Currently Stalking: Preston Choi
Preston Choi and I are sitting in what may be the most nondescript room on Northwestern’s campus -- a male dressing room tucked away in the Wirtz building. Although I met him in the paint shop, a cavernous place that resembles an airplane hanger inhabited by Jackson Pollock, Preston led me to this quiet space for our interview.
The fluorescent lights make the lockers, walls, and floor a uniform shade of hospital-scrub green. Preston stands out even in the paint shop, and here, the bland room seems almost too small to contain him.
He laughs after almost every question. I am not sure if this is because my questions are funny, or because the act of answering, of reducing the facets of himself to a coherent soundbite, is laughable.
Preston, a junior studying Art Theory and Practice and Theatre with an emphasis on playwriting, likes to create the new. He creates new plays -- he is currently working on what will hopefully be his proudest achievement here at Northwestern, a Vertigo-produced play exploring the life and death of Japanese American Takako Konishi that will 1) challenge the Madame Butterfly stereotypes Asian women face and 2) feature only Asian women.
He also creates new looks. He meets me wearing a navy polka dot shirt under a pair of overalls, canvas Doc Martens, and his hair tied into a bun at the nape of his neck. We are sitting on a long bench that runs parallel to the row of lockers.
As he describes a childhood and adolescence spent in San Diego, Syracuse, and Atlanta, it seems as if Preston also had to become adept at creating new versions of himself.
“My childhood was in the Northeast, but my growing up and loss of innocence was in the South. Going from house to house, moving a couple times, home is not a physical thing for me anymore. When I’m with my family, that feels like home.”
At multiple points in our conversation, Preston draws a distinction between our bodies -- the physical thing that contain us -- and our true selves, our thoughts and feelings and sum of experiences that inspire us. He sees a clear connection between who is and what he creates.
“I am mixed race, my mom is Irish and my father is Korean. My father is not in the picture, so I was raised by my white mother. Being mixed, I had to search on my own through my identity and culture. Because I have existed in-between things, I take what I want from things. I’m not afraid to smash things together. Because I’m already a mismatch of things, I’m going to keep fusing as many things as I can together. If it looks weird or ugly, it’s still something.”
But Preston wants to clarify -- “I don’t purposefully dress strange.”
Before coming to Northwestern, he dressed in the uniform of high school guys everywhere -- black polos and khaki shorts. It was only when he became more involved in his art that he became tired of being boring.
“What I wear is different day to day. For an assignment for photography class, something I photographed had a lot of circles in it, so I wore this polka dot shirt with circles all over it. Or if I’ve written something spooky for a playwriting class, I will purposely wear my skeleton sweater. It is an inside connection to what’s happening in my head. Even if no one else will get it, I know it’s on purpose.”
When Preston talks about creating an outfit, he is really talking about the act of creation itself. He describes trading shorts for overalls with the same metaphor Truman Capote used to describe completing a novel -- killing your darlings. Why would he hesitate to mix patterns, when he is in the midst of writing a play that mixes fact with imagined history? He explains how exploring and embracing different looks, different projects, has allowed him to grow. There is no looking back, only moving forward.
There is a photo of a bunch of my sweaters all over a table. And one of them is the skeleton sweater that I got freshman year that most people in the theatre department know me for. Another sweater is this huge colorblock one with these squares that I got it from one of my friends who graduated. He had a huge collection of sweaters, and at the end of his senior year, he sold them all off to people. It’s great that I have this sweater that I like that was his.
I am also a matryoshka sweater -- those little Russian nesting dolls. I bought it because my mom got a little doll from the Nutcracker in New York that fascinated me. But we lost it along the way. Now I have that sweater, so I have a bit of that object back.
Preston expects his clothes to adapt along with him.
“I buy things from Amazon. Which is a hit or a miss game. I will search for specific things, like spooky Halloween sweater. Then, some stuff I have purposefully manipulated. H&M has stuff that I will buy and then slice them up. That’s where I get most of my shorts -- I’ll see a cool pair of pants and slice it at the knee. Most of the unique things come from the fact that I work in a paint shop and make art, so things get stained or burned or chemically altered in some way. Most people would throw away a pair of paint-covered pants. But I keep them, because it’s honest about what I do.”
The room is quiet. It is a dressing room, a place where people prepare to enter a role. But today it is empty. Preston is not playing any part. He might be wearing a pair of overalls, but not as any gimmick. Clothes for him are simply one means telling his story. But the other, and more vital way, is through writing.
“I hope to become a playwright, or maybe even get into TV writing. Someone who is able to write stories for people that don’t really have their stories being told too often. Specifically, for the Asian American community. There are a lot of important stories being told at the moment, and I think the Asian American community is often one that has to...not have to settle for waiting their turn, because that’s not the right way of saying it, but often their voices aren’t projected or given volume. That’s what I want to do, provide a platform to write a good story -- yes, the characters are Asian, but it’s also a good story. It’s not there to be special interest piece. I love realism, but it’s not what I want to do. If I could make a play that was both Hayao Miyazaki and David Lynch...it’s ambitious, but that is what I want to make.”
Photos: Sam Schumacher