Help bring “My Korean Deli: The Musical” to life!

Remember a time before smart phones were super smart, when they were still called mobile phones. Back when you actually complimented people in person rather than on social media. A time before AI gave you instant answers, when curiosity lingered long enough to get you searching and you found more than you searched for. Sometimes it dropped like a ton of bricks, waking you to a new destiny. Well that time is back and the ton of bricks come in the form of a Brooklyn Korean deli in MY KOREAN DELI: THE MUSICAL!

In My Korean Deli, Ben, who refers to himself as a Plymouth Rock WASP, arrives at 30 years of life with a question of his purpose. His Korean-American wife Gab, is a corporate lawyer, an overachiever with multiple degrees. She’s successfully climbing the corporate ladder but reevaluates it all when her mother, Kay, a Korean immigrant who Ben refers to as the Mike Tyson of Korean grandmothers hits a midlife crisis. Slow down, she does not, but rather it’s go go go for Kay. But where to? Set on paying her mother back, Gab reroutes her own journey of self purpose to a journey for Kay’s purpose, and Ben complies. All three dive headfirst into the perils of big city entrepreneurship and purchase a deli in the on-the-cusp-of-gentrifying neighborhood of Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. The customers are salt of the earth, fly by the seat of your pants types that contrast strongly with Ben’s over-intellectual ways. Ben starts as a total fish out of water, floundering on the cash register, packing eggs at the bottom of the bag. But he’s perceptive, sharp witted, & evolves. By the end, he’s found his land legs.

The story, based on Ben Ryder Howe’s 2011 critically acclaimed memoir, My Korean Deli, Risking it all for a Convenience Store is perfect for the live musical format. The characters are quirky, strongly opinionated. And the setting, the deli / bodega, as all New Yorkers know, is more than just a place to buy cigarettes and beer. In My Korean Deli, it’s a community center, a lifeline, a family affair, a test of endurance. Brooklynites, Koreans, lotto, perfectly bland coffee, and the Ben v Kay dynamic… a winning combo for a comedic uplifting show.

Favorite quotes from the memoir:
“For the most part, the regulars aren’t the types to get drunk and knock off convenience stores. They’re the types to get drunk and go fishing underneath bridges.”

“That’s the thing about family business, though - there is no escape. You live with the people you work with, and after putting up with them at work all day, you get to come home and listen to them clip their toenails as they hog the television.”

“There’s no ‘blah blah blah,’ as Kay would put it - ‘just do.’ (Like her syntax in English. Kay’s life doesn’t have a conditional or subjunctive tense —only action.)”

“Standing there all day not knowing who’s going to come in next or what they’re going to say, you have almost no choice except to become a bit more easygoing, and to trust more. It’s a good thing. Everyone should work at a checkout counter for some part of their lives.”

The time is ripe for the memoir’s next iteration, My Korean Deli: The Musical. A few years into the post-pandemic loneliness epidemic, at the apex of the AI wave, we’re hungry for stories that celebrate human to human interactions. So if you’re wondering: How does one join a community of the other? What is it that makes some people embrace an uncomfortable situation while others reject it? Or simply what’s the trick to picking winning lotto numbers… well you’ve come to the right place.

Our team thus far: Timothy Huang, triple threat composer/lyricist/librettist and creator of the award winning one-man musical, The View From Here, and David K. Israel, NYC ballet composer and author of Behind Everyman (Random House) and upcoming The Lost Mozart (Regalo Press), myself Ruth Chon, a Korean-American documentarian/ storyteller (also MKD the memoir’s #1 fan) and Ben Ryder Howe, the memoirist himself.

Please consider a tax-deductible donation so we can move this project, in the words of the wise Kay, from “blah blah blah” to “just do”!