Theatre Horizon presents Lauren Yee’s Young Americans: A Play in Two Road Trips

Yee takes the audience on two road trips, both starting in Washington, DC and ending in Portland, Oregon. We quickly learn that these road trips are linked by Joe (played by Hansel Tan) and happen 20 years apart. In the first road trip, Joe and Jenny (Bi Jean Ngo) use the long drive to unpack the uncertainty of their newly arranged marriage. In the second road trip, we learn the fate of Jenny and Joe’s relationship from their daughter. Lucy (Merri Rashoyan) is returning from a year abroad in an ambiguous “country of birth”, giving this father and daughter a lot to catch up on. Throw in all the classic road-trip bits for good measure—fast food, tourist traps, wrong turns, and a great soundtrack—and the show whizzes cross-country in 90 minutes.

Not confined by the car

Cat Ramirez’s direction opens up the car and the conversations inside it to fill the entire stage. A less-experienced director could make this play seem claustrophobic and limiting, but Ramirez expertly reimagines the vehicle as two seats on a stage, a wagon, and a toy car among other iterations. They also rely heavily on the actors’ physicality to reflect the intimacy and vulnerability of the characters’ conversations over the course of the show. Props (literally) to Chris Haig as well, whose set and playful prop design complement Rameriz’s vision, generating the feeling of the open road with also constructing an IHOP, the Four Corners Monument, and various bars and scenic pull-offs.

Tan is charming as Joe—important because the character could be too broad or easily dislikable as written. Tan effortlessly flips between the two road trips, embodying both the nervously excited young man unsure of his desires, and the older man struggling to keep us with his daughter’s changing life. He also spends nearly the entire performance onstage with either Ngo or Rashoyan, except for two notable scenes. His chemistry with Ngo gives weight to the characters’ arranged marriage: the attraction and confusion in getting to know someone. Similarly, his chemistry with Rashoyan, while not always feeling like parent and child, plays with the characters’ familiarity and distance in their reunion.

What makes an American?

Each character deals with understanding themselves as Americans. Jenny imagines what her life could look like in this country given the limits she had in the previous one. While firmly claiming the US as his home country, Joe struggles in finding himself with the expectations of his family of origin, his career, and raising his daughter. And as an adoptee, Lucy reflects on what it means to return home in both senses: a place she had never been and the confines of life with Joe back in Portland.

In a country where immigrants and “diversity” are targeted on a daily basis, conversations about becoming American or contextualizing American identity on an individual level feel incredibly important. But as Ramirez says in their director’s note, Americanness isn’t defined by assimilation or approval; it’s embraced when we find ourselves on the open road. This heartfelt family comedy lets each character, both past and present, take charge of their destinies—apart and together.