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Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play – A Note from the Artistic Director
January 2025 / No Comment

Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play – A Note from the Artistic Director

Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play is one of those rare scripts that became a front-runner for season selection before I even finished reading it. The play was handed to me by Marie-Claire Erdynast, our Associate Artistic Director, who saw the play in its Old Globe run in San Diego. Before I reached Page 10, I was laughing out loud and also startled by the unique, fresh voice of the playwright, Keiko Green. Exotic Deadly is a coming-of-age story of a 15-year-old Japanese American girl, told in format of a time-travelling odyssey, with a journey to the bottom of the psychic seas, told in the style of Japanese anime. Wow!

And if that seems enough for a captivating night at the theatre, Keiko has seamlessly melded into Ami’s journey a scathing indictment of the racism implicit in the scandal of MSG.  Our protagonist’s exposure to the “Chinese restaurant syndrome” and the bogus health issues illegitimately dumped on MSG (found in tomatoes and Doritos) is integrated in to the drama without preachiness or lecturing. Instead, we are led to understand the outrageous racist scope of the MSG lies by being whisked on a mad cap journey across continents and decades.

We also travel to the bottom of the sea, into the depression of Ami, and share her discovery that she is a part of generational suffering shared by her mother and grandfather. As she struggles to find out how and why she got there, she and we are led to understand the hurt and loneliness of cultural separateness through this lovely undersea metaphor. Led gently into empathy and understanding, we root for her to find her way up to the surface.

We are doubly honored to have not just Keiko here to work with us, but Jesca Prudencio, who directed the original production in San Diego. The two of them have taken what they learned from the first production and done re-writes and a workshop with us so that the play could continue to grow and blossom. Ultimately, Exotic Deadly is about the power of a family to learn to accept each other’s struggles and heal. They triumph through the courage to face their suffering, and the miraculous power of meals shared together.

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