"The heart of the play is really about grief."
An interview with Chester Poon, playwright of The Hardest Goodbye
Photo from the 2024 Flux Annual Retreat workshop of The Hardest Goodbye. Pictured: Justin Woo, Corinna Schulenburg, Nandita Shenoy, and Mercena Schulenburg.
After a joyful workshop of Chester Poon’s The Hardest Goodbye (then called The Belle) at the 2024 Flux Annual Retreat, Flux knew we wanted to keep developing this hilarious and loving play about YouTubers who go ghost hunting—and have their lives transformed when they meet the real thing. In this dark comedy, a very haunted house forces the characters to confront their own ghosts and demons.
Flux hosted a public workshop of the play later in 2025. On March 26, 2025, we held an internal reading of the play to help Chester develop it. To give you, beloved Substack reader, a window into that process, we asked Chester a few questions:
At Flux’s Core Work, we’ve been blessed to track the progress of this beautiful play from its very first scene. What was the genesis of The Hardest Goodbye?
The honest truth is that I’d just gotten pretty stoned one night and was watching random videos on YouTube. I came across a video of two ghosthunter youtubers doing a collab with two video game YouTubers exploring a haunted hotel and they were going to spend the night. I watched the entire video and thought it would be kind of fun and interesting to try my hand at writing a play based on what I watched. The play evolved from there.
Photo of Justin Woo and Rachael Hip-Flores from the 3/26 read-through.
The dialogue between the professional YouTubers is such a delight. How much research did you do to capture that style? Do you have some favorite YouTubers you follow?
I actually didn’t have to do too much research, since I already watch quite a bit of YouTube content. I did have to do a little extra research on ghost hunting and creepy content to fill out any knowledge gap I had. I can say that a vast majority of creepy or ghost related content is very obviously fake. Almost comically so. The algorithm feeds me video game content because I generally have an interest in video games. And of course, this led me to the collab video that served as a quick peek into the creepier content, which led me down the rabbit hole. But my favorites are not in either category. A few of my favorites are “Sheldo’s Kitchen” (baking channel), “Rocky Kanaka” (Sitting with dogs at the shelter), and “Desert Drifter” (backpacking in the American southwest). Sadly, Andrew Cross, the guy who ran “Desert Drifter” tragically died very recently in a car accident.
You recently changed the title from The Belle to The Hardest Goodbye. No spoilers, but what prompted that change?
The Belle had always been a tentative title with the possibility it might be the real one. It was simple and rolled off the tongue, which is why I initially went with it, but I didn’t feel like it truly addressed the heart of the play. I also thought that it put too much emphasis on a specific character and object in the play that isn’t what it’s actually about. The heart of the play is really about grief, which I think The Hardest Goodbye better describes.
Photo from the 2024 Flux Annual Retreat workshop of The Hardest Goodbye. Pictured: Justin Woo, Nandita Shenoy, and Chris Wight.
The characters in The Hardest Goodbye have different relationships to the idea of ghosts. What’s your relationship?
Like the character Fran, who I am most closely aligned with in terms of personality, I’m a big skeptic. I do not believe in ghosts. I have personally had a few strange unexplained experiences that I think most people would attribute to being a ghost. But unlike most people, I just call these experiences unexplained rather than concluding it was a ghost.
What’s something that has surprised you in the writing and development of this play?
I initially intended the whole play to be a comedy and to highlight the absurdity of the ghosthunting genre on YouTube. But people say to write what you know. It evolved on its own to be something I didn’t expect and it’s been quite therapeutic for me in addressing my own personal experiences with grief and loss.
A huge note of thanks to the cast of the 3/26/25 internal read-through of The Hardest Goodbye: Aaron Parker Fouhey, Rachael Hip-Flores, Danielle Juliet Ma, Corinna Schulenburg, Mercena Schulenburg, Chris Wight, and Justin Woo. Rachael Hip-Flores was also the Lead Organizer of the reading.
Chester Poon (he/him) is an actor and playwright. Credits with Flux include: Jane the Plain and Rebecca Roman Redd at the Most Dangerous Hour.