Quixotic Professor Qiu
InterAct Theater Company
302 S Hicks St.
Philadelphia
Closed Feb. 23, 2025
“He had a nervous breakdown,” a person next to me in the audience told her friend about a Chinese colleague who was falsely accused of espionage.
“I don’t doubt it,” her friend responded.
I eavesdropped as the woman reported how her coworker was institutionalized for months after a series of claims lodged against him loosened his grasp on reality.
We were waiting for the curtains to go up on the world premiere of Quixotic Professor Qiu, a play by Damon Chua that tells the story of a university professor wrongfully targeted because of his race for spying on the U.S.
The show is inspired by several true stories, including the local example of Temple University physics professor Xiaoxing Xi, who was wrongly accused of seeking prestigious appointments in China in return for sensitive defense technological information. Amid slashes to the federal scientific workforce, the U.S. government’s anxiety-driven anti-Chinese policies and rampant xenophobia, this play could not be more timely.
The story’s main objective seems to be shedding light on the experience of Asian Americans affected by discrimination. But anecdotal attempts to make the protagonist likable, relatable and patriotic positions the narrative struggle around the wrong ring of identity. The script explores the individual search for national belonging, but passes on articulating the systemic assimilation techniques touted by the same nation those individuals are hoping to pledge allegiance to.
The comedic tone of the piece does paint a bumbling and accurate picture of the U.S. justice system. When the FBI agent investigating Qiu enters the plot line, sultry jazz plays and fabricated light pours over the stage. The scene was set for a corny detective film.
The FBI agent is a source of comedic relief as well as an active threat: We see the depth of his ineptitude during conspiratorial meetings with witnesses as he struggles to read back his own notes, but the crowd also flinches when he threatens Qiu with 20 years in prison during one particularly high-intensity interview. Absurdity, humor, cluelessness and ignorance are at the front of the a characters of this play — and Qiu himself is no exception to this rule.
While his accusers display McCarthyism-level paranoia, Qiu remains obtuse to the severity of his predicament. Up until the show’s conclusion, Qiu is in disbelief that he could be in hot water for a crime he did not commit. He consistently laughs in the face of such accusations as though he is above them, and in his final monologue he waxes poetic about the values of a country that sought to destroy his life: “I chose to be an American, I chose simply the right … to be treated with fairness and dignity.”
Ultimately, Qiu surrenders to the adjective he has spent the whole play rejecting: “Maybe I am quixotic after all.” He maintains an absurd commitment to the false idealism of America, ironically demonstrating his personal internalization of national character. This slow-moving sense of human hypocrisy could have, in the proper context, demonstrated how psychologically deep our blind devotion to country can go — but the show never acknowledges how much McCarthyism has informed America’s open relationship with superficial othering. The fascistic oversteps of our government are instead communicated through generic caricatures of dumb federal agents.
I was more moved by the earnest and serious stories that came from my seat partners with secondhand experience of American chauvinism than I was by the play unfolding in front of me. To the show’s credit, the subject matter did start a dialogue among the audience. However, it failed to give us the tools to connect the dots from the personal to the political.
