Carla Ching's play explores the phenomena of 'motel kids' and 'parachute kids'

July 21, 2015 12:01 am • Last Updated: July 22, 2015 9:19 am

By Kristina Dorsey
Features Editor

Carla Ching

Carla Ching’s play explores lives of ‘motel kids’ and ‘parachute kids’

Worlds collide in a unique way in Carla Ching’s drama “Nomad Motel.”

This play — in development at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference — brings together two 17-year-old characters, one a “motel kid” and one a “parachute kid.”

What those phrases mean: Motel kids are youths whose families are living in a motel because they cannot afford to rent or buy homes. Parachute kids are Asian teenagers whose wealthy parents send them to live in the U.S. during the high school years, hoping to give them a better chance of getting into college. The parents, though, remain abroad, leaving their kids with relatives or paid caretakers or simply by themselves.

Ching created a plotline for “Nomad Motel” that explores those two kinds of existence: Alix is crammed into a motel room with her clan. Mason resides all by himself in a huge house, while his father — who works for the Hong Kong Triad, collecting debts to organized crime — checks in via Skype. Their parents go missing, and the teens strike up a friendship as they try to survive.

Ching’s intriguing idea for the play began percolating when she started working with South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Calif. One of its commissioning programs encouraged dramatists to create plays showing the diversity of Orange County.

“Everybody thinks of the ‘Housewives’ and wealth and all of that,” Ching says, but Orange County is much more.

The program offered the writers a chance to spend time exploring Orange County and perhaps finding inspiration. Ching recalls going to the U.S. Open of Surfing, visiting a predominately Vietnamese-American community, and seeing a spoken-word performance by young Asian-Americans.

As part of her related research, she came across an HBO documentary called “Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County.” It’s about, she says, “motel family culture in Orange County. It’s strange. Disneyland is right there, and yet there are these motel complexes full of whole families who are living there because it’s so expensive to live (in Orange County). Coming up with first month and last month’s rent — it’s so difficult. So a lot of people resorted to living in motel situations in one of the wealthiest counties in the nation.”

While that captured Ching’s attention, so did some academic articles she saw about parachute kids. Parents drop the youths into Orange County to go to school. The kids have houses and cars — but, often, no supervision.

Ching became interested in investigating what might happen if she dealt with both of these communities in the same play.

“What if I crash these two worlds together, and there’s this person who has nothing but space and resources but no family to speak of, somebody to hang onto, (and) somebody who is crushing and crowded but is in need. I was wondering how they could find each other and help each other through their seemingly disparate, difficult familial situations,” Ching says.

Other pieces fell into place when she was part of CTG Workshop in California. They invite specialists to come in to talk to the writers, and Ching asked about people who knew about kids in these situations. Those who came in: Jennifer Friend, who was herself a motel kid before becoming a lawyer and running Project Hope Alliance in Orange Country, which helps homeless families; and Angela Chen, who self-identifies as a parachute kid and produced a short documentary titled “Parachute Kids.”

Ching heard about the loneliness in each group and the parallels between them. She listened to how kids survive despite having an unstable family life and their need to be extremely resourceful at a very young age.

The idea for the play, Ching says, “really opened up after I met these two really incredible women.”

As for Ching’s development as a writer, she has loved writing since she was in grade school in L.A. She originally anticipated becoming a poet and, to support herself, spent several years as a high-school English teacher in New York City. (She taught in three places, all in gifted and progressive programs, including at Hunter College High School.)

But in grad school, she says, “I realized I wasn’t as good at (poetry) as I wished I was.”

When she and a performing arts group made her poetry into theatrical pieces, Ching discovered she liked that form and thought it might be more satisfying to her. She went back to school for playwriting. Since then, her pieces have been produced or workshopped at such venues as Ma-Yi Theatre Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Lark Play Development Center.

She’s been a writer, too, for “Graceland,” a drama about undercover agents that airs on the USA Network.

And, this year, she was among eight playwrights chosen from more than 1,300 to develop their works at the O’Neill’s celebrated National Playwrights Conference.

One of the many benefits of being at the conference is talking with the other dramatists. Ching recalls that Jenny Connell Davis said that part of the reason she wrote her show “End of Shift,” which focuses on five Maine teens, is that people don’t write young people correctly. Ching feels the same way.

“The young people we see onstage aren’t fully fleshed out and realized and given real arcs and wants and needs,” she says.

Ching tried to write youths with complicated lives who survive through trying circumstances.

“That kind of spirit is amazing to me,” she says.

k.dorsey@theday.com