Hannah Ii-Epstein hunches over when she talks, her voice soft and vaguely otherworldly, but her eyes are sharp and deep, and she looks you straight in the eye as she speaks, picking her words with a care that makes it clear she packs meaning in every syllable she emits. Her plays are the same way. Their stories unfold with a misleading informality, accentuated by the fact that most of Ii-Epstein’s characters speak Hawaiian pidgin English, the creolized mix of English, Hawaiian, Cantonese, Japanese, and other Asian and Pacific Island languages that is spoken by everyday Hawaiians. But beneath the easy patois pulses an urgent intensity; in an instant, in her tales, hearts are broken, hope is destroyed or regained, lives are destroyed or redeemed. In her last play, Not One Batu, a former meth addict loses it all, including custody of her son, when she starts using again.
But while the abuse was happening, the drugs were a way to mute the pain. “From when I was 12 years old to 17 years old, monthly using turned into weekly and eventually daily,” Ii-Epstein tells me. “Again, this was all the drugs, any drug I could get my hands on. I started using meth when I was about 17.”
Several years after moving to Chicago she met someone who would change her life, her now-wife, Anna Rose Ii-Epstein. “I met Anna [then Anna Epstein] at 3:30 in the morning walking home from a bar,” Ii-Epstein reminisces. “We started talking and hit it off. Exchanged e-mails.”
Still, Ii-Epstein is aware that keeping clean and sober is a lifelong pursuit. “There is not one day that goes by that I don’t think about using,” she says. “I wake up every morning and tell myself that I won’t use today. I don’t leave my house if I’m feeling less than 50 percent, because I know the first thing I’d do is get some drugs. I don’t go to bars or parties if I’m feeling crappy in any way. I keep myself out of situations where I would ever consider using. I have to trust myself, and if I’m not having a good feeling, I walk away. Instead of drugs, I’ll binge-watch really bad TV shows.”
9/13-10/5: Wed–Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4:30 and 7:30 PM, Mon-Tue 7:30 PM, Berger Park Cultural Center, 6205 N. Sheridan, nothingwithoutacompany.org, previews 9/13-9/16, $10; regular run 9/17-10/5, $30 advance, $35 at the door.
