Asian-American Theatre

Asian-American theatre From "The Cambridge Guide to Theatre" This term could apply to the work of all American theatre artists of Asian ancestry - from the avant-garde spectacles of Ping Chong to the Broadway playmaking of David Henry Hwang. More often, however, it refers to a contemporary movement of ethnic-identified theatre that has yielded several regional companies and provided encouragement, training and professional exposure to scores of Asian-American actors, directors and, perhaps most significantly, playwrights. Whether it has also produced a unified aesthetic or political outlook is open to debate. Historically, artists of Asian extraction have been performing in the USA for over a century; but until recently an intricate nexus of social and cultural factors kept them marginalized or excluded from mainstream theatre, and impeded the development of Asian-American stage literature. Traditional operas, puppet shows and acrobatic displays were imported into the USA from China as early as the 1850s, Exotic and baffling to many Westerners, these vivid spectacles were welcomed by the masses of Chinese labourers who emigrated to California to mine gold, build the railway and start up Chinatowns. Tung Hook Tong was, in 1852, probably the first such opera company to tour nationally. Other Chinese performers played extended runs in San Francisco; some eventually toured in variety and vaudeville. Anti- Chinese sentiment flared in the economically depressed 1870s, and in 1882 Congress passed the Asian Exclusion Act to stem immigration. Related racial violence drove many Chinese from California to other regions of the country. The new Chinatowns soon had their own amateur opera clubs, and by 1900 there were professional Chinese opera houses in New York, Portland (Oregon) and Boston as well as San Francisco. Interest in traditional performance gradually diminished, and by the 1930s many Chinatown theatres had become Chinese-language cinemas. By then a large contingent of Japanese (and a smaller number of Filipinos) had also settled in the USA, mostly in the West. However, apart from the variety artists who imitated such Caucasian celebrities as Fred Astaire, Sally Rand and Bing Crosby in Chinatown nightclubs during the 1930s and 40s, few Asian Americans appeared in Western-style live entertainment. The American theatre continued periodically to produce shows with Asian themes - from The First Born (a 19th-century melodrama set in San Francisco's Chinatown), to Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, to the post-Second World War Broadway hits Teahouse of the August Moon and The King and I. But Asiatic actors were usually relegated to playing stock character maids, cooks, vamps and spies, while Caucasians played the ‘Oriental’ leads. (The same was often true in Hollywood films.) The differences between Western and Asian drama kept some Asian immigrants away from theatre, as did language barriers and moral qualms about show business. Moreover, Japanese Americans were virtually banished from all public life when the government interned them in relocation camps during the Second World War. But as third- and fourth-generation Asian Americans appeared, the stereotyping and casting practices remained. The 1958 Rodgers-Hammerstein musicalFlower Drum Song was the first (and for many years the only) professional New York production set in a modern Asian-American milieu. In 1965, finding little meaningful stage or screen work, Alberto Isaacs, Mako and other Asian-American actors and directors created East West Players in Los Angeles. It was the thick of the civil rights era, and EWP was a self-help venture, talent showcase and declaration of ethnic pride. Unlike contemporary African- American ensembles, however, EWP had no repertoire of new plays or stable of writers to draw on; at first it staged classics and scripts set in Asia (Rashomon). In 1973 two sister ensembles were formed: the Asian Exclusion Act (now Northwest Asian American Theatre) in Seattle and the activist Asian American Theatre Workshop in San Francisco. AATW (later renamed the Asian American Theatre Company) caused the bigger splash, with new plays high on its agenda - plays exploding the old media images of Asians and aggressively revealing the frustrations and contradictions of Asian-American experience. In this vein, co- founder Frank Chin's hip, nervy scripts garnered immediate national attention: first Chickencoop Chinaman and later his Year of the Dragon and Gee, Pop!. Chin was the first Asian-American dramatist to have a ‘legit’ production in New York (Chickencoop Chinaman, 1972, American Place Theatre). In 1977 actor-director Tisa Chang founded New York's Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, the fourth regional outlet for Asian-American drama. This loose network of subscription theatres boosted the careers of many fine Asian-American actors, including John Lone, Mako, Nobu McCarthy, Dennis Dun and Joan Chen, and introduced works by dozens of US writers with ancestral roots in Japan, China, Korea, the Phillippines and other Asian countries. Repeated themes include the Japanese-American Second World War internment, generational clashes between Asian-bred immigrants and their Americanized children, the history and persistence of racism, the mythic reverberations from Asian cultures. realism laced with satiric surrealism is the predominant style, but much variety exists. Noteworthy texts include: Velina Hasu Houston's Tea (a Japanese war bride who kills her US husband); Philip Kan Gotanda's memory play Song for a Nisei Fisherman; Wakako Yamauchi's And the Soul Shall Dance (set on a Depression-era farm); Laurence Yep's Pay the Chinaman (about Chinese con men in early California); Ric Shiomi's Yellow Fever (detective tale with an ethnic twist); Ernest Abuba's An American Story (about a mixedraced family in San Diego); Han Ong's gritty L.A. Stories (about a Los Angeles street hustler); and Reggie CheongLeen's The Nanjing Race, a unique look at the Asian-American dilemma of cultures at odds. A few Asian-American playwrights have ‘crossed over’ into mainstream venues. Most prominently, David Henry Hwang's early works (F.O.B., Dance and the Railroad) debuted at New York's Public Theatre, and his M. Butterfly won a Tony on Broadway (his second Broadway effort failed). Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Eureka Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Mark Taper Forum and Los Angeles Theatre Center have mounted scripts by Hwang, Gotanda, Houston and others. Not all dramatists of Asian descent have worked within the Asian-American theatre axis; some prefer not to affix any ethnic labels to their work. The many linked with the movement have, however, kept involved in it long after finding success in other realms. In 1990 Hwang and actor B.D. Wong led a protest by Asian- American artists over the casting of a white actor (Jonathan Pryce) in a major Eurasian role in the Broadway musical Miss Saigon, igniting a vigorous public debate about the meaning of ‘nontraditional’ casting and multiculturalism. As their ranks continue to swell, Asian Americans have repudiated the notion that they are a ‘silent, invisible’ minority by actively participating in all areas of popular culture; and while some critics now decry ethnic- specific cultural expression as a ‘balkanization’ of the arts, Asian-American drama leaders defend its ongoing importance. East West Players artistic director Nobu McCarthy commented in 1991: ‘Our artists should graduate and perform shoulder-to-shoulder with white artists in the mainstream. But first we must discover who we are, before we become the mainstream.’ MBer The Cambridge Guide to Theatre, © Cambridge University Press 2000 Persistent URL to the Entry: http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/cupthea/asian_american_theatre/0 APA Asian-American theater. (2000). In The Cambridge guide to theater. Retrieved from http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login? qurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.credoreference.com%2Fcontent%2Fentry%2Fcupthea%2Fasian_americ an_theatre%2F0 MLA "Asian-american Theater." The Cambridge Guide to Theater. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Credo Reference. Web. 10 January 2014. Chicago The Cambridge Guide to Theater. s.v. "Asian-american Theater." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login? qurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.credoreference.com%2Fcontent%2Fentry%2Fcupthea%2Fasian_americ an_theatre%2F0 (accessed January 10, 2014.) Harvard 'Asian-American theater' 2000, in The Cambridge guide to theater, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Accessed: 10 January 2014, from Credo Reference.

Load more