Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?) ★★★★★

Solo plays about childhood trauma too often become overly serious forays into staged therapy, focused mainly on how the protagonist survived the psychological and physical damage of their youth and is now able to tell the tale. Better ones go further, interrogating ideas that reach beyond one person’s specific story and giving their audiences real food for thought. The best of the bunch also make room for humor. Fortunately, Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?) falls firmly in the last group, and in her emotionally searing solo autobiographical show, which is now running at The Public Theater, presented by Ma-Yi Theater Company as part of its residency, Zoë Kim wastes no time posing her play’s central dramatic question:

“Love language. Such a simple and yet complicated concept, isn’t it?”

Oh, is it ever.

Raised in Korea before being sent to the United States for boarding school as a teenager, Kim had the additional challenge of learning that concept in two languages and cultures. As she explains it:

“I spent my childhood in Korea but I’m spending my adulthood in America. I cry in Korean but laugh in English. Koreans say I’m too American but Americans say I’ll never be American enough.”

Cultural and linguistic differences were far from the greatest of Kim’s problems, however. Her parents were, to put it mildly, deficient in the practice of love language. Her mother – Umma – was forced to get married rather than pursue her desired career. Never interested in motherhood, she had a child only to please her husband. Her husband, Kim’s father – Appa – wanted only a boy. When Kim is born a girl, her arrival augurs only heartbreak, the immediate beginning of the family’s end:

“The name that’s given to you is meant for their son. They have no name for a daughter. From the day you are born, Appa rarely comes home. He loses interest in his failure of a wife.”

Things go downhill from there, often shockingly so, but the beauty of Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?) is that it never wallows in misery. Tears are not the goal. Kim shares her story not to recount the gritty details of her upbringing but to provoke the audience into thinking about how they want to be loved and to ask the same of those they care about.

This more inclusive approach is evident in the changes Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?) has undergone since its 2023 premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It’s exciting to see a play continue to develop and blossom into its best self, and Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?), like its indefatigable heroine, continues to strengthen. Director Chris Yejin has masterfully helped Kim develop the piece into a show with a greater range of dynamics, and every bit of added levity and color heightens the impact when something awful from Kim’s life is recalled. The show now also features much more movement, and this added energy is due in great part to Iris McCloughan, who has done a splendid job choreographing Kim in a way that allows her feelings and experiences to be expressed physically. Special mention should also go to lighting designer Minjoo Kim and projection designer Yee Eun Nam, who create so many wonderful – and often surprising – visual pictures.

Kim ends Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?) with the reminder that bad cycles and painful legacies can be thwarted and replaced with new, better ones. And though it’s easy to be cynical about such decrees, by allowing the world to hear the darkest parts of her life – and showing how she’s emerged on the other side triumphant – Kim gives the audience genuine reason to believe that change, and love, remain possible.