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Bondage, by David Henry Hwang, 1993

After Gathering Ground came a long hiatus where I did a fair amount of administrative work with the Northwest Asian American Theatre. I headed up two capital campaigns and two major fundraising events and made believe I was a pretty major cog at NWAAT. In the meantime, Dave Hwang had written M. Butterfly, which not only won a Tony Award, but was a commercial smash hit. (As a parenthetical aside, M. Butterfly was pretty much a distallation of all those late night discussion sessions we had as staff back at Stanford. Except on a MUCH more polished scale and stated more subtly. At the time I first read it, I was mumbling I'da given my right arm to write a show like this....).

As a follow up, Dave wrote a piece that was sorta personal for him, working out onstage some of his feelings about inter-racial romances (always a hot topic for Asian Americans). What resulted was a piece about a man and a woman who role-play various racial roles and play off of ALL the racial stereotypes (much like M. Butterfly)...and does so in the environment of a S/M parlor.

The moment I heard about it, I was convinced I HAD to do the show (as to whether this says anything about MY personal life, I leave as an excercise to the reader). In my head, this was a (very) dark romantic comedy, making the point that gender roles and race roles that we cast each other into are much like the dominant/submissive roles of some S/M relationships...and are just as contorted.

To make a long story a tad shorter, I got the rights (getting down on my knees and begging had something to do with it), produced the show during the Christmas holiday season (that seemed right) and did the West Coast premiere of Bondage. The mainstream reivewers weren't too crazy about it, but many of the community and alternative papers liked it much more; in particular, all the Asian males who reviewed it practically went ape-shit over it. Hmmmm....wonder why.... I've also idly mused that this show would do GREAT business if you could cast a couple Trek actors: Nana Visitor (Major Kira on DS9 and Garrett Wang (Harry Kim on Voyager). Appropriate actors and the Trekkies would keep this show going all summer.....(and give them a swig of kuhlture as well...)

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Vivian Umino, 1995

My next show....and definitely my oddest. An original piece done for the Seattle Fringe Fest, Bethelehem was written and directed by a friend of mine. I handled executive producing chores and let Vivian do pretty much what she wanted. What came out was a tad unusual to my eyes, mixing rather broad polemics with some dance-oriented slapstick. Offbeat and not normally a good mix...but it was selected as one of the best of the Fringe. (so, wadda I know?).

Photos by Irene Kuniyuki

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