New play tackles MSG, coming of age through anime and '90s pop
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A new play at San Francisco Playhouse challenges long-held stereotypes about Asian food, belonging and misinformation with a production inspired by anime and '90s pop culture.
Driving the news: "Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play" follows Japanese American high schooler Ami as she struggles to fit in with her peers in 1999. When she discovers that her family helped create MSG — the chemical basis for umami, often stigmatized in the U.S. — she's devastated.
Yes, but: A mysterious new girl at school soon compels her to find the truth.
Driving the news: Lauded as "frenetic and fantastical" by BroadwayWorld, it will run from Thursday through March 8 at the San Francisco Playhouse.
State of play: Keiko Green, whose screen credits include Hulu's "Interior Chinatown," began writing the play during the pandemic. Her grandfather was a food scientist who worked for Ajinomoto, the Japanese company that created MSG in the early 1900s.
- Her mother would only mention his job as a professor during Green's childhood in Georgia, however, and it soon became clear she was ashamed of their family's association with MSG, Green said.
- "I grew up in a super, super white area with very few other Asian kids," Green said. "Looking back ... those things feel so connected, my own shame and internal racism and my mom's shame."
- It wasn't until her 20s that Green learned the truth about MSG and how studies have debunked baseless narratives about the additive making food unhealthy.
What she's saying: "What's interesting about the play is it's so fun, it's silly, it's pop culture, it's all of those things," Green told Axios. "But it really is tackling just that feeling of being invisible [and] misunderstood ... and I think it's so related to our food."
- "It's a really relatable coming-of-age story, where people will see themselves," Green said. "I hope people laugh so much that their stomachs hurt and ... I hope a lot of people learn something new."
Go deeper: New campaign aims to address racist stereotypes around MSG