"The Hot Wing King" opens at Cygnet Theatre in Old Town this weekend. Set in Memphis, the story follows Cordell and his boyfriend Dwayne as they prepare for the city's annual Hot Wang Festival — and navigate grief and a big disruption to their lives. It’s part cooking competition, part family drama, part comedy — all wrapped into one.
Playwright Katori Hall is known for "The Mountaintop," the musical "Tina: The Tina Turner Musical" and the Starz television series "P-Valley." She won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2021 for "The Hot Wing King."
What qualifies a play for a Pulitzer? According to the organization's website, it's "a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life."
Director Kian Kline-Chilton said the play astutely captures "American life."
"In the last couple of years, I think that we as Americans have really lost our sense of community. I think we've lost our sense of belonging. I think we're all really struggling to ask ourselves how to show up for ourselves, you know? And here you have it, this person, this man who is being given the chance," Kline-Chilton said. "I think right now, it's actually what American life should strive to be."
Kline-Chilton and actor Tristan J. Shuler recently sat down with me to discuss the play and its place in the American theater.
Interview highlights
On why ‘The Hot Wing King’ hits home
Kian Kline-Chilton: You read so many plays, but this one — it's really that you read a play that feels like something you already know. To hear it and see it on the page, every time, is like your breath is just — wait, you've unlocked things I thought nobody else knows but me. And suddenly, here I am, bringing something that feels so familiar to me. This beautiful piece about found family, about this queer relationship that's trying to figure out what it means to just be in love. This battleground for belonging. I was immediately just in tears. I loved it so much.
Having such a beautiful slice-of-life family play, with four walls, that looks like the people I know, the people I grew up with, the people I'm around and the people that I am? What a gift. I get to be in a contemporary American drama for the first time.Tristan J. Shuler, actor in "The Hot Wing King"
Tristan J. Shuler: My whole career, my whole theater training, all my drama education — I've been studying Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and on all these plays that are four walls and a family. And I've never been able to do those plays, for the sadly obvious reasons — things like my identity or my skin color. I've always been trained in this type of work, but never been able to do it. So having such a beautiful slice-of-life family play, with four walls, that looks like the people I know, the people I grew up with, the people I'm around and the people that I am? What a gift. I get to be in a contemporary American drama for the first time.
On redefining American life on stage
Kline-Chilton: It's actually what American life should strive to be — that we should all strive to really put ourselves in places around people who help us be our best. The best thing about this play is it's also redefining family. Family doesn't look the same anymore. But I think everything is mixed and it's found, and it's — we've completely redefined it. What's beautiful about this play is the way that it's actually letting us know that family can be what we make it, and also that family, they are our foundation, but our friends and the people that we really surround ourselves with, that's who sustains us. That's who gets us to where we want to be.
It's actually what American life should strive to be. What's beautiful about this play is the way that it's actually letting us know that family can be what we make it, and also that family, they are our foundation, but our friends and the people that we really surround ourselves with, that's who sustains us. That's who gets us to where we want to be.Kian Kline-Chilton, director of "The Hot Wing King"
On love, band-aids and hot wings
Shuler: Cordell and Dwayne have only been living together for two months. They've known each other for about five years, but Cordell is coming from a marriage with a woman and two kids, and coming to live with a man for the first time and redefine what his life looks like entirely. My character Dwayne is holding all of that on his shoulders and saying, “Is this a phase? Is this an experiment?”
So this weekend you see in the play is supposed to be this moment of levity and this moment of salvation to a kind of rocky situation that this couple is in. And this weekend, all the girlies are coming over, all the gals are coming over. We're cooking hot wings and we're going to do our tradition every year, which is going down to do our best on this hot wing competition every year. There's a big band-aid being put on our relationship at the top of the play.
On 'the multiverse of Black folk'
Shuler: I call this the multiverse of Black folk. What you see on stage, you get to see every different stereotype of a Black person you've seen be the token in other things. We're all in one room now. And we're all from different worlds, because Black people are not a monolith and gay people are not a monolith. You get to see four to five different versions of what a Black gay man can look like — all coexisting and going through this hot wing competition together in their own little universes. And really, a lot of the comedy comes from these extremely different men on stage, how they interact and how they also connect and what they connect over.
On food on stage
Food is not something that I know how to fake. You know what I'm saying? Especially in Black culture, that's love.Kian Kline-Chilton, director of "The Hot Wing King"
Kline-Chilton: As a director, you have a bucket list like, if I could accomplish these things, if I could work on these things, I think I want to challenge myself, I want to try. And I have to say, this has been one of the most fun and also invigorating processes because food is not something that I know how to fake. You know what I'm saying? Especially in Black culture, that's love.
If I'm going to accurately do a play in which my culture is going to be on the stage, and we're looking at a real version of what love looks like — between talking and dancing and all those things — food is that next big thing. It's been super, super exciting to work with each other and go like, "OK, we have fake chicken, we have real chicken, we have a stove, we have sauce that has to be made." So what page do we have to look at to go, "actually, you know what? If that's supposed to be steaming by the time you say this line, six pages later, we have to make sure that in that transition, we're turning that stove on so that that baby is at a high enough temperature, that when that line hits, we're seeing the smoke for the first time." It's not easy. It's math. It is such math. We are working with real garlic and butter — and you're going to smell that stuff.
Food is the groundwork for how this love just spreads. It's the centerpiece to all these men being able to be in a space in which they can have really honest conversations that the world won't let them have. So food is both a device to join but it's also a device to conquer.
On the play's impact and learning to care
Shuler: What I want folks to take from "The Hot Wing King" is: Just because your family might not look like this does not mean that you cannot feel the same things that we feel or that we cannot feel the same things you feel. I loved when Kian was talking about how we have reimagined and rewritten what a family looks like, and what family values are and what that nuclear family looks like. I never, as Tristan, have had that nuclear family. But what we get to see in this play — something that may not look anything like what you know — is real and beautiful and tender and protected and protective and scarce and scary and all the things that we feel in a family. We all have that, and that's universal at the end of the day.
Kline-Chilton: We have to care about something. The more that we allow ourselves to just let things wash over, the more that we're losing the value of what anything means to us. How are we remembering that everything that we do — for ourselves, for the world, for each other to be amazing and to be people who actually enjoy life — is to care. I hope people watch this and they want to call their family. We are the only people who make the journey the best thing it can be. And when we reach the destination, don't we want to say, "You know what? I really tried and I did the best I could." So for me, I'm like, start caring. Period.
We are the only people who make the journey the best thing it can be. And when we reach the destination, don't we want to say, "You know what? I really tried and I did the best I could." So for me, I'm like, start caring. Period.Kian Kline-Chilton, director of "The Hot Wing King"
"The Hot Wing King" is on stage through May 2 at the Cygnet Theatre.
