I was mortified by my parents - what they did, who they were, everything. I hated who I was. I hated everything, and I would live in a fantasy world and try to be different. But that's not a lot different, I think, than a lot of kids.

Compared to other forms of drama, performance art is often thought of as inaccessible and overly artsy. I prefer to think of it as storytelling, something that has been with us through the ages and a part of every culture.

I'm usually sort of ambiguous in terms of whether I'm playing a good person or a bad person. I can walk that line of funny but also dark, and I'm happy doing that.

As I wrote about my childhood, I realized that there was no big tragedy. Being multiethnic is not a tragedy. I didn't have any big life-threatening illnesses, no tumors, no kidney malfunctions... I came from a very poor family. I was chubby as a kid.