Zoë Kim shares her childhood trauma with a glowing orb in Did You Eat? (photo by Emma Zordan)
DID YOU EAT? (밥 먹었니?)
The Shiva Theater at the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 16, $80
publictheater.org
In 1992, Baptist minister and radio host Gary Chapman wrote The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, in which he described five “love languages”: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.
In her autobiographical solo show Did You Eat?, Zoë Kim offers her own take on love languages, as they apply to her relationship with her parents, herself, and her place in the world as a Korean American. It’s a brave but uneven journey that explores severe trauma but doesn’t quite dig deep enough during its too-brief sixty-five minutes, as she tells her story to a glowing white orb that represents her inner child.
Kim was born in Seoul to a dysfunctional family mired in resentment. Her father, Appa, was the youngest of thirteen children and the only son. His parents, who were poor, heaped all their attention on the boy, considering him to be “their only hope.” Kim explains, “Every piece of food and clothing went to keep him fed and warm. It was normal for him to wake up on a winter morning to find one of his sisters frozen or starved to death. None of his twelve sisters made it to adulthood. Harabeoji’s [Grandfather’s] future was worth the lives of twelve daughters.”
While studying for her PhD, Umma (Kim’s mother) was forced by Harabeoji to give up her dreams of becoming a scientist and instead get married. She did not want to be a mother, but she got pregnant immediately; Appa was planning on having many sons, but when Kim was born, he was more than disappointed, and Umma and Appa spent the rest of their lives taking it out on their daughter, in different ways. “The day you are born is a tragic day,” she says to the orb. As a child, she blames herself for the breakup of her parents’ marriage and the lack of love she receives from them, praying to the gods to turn her into a boy.
However, she spends a lot of time with her grandmother, Halmeoni, who introduces Kim to theater, music, and poetry. “Feeding you is her love language,” she notes happily, even as she points out how miserable Harabeoji is to Halmeoni. “You learn that your love language is to make her laugh.”
At fifteen, Kim, who does not speak any English, is sent to boarding school in America, where she is determined to thrive, fighting her fears as she attempts to balance being Korean and American. At sixteen, her father tries to kill her. “Your American dream is vaporized,” she says, and is soon battling “anxiety, depression, rage, shame, guilt, and hurt,” believing that she brought it all on herself, that she deserves all the bad things that are being heaped upon her. “Will I ever be okay?” she asks.
We might be watching her in a play that has had success since its workshop debut at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and is now being presented at the Public by the Ma-Yi Theater Company, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s okay, given what she’s had to deal with since birth.
The title of the show refers to how Umma would say things to her that meant something else. For example, “Did you eat?” actually was “How are you?,” and “Are you eating?” was “I’m worried about you.” It was as if Umma could not speak to her daughter directly, would not communicate with her in a caring and loving way, skirting around reality.
Director Chris Yejin and choreographer Iris McCloughan keep Kim on the move, adding a potent level of physicality that counters the inner turmoil with a sense of impending freedom rather than doom. In a midriff-baring costume designed by Harriet Jung that reveals impressive abs, Kim flits across Tanya Orellana’s geometric set, consisting of an abstract arrangement of white platforms, walls, and doors, amid Minjoo Kim’s colorful lighting and Yee Eun Nam’s projections, which range from English translations of Korean dialogue to photos of old hands and animations of rain and falling letters.
While Kim is an engaging figure onstage, the narrative and movement occasionally dip into cliché and repetition, especially when it comes to her overuse of the concept of love languages, and it’s not always immediately clear when she shifts between characters. In addition, the orb is at times distracting, a precious prop that can be too sentimental.
At the end of the show, I was happy that Kim had overcome so many obstacles, but on the way home I couldn’t help but feel that I was still hungry, that I wanted more. Perhaps that will be sated by the next two parts of what Kim is calling the Hunger Trilogy.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]