Your story “Happy Days” revolves around an unorthodox staging of Samuel Beckett’s play “Happy Days,” by an Off Off Broadway theatre company, in the East Village. As the story explains, the Beckett estate is notoriously opposed to any production that doesn’t follow Beckett’s script and stage directions exactly, which, of course, creates a tense situation for the production. What made you want to write a story against this nonfictional backdrop?

First of all, let me acknowledge that this question of the Beckett estate’s meanness is very vexing.

Vexing because, for me, as for a lot of my writer peers, Beckett is a colossus—worthy of the highest regard. Also vexing because I’m a firm believer in copyright protections. You want to put guardrails on how your work is transmitted and interpreted across time? Be my guest.

But, at this point, it has to be said: the Beckett estate is a crypt-keeper.

As a writer, I’m drawn to pockets of partisan passion—my interest perks up when you tell me about who you truly hate. The Beckett estate, of course, qualifies in this regard. It is, in some quarters, much hated. Reviled. And it also has to be said—though you can chalk this up to my opinion—that the estate’s strictures seem to shut out a lot of women and colored performers. A Google deep dive will yield, again and again, controversies about the estate denying performing licenses to, or attempting to shut down productions of, all-female “Waiting for Godot”s, for example. (This happens mainly in Europe and Australia.)

Is an all-female “Waiting for Godot” a bad idea? Well, put it on, and let’s see! If it’s a bad idea, or if it’s a good idea but not thought through, or if it doesn’t have performers who can do the play justice—Beckett can survive all of those possibilities! The onus will not be on Beckett, who is now so far beyond being a proven quantity that it’s laughable to even worry about it. Also: an all-female “Godot” might be a great idea! The estate may be depriving us of revelations and epiphanies that we don’t even know about!

The theatre company in the story says this: “Fuck. The. Estate.” I don’t know if I myself would make so bold a statement, but stories are usually launched on bold energy, and, in that sort-of manifesto, I had a story.

The protagonist of the story, an actor named Matthew Lim, has been longing to play the part of Winnie in “Happy Days”—a female role. Why do you think he is so determined to do it?

I used to be an actor many decades back—a parallel practice to my playwriting. Unfortunately, I was middling, at best. Still, in my defense, if very bad stage fright hadn’t forced me to quit, I would have been able to put in my hard yards and improved and grown as a performer. One of the perennial questions put to actors is: “Is there one role you would love to play?” For some, the answer is Hamlet. For others, it’s Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” That, or Blanche DuBois. For me, there has been only one role that I would kill to play. It’s Winnie, in “Happy Days.” Full confession: Matthew Lim, c’est moi. I have wanted to play Winnie for the longest time, and, when it comes right down to it, I can’t really explain why. The spirit that Winnie embodies—of willed cheer in the midst of existential gloom—has never been part of my skill set, as a person or as a performer. Maybe that’s why I’m attracted to it? Winnie, for me, is the figurehead on the prow of a ship, saying, “Onward!” She is any number of screwball heroines: Ginger Rogers, Carole Lombard, and, most of all, Jean Arthur. If I could be Groucho Marx and Jean Arthur, that’s who my Winnie would be.

At the center of the story is a friendship, between Matthew and the actress who is ostensibly playing Winnie, Aira. Their personal lives seem as interwoven as their professional lives. What do you think draws them to each other?

The theatre, because of the communal aspect of the work involved, is a place where falling in love is an occupational hazard. Friends for life, just-shy-of-lovers—that kind of love. All it takes, sometimes, is looking up during rehearsal at one of your fellow-actors trying out a different approach to a monologue and, suddenly, getting it right! After weeks and weeks of struggle, they’ve found a way to deliver the monologue with soul and spirit and poetry. And that sight, of someone discovering their true identity, is so beautiful: love can be built on such ephemera, in the theatre. I don’t know if something like that was what really cemented Matthew and Aira’s relationship—though it seems very likely. I haven’t considered it, because, frankly, that would be its own short story, and also because I’m quite satisfied that, in the short span of this story, I was able to establish their deep friendship: quarrels, health check-ins, physical touch, personal obligation, admiration of each other’s talent and support for it (including Aira being an immediate backer of Matthew’s folly of wanting to play Winnie).

The story doesn’t tell us a lot about Matthew—how he became an actor, his life outside the theatre, and so on. It’s a snapshot of him in a very finite period of his life. How much do you want the reader to intuit about him that isn’t said?

I write what I write with the firm belief that the fraction (of plot, of character) that I bring to life with my limited (maybe parsimonious to the reader) descriptive and expository efforts can more than stand in for the big picture. Out of fragmentary stitches, whole cloth.

Also, the two poles of Matthew’s life are clearly laid out. He grew up in Manhattan’s Chinatown (read: poor), with a beloved grandmother who picked things out of neighborhood trash cans (recyclables to sell; even food that other people had thrown out). He calls himself an autodidact, so it’s possible that he didn’t go to school, or he went to public school, but didn’t go to college. Today, he lives in an apartment in the West Village (perhaps having moved in at a time when a lot of artists were still able to find rent-stabilized apartments in the area)—so maybe not a complete one-eighty from his childhood but a considerable leap still? In between, he’s made a life in the theatre (read: poor, but maybe with short-lived and unpredictable forays into prosperity—a common vicissitude for arts folk). And, also, he was a steady worker with the company before he became a kind of “star,” which didn’t happen until he was already in his forties. Doesn’t that make a whole world?