{"id":19022,"date":"2011-09-05T05:09:36","date_gmt":"2011-09-05T05:09:36","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-09-05T05:09:36","modified_gmt":"2011-09-05T05:09:36","slug":"writer-actress-sarah-lau-on-the-secret-adventures-of-fat-woman-remedial-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=19022","title":{"rendered":"Writer-actress Sarah Lau on &#8220;The Secret Adventures of Fat Woman &#038; Remedial Girl&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sarah Lau leaps through half a dozen characters, from tweens to octogenarians, in her cheeky solo show &#8220;The Secret Adventures of Fat Woman &#038; Remedial Girl.&#8221; Based on her novel of the same name, this is the oddball tale of an 11-year-old Asian-American named Louise Pang, who can&#8217;t stand her overachieving family and can&#8217;t live without her BFF, the fattest girl at school. Oh, and did we mention that Louise worships Wonder Woman and that her grandmother is trying to kill her?<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZM2KVUXhhLQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>One of the few San Jose-based performers showcased in the 20th-anniversary edition of the San Francisco Fringe Festival, Lau, a technical writer by trade, recently took time for an email interview about her 85-minute stage romp and making her acting debut.<\/p>\n<p>Q You have described the show as a cross between the Yakuza and &#8220;The Golden Girls.&#8221; It sounds outrageous.<\/p>\n<p>A There&#8217;s a 25-minute scene &#8212; &#8220;Grandma&#8217;s Party&#8221; &#8212; where a gang of seniors invades the house while Louise is home alone, my twist on teenagers partying when the parents are away. Even hardened criminals have grandmothers, though in Louise&#8217;s case Grandma Pang is the chief troublemaker. The ladies lock Louise up and bomb the living room, and that&#8217;s just the first five minutes. This scene also contains &#8230; a murder attempt and a three-way wrestling match involving a pair of flying pants that would violate health codes if it weren&#8217;t all imaginary.<\/p>\n<p>Q I bet people assume your story is autobiographical, because it&#8217;s a solo show. Is any of it true?<\/p>\n<p>A Most folks assume the story&#8217;s about my family, so sometimes I get comments like &#8220;Wow, your mom seems really crazy.&#8221; Unlike most solo acts, my show is based on a novel, so the events are mostly fictional. The underlying emotional truth, however, is real. Who hasn&#8217;t been the misfit, felt deep shame or been held hostage by their own family members? OK, maybe not so much that last one.<\/p>\n<p>Q What made you bring this story to the stage?<\/p>\n<p>A I started the original short story in 2002. &#8230; What has kept me going for so many years is Louise. The people who should love her treat her worse than a stranger would, and yet she perseveres. She has such spirit and joy. She spoke loudly to me, and I listened. My manuscript became a one-woman show so the characters could literally tell their truths.<\/p>\n<p>Q What do you like most about the Fringe Festival?<\/p>\n<p>A The creative freedom and support. Finding a venue for a scatological one-woman show when you have no experience on a theater stage would be impossible without the open-heartedness of a Fringe Festival.<\/p>\n<p>Q What do you love about going solo?<\/p>\n<p>A I love the alchemy of transforming my written stories into a full-bodied, in-the-moment experience on stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sarah Lau leaps through half a dozen characters, from tweens to octogenarians, in her cheeky solo show &#8220;The Secret Adventures<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Sarah Lau leaps through half a dozen characters, from tweens to octogenarians, in her cheeky solo show &#8220;The Secret Adventures","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["News"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":141,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":3,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"<a href=\"#\" class=\"category-link category-link-1\">News<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}