‘SWAN’ Preview: A Modern, Queer Spin on Tchaikovsky’s Classic

It’s hard to imagine “Swan Lake” without picturing ballet dancers performing intricately choreographed routines following a plot that’s set long before even our grandparents were born. Playwright Sophie H. Kim ’24 hopes to change that through their award-winning play “SWAN,” which ran at The Calderwood Pavilion in Boston’s South End from June 22 to June 25.

“SWAN” puts a queer, “darkly comedic” spin on Tchaikovsky’s 19th century ballet, centering on Korean-American college student Richard and “moderately YouTube-famous” white tradwife Aiden as the two grapple with their queerness and questions about themselves and their futures. Through the characters’ conversations with the Swan character — a voice in the back of their minds — “SWAN” demonstrates the difficulty of being a queer individual in today’s society.

“SWAN,” Kim explained, is a play about “darkness” and “hope.”

“It’s a play about how we create ourselves in spite of the people that try to stop us,” Kim said.

“The story follows these characters who have this voice of Swan in their heads who is being like, ‘You should come out, you should be your authentic self, you should not be afraid of yourself, and you should also flip off the bigots,’” Kim said.

“The whole play is about them learning to do that and stepping into their own,” Kim added.

The complexity of the two protagonists’ experiences is emphasized by deeply emotional monologues by Aiden and Richard which cast a spotlight on their moments of introspection and self-realization.

Like Richard and Aiden, Kim hopes audience members leave “SWAN” with a better understanding of themselves, regardless of their identities.

“For everyone — whether or not they’re queer or trans or Asian — I think that I want people to come away with thinking about the ways that they may be imposing limits on themselves or that they might be letting other peoples’ voices into their heads,” Kim said.

Kai Chao, the director of “SWAN,” said that his process of taking “SWAN” from script to production was an educational one, showing him the importance of embracing our differences.

“What this process has shown me is how — ultimately — we’re all human, and that we all identify differently, and that it’s not necessarily bad, good, indifferent, but it’s the recognition and the self-ownership of our identities and to take ownership of that monstrosity or that queerness or all of that — to embrace it,” Chao said.

“Ultimately, I want people to understand Sophie’s words and also to understand that how we embrace ourselves is viewed very differently to very many different people and that we all need to accept it, embrace it, recognize it, and — if you don’t — at least try to understand it,” he added.

Jupiter Lê, who plays Richard, remarked that the present moment is “an exciting time” to tell queer, trans, and Asian stories.

“The whole process has been questioning how we want to represent our communities without rendering them vulnerable because as marginalized people, I think about how we want to be represented in the best light or we want to counter the narratives told in media and representation and all the violence and all the sadness,” Lê said.

Lê portrays Richard, a transgender man, as both cheeky in demeanor but also nervous about his identity, his situation, and the future that awaits him. He said that he hopes audiences receive Richard with “open arms.”

“I just hope that folks have a lot of patience for [him],” Lê said. “It’s very easy to look at somebody and say they’re so upset and they can just be a better person, just be a bit nicer, just respect your elders.”

For Kim, the experience of bringing “SWAN” to life underscored to them that neither “queer” nor “Asian” are pre-defined genres.

“There are many different types and ways of being queer or being Asian or even being something that is not under those labels,” Kim said. “I also learned the importance of being like, ‘This piece doesn’t speak for all queer and trans people or all Asian Americans, and it shouldn’t.’”

While working on “SWAN,” Kim found that a person is ultimately an “idea of continual changing and becoming.”

“It’s okay to be constantly changing and evolving and learning new things about yourself. Identity and life are not static things,” Kim added.

—Staff writer Neil H. Shah can be reached at neil.shah@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @neilhshah15.