When the Old Globe commissioned Keiko Green to write a play, she had a specific idea in mind for the project.
“I knew that I wanted to write a ghost story,” she recalled. “I had some ideas and I was really drawn to these stories of someone picking up a ghostly enger in a car.”
Those stories originated in Japan, where some taxi drivers in the city of Ishinomaki reported encountering “ghost engers” in the wake of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that claimed an estimated 20,000 lives.
This would become, in part, the catalyst for Green’s play “Empty Ride,” which was workshopped last year at the Globe’s Powers New Voices Festival and is now making its world premiere on the Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre stage.
Green, who is based in Seattle and in Los Angeles, enjoyed earlier success at the Globe in 2023 with her play “Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play.”
The central character in “Empty Ride” is a painter from Paris named Kisa, who after the tsunami returns to her hometown in Japan and takes over her ailing father’s taxi-driving service. Green’s own grandmother, who ed away last year at the age of 99, lived in one of the areas that was impacted by the tsunami.
“I was resistant to writing about the tsunami, as if I was exploiting the disaster in any way,” said Green, who is of Japanese and American parents. “Then I went into the area with my mom and we met people who were interested in these (ghostly) stories. I decided to write about this specific area (Ishinomaki). In the play, Kisa was gone when this tsunami hit and felt a lot of survivor’s guilt and began thinking about her own place in the world. The play has a lot to do with ‘What is a haunting?’”
At the Globe, “Empty Ride” is being directed by Sivan Battat. Green and Battat, who is director of New Work Development at Noor Theatre Company in New York City, discovered a common theatrical interest as they got to know each other last year in New York.
“We talked about (playwright) Sam Shepard for a really long time,” Green said. “There’s a deep love for our predecessors and how we can build on what they’ve made. We really connected.
“This play is a big ask,” Green continued. “A lot of it takes place in a taxi. The play is set in the round. There are some directorial obstacles there. I needed someone who could do the scene work, take a bold swing in of how we’re going to do all the taxi stuff, and who had a sense of international identity.”
Portraying Kisa and making her Old Globe debut in “Empty Ride” is Michele Selene Ang, who may be known to many from her three-plus seasons on the Netflix teen drama “13 Reasons Why.”
“The play is centered around a huge natural disaster of course,” Ang said, of “Empty Ride.” “One of the main questions is how do we find love out of unfathomable loss and how do we move forward in spite of that loss?”
Ang ires Green for storytelling that is “very character-driven, focused and non-sentimental. There’s a lot of heart and emotion, but not really so much sentimentality, which I appreciate.”
Green’s playwriting canon, which includes not only “Exotic Deadly” but the dark dramedy “Sharon” that was produced by Cygnet Theatre two years ago — she herself co-starred — is not one populated by linear, traditional characters.
“I’m really interested in characters who are accidentally mes and having to deal with the consequences rather than people who are deliberately trying to hurt people and dealing with consequences,” Green explained. “When people are accidentally mes they’re really trying their best. A lot of that ends up funny. I also love a quirky character.”
Ang has embraced the role of Kisa. “This part means so much to me,” she said, “because I’ve never seen a character like this for an Asian American female. Beyond that it’s messy, it’s loud, it’s a little bit crude. I’ve felt that way all my life and I’ve never seen it reflected in a piece of art.
“It’s personal to me and important to explore that messiness in all the characters and how they try to make sense of their lives after such a big disaster,” Ang said.
Green said that in this play “all the characters are trying to break a stereotype about Japanese culture. The men are usually portrayed as very curt and not very affectionate, and the women are very ‘ingenue-y’ and sweet and innocent. When I go to Japan, that’s not what I see. It’s not the Japan I know.”
In “Empty Ride,” she said, “Kisa’s father is extremely warm and goofy. We have a young male character who is flashy and sleazy. And our lead character is an artist who carries a lot of darkness with her.”
Green said Ang is being asked to indulge her “weird, tortured, dark part. She (Kisa) is going through something, and it’s OK that we have this whole play about a woman who’s figuring out whether she’s going to stay in this town or leave forever.” “There’s something inside of her that feels like we’re wrestling with the same monster.”
‘Empty Ride’
When: Previews today through Wednesday. Opens Thursday and runs through March 2. 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. (plus 2 p.m. matinee on Feb. 26)
Where: Old Globe Theatre’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, Balboa Park
Tickets: $31 and up
Phone: 619-234-5623
Online: theoldglobe.org
