In her luminous and searching essay, theatermaker Jeesun Choi uses her multifaceted identity as a springboard to explore the social justice-oriented words, acronyms, and phrases that have flooded our world over the past year—and how these words might be, and only be, shorthanded expressions unable to fully unpack increasingly complicated issues.

Through anecdotes touching and personal, humorous and insightful, audiences share their stories about money with theatermakers Jeesun Choi and Bryn Herdrich, who then post those anecdotes on their Instagram account Penny Thoughts (@penny_thoughts_2020) alongside painted, bedazzled coins. But the account is but one chapter of the artists’ story: this digital initiative was birthed during the pandemic, which waylaid their live piece about capitalism, migration, and how we define currency.