversity of the Asian diaspora in Aotearoa.

Her first outing as a playwright, she says, has proven more liberating than filmmaking – although the processes are intertwined.

“Playwriting feels like a space for dreaming, of urgency and risk-taking. I felt freer to explore my ideas, to experiment with form and to play. But I still believe film and playwriting inform and spill into each other and can be different modes of storytelling for me.”

While The First Prime-Time Asian Sitcom was initially inspired by her experiences as a Korean woman, Lee says she’s grateful for the input of her production team and the wider creative community. “The production of the play has been a joy. It has been wonderful to have [the] actors, creatives and my director, Ahi Karunaharan, bringing in perspectives and experiences beyond my own.”

She hopes the play’s cheeky dynamic and explosive undertone will prompt audiences to actively interrogate the power relations at play behind creative representation. Through her work, Lee aspires to continue creating space for Asian artists, and agency in the telling of their own stories. “For me, it’s less about seeing what is missing, but seeing what it could be.”

The First Prime-Time Asian Sitcom is showing from November 4–27 at Q Theatre Loft, 305 Queen Street, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.

silotheatre.co.nz