Susan Lieu: Dancing with Three Generations

“I want to heal the trauma and the pain and the loss of the human condition through scaleable stories that people can experience that create outlets for reflection and connection. I had to try a lot of different jobs, meet and talk to a lot of different people, and make a lot of mistakes. It’s quite risky to go into the uncertain and understand what it is that we truly want and who we are and what we stand for and do that thing. That’s actually quite a tall order. But you can take one step in that direction by being curious and by being bold.”

When I met Susan Lieu for our interview, I was struck by her bubbly personality. Her expressiveness and energy instantly brought our conversation to life, even through a Zoom screen. Throughout our conversation, I could tell that she is one of those few people with the ability to feel every part of life and be unafraid to make it her own. She uses her talent for performance to bring people together in a space of collective healing and growth. Her wise advice to be bold and be curious has inspired many to live life with no regrets and to do so with joy, purpose, and love.

Susan Lieu is a Vietnamese American producer, playwright, and performer. She is the creator and solo performer of 140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother and its sequel, Over 140 LBS. Susan graduated from Harvard University in 2008 and received her MBA at Yale University before entering the world of performance.

Susan Lieu’s story behind her journey to producing 140 LBS is one of heartbreak, family, love, and motherhood. As we as undergraduate students continue to discover our own passions and interests, we have much to learn from Susan’s story.

How did you come to produce 140 LBS?

I’ve always had a hunger for performance even when I was at Harvard, but because I started late, I always felt so behind. Because my mom died due to medical malpractice when she received plastic surgery when I was 11 in 1996, I live with a sense of urgency and a sense of wondering: what must I do now in case I die soon? When 2011 came around – the year before the end of the world in the Mayan calendar – I realized my biggest regret would be that I didn’t try standup comedy. And that began my standup comedy career. Within six months of starting stand up comedy, I was a semifinalist at a tournament that got me a slot to headline at the Purple Onion in San Francisco in front of over a hundred people. Within a few years, I found myself at Caroline’s on Broadway, which is one of the biggest comedy clubs in New York City.

In 2012, I started my MBA at Yale but the passion for performance was still there. I took classes at the drama school, and felt like a whole new world was opening up to me. What mesmerizes me about the courses was learning about how we connect with others, hold their attention, and hopefully inspire them to greatness. That was one of the few classes I got honors at while I was at Yale, and it was because it really spoke to a core part of who I am. After I finished my MBA, I moved to Seattle for a corporate job to gain more experience and pay off loans.

When I got married, I started feeling a lot of pressure from my family to start having kids. I felt anxiety because, how could I tell my kid to do what they want in life if I didn’t? So I said, okay, I’m just going to be a performer. Here I go. I will not stand in my own shadow and my own fear. I think in facing fear, there’s always something really rich and important that will happen. I took a solo performer class and on the first day of the class, they said, “tell a five minute story.” The first words that came out of my mouth were,

“I want to avenge my mother’s death.”

I started talking about trying to find the guy that killed my mom. For so long, my family didn’t want to talk about her death, and I just wanted to have closure. If I don’t have the person that is one of the closest relationships in life, a mother to a child, what do I have? And if I’m going to think about having a child, how do I know how to do that when there’s a gap? So that comes out of my mouth, and I have never told the story to anyone except my husband. And everyone’s shocked. That precise moment began my journey to understanding how I can be the mom that I want to be but also understand who my own mom was.

At that point it was fall of 2017, and I spent the next two years doing different workshops that I called “episodes.” In each episode, I answered a question. What happened? Who was she? What were our body image issues like? And each time, I had more and more people coming and more and more press. As I started applying for grants, I began to wonder if I could make this a full time career. I had gone to business school to figure out how I can bring good to the public sector by using private sector frameworks. At that time, I was a management consultant at Microsoft and I hated my job. I hated my life. It was not mission driven and I didn’t feel a sense of purpose or fulfillment. This all came to a head when I was laid off in Summer 2018. I was at a fork in the road. But I knew if I didn’t do performance full time, I would not not be okay with myself.

I had done so many iterations of my performance, but when I looked at what I created, I tore it all up. I burned it to the ground. I was not happy with the story because it didn’t match the vision and tone of me, my family, and my heritage. So I switched directors, rewrote the show, and had the world premiere in February 2019. I did it in the way I wanted. In that first episode, there were around 40 seats, and I went to Fedex Kinkos and printed out these little brochures with my mom’s face on it, an article of the real story of what happened between the doctor and my mom, and also the doctor’s obituary. I walked up and down the aisles and put that brochure on each of the seats. I wanted my show to be true and honest and experiential. When I had my world premiere of 140 LBS that you know today, I had nine performances and sold 1300 tickets -- a sold-out run. Everything was the way I wanted it. No regrets. And I knew that now I was not a coward. And then a few months later, I got pregnant.

You recently became a mother and you are also the creator of a show about motherhood. How have these two aspects of your life interacted with each other?

I named my son Art, actually. When I found out I was pregnant I realized I can only go on tour during my second trimester, so Art went with me on tour! Because I’m a solo performer and was trying to minimize costs, I traveled the country alone and hired local people in every single city. It was a logistical nightmare but it worked out. And before every show, I would hold my bump, and I would hold my shoulder, and I felt like I was dancing with three generations: him, me, and my mom.

PC: Jenny Crooks

I would say, since producing the show and performing it, my relationship with my mom has become so close even though she died over two decades ago. And having Art has been so interesting because he’s so forgiving and his love is so unconditional and non judgemental. I don’t know about you, but I think Asian child-parent relationships are really complicated. My relationship with my father has always been hard. He has judged my body and my career choices. I’m like a little girl, still wanting his approval. But when I hold Art, I love him so much. He doesn’t need to do anything beyond be himself and I’m still going to love him. And so having him makes me hope my dad loves me unconditionally. Because my dad’s never going to say it. He’s never going to say he’s proud of me, he’s never going to say any of the things I've craved my entire life. But knowing the way I feel about Art, I just hope my dad feels the same way about me. Art the baby is a form of healing for me around the pain that I still have about me and my dad and me and my mom, and he doesn’t even know it.

PC: Jenny Crooks

A big theme in 140 LBS is intergenerational trauma. It’s not just that my dad doesn’t understand his daughter. It’s that my dad and his trauma–-of the war, the boat escape, coming to America, not having much money, losing his wife so early--it’s all of that that I’m also interacting with when we trigger each other. I wish we could have direct conversations with each other but we can’t because our traumas are fighting each other and they don’t always understand each other. So as I raise my child, I think about what I want to pass along. The trauma that we had gave us grit, gave us power, and gave us resilience. What do I want to keep? And what do I want to consciously not perpetuate? The body shaming, the constant comparison and belittling, the being afraid all the time that there isn’t enough. I have to be very careful because I’m subconsciously sharing a lineage all the time.

What are some things that you’re currently working on?

I’m working on a memoir which will be published through Celadon Books, an imprint of Macmillan, in 2023! In that way, my book is a continuation of the story where I can go deeper on family and my own experiences as an Asian-American woman.

I’m also releasing a podcast with two Harvard Asian moms called “Model Minority Moms” coming out April 30th where we get raw about the pressures of fitting in while standing out.

I also have a chocolate company that I started with my sister in high school. It’s called Socola Chocolatier, and I’m the Chief Marketing Officer and I bring my form of writing and storytelling into our products, including our Little Saigon Box which has durian and phở truffles.

During the pandemic, I’ve also been working on turning 140 LBS into an hour-long drama. I had applied for a Sundance competition and was a semi finalist, so I wrote a longer screenplay. Theater is one thing. Being on stage as a solo performer, I felt that the stage is a place where we all hold each other together and be in union. It’s such a beautiful, healing space, and it’s so intimate. But I can’t perform this story night after night. I’m still an MBA, so I’m still thinking about how I can make money off of this to pay off my loans and make this a career. So my problem is, how can I take a story that’s so intimate and vulnerable and transformative for audiences and scale it? That’s why I was just experimenting with screenwriting and experimenting now with a novel. I still feel like I’m behind, but what’s different now is that I’m putting myself out there. It’s been a high risk endeavor, but I look back on my life and I think I’ve only been happy when I took risks.

Any advice for students who are scared to take these risks or scared to step away from a path that they think they should take?

Yes. Let me be real with you. I look at my peers from Harvard and Yale, and sometimes I feel jealous. Sometimes I wish there was a clear path for me. In a way, I would be relieved because I’d know where I was going. Here, there is a lot of uncertainty and a lot unknown. And I don’t think I’d have it any other way. I was asking a mentor of mine when I was working as a consultant at Microsoft, “Why can’t I just appreciate that I have PTO, a 401K, and a good wage? It’s all the things my dad didn’t have and therefore always wanted for me. Why can’t I be happy with this?” My mentor said to me, “Susan, here is an easy way to tell. Is it life giving or is it life taking? Do you feel small and empty or do you feel so overflowingly big and that you can share more?” When I think about familial obligations, I think about being able to give my dad money every month. And for the longest time, I didn’t. I felt like not enough. I felt like a bad Vietnamese daughter. And when I finally got to a place where I could give him that money but also do what I wanted, it made me feel complete.

Now this comes with a whole bunch of judgement. My dad doesn’t like what I do. He’s always suggesting things I should become. He’s like, “How about an accountant, loan officer, real estate agent?” We went to a spirit channeler in Houston, and he asked, “Uncle Number Nine, my daughter Susan is allergic to work. Can you help us? What should she do?” And Uncle Number Nine replied, “actually this whole thing that she’s doing, she’s going to be better at it than anything she tries. Because this is what she wants to do and she’s going to be good at it.” And my dad’s face dropped because he wanted him to say something easy like lawyer, doctor, engineer. It’s not that our family is wrong or bad. Our family wants us to be stable and safe and not have to worry. So it comes from a really loving place. But the overall question is, is it life giving or is it life taking? Can you go to sleep at night and feel good about yourself? Do you feel whole and complete outside of your familial unit? Because I think being Asian is all about family. Family is dysfunctional but family is still part of your core identity, and they will stick with you even if they are not happy with you. I love my family. It’s complicated, but if I always listen to them and feel like I have to sacrifice, I just don’t know if given my personality, I would stay motivated. I think it goes back to finding your strengths, the calling you feel you want to do, and the subjects you are innately interested in, and creating those opportunities for yourself.

I can’t just say, follow your dreams and screw everyone else. That’s also not Asian. Confucianism is still about collectivism and group harmony, not individualism. But growing up in America, we have to understand that the individual still exists and the ego is still real. If there’s something that’s gnawing at you and you don’t feed it, the voice of that may soften over time so you might not hear it or know you want it anymore, but the gnawing doesn’t stop. You will know if you feel complete. Check your intentions, understand the vision that you have for yourself, and experiment to get more information. Curiosity and boldness will create more opportunities and get you closer to the place you want to go. But you need to know what you want to do. And I think you can only do that through experimentation. I’m constantly asking myself why I am doing what I’m doing and what I actually want.

For instance, as an artist, what’s my artist’s statement? I am an artist who tells stories that refuse to be forgotten. With a vision for individual and community healing, my work delves deeply into the lived realities of body insecurity, grieving, and trauma. How do I want to do that? I want to do that through scaleable stories that people can experience that create outlets for reflection and connection. What does that look like? That looks like a book and a movie and a talk show. Great, how am I going to do that? To even figure out what my artist statement was, I had to try a lot of different jobs, meet and talk to a lot of different people, and make a lot of mistakes. We’ve been rewarded our entire lives for being efficient, so it’s quite risky to go into the uncertain and understand what it is that we truly want and who we are and what we stand for and do that thing. That’s actually quite a tall order. But you can take one step in that direction by being curious and by being bold.

Susan is hosting a Mother’s Day Weekend screening on May 7-9 of both 140 LBS and Over 140 LBS: https://oacc.cc/event/140lbs-double-feature/

Use “UNAVSA” for a $5 discount

You can find more information about Susan and her projects at her website: https://www.susanlieu.me.