Ria S. Cuéllar-Koh '26 presents her senior thesis. | By Courtesy of Marin E. Gray
The first time Ria S. Cuéllar-Koh ’26 saw “The Old Man and the Old Moon” was when she was in high school, sitting in the audience of a local high school production. She loved it so much that she convinced her own high school theatre teacher to stage the play — then starred in it herself.
This kind of double immersion captures how Cuéllar-Koh lives out art. Now a senior with a joint concentration in English and History of Art and Architecture, she has build a restless and deliberate theatre life at Harvard. Cuéllar-Koh — Theater Editor of the 152nd Guard for the Harvard Crimson — writes for The Crimson, sings and manages the social media account for the Din and Tonics, and just directed David Henry Hwang’s play “Yellow Face” in the Loeb Drama Center.
“Yellow Face” was different. The material asked her to work in the specific and messy register of personality and interiority — the semi-autobiographical play follows David Henry Hwang as he mounts his 1993 play “Face Value” — a contrast to the archetypal, fable characters in “The Old Man and the Old Moon.” Cuéllar-Koh had grown into the role of director.
“I think I’ve grown a lot in confidence,” Cuéllar-Koh said.
During rehearsals, The cast and crew also got a special opportunity to have a Zoom Q&A with David Henry Hwang — the playwright of the original play “Yellow Face” — himself. His main piece of advice was not to go easy on the play’s fictionalized version of himself — which contrasts with other autobiographical works that put the author in a more favorable light — even though the point being that Hwang’s depiction is “extremely not flattering.”
“He thinks of that [Hwang] as being a character named after him rather than an embodiment of himself,” Cuéllar-Koh said.