Katie Đỗ

Sponsored by Grant Gribble

MEET THE PLAYFEST PLAYWRIGHT KATIE Đỗ

“Who Hurt You?“

By Katie Đỗ

Directed by Felichia Chivaughn***

Performance: October 28, 2023
Time: 8pm

An interview with Caroline M. Hull
***Member of the Society of Directors and Choreographers (SDC)

Without revealing any major story spoilers, what is “Who Hurt You?” about?

The play is about a Vietnamese-American girl named Ellie who is constantly comparing herself to a half-white, half-Vietnamese actor. They’re always going out for the same parts and dating the same people.

Are all the characters fictional or are any of them inspired by real people or real situations?

I think a lot of it is both. It’s both fiction and nonfiction. I’m always trying to take observations
from my real life and dramatize them in ways that make sense to me or that can help me make
sense of things. If that makes sense at all.

What inspired you to begin your career as a playwright?

Funny enough, you know, that this play’s about actors. I started my artistic career as an
actor and I was in conservatory in undergrad studying acting and it was one of those super
intense programs where you’re just, like, living and breathing and not thinking for yourself. So when senior year came around, I had a showcase. It’s do or die. This is where you get an
agent, this is where you get a manager. I tried looking for performance material that I deeply
related to and I couldn’t find it. So I just started writing these little scenes and bringing them to
class. I didn’t end up using any of them because they weren’t that great, but it just started my
journey into falling in love with writing and then after I graduated, I wrote my first play.

Do you have any major influences that continuously inspire you to create more?

A lot of playwrights inspire me, actually. Martyna Majok is one of my favorites, David Henry Hwang, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury. Yeah, I would say those are, like, my big four. And
then I do love reading fiction and non-fiction. I get a lot from essays and just writing, writings
about things that are reflecting our current time and space or how history informs our current
time and space. And I think that always gets me thinking about how these things play into our
lives, and how we treat each other, and how we love each other.

If you had any guidance for people who are just beginning their playwriting journey, what would you say?

That’s the hard question because I feel as though playwrights never want to be playwrights. I feel like most playwrights are just trapped in it because they realize, there isn’t the material that they want out there. I think my biggest piece of advice would be to write what you want to see and just keep investigating that and chasing that down and finding the right people to share it with and get feedback from. And remember that you love it because I think ultimately that’s why we start writing plays. I mean, no one writes a play who doesn’t love a play, you know?

I’m excited that your script is going to be shared with audiences in Orlando! How did you find out about PlayFest as an opportunity?

I heard about PlayFest through friends, I believe. In the little playwriting community I’m a part of. We always just send whatever applications we’re working on so that one of us can get it. I’m really excited to see it come to life with actors and have a theater community that isn’t New York
kind of experience the play because I do think it’s very different than what we know of theater. I
think it’s really challenging too, so it was really challenging for me to write it. I think I’m just excited to work with people from Orlando and just really get to explore and be a part of a different community for a bit.

If you could guarantee that audiences at PlayFest could take away one thing from seeing your play, what would you want it to be?

I’m going to set the bar so low here. I hope they will chuckle at least once. If not, I’ll take a smile – but I’d really like a chuckle. No, seriously, something that I used to say before performing in a show for the first time was, “If we make at least one person smile tonight, that will be enough.” It’s a good thought to have.

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