Wednesday, June 3, 1998
Dangerous beauty
THEATER: Professionals and community members
join forces to chronicle Asian American experiences – from hate
crimes to drag shows – in ‘A Beautiful Country’
By Cheryl Klein
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The kids shooting hoops on the blacktop outside Chinatown’s
Castelar School are probably unaware a man wearing a dress and lip
syncing to Madonna’s "Vogue" is doing his best to chronicle their
history.
He plays Miss Visa Denied, an immigrant drag queen who threads
together a series of sketches spanning 150 years of Asian American
experiences. Actor Reggie Lee flexes and taunts, momentarily
lending the school’s dimly lit auditorium a sort of night-club
chic. If the eyes of the cast and crew focus on him, it is perhaps
because, in his silence, he breathes their stories.
Countless voices comprise "A Beautiful Country," which begins
previews Friday. As a collaboration between the Santa Monica-based
Cornerstone Theater Company, the Mark Taper Forum’s Asian Theatre
Workshop and the East West Players, they wouldn’t have it any other
way.
"How (playwright Chay Yew) explained it to me is that in the
United States, when Asians come here, basically we have no voice,"
Lee says. "We take on the characteristics of Americans. And that’s
basically what Visa is doing."
Yew called upon local Chinatown residents, many of whom appear
on stage and behind the scenes, to recount their immigration
memories. While workshopping the piece, incidents ranging from
anti-Asian hate crimes to mother-daughter communication gaps found
their way into the final script. For some community members, this
was the recent past. For others, it meant probing their parents
about a period they rarely spoke of.
For producer and UCLA alumnus Christopher Lore, the process
reminded him of his family’s similar if non-Asian history.
"I’m sort a middle class white boy, but my grandfather came over
from Sicily as a young child. It’s interesting because I’ve found
it’s hard to get them to talk about the kind of things that Chay is
now, through trust and work, getting people to talk about," Lore
says. "My grandparents didn’t speak Italian around my father
because it wasn’t cool to be ‘other’ then."
Though this personalized the play for Lore, he admits that "you
tread carefully" in outreach-based theater, not pretending to know
the culture better than those who live it, yet also not letting the
artistry of the piece get lost in politics.
"I don’t know how many companies could pull this off," Lore
says. "Making sure Chay gets his point across and gets to do what
he wants, but we also have an advisory board from the community,
and we have to try to serve them and make them happy.
"They’ve been extremely supportive, but things we would normally
take for granted and go, ‘no big deal,’ they see and go, ‘How is
the community going to react with that? Why would I want to go see
a show about a drag queen?’" Lore continues.
But if anyone has the resources to materialize such a delicate
balance, it’s Cornerstone. After several years of adapting classic
theater for small, rural towns around the country, the troupe gave
up its gypsy existence in favor of focusing on various urban
populations in Los Angeles. Most notably, they staged "Central
Avenue Chalk Circle," which combined three neighborhoods in Watts –
Latino, Arab and African American – and won an Ovation award for
Best Play, an unprecedented achievement given that they were
competing against over 250 professional productions.
"There’s always what we call ‘Cornerstone guilt’ when we leave a
community," says Cornerstone’s Page Leong, who plays no less than
eight characters in "A Beautiful Country."
"We create all these bonds and you come to some sort of common
understanding of one another. And you make friends and you
introduce many people to theater for the first time. … And then
you go on to the next project."
Of course, this is also part of the adventure.
"We’ve experimented with the idea of community," Leong
continues. "We had our 10th anniversary on June 30 a couple of
years ago and we thought, ‘Why don’t we really push the envelope
and define a community based on the day that people were born
on?’"
Their casting call turned up over 200 people boasting June 30
birthdays. Yet while the company relishes its time in various
neighborhoods, the true realization of their impact comes when
community members show up at Cornerstone’s subscriber-based
ensemble shows.
"We’ve tried to encourage audience cross over and that has
happened as the Cornerstone circle kind of widens," Leong says.
"People are excited enough about theater to get out of their
neighborhoods or their perspectives."
With luck, they will find their way to the stucco complex in a
nest of hillside homes and Chinese restaurants that houses "A
Beautiful Country." From Leong’s light-footed dance as a Filipina
mail-order bride to the rhythmic pantomime of assembly line workers
canning fish, the production offers audience members a glimpse into
Asian American history that many feel is sorely missing from
theater today.
"What we lack are a good source of Asian American writers," Lee
professes. He adds that Yew is fighting to change this, along with
East West Players. Yet since East West’s recent move to a larger
venue and their transition to equity format, Lee worries that "it
has become more focused on being able to sell its shows as opposed
to the artistic end of things … But you know what? I think it’s
good in that they’ve made an effort to grow larger and sell
themselves as a voice."
Having more Asian writers (and theater companies, of course)
creates more quality parts for Asian actors, something currently
absent from most film and television productions.
"You’re either a gang member or a nerd. You’re never somebody
normal falling in love," Lee says of his film and TV experiences.
"A friend of mine just did a pilot called ‘Honolulu Crew’ which was
set in Hawaii … it was a Disney pilot. And because they tested it
in middle America and they didn’t understand this whole ethnicity
thing, they scrapped it."
Lore, who just finished his first short film, agrees that "the
bottom line in the film industry is the dollar."
But, he adds, "Because of this sort of independent push in film,
I feel like there’s an opportunity now for me to do the kind of
work that I’m interested in."
Theater, however, remains at the forefront of both Lee and
Lore’s goals. To compliment the production’s educational stance,
the collaborators are selling tickets on a "pay what you can"
basis.
In addition to enticing Chinatown residents, the opportunity to
see virtually free theater may shift audience demographics toward a
younger, college-aged crowd.
"I don’t know how many theaters around town I could afford to
subscribe to," Lore confesses.
"I’ll go see a show here or there when I can, but I don’t know
if I could plunk down – between my wife and myself – the hundred
dollars it takes to subscribe to a theater."
But with an opportunity like this, the basketball-playing youths
won’t have an excuse not to find out just what a beautiful country
it is.
THEATER: "A Beautiful Country" begins previews Friday and opens
June 12 at the Castelar School, 840 Yale Street, Los Angeles.
Tickets are pay-what-you-can. For more information, call (310)
449-1700.
LYNN NISHIMURA
Page Leong plays a mail-order bride from the Philippines in a
segment of "A Beautiful Country."
LYNN NISHIMURA
Actress Nancy Yee speaks with her drag queen son, played by
Reggie Lee.
LYNN NISHIMURA
Actress Page Leong confronts her son’s killer (Chris Wells) in
"A Beautiful Country."
LYNN NISHIMURA
Miss Visa Denied (Reggie Lee) dances to Madonna’s "Vogue."