Writing, playwrighting and producing serve, for me, two purposes: artistic and pragmatic. Their artistry originates for me in my training as a musician – this is reflected on both a micro and macro level. Narrative language, be it verbal or visual ‘works’ when it is rhythmic and melodic – which does not necessarily mean pretty, because not all music is pretty. Similarly, the larger narrative that this language creates, a film, a play, a story, is a composition; it can move like a song or a symphony, but it must move; it must be musical.

As pragmatic tools, these media are vehicles for conversation. My work attempts to engage my audience in conversation: with me, with the performers, with other audience members and with the individual him or herself. This is essential, as it is at this level that my work has value – in participating in our society’s development and self-reflection.

The Telling Project is a direct expression of these two functions, the artistic and the pragmatic. As an artist, it is my work to ‘shape’ the words and stories of the veterans and their family members into a play – into something with form and movement. As a citizen, it is my job to bring these individuals and their experiences to their communities, to facilitate an open and respectful conversation concerning the service that these people have rendered.

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Jonathan Wei is a writer, playwright and producer. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Glimmer Train, The North American Review, Vespertine Press and Rivendell, among other publications. He has been interviewed on NPR, UO Today and his work reviewed by New York Magazine, Arts Journal Online, Inside Higher Ed, The Oregonian, The Eugene Weekly, Oregon Quarterly and the Eugene Register Guard, among others. His production credits include “Telling, Eugene” (co-creator, co-author, executive producer), The New Writing, New Thinking Conference (conference creator, director), KGB Sunday Evening Fiction Series (co-director) and the Emergency Reading Series (founder, co-director). His collaborations include “Telling, Eugene,” with co-author Max Rayneard and director John Schmor, and the multi-media digital art installation “Sunflowers,” with Stephen Hilyard which premiered at the Madison Museum of Modern Art in November, 2007. Jonathan is a fellow of the Vermont Studio Center and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and he was named the Borchardt Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference. His work has won the Glimmer Train Fiction Open, been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and been selected by the Writers at Work Fiction Contest, the Lorian Hemingway Fiction Contest and the Literal Latte’ Fiction Contest. He graduated in 1999 with an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Jonathan currently resides in Austin, TX.

Five Questions for Jonathan Wei; by Timothy Braun, Culturebot Zine, June 7, 2009