Left to proper: Sittichai Chaiyahat, Nina Kasuya, Aric Martin, Package DeZolt, and Gemma Pedersen performing “Welcome to Kanagawa” in Pacific Overtures (2024) at East West Gamers (picture by Teolindo, all pictures courtesy East West Gamers)
America’s Cultural Treasures: This text is a part of a collection sponsored by the Ford Basis highlighting the work of museums and organizations which have made a big impression on the cultural panorama of america.
Our motivation is enhancing visibility for the AAPI group to indicate our complexity via the storytelling that occurs on our levels, and the way we exist in group outdoors of the stage experiences.
David Nguyen, volunteer, East West Gamers
Once you learn the names Sammee Tong, Victor Sen Yung, or Leon Lontoc, it’s possible you’ll draw a clean — and that’s by design. These males had been actors who principally carried out both bit components or supporting roles on American community tv collection that aired throughout the Fifties and ’60s, by no means rising to the stardom loved by their White American colleagues. They did, although, have some moments of distinction. Starting in 1957, Tong co-starred within the scenario comedy Bachelor Father, which starred John Forsythe and Noreen Corcoran. He performed the position of Peter Tong, who was Bentley Gregg’s (Forsythe’s character) live-in houseboy and valet. Although he was born in San Francisco and raised in California and Hawaii, he spoke with a stereotypically “Asian” accent for his position. Nonetheless, because the civil rights activist Man Aoki — the founding president of Media Motion Community for Asian Individuals, a corporation dedicated to monitoring mass media for balanced and delicate depiction of Asian Individuals — factors out, Victor Sen Yung performed Tong’s very Americanized “uncle Charlie.” Each actors went on to a number of different roles in each tv and movie. However when Sen Yung is remembered in any respect, he’s sometimes recalled for his position as Hop Sing, the quick-tempered prepare dinner for the Cartwright household, stars of the tv collection Bonanza from 1959 to 1973. In the meantime, Lontoc performed a personality recognized solely as Henry, a chauffeur and valet to a millionaire police captain, on the present Burke’s Legislation. In a while, he guest-starred in a number of tv exhibits, together with his final credited look being on The Brady Bunch.
Throughout that period, the overall expectation for a lot of Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants to america who appeared in main film and stage productions was that they might play solely secondary and tertiary characters: cooks, valets, houseboys, and servants to middle-class and rich White Individuals. This established order gave the impression to be damaged in 1961 when Flower Drum Music turned the primary main Hollywood function movie with a majority Asian-American forged in a recent Asian-American story. It was nominated for 5 Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards, together with Greatest Movement Image – Musical or Comedy. That the movie was made with a principally Asian-American forged was outstanding contemplating that on the time, the follow of White actors donning “yellowface” to painting East Asian characters was extra widespread than hiring Asian or Asian-American actors to play ethnically Asian roles. Regardless of this breakthrough, this state of affairs of well-resourced productions largely ignoring the tales of Asian Individuals’ experiences as advised from their factors of view would proceed for a minimum of 30 extra years, arguably till The Pleasure Luck Membership premiered in 1993. It will take one other 25 years after that debut for Loopy Wealthy Asians, a commercially profitable romcom-drama movie with a majority Asian and Asian-American forged, to be produced within the US.
It’s in opposition to this historic backdrop that East West Gamers (EWP) was based in Los Angeles in 1965 by the performer Mako (born Makoto Iwamatsu in Kobe, Japan), together with Rae Creevey, Beulah Quo, Quickly-Tek Oh, James Hong, Pat Li, June Kim, Man Lee, and But Lock. The group started within the basement of Bethany Presbyterian Church in Silver Lake earlier than shifting to a 99-seat home on Santa Monica Boulevard. It then labored with Little Tokyo Service Heart to renovate the neighborhood’s Union Church. In 1998, the ensuing Union Heart for the Arts turned house to 3 nonprofit arts organizations together with East West Gamers.
East West Gamers’ David Henry Hwang Theater
The theater firm, which is now the oldest and longest-running Asian-American theater within the nation, was based as a spot for members of the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) group to work on their craft, honing their abilities whereas offering alternatives for one another in opposition to the marginalization of their lives and tales.
“At the time, their concern really was twofold: They just wanted jobs,” explains Rose Chan Loui, the chair of the group’s board of administrators. “The actors who founded it wanted to be able to act here, and then secondly, in terms of what they were doing as a theater group, they wanted to be able to play roles that they would never be allowed to play in mainstream theaters or in Hollywood.”
Mako, the corporate’s first creative director, was himself a distinguished actor and performer. The yr after the founding of East West Gamers, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Greatest Supporting Actor for his position as Po-Han within the movie The Sand Pebbles. Ten years later, he was nominated for a Tony Award for his portrayal of 4 characters (Reciter, Shogun, Jonathan Goble, and Emperor Meiji) within the Stephen Sondheim musical Pacific Overtures. In the end, although, he was by no means awarded any of those prizes. Based on Andy Lowe, the previous director of Manufacturing and Casting at East West Gamers, Mako is probably going finest generally known as the unique voice behind the character of Uncle Iroh within the animated collection Avatar: The Final Airbender (2005–8), in addition to for exhibits comparable to Samurai Jack and roles within the Nineteen Eighties movies Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer. Given the racial politics of mainstream tradition in america throughout the time Mako was lively, he was constantly performing for folks not fairly able to see him.
Lowe explains that the house that Mako and his colleagues created to primarily be a coaching floor, a conservatory of kinds, quickly turned one thing extra.
Founders James Hong (left) and June Kim (proper) on the East West Gamers warehouse in 2023
“All the founders … shared a vision of wanting more for themselves beyond the very limited roles offered to Asian-American actors in the ’60s. Producing shows allowed them to utilize more of their instrument, and as more people became involved, [there] was the opportunity to bring up underserved artists with training they did not have access to otherwise,” Lowe says. “Eventually, it expanded to owning one’s own narrative and developing the playwrights who would tell our stories authentically, with humanity.”
The story of Dom Magwili is exemplary of what this flip towards producing narratives in a single’s personal voice can imply for an actor, and maybe a complete group.
Magwili is an actor, writer, director, and lecturer within the Division of Asian American Research at California State College, Fullerton. After graduating from the Performing Program of San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre within the Seventies, he made his approach to Los Angeles in search of work and discovered that East West Gamers was “the only game in town in terms of theatrical representation.” He auditioned for just a few components however didn’t land them, and so determined to volunteer as a stage supervisor. This expertise introduced him, he says, “into Asian-American studies through the back door.”
“It was an ethnic studies program 24/7, which I didn’t like,” he explains. “They were a new kind of discipline, and they were discovering things daily that we didn’t know about ourselves before, and new points of view, historical facts.”
Initially, Magwili chafed in opposition to this coaching as a result of he needed to carry out what he considered on the time as “high art”: Shakespeare. As he places it: “I thought of myself as a European and just found myself in this odd body, the Filipino-American body by mistake. There was nobody like me.”
The ensemble forged of Pacific Overtures (2024) throughout the first rehearsal at East West Gamers (picture by Teolindo)
Nonetheless, an train in a chilly studying class run by East West Gamers challenged him to current a speech that didn’t make sense to him till he carried out it in his father’s Filipino accent. “For me to do the dialect broke me open, not wide open, but there was a crack in my presumptions, and I started writing to it,” he recollects.
“I started writing pieces where either I did research, or I used language, or I got into the dialect, and that was a gateway for me to start discovering myself, and it didn’t happen overnight. I was given an assignment. The East West Players got a quarter of a million-dollar grant to essentially create an Asian-American theater festival that we would take to county parks,” Magwili continues. “Every weekend, we’d do an Asian-American theater festival at a variety of parks, and I wrote several pieces for that … it put me in the community of Filipino Americans in LA and I would write to participate in it. I wrote songs, and poems and speeches. So, East West for me personally was a way for me to discover myself.”
A part of the liberty Magwili skilled in discovering himself via that follow of writing tales in regards to the Asian-American expertise was coming to grasp that his specific perspective has worth — past the field workplace take. Cultivating, inviting, and producing genuine tales advised from throughout the AAPI communities turned essential to the general mission of East West Gamers.
Left to proper: Kerri Higuchi, Daniel Dae Kim, Amy Hill, Emily Kuroda, and Melody Butiu in Golden Little one (2000)
The corporate’s manufacturing of the musical On This Facet of the World by Paulo Ok Tiról in Might of 2023 is consultant of any such story. The present options 28 Filipino characters performed by six actors — all of Asian heritage. Their songs depict the very actual questions and dilemmas that immigrants (significantly these whose native tongue will not be English) face when making a brand new life within the US. As two characters sing inside a gap airport scene: “Do I have the ambition and focus to thrive? / It’s a new lease on life, but will I stay alive?”
The characters depicted ought to be acquainted to these within the migrant Filipino group and different immigrant teams: the cool uncle who constantly sends presents again to his prolonged household at house on demand, although he’s financially overextended; the nannies who spend their youth elevating different folks’s kids whereas deferring or eschewing their very own goals of beginning a household; the previous film star who can’t get forged in Hollywood regardless of his in depth movie resume and beauty; a girl who agreed to an organized marriage to safe her citizenship, however ended up falling in love with somebody who won’t ever reciprocate her affection; two queer males who try to show that their love for one another is actual whereas being interviewed by authorities officers; spoiled kids who cry for his or her nannies, fully oblivious to their caretakers’ personal wants and wishes as full human beings. As one tune places it, there are “stories of wins, but also stories of loss; stories of success come with stories of the cost.”
The present occurred on the theater’s predominant stage, the David Henry Hwang Theater, which seats 230 folks and gives three to 4 performs and musicals per yr. These exist alongside East West Gamers’ key applications, together with Theatre for Youth, EWPlay!, EWP Writers’ Group, and Skilled Growth lessons.
Left: Lily Tung Crystal, creative director; proper: Kevin Johnson-Sather, appearing managing director
Every of those productions and applications acts as a special sail for the ship that’s East West Gamers. This framework for a theater firm is exclusive in that, following the founders’ lead, they supply the sensible means for coaching, however not the type of coaching that one would possibly affiliate with an antiquated apprenticeship mannequin — one through which the coed is handled as an ignorant, underpaid, or exploited employee who is predicted to passively be taught on the grasp’s toes. Relatively, East West Gamers has adopted a pedagogical method that seeks to caringly nurture voices to have quantity and energy, but additionally nuance and shade, to be genuine to the actors’ personal expertise, fairly often as a member of the AAPI communities. After which, in the end, they provide performers a stage on which to sing.
Performing Managing Director Kevin Johnson-Sather describes the theater’s ambitions because the group celebrates its sixtieth anniversary this yr: “We are deepening our roots in Little Tokyo, where the David Henry Hwang Theater stands as a beacon of our legacy, and forging stronger partnerships with local organizations to expand access to the arts.”
“In a time of rising division, EWP remains steadfast in our belief that diversity is a source of strength, and that empathy flourishes when every voice has the chance to be heard,” he continues.
Left to proper: Abraham Kim as Rom, Joe Ngo as Chum, Jane Lui as Pou, Kelsey Angel Baehrens as Sothea, and Tim Liu as Leng in Cambodian Rock Band (2025) at East West Gamers (picture by Teolindo)
Rising the amount and attain of those voices requires conscious tutelage. Their Skilled Growth program offers performers of a variety of talents and ages with entry to this type of instruction, resting on what Inventive Director Lily Tung Crystal identifies because the three pillars of East West Gamers: “Asian-American stories, high-quality art, and social justice.”
Jade Cagalawan, the Arts Schooling/Skilled Enrichment director, attests that at the moment there are 5 to seven lessons being provided, comparable to Auditioning for the Digicam, Clowning, Introduction to Playwriting, and Writing for Solo Exhibits. The construction of those lessons and the approaches they take are simply as vital because the course choices themselves.
“We have BIPOC teachers who are not only active in the industry but who have the experience and can tell you what they went through and even how to handle situations of miscasting or people making assumptions about their race and what roles that they can take on,” Cagalawan explains. “Having a teacher who is a person of color in the classroom who can give that insight makes people feel comfortable, like this is the space they can safely practice their craft in.”
The concept these learners is not going to be demeaned for his or her specific mannerisms or linguistic habits is crucial to this program and the general ethos of East West Gamers. Crucially, learners aren’t being held to White American fashions of diction and comportment. Cagalawan discusses how accents are handled in these lessons, noting, “We do get a lot of folks who are immigrants who have accents, and we don’t try to undo those accents.”
“It’s more [about] how you work on clarity and speech as opposed to sounding quote unquote ‘more American,’” she explains. “And so, you know, we embrace the whole person as opposed to trying to undo parts of themselves.”
The ensemble forged of On This Facet of the World (2023) (left to proper: Michael C. Palma, Cassie Simone, Steven-Adam Agdeppa, Zandi De Jesus, Andrea Somera, and Shaun Tuazon) performing “Hold On/In Mid-Air” at East West Gamers (picture by Jenny Graham)
East West Gamers’ writing applications are one other means by which college students have the liberty to craft literary characters with confidence and authenticity. The EWP Writers’ Group provides a particular group of established playwrights a room through which to sharpen their drafts and writing. Previously, this system has been led by playwright and professor Alice Tuan, who instructs each rising and mid-career playwrights. Notable individuals who have come via this program embrace Lisa Sanaye Dring, who has received two Silver and one Bronze Clio awards; Anna Moench, a Writers Guild of America Award winner; Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota), the primary Native American lady to have a play produced on Broadway and a winner of the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award; Jeanne Sakata, who was given the Ovation Award by the LA Stage Alliance; and Kristina Wong, a Guggenheim Fellow and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
The Nice Jheri Curl Debate (2022), penned by Inda Craig-Galván, is an instance of a play that emerged from the EWP Writers’ Group that casts a large cultural web. The play takes place within the ’70s on Chicago’s South Facet, the place a Korean immigrant, Mr. Kim (Ryun Yu), is struggling to run a Black magnificence provide retailer. Veralynn Jackson (Julanne Chidi Hill), a neighborhood hairdresser and professional from the South Facet, will get a job on the retailer, sparking conversations with Mr. Kim concerning anti-Blackness within the Korean group and the biases and tensions that white supremacy and segregation create. Poppy Lang, a teen author who reviewed the present for the TeenTix weblog, described the play on this means: “Yu’s and Hill’s portrayal of this real-feeling relationship with arguments and laughter, highs and lows, and genuine care for each other was lovely and meaningful. I loved how they didn’t shy away from showing the biases that each of them had and how they overcame them.”
A means for East West Gamers to unfold the gospel that AAPI actors, writers, managers, and theater help employees have transformative artwork to share is the long-running Theatre for Youth program, which acts, partially, as a recruitment and viewers growth device of kinds. This system commissions a playwright to write down a few vital Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander determine. Every present is often 35 minutes lengthy and excursions all through the Los Angeles Unified Faculty District, group facilities, and libraries.
One such play is Rosie Narasaki’s “When Yuri Met Malcolm” (2022), a 30-minute present that explores the connection between Malcolm X and American civil rights activist Yuri Kochiyama. The lasting impression of staging this play for scholar audiences is illustrated by the response of 1 pupil, who requested the actors, “Why didn’t we learn this in school?” Theatre for Youth demonstrates how the histories of Asian Individuals are deeply intertwined with the histories of different communities of shade. As Kristina Wong, an aforementioned alumna of the EWP Writers’ Group who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her 2021 solo present Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, says: “We might have to be the history teacher; we’re already sort of the therapist.”
Left to proper: Founder Beulah Quo, John Cho, and Deb Nishimura in Ikebana (1996)
Wong can also be a member of the advisory board of API RISE, a nonprofit group that seeks to handle the wants of people impacted by the legal justice system, significantly those that are at the moment and previously incarcerated. She recollects how Snehal Desai (who was then main East West Gamers) approached her in 2020 to inquire what she was engaged on and provide help for her growth of a storytelling workshop that handled the experiences of previously incarcerated folks.
“So much of Asian-American theater is talking about things we never talk about, but the tip of the iceberg when we talk about incarceration tends to be Japanese concentration camps, not the incarceration that’s happening right now in our communities and the impact of it, and it’s a very tricky thing to talk about because people have been impacted by crime,” she says. “Because even within the Asian-American community it’s like, ‘Oh, could we just talk about sexy TV stars and not prison?’”
To her level, Tung Crystal explains that the group hopes to proceed increasing its give attention to social justice shifting ahead. “Our vision moving into the next 60 years is that we continue to widen our circles to be as inclusive as possible,” she says. “We hope to tell stories and collaborate with artists from across the Asian-American diaspora, from East Asian and Southeast Asian to South Asian and Southwest Asian American communities. We are looking toward our adjacent Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian communities. And we’re focusing on how our AAPINH stories intersect with other marginalized groups — other racial communities, committees of disability, queer communities, and artists of all genders.”
It’s a cliché to say that this group provides the communities it serves a voice, and it’s additionally not fairly true. East West Gamers as an alternative amplifies their voices, offers events for them to be heard. Due to this orientation to being a spot of broad welcoming, their dedication to a excessive diploma {of professional} preparation, and their willingness to exit into the encompassing group to convey theater to extra folks, the group’s refrain swells with much more voices now. As Lowe tells it, East West Gamers sparked a wave of “creative entrepreneurship.” He explains that the corporate’s alums have gone on to discovered “Cold Tofu improv in the ’80s, and many other AAPI companies that formed in the ’90s like hereandnow theatre, Lodestone Theatre Ensemble, OPM Comedy, TeAda Productions, Great Leap, Inc., and more recently companies like Artists at Play.”
Furthermore, a number of AAPI performers who had been educated at East West Gamers have gone on to win starring roles and vital acclaim. Amongst these actors are John Cho, star of the Harold and Kumar movie collection; BD Wong, who’s the one actor in Broadway historical past to obtain all 5 main New York theater prizes for a similar position, Music Liling in M. Butterfly; and Daniel Dae Kim, who had a outstanding position within the tv collection Misplaced and was the primary actor formally forged for Hawaii 5-0. Nonetheless, Kim left Hawaii 5-0 along with co-star Grace Park in 2017 after CBS refused to supply them the identical pay as their White colleagues, a testomony to the work that also must be achieved.
However David Nguyen, a volunteer usher at East West Gamers for the previous a number of years, reminds that there’s way more at stake than questions of fame and equal compensation.
“We are doubly proud, not only because of the … people that are on stages telling their stories. We are also proud because there’s this feeling in the room that we are succeeding, that whatever hardships, prejudices that we encounter outside of this space from different communities, that at least here we’ve created something special of our own,” he says. East West Gamers is aware of that tales of success and tales of the associated prices are among the many most compelling tales we are able to share.
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