East West Players

Paul Kikuchi has spent nearly half his life pursuing the Great Hollywood Dream: selling a screenplay. A couple of years ago, however, he hit a dry spell and decided to switch things up by taking a playwriting class at East West Players, the nation's oldest Asian American stage company. Kikuchi, a third-generation Japanese American, had never written about anything Asian American, and his theater experience was, he admits, "pretty thin." Even so, he appears to have aced the class. His first play, "Ixnay," will open at East West on Wednesday.

Dorothy isn't the only one who got lost in Kansas. After World War II, more than 100,000 Japanese women married American GIs and resettled across the United States. We meet five of those brides, unmoored in the Midwest, in “Tea, With Music,” a bittersweet chamber musical with book and lyrics by Velina Hasu Houston and music by Nathan Wang, now at East West Players. The occasion is a tea ceremony - and an exorcism. In a small Kansas town, Himiko (Joan Almedilla) has killed herself after a downward spiral of loss and rage.

The “encounter” that is at the heart of Navarasa Dance Theater's 80-minute performance piece has a specific and dreadful meaning. An “encounter,” the characters tell us, is the horrific practice of governments scooping up opponents and summarily murdering them. The example of the “disappeared” in Argentina comes to mind. Navarasa Dance Theater's dance-drama, “Encounter,” presented by East West Players at the David Henry Hwang Theater, concerns India and a fight over the lands of destitute indigenous peoples.

The “encounter” that is at the heart of Navarasa Dance Theater's 80-minute performance piece has a specific and dreadful meaning. An “encounter,” the characters tell us, is the horrific practice of governments scooping up opponents and summarily murdering them. The example of the “disappeared” in Argentina comes to mind. Navarasa Dance Theater's dance-drama, “Encounter,” presented by East West Players at the David Henry Hwang Theater, concerns India and a fight over the lands of destitute indigenous peoples.

Dorothy isn't the only one who got lost in Kansas. After World War II, more than 100,000 Japanese women married American GIs and resettled across the United States. We meet five of those brides, unmoored in the Midwest, in “Tea, With Music,” a bittersweet chamber musical with book and lyrics by Velina Hasu Houston and music by Nathan Wang, now at East West Players. The occasion is a tea ceremony - and an exorcism. In a small Kansas town, Himiko (Joan Almedilla) has killed herself after a downward spiral of loss and rage.

To understand why East West Players loves Ken Takemoto, ask about "the duck." The fake fowl -- a Rube Goldbergian contraption he created for a 2008 revival of "Pippin" -- shows just how clever, conscientious and cheap the 75-year-old prop master can be. "Ken has spoiled us," says Tim Dang, producing artistic director of East West, the nation's leading Asian American stage company. "He can find almost anything, and what he can't find he can make himself." A script doesn't always describe what a prop should look like, he adds, "but Ken knows exactly what is wanted because he really listens to the play and the director.

Les Thomas' "Cave Quest" is high concept -- i.e., Himalayan. The light but appealing new comedy, presented by East West Players at the Union Center for the Arts, is "The Odd Couple" at 14,000 feet. Video game designer Justin (West Liang) has dragged himself around the world in search of legendary Buddhist nun Padma (Kim Miyori), rumored to be in deep seclusion. He crashes her meditation pad, a rocky Nepalese cave inside the world's highest peaks. Justin's goals, however, are more entrepreneurial than mind-expanding: He wants to design a game that will bring players inner peace, for a mere $49.99.

A high school reunion--Hawaiian style--is the setting for Ed Sakamoto's "Stew Rice," which just opened at East West Players. "It's my fourth 'Hawaii play,' " noted Sakamoto, who grew up in Honolulu. "In them, I try to recapture a time, a place, a people--give audiences an accurate picture of how we were, how we are, how we lived, thought, what we liked, didn't like. So, hopefully, it reflects a truth. Also, I use pidgin English.

"Hero, a Tribute to George Takei," an evening of comedy and music honoring the actor of "Star Trek" fame, will be held Nov. 14 at 8 p.m. at East West Players' David Henry Hwang Theater at the Union Center for the Arts. The event, which features guest performers Garrett Wong ("Voyagers"), Jennifer Paz ("Miss Saigon"), Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig ("Star Trek") and Pat Morita ("The Karate Kid"), will benefit East West programs and operations.

East West Players will premiere its first South Asian-themed play, Sujata G. Bhatt's "Queen of the Remote Control," as part of its 2002-03 season. The play, about a family of affluent Indian immigrants in Calabasas, is slated for Sept. 11 to Oct. 6 at the company's home in the David Henry Hwang Theater in downtown Los Angeles' Little Tokyo.

The next play from East West Players, a Los Angeles theater company whose annual budget of about $1.2 million typically doesn't leave room for buying spots on network television, will receive many hours of free promotion this summer on NBC -- at least indirectly. The show, “Three Year Swim Club,” by Hawaiian writer Lee Tonouchi, concerns one of the great underdog sporting feats in U.S. history. It's the true story of Soichi Sakamoto, a science teacher in Maui who decided that he could turn the children of sugar cane workers into Olympic swimmers - - never mind that he initially lacked a pool to train them in and had to use 3-foot-deep irrigation ditches as a substitute.

To understand why East West Players loves Ken Takemoto, ask about "the duck." The fake fowl -- a Rube Goldbergian contraption he created for a 2008 revival of "Pippin" -- shows just how clever, conscientious and cheap the 75-year-old prop master can be. "Ken has spoiled us," says Tim Dang, producing artistic director of East West, the nation's leading Asian American stage company. "He can find almost anything, and what he can't find he can make himself." A script doesn't always describe what a prop should look like, he adds, "but Ken knows exactly what is wanted because he really listens to the play and the director.

Les Thomas' "Cave Quest" is high concept -- i.e., Himalayan. The light but appealing new comedy, presented by East West Players at the Union Center for the Arts, is "The Odd Couple" at 14,000 feet. Video game designer Justin (West Liang) has dragged himself around the world in search of legendary Buddhist nun Padma (Kim Miyori), rumored to be in deep seclusion. He crashes her meditation pad, a rocky Nepalese cave inside the world's highest peaks. Justin's goals, however, are more entrepreneurial than mind-expanding: He wants to design a game that will bring players inner peace, for a mere $49.99.

The phenomenal success of "Art" seems due to its literary flair. Yasmina Reza's existential comedy about a meltdown among three longtime friends after one buys an expensive painting blends behavioral farce with sociological essay. That dichotomy lends "Art" an accessible veneer that has dazzled audiences since its 1994 premiere at the Comedie des Champs-Elysees in Paris. Not long thereafter, "Art" hit the English-speaking world in Christopher Hampton's idiomatic translation, winning an Olivier award and a Tony for best play in 1998.

Paul Kikuchi has spent nearly half his life pursuing the Great Hollywood Dream: selling a screenplay. A couple of years ago, however, he hit a dry spell and decided to switch things up by taking a playwriting class at East West Players, the nation's oldest Asian American stage company. Kikuchi, a third-generation Japanese American, had never written about anything Asian American, and his theater experience was, he admits, "pretty thin." Even so, he appears to have aced the class. His first play, "Ixnay," will open at East West on Wednesday.

BLYTHE MATSUI holds her arm straight out, hand flat, palm up, while rotating her body. Dressed in a white lace tank top cropped above her navel and camouflage cargo pants rolled up to reveal high-heeled leather boots, the dancer-choreographer and former Laker Girl turns to Mike Moh, an extreme martial arts specialist, and says: "Blade open."

David Henry Hwang's "M. Butterfly" hasn't been professionally revived in L.A. since the touring version stopped at the Wilshire Theatre in 1991, and according to the playwright, it has never been professionally staged by an Asian American theater company. East West Players plans to change that by staging Hwang's play about a French diplomat whose Chinese mistress turns out to be a man from June 9 to July 4 next year. Hwang didn't intentionally withhold the L.A.

East West Players has reached "a turning point," said the group's new board president, Jeff Smith. Smith himself is an indication of the multicultural direction in which Los Angeles' primary Asian-American theater company is turning. He is the group's first non-Asian board president. Which is not to say that East West is about to become West West. The upcoming season will include three plays by Asian-Americans, plus the musical "Into the Woods," directed by two Asian-Americans.

Throughout his life, author and playwright Jon Shirota has been exploring the meaning of identity. The 80-year-old's newest work examines the relationship between U.S. and Okinawan culture in a present-day setting that evokes several parallels with the current war in Iraq.