This post was updated Oct. 12 at 8:47 p.m. 

Editor’s Note: This article contains references to suicide. 

The truth is not always what it seems in Artists at Play’s latest production.

Written by Preston Choi, the satirical play “This Is Not a True Story” will complete its nearly five-week run at the Los Angeles Theatre Center on Sunday. The show follows three Asian tragic heroines – CioCio from the opera “Madama Butterfly,” Kim from the musical “Miss Saigon” and Kumiko/Takako from the film “Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter” – as they escape their fates and seize control of their destinies. Alumnus and lead producer Stefanie Lau, who was previously an assistant News editor and managing editor at the Daily Bruin, said the play implores audiences to reckon with the historically submissive portrayal of Asian women in the media.

“Why is it so entertaining for years and years and years to watch these Asian women die on stage?” Lau said. “Why is that the entertainment? Why is that romantic? What does that say about us as an audience?”

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Choi said he started writing “This Is Not a True Story” as an undergraduate student because he wanted to engage with the ongoing critique of popular, yet problematic, productions. In the opera adaptation of “Madama Butterfly,” CioCio dies by suicide after learning that her husband, an American naval officer, has left her for another woman and wants to take their son back to the United States. However, Choi said she survives her attempt and keeps her baby in the original story.

Given that “Miss Saigon” is a loose adaptation of “Madama Butterfly,” Kim also ends her life after her American husband and his new wife try to take her child from her. Lau said “This Is Not a True Story” poses the idea that if Kim could raise her child by herself for three years, she could have continued to do so. The production allows viewers to challenge the notion that Kim and CioCio were wholly dependent on their male lovers, she added.

Although CioCio and Kim are completely fictional characters, Lau said Kumiko/Takako was based on a real woman, Takako Konishi, who was found frozen to death in 2001. Her death spawned a conspiracy theory that she died looking for the treasure featured in the 1996 film “Fargo,” she said. In reality, Konishi was alleged to have taken her life in a place she and her former American lover had visited. Choi said he included Kumiko/Takako in “This Is Not a True Story” to cast a light on how fictional stories can begin to influence real events. In this case, he said CioCio and Kim’s deaths and their interactions with white men mirror those of Kumiko/Takako.

Most of the interactions between CioCio, Kim and Kumiko/Takako in “This Is Not a True Story” occur in a void, where Lau said the women sit on three white platforms in an otherwise black set. Choi said this void represents a space in which CioCio, Kim and Kumiko/Takako are more self-aware.

“It’s sort of like they’re actors on a break – except they’re the characters on break and don’t really get a break,” Choi said. “I like to think of them as a shred of the real person that’s caught inside this fictional version that’s being told and told again, and this fictional version needs a core or some fragment of a real thing to have basis in truth and keep going.”

As a satire, “This Is Not a True Story” pokes fun at the original projects that inspired it, Choi said. Alumnus Darica Louie, who is also the understudy for CioCio, said the dramatized death of her character in “Madama Butterfly” is viewed as absurd in this production. Through pointing out the contradictions in CioCio’s fate, Choi said he wanted to challenge why “Madama Butterfly” has remained a popular narrative for over 100 years.

Furthermore, Lau said much of the comedy comes from the relationships formed between CioCio, Kim and Kumiko/Takako. For example, she said both CioCio and Kim find amusement in the fact that neither of them has a last name. Additionally, CioCio and Kim bond over how they were taken advantage of by adult men as teenagers, Lau said.

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Ultimately, Choi said “This Is Not a True Story” is only a part of an ongoing conversation critiquing dated works that continue to remain popular today. Through his play, he said he has also connected with fellow Asian creatives who want to diversify Western theater. As an Asian American woman, Louie said she is proud to be a part of the conversation surrounding the representation of underrepresented communities.

“I love this story, and I love sharing this story because I think it really shows the power of having more Asian (stories) and more stories about women and more stories about every marginalized group,” Louie said. “No one story is going to solve representation. It’s about getting to have more of them and be able to have of each of them be different and tell something different.”