Before Kim's Convenience was a TV show
Playwright Ins Choi wanted to see more roles for Asians when he wrote the play of the same name
This week, fans of the CBC-TV comedy Kim's Convenience were "shocked" to learn that the show would be coming to an end after five seasons on the air.
According to CBC.ca, co-creators Ins Choi and Kevin White confirmed to the show's producers "that they were moving on to other projects."
Back in 2012, CBC reporter Deana Sumanac-Johnson — then Deana Sumanac — visited Choi on the set of the play of the same name for CBC's The National. Based on his family background, Choi's creation for the stage inspired the TV series.
Soulpepper production
As Sumanac-Johnson previewed the play on opening night in January 2012, actor/playwright Choi and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee were seen onstage at Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre. Lee would reprise the role of Mr. Kim for the TV show.
Choi, a graduate of the acting program at York University, told the reporter about what had inspired him to write Kim's Convenience.
"There was a lack of Asian-Canadian plays on the scene," he said. There were few roles for actors as well.
So Choi had set to "digging into his family's past" when creating opportunities for himself and his friends, said Sumanac-Johnson.
"My parents immigrated from Korea," said Choi. "My dad's first job here was at a convenience store."
Choi started writing Kim's Convenience "as a vignette in 2005 under a playwriting unit in the Fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre company," according to CBC.ca.
Sumanac-Johnson called the play a "humorous tale" after viewers got a glimpse of an exchange between Mr. Kim and a store customer. She said it had been a "hit" at Toronto's Fringe Festival for its depiction of "intergenerational struggles" in a Korean-Canadian family.
Across Canada
By moving the play to the Soulpepper stage, Choi "might finally get a chance to reach the audience whose very story he wanted to tell," said Sumanac-Johnson.
"Ins Choi is hoping to take his play across Canada," noted the reporter. In 2013, he did.
Within two years of its Soulpepper debut, the play was being adapted for both the big and small screens, according to a 2014 story by the Canadian Press.
Kim's Convenience began airing on CBC Television in the fall of 2016.
