Center Theatre Group News & Blogs

‘Soft Power’: The Show, The Theory, The Inspiration

Center Theatre Group — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 11:30:00 -0700

China has been making a concerted effort in the last decade to create a more robust entertainment industry as part of a larger initiative to increase its global influence, or, as President Xi Xinping elaborated in 2014, increase China’s soft power, give a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China’s messages to the world.

The idea of soft power was first coined by renowned political scientist and international relations scholar Joseph S. Nye in his 1990 book Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. Nye wanted to distinguish between well-established direct or coercive means that countries use to achieve their interests—dubbed hard power—versus more indirect ways countries work to passively align others’ interests with their own. Soft power is getting others to want the outcome that you want, wrote Nye.

Say you and your coworkers take turns choosing where to grab drinks after work every Friday, and the coworker in charge this week has chosen a place you don’t like. A straightforward use of hard power might be refusing to be the driver if they choose that bar, or offering to pick up the first round if you all go somewhere else. On the other hand, a soft power tactic would be forwarding a write-up about a new bar that just opened, convincing your coworker to change their pick.

Soft power is 'getting others to want the outcome that you want,' wrote Nye.

On an international level, hard power is exercised with economic sanctions, military action, and the like. Soft power is more nuanced. Take Cold War-era broadcaster Radio Free Europe. The station, though funded by the US government, was an independent organization focused on broadcasting uncensored, non-Soviet influenced news to Eastern Bloc countries. The dissemination of Western culture, ideologies, and world news helped build internal pressure within the Soviet Union that eventually led to reforms and the country’s dissolution.

But figuring out when and how soft power is effective, as well as quantifying how much soft power a country can bring to task, can be tricky. Nye elaborated in more recent writings that the basis of a country’s soft power isn’t some measurable metric, but comes from a combination of its political values, foreign policies, and culture, and how others value those resources. Additionally, the use of soft power relies on a good relationship between those involved, requiring not only a receptiveness to act on the target’s part, but also influence and persuasion on the actor’s part. Attraction and persuasion, Nye explained, are socially constructed, making measures of effectiveness inherently subjective.

Some of the aspects that make soft power difficult to track and measure also make it difficult to wield. Getting results using soft power means relying on the government you’re targeting to make the changes themselves, which can be slow and unreliable. Nye characterized soft power as hard to use, easy to lose, and costly to reestablish.

So considering all of this uncertainty, what makes soft power a desirable tool in world politics? It takes less effort (and often less money) than hard power tactics. And sometimes it can take little to no effort on the part of the government at all. Take for example the 2008 Olympics in Beijing…

In 2007, director Steven Spielberg sent an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao urging him to take action in the regional conflict engulfing the Darfur region of Sudan. China, one of Sudan’s strongest allies, had yet to take any significant political action toward mitigating the conflict. But after Spielberg—who had been brought in as a creative consultant on the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics—publicized his letter, China sent a high-level diplomat to Sudan to advocate bringing in United Nations peacekeepers.

Soft Power reminds us that America’s influence is inspirational, not confrontational.

Steven Spielberg wasn’t ordered by any governmental agent or organization to take action; he was just a private citizen expressing his interests. But within the frame of soft power politics, he is a de-facto ambassador of US culture; his movies have been watched by generations around the world. As a result he was able to incite action from China, action in line with US foreign diplomatic goals that official channels weren’t able to produce. These results, Nye noted, were the soft power fruits of labor of US policy.

Now, 10 years later, US approval ratings in international polls have dropped as China’s have risen, putting the two countries on par—which some scholars have interpreted as evidence of our decreased soft power. Still, Nye tempered their more dire outlooks by highlighting the separation of many soft power resources, such as our culture and non-governmental organizations, from the government itself.

But what if Nye is wrong? Hwang and Tesori look back on the legacy of the recent US political upheavals and a subsequent shift in the global balance of power from a Chinese perspective 100 years in the future. Soft Power reminds us that America’s influence is inspirational, not confrontational—that, when it comes to politics, the best won battles are the ones you don't have to fight.

Can Music Make Democracy?

Center Theatre Group — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 16:50:00 -0700

Nonetheless, at Center Theatre Group’s Community Conversation Can Music Make Democracy? on April 8, a panel of notable jazz musicians, scholars, and enthusiasts weaved a web of connections between the two seemingly unlikely modes of thought. The event gave historical context to Critical Mass Performance Group’s Block Party at the Kirk Douglas Theatre.

The show was inspired in part by the US State Department’s Jazz Ambassador program. Created in 1956, the program sent distinguished jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie overseas—especially to Iron Curtain countries like Poland—to propagate America’s vision of equality and freedom.

Ameryka playwright and director Nancy Keystone learned that American popular culture, particularly movie Westerns, and music, particularly jazz music, were super important in Poland during the Cold War, she explained at the event. And then during the course of [the play’s] research, I discovered there was a photo exhibition of the Jazz Ambassador program, and so I became instantly intrigued.

Audiences in Poland, in particular, welcomed the Jazz Ambassador program with open arms; during this period, Soviets tried to limit Eastern European access to only traditional art forms like ballet and opera. At a time when Soviet communism loomed over the sanctity of democracy, jazz music served as cultural capital that eventually helped America gain political allies as well.

However, the blending of music and politics and the jazz ambassador program were not without controversy. Panelist Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn, who is working on a documentary about contemporary female jazz horn players, recounted Louis Armstrong canceling his Moscow tour in protest of loose enforcement of school integration laws in Little Rock, Arkansas. The democratic ideas America tried to spread internationally were largely ignored domestically, especially within African American communities.

Littlejohn added that women were not invited to become jazz ambassadors. After the World Wars, a lot of the women who were banned [from the program] were really big overseas, she said. There was a period in the '50s where women were being shunned and told, ‘It’s time for you to go back into the kitchen. It’s time for you to raise some children.’ Gender inequalities persisted throughout the duration of the program, because many feared that women were taking jobs away from men.

Jazz and politics intersect in other ways, too. Speaker Daniel Ho—a Grammy Award-winning producer, musician, and composer from Hawaii—said that jazz, like democracy, is all about listening. He drew parallels between the structure of big band ensembles and the American government: If we as a country listen to other people, and we come to an agreement, Ho said, then that’s a democracy. Conversely, he argued, If we’re a band, and I’m here to impose my will and execute my agenda, that’s a dictatorship. And I don’t know how many jazz musicians will play with me if that was my attitude about music.

Panelist Steve Lehman—saxophonist and professor of music at the California Institute of the Arts—talked about a more direct link between politics and art. I think about people like Paul Robeson, whose life was in danger because of the ways he tried to integrate his political beliefs with his musical output, Lehman said. I think in some cases, when the stakes are really high for musicians and performers across any genre, he explained, music can transcend social boundaries, and listeners can really connect and engage with that.

Although the Jazz Ambassador program has since dissolved, new cultural ambassador programs around the world have taken its place. Ho served as an artist envoy for the US Embassy of Japan in 2011, right after the Tōhoku earthquake, performing in communities that were devastated by the earthquake and tsunai. Other initiatives even involve young people, like the TOMODACHI Honda Cultural Exchange program, which invited Japanese high schoolers to participate in last year’s Rose Parade in California. International programs such as these build upon a reciprocal relationship of cultural exchange among nations—a notion that Ho is especially proud to take part. It feels so special to represent the US, and it gave my life more purpose rather than just playing music, Ho said. I’m proud to be representing America in that way and sharing music and hopefully happiness.

One thing all the panelists agreed on is that jazz music is just one piece in the larger democracy of sound. Jazz, said Ho, is not set and written and structured, so we have to listen to each other. We all have a say in the direction of our country, of our piece of music.

Orientalism and the Portrayal of Asian Americans in Musicals

Center Theatre Group — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 15:57:00 -0700

The March 15, 2018 event, titled “Orientalism and the Portrayal of Asian Americans in Musicals” and co-hosted by Center Theatre Group and East West Players, is part of an ongoing series leading up to the World premiere of David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori’s Soft Power at the Ahmanson Theatre May 3 – June 10, 2018.

Questions surrounding identity—particularly the kind of American identity portrayed in musicals—sat at the crux of conversation. UC Riverside Assistant Professor of Theatre Donatella Galella explained America’s long history of labeling Asian Americans as the perpetual foreigner, an identity that dates back to various racial exclusion laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that set immigration quotas or prohibited specific Asian nationalities from immigrating to America at all. These laws weren’t dismantled until basically 1965 with the Immigration Act, she said.

One effect of these laws and other forms of institutionalized discrimination is a misrepresentation of Asians in theatre—with playwrights often drawing stereotypical caricatures of Asian people and setting them outside of US boundaries. These stories constantly place Asians in Asia or make-believe places, Galella said, which also relates to Orientalism and thinking about Asians as make-believe people.

Marie-Reine Velez, a founding member and producing artistic leader of the Los Angeles theatre collective Artists at Play, elaborated on the danger of such stories in society. They create a hostile attitude toward people, and not just from the people who are not from that culture—not just white Americans thinking about Asian Americans—but how Asian Americans can think about themselves, she said. By contrast, stories about richly drawn Asian Americans are a validation of who we are and that we exist in American society.

Although iconic musicals like The King and I have been known to infantilize and exoticize Asian communities, Esther Chae, a Korean American actress (NCIS, Law and Order) and playwright (So the Arrow Flies), is grateful that they were conceived in the first place. I’m personally glad that that canon of musical theatre exists, even with the problems, Chae admitted. If we don’t even have those stories or characters, we [Asian Americans] don’t get to work. We don’t get to exist. We don’t get to have the dialogue. These shows, she added, are a starting place for representation to evolve and improve.

Velez pointed out that the question of whether or not to love these shows is a relatable crisis for many Asian Americans, including those on the panel. I think that’s where the conflict lies, right? she said. These shows exist. They’re problematic, but they hire our friends, and they hire our colleagues. I’m so happy that people are getting work and that some folks are also being recognized even, winning Tonys or other awards for their performances and helping launch careers, but they’re also perpetuating stereotypes and just a reduction of who we are as people.

How can theatre companies help evolve representation? One suggestion was not only implementing nontraditional casting—where companies cast actors without considering their ethnicity or skin color, particularly for roles that have traditionally gone to white artists—but also ensuring the creative team behind the production is as diverse as the cast. Another idea was for theatre companies to showcase a range of stories throughout the course of the season rather than featuring one large cultural show annually.

It’s about not just having this one show that [companies] feel like is their diversity show, panel moderator and actress Stefanée Martin (The Get Down) said, so they go to their diversity marketing people and their diversity center in their city one time, and then they feel like, ‘Oh, we’ve done our diversity.’

Playwright and panelist Lauren Yee (whose King of the Yees played the Douglas in 2017) said that theatre artists can also make an impact. You have to do your legwork far in advance, she explained. When Yee was first writing her new musical Cambodian Rock Band a few years ago, she kept hearing that the roles of six Asian American actors who also play specific rock band instruments were impossible to cast. Undeterred, Yee reached out to her fellow theatre friends and colleagues for talent and soon realized that it was the easiest thing [to cast] in the world.

I actually keep a spreadsheet, Yee said. I have probably around 500 or 600 Asian American actors across the country that I pull from to be like, ‘OK, you need a male actor in Seattle non-equity? Here’s 30 names.’ Yee stressed the importance of creating and maintaining databases such as these, especially for companies who claim Asian Americans don’t show up to their castings or regularly depend on Asian American communities to provide names when productions call for more diversity.

Chae added that the job requires effort from everyone involved in theatre—not just Asian Americans. It just reminds me of still so much work that we have to do, she said, but not just doing the work, but making sure that the work actually stays in there and that [companies] get responsible for doing their outreach and the work that they should be doing.

Although there is still much to do in improving representation in American theatre, all the panelists remain hopeful. Many of them spoke about the 2015 Broadway musical Allegiance, which follows a Japanese American family after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and places Asian Americans at the forefront both onstage and off-stage. Shows such as this—and Soft Power—help dispel the myth surrounding the elusiveness of Asian American talent. As Yee aptly said, They’re not unicorns. They’re horses, and they’re right there.

Listen to the full Community Conversation.

Four Years, Two Breakfasts, and One Big Commission

Center Theatre Group — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 12:00:00 -0700

Michael Ritchie: Nonprofit regional theatres like Center Theatre Group have become the national theatre of America. Collectively, we’re responsible for not only maintaining the art form but pushing it forward by commissioning and developing and producing new plays. We’re uniquely capable of creating new works on a grand scale, without the commercialized limitations of Broadway, because we can give a creative team enough space to realize something that is truly special. And that’s what I think we’ve done with Soft Power.: David Henry Hwang: About four years ago, Michael met me for breakfast, and made me this amazing offer: he wanted to commission a piece from me, and not only that, there was a slot open, so the piece was guaranteed to be produced. Really, who can say no to that? What I was interested in at the time, and what has continued to remain the seed for the show that’s become Soft Power, were two things. Number one, China’s quest for soft power—for intellectual and cultural influence. China is a nation that increasingly has a lot of hard power; most people kind of feel that China’s likely to be the other major superpower if not the superpower of the 21^st century. And China has this desire to gain soft power, a desire I began to experience. I would get a lot of meetings with Chinese producers or Chinese theatres, since they wanted to create a Broadway show…and I happen to be the only even nominally Chinese person who’s ever written a Broadway show. Nothing ever came of these meetings, but it was interesting to me that you had a system that wants international artistic and cultural influence but is very top-heavy when it comes to authoritarian power and content restrictions. Number two was, I had seen the recent revival of The King and I. I’ve always loved The King and I, it’s been a show that has moved me since I was a kid. But as I’ve gotten older, there’s this complicated feeling where I know it is kind of inauthentic and making a political point subtly—reinforcing the dominance of the West. But it’s done so beautifully that by the end of it I’m still in tears.
Now one of the things that I find most intriguing about Soft Power is that it’s not a mirror to The King and I, but it certainly follows some of the impulse. It wasn’t until I sat with you at breakfast and you reframed it for me through your eyes that I realized that The King and I is actually demeaning to an entire country and a culture. The basic plot is that a white woman comes to this country and saves itself from its own stupidity by teaching the king how to dance and be nice to his children.: This idea that it takes a white nanny to come into Siam or Thailand and teach the king how to bring his nation into the community of civilized countries—that’s not that great. It’s a trope that exists consistently in Western stories about the East. I wrote the first draft of the movie that eventually became Seven Years in Tibet. Any time you get a white person in an Asian country who writes a memoir, somehow they end up becoming the advisor to the ruler. And the question is, when we talk about issues like appropriation, how do you express that, how do you replicate that feeling for a general American audience? If we look at appropriation in a future where China is dominant over the US, then I think we begin to perceive that in a different fashion, because we understand the power context. And that’s what the show’s trying to do—a complicated thing for a musical to achieve.
The first time we talked about the commission, this was going to be a new play—the final show of our 50^th Season at the Mark Taper Forum. At our second meeting though, when we sat down to breakfast again about a year and a half later, you had an expanded idea of what you wanted to do with this play.: I wanted to do a play that becomes a musical. The first 20 minutes of it would be a contemporary comedy, and then that comedy becomes mythologized, and 50 years down the road it becomes the source material for a beloved East-West musical in China. So we are then watching a Chinese musical based on the incident we saw. And that seemed to me to bring together a twist on The King and I and also this exploration of what would it mean for China to gain soft power, and how soft power would manifest itself in the musical form. So I said, Michael, I kind of want to do a musical.
And I was completely intrigued by it. And then you mentioned someone you were thinking of working on it.: It was my dream that we could work with the composer Jeanine Tesori. My thought was, if we pull this off, you should have that same feeling that you do at the end of The King and I, which is, this is kind of not true but it’s so beautiful. So the person I thought of was Jeanine, because she’s a fantastic composer of course, but she’s also a scholar of musical theatre, she understands the form so well.
How did you and Jeanine decide on the style and how the music should come across?: Jeanine says that musicals—and I’ve now incorporated this into the play—are an incredibly powerful delivery system. When the music is great, you kind of let the idea it expresses seep into your heart. Which means that in a show like this, the music has to be as rich and seductive and as reminiscent of classic Broadway as possible. So Jeanine set out to write her most beautiful score, and I think she has. People sometimes asked, is she trying to write in an Asian or Chinese vein? I would say not so much. We’re going for the idea that China 50 years from now really appropriates the American musical form.
Thank you, David. There is nothing better in the world than working on a new musical.: Thank you and Center Theatre Group. You committed to this huge project when we only really had a title. Thanks so much for your faith.

Listen to the full recording of Ritchie and Hwang in conversation on our podcast.

The Politics of Casting

Center Theatre Group — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 11:49:00 -0700

These were among the questions tackled on January 18, 2018 at a Community Conversation titled "Asian American Representation: The Politics of Casting." This was the second of four free events co-hosted by Center Theatre Group and East West Players leading up to the World premiere of David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori’s Soft Power at the Ahmanson Theatre May 3 – June 10, 2018. Soft Power is offering an opportunity for us to explore the questions, themes, and ideas that Hwang has grappled with throughout his career.

One of panelist Amy Hill’s first big roles was on the short-lived mid-1990s TV series All-American Girl, starring Margaret Cho. After that show failed, it took two decades for an Asian American family story to come back to primetime, with the 2015 premiere of Fresh Off the Boat. Panelist Jeff Yang, who co-hosts the Asian American current affairs podcast They Call Us Bruce, is the father of one of that show’s stars. Yang recalled a conversation with an executive before the show aired, who told him, ‘There are so many projects with Asian Americans I would love to make. We are hoping Fresh Off the Boat is a hit so we can make them.’ It was literally stating, we have great ideas with great talent attached that we cannot make until somebody else is successful. Yang added, There’s this conceptual challenge that Hollywood, that every industry, has to overcome: to just think of an Asian American in that space before they’re willing to actually open the door and make that happen.

One notable exception is Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which stars Filipino American Vincent Rodriguez III as the romantic lead, and on which Hill currently appears. The show’s creator grew up in Torrance, explained Hill, and the prom king and queen at her high school were both Asian Americans. She wasn’t thinking, ‘I think this should be diverse.’ She was reflecting her experience, said Hill. These people creating shows, they don’t have any experience with people of color except for as maids and housekeepers and servers.

Nonetheless, panelist Phil Yu, who blogs as Angry Asian Man and co-hosts They Call Us Bruce with Yang, sees a great deal of progress in representation and conversation. For a long time it felt like I was shouting into the void and I was just that guy on the Internet, he said. It now seems like people are listening...and then you see change and reaction happening because of it.

Panelist Alice Tuan, a playwright, asked her fellow panelists if they share Yu’s optimism. Do you all think that because there’s so much more demand for content and because people have a little more agency to choose...there’s going to be more and more diversity, in all genres?

The verdict was unanimous: yes.

Tuan herself is optimistic about the way a new generation of playwrights, including Lauren Yee (King of the Yees) and Young Jean Lee (Straight White Men) are tackling these questions. Her own work is changing, too. I started writing because I wanted to write myself into the culture, she said. Now the project is writing myself so that I am the dominant culture.

Which isn’t to say it’s all been figured out. In the question-and-answer session that concluded the panel, an audience member asked about casting Asians in non-traditional roles.

I think it’s dangerous to approach something as, ‘What are the rules to this and when can we make the exception?’ It matters when it matters, and it doesn’t matter when it doesn’t, said Yu. You have to interrogate all of [the roles] individually. There’s no, ‘Here are the rules to casting, and here are the rules to casting Asian Americans.’ Which means conversations like this one will continue to be necessary.

Setting the Stage for Historical Exploration

Center Theatre Group — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 00:00:00 -0700

Their original pieces include Apollo, a trilogy based on relations between the US space program and Nazi rocket scientists, and a movement piece inspired by the life of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, The Akhmatova Project.

Their latest, Block Party.

As Critical Mass Founding Artistic Director and Executive Director Nancy Keystone explained, the process that produces these works is as sprawling as their subject matter. Unlike other theatre companies, Critical Mass Performance Group initially approaches projects like Ameryka without a script. Instead, the company expands upon an idea—usually generated by Keystone and inspired by an historical event. Then, they sift through piles and piles of research, explained Keystone, that are later translated into movement and dialogue for the stage.

It’s kind of like a seminar in group learning, she said. We do a lot of reading, listen to a lot of music, watch movies, have guest speakers, and take in as much as we can through as many different portals as we can. And then we move into a laboratory situation where we develop the work. The creative process happens organically and collaboratively, with Keystone working closely with actors in script development. [No actor] has a role when we start [developing], Keystone said. We take the research and try to tap into the physical and intuitive. I’ll devise exercises for the actors to try to find some of the information—like different emotional, psychological, or living conditions—through their bodies and imaginations.

It is only after Keystone explores the physical landscape of the piece that she puts text onto the page: Sometimes it’s text that we find from our reading or government documents or poetry, she said. A lot of it is text that I write. We work with the text in the same kind of way. I don’t bring it in in its finished form. We might work on it as a choral piece. We might break it up into a dialogue. We do a lot of editing. From there, the company invites the public to watch works-in-progress, continuing a long collaborative editing process. The end result is a kind of ensemble theatre of the type that has intrigued Keystone since her undergraduate studies at UCLA.

Keystone came up with the idea that became Ameryka after visiting Poland in 2009, where she witnessed the Solidarity trade union win the majority of legislative seats during the country’s 20^th anniversary of holding democratic elections. There was an election poster all over [the country], and it had an image of Gary Cooper from the movie High Noon as the Marshal Will Kane, and instead of holding a gun, he was holding an election ballot, Keystone recalled. It was an image from an old American Western on a Polish election poster, and when I looked into it, I was really blown away by connections between Poland and the US, the influence of Western films on Polish culture and thought, and the relationship between our two countries going back to the Revolutionary War.

Keystone unpacks these political connections throughout Ameryka, with an assortment of characters and storylines intersecting through time and space. Though Ameryka largely unfolds in the shadows of the past, Keystone believes the story becomes illuminated by today’s political climate: The play explores acute issues around freedom of the press, the notion of truth versus propaganda, and around democratic institutions, and the health of democracy, she said. Issues of injustice, the legacy of slavery, and the struggle for a better democracy are always current issues.

What’s an Aswang, Anyway?

Center Theatre Group — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 09:15:00 -0700

The Aswang Phenomenon

Jordan Clark, a Canadian filmmaker who traveled to the Philippines, grew intrigued by the myths of the aswang and created The Aswang Phenomenom—a multi-part documentary about the creature. Clark takes his viewers on a journey, investigating the history of the aswang and interviewing Filipino people who have encountered it.

Aswang Sightings

In May 2015, multiple aswang sightings were reported in central Mindanao. In one instance, the creature took the form of a large dog, entered a couple’s home, and proceeded to viciously bite them. Another report claimed that one creature first appeared as a black cat, shifted to a human, and attacked four people. After a 10-year-old girl died from an alleged aswang attack, residents of Davao del Norte planted weapons strategically to protect their town. Was this just a spate of misrepresented animal attacks? Or aswangs?

CTG Podcast: Filipino Family Myths and Monsters

Hosted by actor, comedian, and writer Alec Mapa, this Center Theatre Group Community Conversation features Bloodletting playwright Boni B. Alvarez, UCLA Associate Professor of Asian American Studies Lucy Burns, and actor Reggie Lee. I grew up hearing about [aswangs] from my Lola [grandmother] and my mom and dad…and all sorts of other vampires and ghosts and werewolves and everything. We were always taught to believe that it was the absolute truth, Mapa explains.

An Aswang on Primetime

As actor Reggie Lee mentions on our podcast, a 2014 episode of the TV show Grimm, Mommy Dearest features the aswang prominently. Lee’s character, Sgt. Wu, investigates a strange attack on a pregnant friend. This creature profile video (caution: it’s a little bloody) offers one interpretation of the aswang in pop culture.

Filipino Mythology Podcast

In this short podcast, RadioActive youth reporter Maria Caoagdan interviews University of Washington Professor Vicente L. Rafael, who specializes in Philippine history, on the country’s mythological belief and its impact on culture and everyday life.

Sundance Sacrifice

The American film Aswang had its World premiere at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival. Aswang (retitled The Unearthing for US distribution) is about a young, unwed pregnant woman who agrees to play a wealthy man’s wife. Unbeknownst to the woman, her mother-in-law plots to sacrifice her unborn child to an aswang. With its low budget and emphasis on gore over horror, Aswang opened to lackluster reviews but exposed American viewers to an alluring part of Filipino culture.

A Filipino American Los Angeles Story

Center Theatre Group — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 09:00:00 -0700

Artistic Director and Founder Jon Lawrence Rivera strives to showcase diverse and adventurous theatre programming, supporting local playwrights like Boni B. Alvarez. Rivera directs Alvarez’s Block Party (onstage March 29 – April 8, 2018), extending a relationship between the company and playwright that began over 10 years ago while Alvarez was still a graduate student.

Jon actually came to my thesis reading for my MFA at USC and was really enamored with the play [Ruby Tragically Rotund], Alvarez recalled, and pretty much within the week committed to producing it, so that was very exciting—to come out of school and know that you’re going to have a production.

Playwrights’ Arena premiered Ruby, Tragically Rotund—the story of a self-described fat girl and her quest for a beauty pageant crown—at The Los Angeles Theatre Center in 2009. The company followed it with Alvarez’s Dallas Non-Stop—set at an American airline call center with a Filipino staff—in 2013. This is the third collaboration we’ve had with Boni, and we hope to have more collaborations with him in the future, said Rivera, who has directed all three plays by the Filipino playwright.

Although Alvarez has found success in developing work at Playwrights’ Arena, he understands the challenges of being a playwright in L.A., especially the difficulties of living in the shadows of film and TV. Because of this, Alvarez has appreciated Rivera’s commitment to the stage and his openness to producing a wide range of scripts. I never really have to self-censor with Playwrights’ Arena, Alvarez said, it’s like whatever I might be writing it could very well have a home at Playwrights’ Arena, and that’s a very unique thing—it’s unheard of.

Since its establishment in 1992, Playwrights’ Arena has worked to broaden representation in the L.A. area—both culturally and artistically. Which is one reason why the company is such a good fit with our Block Party program, which is designed to celebrate Los Angeles theatre. After attending two of the three Block Party productions last year, Rivera grew excited about the whole idea of brotherhood and community fostered by the program, and knew Playwrights’ Arena had to be a part of it. There is this community of artists—as diverse as they can be—working and creating art, creating theatre year-round in Los Angeles, Rivera explained. This participation of Playwrights’ Arena in Block Party really gives us a sense of visibility for an audience that may not know us.

He also feels there is a sense of pride that fills the entire community when different theatres—both local mainstays and companies in the more intimate scene—are able to showcase their work together. Rivera hopes that Bloodletting will serve as an example of a cultural story worth adding to the mix: There are many stories told in the city of Los Angeles, he said, and a Filipino American story is something that is a part of that.

Center Theatre Group News & Blogs

‘Soft Power’: The Show, The Theory, The Inspiration

Can Music Make Democracy?

Orientalism and the Portrayal of Asian Americans in Musicals

Four Years, Two Breakfasts, and One Big Commission

The Politics of Casting

Setting the Stage for Historical Exploration

What’s an Aswang, Anyway?

The Aswang Phenomenon

Aswang Sightings

CTG Podcast: Filipino Family Myths and Monsters

An Aswang on Primetime

Filipino Mythology Podcast

Sundance Sacrifice

A Filipino American Los Angeles Story