Tina Huang

I Survived Theatre School

Intro: Nasty neighbors in the Great Unraveling, The Rest Movement
Let Me Run This By You: Rejection
Interview: We talk to Tina Huang about soap opera acting, LaGuardia High School, the Playwrights Horizon program at Tisch, breaking down barriers for Asian actors, Ammunition Theatre Company, Revenge Porn or the Story of a Body by Carla Ching, Bay Area Theatre, Pig Hunt, starting a fake management company, Word for Word Performing Arts Company, Intersection for the Arts, Campo Santo, Amy Tan, 1:1 Productions, Karla Mosley, Jeanne Sakata.
FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited):
1 (8s):
I'm Jen Bosworth Ramirez this, and I'm Gina Pulice.

2 (11s):
We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it.

3 (15s):
20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of

2 (20s):
It all. We survive theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet?

0 (34s):
You

2 (35s):
Part of the building.

1 (36s):
Okay,

2 (37s):
Great. I don't know how it's gonna go.

1 (41s):
I mean, nobody knows how it's gonna go. It's unknowable until we know it.

2 (45s):
That is true. Good morning.

1 (48s):
Good. Margie,

2 (50s):
Your makeup looks amazing.

1 (53s):
Thank you. I'm not doing well, so I'm acting opposite. You know that skill?

2 (59s):
Oh, I know. Oh, that's like, I would say like 90% of adulthood. Anyway. What's happening? What, what is, if you wanna get into it, like what's the overall arching shittiness,

1 (1m 10s):
The overarching thing is just, Well, my neighbor I told you about.

2 (1m 15s):
Okay. And I just wanna put it out there and we'll get into the story, but I wanna put it out there that I, we are in, and we've said this before on the podcast in what I would call, and others like Gina would call probably similar, the great unraveling of our society. So it's like Rome is falling and I, I don't even say it, it sounds so cavalier the way I'm saying it, but I literally every day see evidence of the great unraveling of the American sweater. You know what I mean? Like it's coming out. Yes. Yeah. And we, it's okay. And I think one of those things is terrible neighbors, right? Like, people who are terrible are just getting more terrible.

2 (1m 58s):
So Gina has a neighbor that is very terrible.

1 (2m 0s):
Yeah. People just over the last several years do seem to feel way more comfortable just being extremely hor. Horrible. Horrible. So what, So this is the same neighbor that I've talked about before. And basically the deal with her is it's like she's obsessed with us. And, and like, what she doesn't understand is that we just work very hard to avoid her, you know, avoid interacting with her at any cause. I realized yesterday after she screamed at me that she has screamed at three fifths of my family members.

1 (2m 40s):
She only hasn't screamed at the nine year old and the, and the 14 year old. It's so insane. She's the one who Aaron was walking the dog and he had a flashlight and the dog was really young and he was trying to train him. So he kept like stopping and starting screens out. It's very disconcerting to be sitting in my living room and seeing a flashing light in front of my house, house. Like, he's like, I'm walking the dog. And the same one who when she was walking her dogs and he was walking our dog, she's like, It's not a great time to be walking your dog because her dogs are out of control. And she's yelled at my son a few times. Anyway, so what happened was, I walked the dog, I picked up the poop, I had the little baggy. If it's anybody else's house, I feel comfortable putting it in their trash

2 (3m 23s):
Can. Yeah. Here's the deal. Here's the deal. I hate to tell you people, but poop is trash. There's like nowhere else to put it. So if you, if you are like not okay with pooping in your trash in a bag tied up, then you don't need to live in a society where there are dogs or where there are trash. Cause that's what it

1 (3m 44s):
Is, Honestly. Honestly. And it's like, I feel like a big part of what's driving all this bad behavior is just like, so much entitlement. Like, I'm entitled to have only my trash in my trash can. And it's like, okay, you've never lived in New York City, right? Cause you don't understand anything about cooperative living. And anybody, whether they live in my neighborhood or not, is welcome to put their poop

2 (4m 6s):
Back. Yeah, dude.

1 (4m 7s):
So I'm walking by and I'm talking on the phone stuff, somewhat distracted, and I see this trash can, and I go, I like reach out ever So tentatively, not tentatively, but like, I had barely started to reach out, realized it was their house didn't. And within milliseconds, she is out of her house screaming at me. And I hadn't even, you know, put the poop in there. And I, I'm talking about misbehavior. I mean, I've, I don't think I've ever done this except for like having road rage in the car where the other person really can't hear me. Like I just screamed every obscenity Yes.

1 (4m 48s):
In the book. I, I hope nobody else, I'm sure somebody else heard, but nobody, nobody's contacted me. And, you know, I'll say this, I'm much better about taking a beat. Like, I really wanted to blast her. I really wanted to like write a horrible message to her. I really want, and I, and I don't, I'm not refined enough, well enough evolved enough to like get right to like, what's, what's the need of the matter? But I have figured out that I should probably just not say anything until, until I've thought about it. I had a good long think she messaged me on social

2 (5m 22s):
Media. What

1 (5m 23s):
She said, I'm sorry, I accused you of throwing trash in our trash can. And I just blocked her. I'm just like, you know, I, I, I wanted, what I wanted to say is like, you have no idea how much time we spend trying to avoid you. You are unwell. You have yelled at three fifths of my family, like, never speak to me or my children ever again. Forget I exist. Forget I live right across the street from you because that's what I'm trying to do about you. So

2 (5m 50s):
Instead you just blocked her. Well listen that, that, because when you told me this story yesterday that she, the the reach out on social media hadn't happened. So now I'm like, I think what, before you said that part, I was gonna say like, I think our only recourse is what people do, which is start videotaping the insanity. And I'm not sure that's a really a good solution. Like, I think that like, oh sure, people put it on social media and then there's a laugh, but then we're really laughing at sort of the horribleness and the, and the mental illness of others. And it's their person and who knows how that's gonna negatively affect them or their job or their family. So I don't, like, I understand the, the urge to videotape everything, but I'm not sure that's really the answer with, with non-criminal behavior.

2 (6m 40s):
If it's a crime, then i...