Interview: Emilio Ramos Directs an All-AAPI Cast in Fresh Revival of See What I Wanna See

For up-and-coming director Emilio Ramos, a rarely revived Michael John LaChiusa musical had always, “without anyone really knowing, belonged to us as Asian Americans.”

The premiere production of See What I Wanna See, led by Idina Menzel, ran at the Public Theater. LaChiusa’s ambitious piece draws from three Ryūnosuke Akutagawa short stories to explore questions involving hope, faith, and the slippery nature of truth. Ramos, an Anglo-Filipino New Yorker who immigrated to the US from Australia, discovered the cast recording as a musical-obsessed teen.

While See What I Wanna See marks their lead directorial debut in New York, Ramos has already racked up an impressive set of credits. They served as associate director to Chay Yew on his recent AAPI-led Encores! revival of Light in the Piazza, starring Ruthie Ann Miles, while supporting director Michael Arden as an associate on the Ben Patt-led revival of Parade and Tituss Burgess’s adaptation of The Preacher’s Wife. Also an accomplished dancer, Ramos performed in the national tour of Miss Saigon and Lincoln Center Theater’s 2015 revival of The King and I before their move into directing.

Presented by Out of the Box Theatrics, Ramos’ reimagining of See What I Wanna See utilizes an entirely AAPI-cast and traditional Asian theater techniques. Sections of LaChiusa’s score have also been translated into Japanese. Led by Broadway veterans Marina Kondo (K-Pop), Kelvin Moon Loh (Beetlejuice), Zachary Noah Piser (Dear Evan Hansen), and Ann Sanders (The King and I), See What I Wanna See runs at Theatre 154 through September 29.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Tell us about See What I Wanna See and the source material that inspired it.

The show draws from three short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, whose early 20th century work has a special place in contemporary Japanese culture in terms of life philosophy and navigating the murkiness of being human.

The first act is based on “In a Grove,” which became Akira Kurosawa’s legendary movie Rashomon. In our version, it centers on a murder in Central Park in 1951. You hear the circumstances of the murder from the perspective of three people – including the victim, whose story is summoned by a medium – and there is ambiguity around whose version is correct.

Act 2 is based on the Akutagawa story “The Dragon,” about a priest who has lost faith in God. He decides to play a prank on the community and claim that a miracle will occur. The entire community falls for it, but right when he starts to question the morality of his prank, a great storm takes over and he witnesses a miracle – but no-one else sees it.

Is that enough of a mouthful?

Well, with a Michael John LaChiusa show, it is never going to be straightforward.

I said to the company when we first read it – you can’t really think about the show in terms of plot. It’s about faith, hope, and truth. In our version, we are imagining all of these characters as either Asian or Asian American. Nothing about the script or score has changed, but we’ve placed these incredible Asian performers and their bodies into these roles to imagine what life is when you hold two things to be true at the same time.

For myself, as an Asian-American person and as an immigrant, that concept of holding multiple truths really resonated. And it reflects the beautiful fusion in Michael John’s music, which straddles that line between a Japanese or Eastern motif and Western jazz.

How did you first discover the show?

I was on tour with Miss Saigon with my friend Adam Rothenberg [now the music director on See What I Wanna See]. I was in the ensemble, and he was on the music team. At a party one night, we discovered that we had this shared affinity for the show. And I think because of the context of where we were, the idea just fell out of my mouth: “Well, what if everyone was Asian?”

How will traditional Asian theater techniques be incorporated into your production?

I’ve brought on a trio of puppeteers, Nikki Calonge, Takemi Kitamura, and Justin Otaki Perkins — new performers who don’t usually exist in this show. They are doing two very specific forms of traditional Asian puppeteering: bunraku-style puppetry, which are figurative puppets; and wayang kulit-style puppets, inspired by the Indonesian shadow puppetry tradition. Both are merging with this material in a way that I knew would be quite magical.

It is hard not to notice, in looking at this company’s credits, the limits which AAPI performers push up against in theater. Nearly everyone in See What I Wanna See was involved in the recent revival of The King and I, including yourself. How can a production like See What I Wanna See help in expanding those opportunities?

I am grateful to The King and I for a lot of reasons. It was my Broadway debut, and I made it very young. What it gave me was a ton of lifelong friends and very special connections. It also taught me about working hard and never tiring to get something right.

I hope that the gift I can give these actors is access to such rich material. It would be rich material for any actor, regardless of race or any other considering factor. But these five performers in particular get an opportunity to be shown in a new light.

In tackling such universal themes, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s stories are of course timeless. LaChiusa specifically placed “The Dragon” into the context of post-9/11 New York City. But why did the stories of See What I Wanna See feel particularly timely to you right now?

It didn’t take long, in the first readthrough, for somebody to connect the central theme of hope to the first moment we were able to step outside after the pandemic feeling safe — feeling like we weren’t battling something, or waiting for the next awful event to happen. We’re able to tie into those recent events without forgetting the particulars of that post-9/11 moment.

Also, with every marginalized group there comes a specific sort of pain in the American existence, and a specific way of holding that. So without having to do much, but just by gathering these folks in the space, it feels like there’s a shared understanding of how we move through America.