At a church funeral, a woman collapses into a chair. Her face is shadowed as her shoulders shiver with each sob. Despite the tears staining her cheeks, she looks impeccably put together, decked in high heels, pearl earrings, opaque tights, and a long delicate cloak, all in black.
The woman’s name is Lee. She mourns both the loss of her husband Chris who died from cancer, and the growing distance between her and her daughter Anna.
Lee, played by Kiyomi Ton ‘28, is one of the characters in the play To Dream About Wings, written by Steph Chen ‘25 and directed by Wasif Sami ‘25. Performed this February at Wallace Theater, the play follows Anna and Leo, two teenagers who navigate their own dreams and relationships while trying to make their families proud.
Leo worries about Anna’s stressful home life, but he also dreams of flying and has been working on a flying machine. Meanwhile, Anna worries that Leo will leave her one day. When Leo excitedly shows Anna his finished flight machine on a rooftop, Anna holds him back, breaking his wings, and causing him to fall to his death. Anna’s grief restrains Leo’s spirit on Earth, but with the help of a former priest, Anna finally lets Leo go, all the while dealing with the loss of her father. Meanwhile, her mom Lee desperately wants to help but doesn’t know how, her worries overshadowed by an excessive concern for her daughter’s success, her own unfulfilled dreams as a housewife, and the loss of her husband. This play is about the American immigrant dream, but also about how people find each other to grieve loved ones and learn to let go.
Kiyomi, who played Lee, lost her dad as rehearsal started last November, and her character’s loss became personal. Kiyomi’s mom is named Ly, pronounced the same way as the character she portrays, and Kiyomi feels the uncanny echo of her mother’s experiences when enacting Lee’s grief. Like Lee and Kiyomi, Ly was a singer herself at Buddhist temples. A Vietnamese immigrant from a poor family, she raised Kiyomi as a nail artist, fulfilling both parental roles when her husband couldn’t. Bringing Lee to life, the play became Kiyomi’s way of understanding her parents. But more specifically, it allows her to understand how her father loved her and pay tribute to him.
“When he lived, I feel like I never thanked him specifically and, you know, said ‘This is for you’,” Kiyomi shared, her eyes shining brightly under long eyelashes. “So this play, I’m doing this for him.”
To Dream About Wings, Scene 6. Written by Steph Chen.
Chris, Lee’s husband, sits on the sofa in his living room as his daughter Anna talks to him eagerly.
ANNA
Well, then when I’m successful I’ll bring you and mom and we’ll travel all over the world. We’ll go ride the hot air balloons in Turkey, see the Eiffel Tower—
CHRIS
You’re all grown up.
ANNA
—why don’t we go now? Dad, we could go tomorrow.
CHRIS
Maybe one day. (beat) I’m so excited to see you graduate.
Little Kiyomi’s bedroom door had a sign that read “Daddy’s Girl.” Some of her fondest childhood memories involve exploring new restaurants with her parents, her favorite being Pho Van Restaurant in Baltimore. Yet, a cloud hung over those moments. As Kiyomi grew up, her father was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and their relationship was placed under increasing strain by her father’s unpredictable mood changes. “There’s good moments but they could have easily turned bad,” Kiyomi said.
As her father’s illness turned into a drug addiction, the chasm between him and Kiyomi widened. Knowing his mood could change at any moment, Kiyomi felt like “walking on eggshells” in every conversation. The confusion morphed into a practiced distance by the time she was in high school. She turned to theater, performing others’ stories and staying late at rehearsals to escape the silent tension at home. By the time she graduated, Kiyomi had participated in six productions.
Scene 19.
Anna sits with the Priest on a bench under a streetlight as she confesses her struggles.
ANNA
I tried so hard praying for my dad to get better. I would lie in my bed at night, under the covers with the lights off, and gamble with God. If I got an A on my next exam, my dad would get ten more days.
Grandpa, please bless me with good grades.
When Kiyomi was little, she prayed to her late grandfather. He looked back at her from a framed photo next to a Buddha statue, shrouded by incense in a family shrine. Waiting for college decisions, Kiyomi and her family sought blessings at a Buddhist temple.
Since seventh grade, Kiyomi had known that college was the fastest way to leave home and find her own success. She put everything into her Questbridge application, thrilled when she matched with Princeton. Posting alongside the signature tiger outside of Nassau Hall on Preview Day, Kiyomi took in her parents’ excitement. They had not gone to college themselves, but walking into Princeton with their daughter, they’d achieved a different dream.
Scene 21. Chris walks on stage in a white suit and narrates his own eulogy. He is not holding his signature cane for the first time.
CHRIS
Chris died January seventeenth, days before his sixtieth birthday. He is survived by his wife, Lee, and his daughter, Anna. He had been fighting cancer for a long time. He was born in China, on a farm, to a family of six. He was the runt of the litter, but he was determined to best his sisters and brothers, and be the first in the family to go to college. And he did! Good for him…
…The past few years he had not been so well. (he looks at ANNA, and smiles) But he did a good job raising Anna. He lived a good life, and he died a good death. He did well.
CHRIS takes a moment to appreciate his shrine, and the life he has built. He leaves.
It was 11 PM, and Kiyomi was chatting with her friend on the red cushioned dorm seat when a few messages popped up from her mom. It was too late for her to text. Kiyomi tried calling, but when her mom didn’t pick up, she sensed something was wrong. She called her aunt, who picked up after a few rings and told her frantically that her dad was in the ICU. Then, her phone rang. It was a call from her mom.
Her mom was crying hysterically on the other end. You need to be here. You need to be here. I can’t handle this on my own. Kiyomi tried to gather what happened. Her dad was crossing the street when he got hit by the car. He was sent to the ICU and only three days later was he identified and Ly notified. Now, her mom, who knew limited English and relied on her daughter to run family errands, had to decide if they would pull the plug while her daughter was hours away.
Two hours later, on November 7th, Kiyomi’s dad passed away.
Catching the 5 AM NJ transit train and the next Amtrak out, Kiyomi arrived in Baltimore at 7:45 AM. Her mom waited outside the station with her aunt to pick Kiyomi up. From the moment of arrival, she was engulfed in a whirlpool: contacting the funeral house, meeting Vietnamese monks, and planning a memorial. She signed her dad’s death certificate.
Later, Ly told Kiyomi that she was worried that Vinny died hungry. On the day of the accident, when Ly couldn’t find Vinny, she waited till late at night and left food on the counter before going to sleep. She waited for two more days, only to learn that he was in the ICU. Now every time she eats, Ly gets emotional.
One week and a half after her father’s passing, Kiyomi returned to campus and started rehearsals.
Looking back, Kiyomi recounted how she drew on her mom’s reaction to her dad’s passing when acting out Lee’s hysteria at Chris’ death. To Kiyomi, both women were scared and at a loss for what to do. At Chris’s church funeral, Lee cries with desperation. Performing this emotional outbreak on stage, many thoughts passed through Kiyomi’s mind. One constantly returned: I wonder if my dad died starving.
Forty-nine days after her father’s passing, the dreams stopped. In some Buddhist beliefs, the soul lingers on Earth for 49 days before reincarnation. The day before Vinny’s 49th-day memorial, the family gathered near a tree facing the street where Vinny had been struck by the car. Through chants, they told Vinny’s soul it was okay to leave. As Kiyomi kneeled and prayed, a gust of wind shook the tree—and Kiyomi felt her dad’s soul leave.
Scene 21.
Anna storms out after a huge fight with Lee at Chris’s funeral. The Priest, who stumbles into the funeral, follows her out.
PRIEST
I don’t pity you at all, Anna. In fact, I’m jealous.
ANNA
Jealous?
PRIEST
Yeah. You got so much love to give.
Amidst the rapidly moving pace of Princeton life, rehearsal became Kiyomi’s outlet for grief.
“All the pent-up emotions I have and my grievances, it gets thrown on stage as an art form,” she said.
In the playbooks of her high school shows, she would thank her mom, who always showed up to support her — her dad, conspicuously absent, was always mentioned as part of the family. Emulating a wife and mother’s grief as Lee, Kiyomi felt a novel and therapeutic compassion for her own mother. Kiyomi always knew her dad loved her, but found it difficult to convince herself of that with his love shadowed by illness and addiction. But playing a parental character made Kiyomi reflect on her own parent’s protectiveness in an intimate way. “My dad was always telling me to be safe,” she said. And that protectiveness, she realized, was a reflection of his love. The play was no longer an escape, but on the contrary, a special devotion to him.
She had always loved when the Priest said to Anna: “You have so much love to give.” She devoted more of herself to To Dream About Wings than any other play, resonating with characters onstage, bonding with an Asian American cast, and finding love to give.
One late night after rehearsal, a week before the premiere, Kiyomi sat alone in the green room and recorded an Instagram video to promote the play. She was in a light blue vest but still in stage makeup, and her voice was thick from crying in rehearsal. In the one-minute vlog, she flashed photos of her family shrine and her father’s funeral, sharing her personal connection to the play.
Scene 21, continued.
ANNA
Why won’t you just let me be sad by myself? It’s so embarrassing to be seen like this. Life is supposed to move on, and I’m supposed to get a job and be happy, it’s what he would have wanted.
PRIEST
Is it?
ANNA stays quiet.
PRIEST
I didn’t know your dad, but I do know that if I had died, I would have wanted someone to be there for my daughter.
ANNA softens slightly.
One of the first people to watch that video was Steph Chen, the playwright of To Dream About Wings. As Kiyomi brought Lee to life, Steph followed every line intently.
With shoulder-length hair, soft speech, and a tender smile, Steph had never imagined joining the theater before coming to college. Growing up in Hong Kong, she always knew she wanted to move to the U.S., where she could finally “make it big.” The fastest way was college.
In her freshman summer, after ignoring her mom’s calls for as long as possible, Steph finally picked up the phone. You should come home, her mom said. Your dad is very sick. She went home to see her dad, and one year later, in February of her sophomore year, he passed away. Out of fear of getting pitied, she only told her closest friends.
Steph began writing To Dream About Wings in her junior year. Initially inspired by Leonardo da Vinci, it featured a carefree boy who wanted to fly. But Leo’s image overlapped with her own father: I wonder if my dad is flying right now. I wonder where he’d want to be. Maybe he’s flying over Oregon. Somewhere along the way, it evolved into a beautiful meditation on grief and community, with her father’s shadow in every character she created: a little bit of him shines through Leo, an utterly pure desire to take flight. Chris, too, holds Steph’s father, his illness taking a toll on him and those who love him.
Art became her catharsis, releasing the grief and depression buried deep inside her. “It’s all about my dad,” Steph slowly realized as the play morphed into its entirety. “It’s like a big love letter to him.”
Maybe that was what Kiyomi found in Steph’s play: a thread of love that connects scenes of the deepest grief, allowing her to find strength and reconnect. The art is a mirror of sorts between Steph and Kiyomi, allowing them to reflect each other’s emotions, grounded in their own experiences.
On stage, Steph watched Kiyomi unleash Lee’s fierce protectiveness and love for Anna, and emote a gentle sorrow over the imminent loss of a husband. Offstage, Steph watched how Kiyomi shared her experience with her father’s passing, not afraid that she would be looked at differently. In Kiyomi’s promotional video, Steph admired Kiyomi’s openness and power to turn grief into strength and love. “She was warm, and funny, and kind, and generous, and smart, and scathing the entire time,” Steph said about Kiyomi, “I didn’t know that you could just be open about it and just say like ‘Oh, my father had passed away’.”
Partially because of Kiyomi, Steph resolved to start talking about her father’s passing as the production closed. Leaving rehearsal one day, she felt a sense of happiness and lightness she had not experienced in a long time.
Scene 22.
Surrounding the priest holding a mic from God, the community gathers and sings one Hallelujah together.
LEE & CHRIS & LAO LAO
AND EVEN THOUGH IT ALL WENT WRONG
I STAND BEFORE THE LORD OF SONG
WITH NOTHING ON MY TONGUE BUT HALLELUJAH
Near the end of the play, Lee, Chris, and Leo’s grandma Lao Lao returned to the stage in a metaphorical space of Hallelujah to embrace, dance, and sing. Eventually, they invited the audience to sing along too. Some hummed to the tune while others fully belted out the lyrics. Many teared up. “What makes a good show…is when I can feel all sorts of emotions—if I can laugh, cry, feel inspired, ” Kiyomi said. “And I know that To Dream About Wings did that, and I wanted other people to experience it too.”
Wasif Sami, the play’s director, particularly adored the Hallelujah scene. It is a metaphor of theater: playwright, actors, light, and sound supporting each other to create an entire world.
“As theatre makers, we’re all showing up for each other and with an audience to celebrate life and commemorate loss,” he reflected.
The week before the show’s opening, Wasif accidentally walked in on Kiyomi filming the promotional video. He found her teary-eyed talking about the loss of her dad. The 100th-day anniversary of her dad’s death was approaching on the same day her mom and paternal grandmother would be coming to watch the play.
Wasif realized then that theater is inextricably tied to life. “This is her life. And this show is…part of the story of her losing her dad. It’s part of the story of her first year at college,” Wasif said. “It reminded me that the things we’re making the play about, even though it’s fiction, it’s also something that matters.”
THE END.
Kiyomi’s mom came to see the last night of the show from Maryland. Back in Hong Kong, Steph’s mom never knew about the play. As the stage blacked out for the last time and actors held hands to bow, Wasif and Steph ran onto the stage. Steph’s face was covered in tears. Wasif, who was standing right next to her, pulled her into a hug. Then everyone joined, running into Steph and Wasif’s outstretched arms into a tight circle. Kiyomi still had dried tears on her face, but everyone was smiling. Sun Bleached Flies by Ethel Cain, picked by Steph, played in the background:
Dancing with the windows open
I can’t let go when something’s broken
It’s all I know and it’s all I want now…