Asian American Theatre

Producer Jane Jung offers compelling insight on the history and necessity of Asian American Theatre as a form of activism and expression to combat exotification and other-ing.

I was inspired to believe in the power of the arts to mobilize people and sway emotions and opinions and build community in ways that petitions and protests couldn’t. I decided that I could use my skills to pro-actively organize through and for the arts, and became an intern at the Painted Bride and have been with Asian Arts Initiative since then as it has grown into an independent multi-disciplinary community arts center.

Home is not a shared skin tone, language, religion, location, orientation, or political sensibility, though those all play a small role. It’s a sense of history, of being known thoroughly, not just for who you are, but for who you were and who you will be; not just the good, but also the occasionally ugly. It’s the place where people want the best for me, even as I sometimes drive them crazy. It’s the place where I'm not thinking about you or about me, but about us, the house, the whole thing.

In this installment, Mike Lew discusses the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, the fraught practice of yellow face, and what equity for people of color actually looks like.

Victor Maog examines the efforts of Asian American theatremakers to create spaces and push out meaningful narratives.