"Joy Luck Club" Stirs Family Memories for the Holidays

by Patricia Lamkin
Originally published December 5, 2008 in Asia the Journal of Culture and Commerce. Photo by Michael Lamont.

Mothers and daughters: Emily Kuroda, Jennifer Chang, Deborah Png, Katherine Lee, Karen Huie, Celeste Den, Elaine Kao, and Cici Lau.

East West Players could not have better timed their moving production of THE JOY LUCK CLUB, adapted by Susan Kim from the best selling 1989 novel by Amy Tan. The production, which opened on November 12th, comes on the heels of both religious and secular autumn celebrations - Halloween, Samhain, All Saints, All Souls, and the various Festival of the Dead observances that memorialize and acknowledge our ancestral bonds.

China, too celebrates the dead in their Ghost Festivals. This spirit, along with the culturally ingrained ancestral veneration teachings of Confucius and Laozi, are at the core of Kim's play.

The play unfolds through the eyes of four China-born mothers and their American-born daughters. The modern, free-spirited young women, (June Woo, Waverly Jong, Lena St. Clair and Rose Hsu Jordan) struggle to understand and often reject the traditional and seemingly out-dated ideas of their mothers, (Suyuan Woo, Lingo Jong, Ying-Ying St. Clair and An-Mei Hsu). As the mothers work through dark memories and share their own life struggles, the cultural and generational gaps begin to close.

The many introspective monologues of Act I make for a slow paced first act. Tan's broad-sweeping novel has been greatly condensed by Kim, but it is still a lot to take in even if one has read the book or seen the film. The audience is being introduced to eight-plus characters, and learning to identify each one. The strongest moments of Act I are the lighthearted ensemble scenes such as those around the Mahjong table. Here we are more grounded in the present, and the exposition is easier to absorb and more energized.

Composer Nathan Wang brilliantly opens with the floating sounds of isolated instruments that gradually blend together, beginning with a solo cello, joined by a flute and then a piano. These beautiful and lilting melodies reinforce the dreamy nature of revisiting old memories.

By the second act, with the major exposition out of the way, we can follow the stories and characters with more ease, and Wang's thematic music feels more grounded to each scene. Director Jon Lawrence Rivera's set and costume team likewise guide us along. Dori Quan's costumes help us put two and two together by pairing each mother-daughter set in matching color palettes. The magnificent set, by John H. Binkley, has an urban brick apartment wall with fire escape and balcony as a backdrop, offset by an ancient giant scroll that sprawls across the stage. Beginning high up on one side of the stage, the scroll comes down flat across the stage floor, and ends in a curl on the opposite side. A character name and title for each story is projected on the scroll, which further helps to keep track of the many flashbacks of the play. Flashbacks are always tricky, and Rivera handles them well, however it is not always clear how old the characters are or the time period of their memories.

The women of the cast offer strong, ensemble performances. Jennifer Chang's disturbingly weak-willed Rose is empowered by her long-suffering mother An-Mei Hsu (Emily Kuroda). Celeste Den is commanding as Waverly Jong, whose mother Lindo (Karen Huie) shines with Chinese common sense; Elaine Kao exudes quiet frustration as failed pianist June Woo, bucking under high expectations from her headstrong mother Suyuan (Cici Lau) until the revelation of a great family secret; and Ying-Ying St. Clair (Deborah Png) painfully teaches her daughter Lena (Katherine Lee) the value of worldly innocence. The men equally hold their own: Edward Gunawan is endearing as Tin Jong as he woos Lindo, and outrageously fun as the flamboyant Moon Lady. Ben Lin's Canning Woo delivers a profoundly moving monologue about his dead wife's lost daughters, and David Stanbra is the perfect embarrassment as Richard Shields who does all the wrong things when meeting his Chinese in-laws.

Despite the daunting time and location shifts, the emotional power of the stories is palpable; resonating long after the play is over. With Thanksgiving and the winter holidays around the corner, EWP's JOY LUCK CLUB does much to affirm a time of year in the United States in which paying attention to family matters most.

The run of JOY LUCK CLUB has been extended through Sunday, December 21, at the David Henry Hwang Theater at the Union Center for the Arts at 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Performances are on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 2pm. For ticket information, call East West Players at (213) 625-7000 or visit www.eastwestplayers.org.

An American Filmmaker Takes on J-Horror in “Tales From the Dead”

By Patricia Lamkin
Special to Asia

Jason Cuadrado loves horror film of the Asian persuasion, especially the genre known as “J-Horror” (Japanese horror). So he decided to write his own J-Horror script, and as the ultimate homage, shoot the entire film in Japanese. The fact that he isn’t Japanese, or can’t speak a word of the language didn’t stop him.

Cuadrado squirreled away over $40,000 for his low-budget indie, “Tales from the Dead” working as a web designer. Using Craigslist he found someone to translate his script into Japanese, and posted for his cast. By the January 2007 shoot date he had, “only 17 days to complete principal photography, a rapidly dwindling bank balance, a cast of thirty Japanese actors, and no translator on set," he said.


Director Jason Cuadrado discusses a scene with actor Sachiko Hayashi.

Most of the actors spoke English. But when they spoke their lines Cuadrado couldn’t understand them. He humbly credits them for making everything work. "I knew where they were by what they were doing,” he said, and even found certain advantages to this. “When you write and direct you can get so locked in on your words and how they should sound. And I didn’t have that," he said. He told them he could only offer the direction and the story. “I knew that the authenticity would come from them. And they were amazing," he said.

Despite its contemporary name, J-Horror has its origins in Japan’s Edo Period (1603-1868) in the ghostly folktales known as “kwaidan,” which tell of vengeful, earth-bound ghosts called yūrei. Traditionally yūrei are dressed in white - a burial practice still used in Japan today. Probably the most famous J-Horror yūrei is the terrifying girl who comes out of the t.v. in the 1998 nail-biter “Ringu,” (Ring) directed by Hideo Nakata. Other popular examples are “Honogurai Mizu No Soko Kara” (Dark Water), and “Ju-On” (The Grudge). All of these have been remade in the U.S. with major female stars like Naomi Watts and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

While fear is universal, there are cultural differences between Japanese and American horror. "[With] American horror you spend so much of your film trying to convince people you’ve seen something, and everyone thinks your crazy for like an hour," said Cuadrado. "In Japanese horror you would say, 'I saw a ghost' and they’d say, 'Of course you did. Let’s see what it wants.'"

"We’re just born with it, being Buddists," said actress Leni Ito who plays the medium Tamika in “Tales.” “We’re just born with 'oh, that’s a spirit, and the spirits are always with you,' so it was kind of a natural thing for me to get into the role," she said.

"Tales" will premiere at HBO’s 2008 New York International Latino Film Festival, July 22-27th. Cuadrado will speak on a festival panel about Latino filmmakers and horror. He’s excited about the premiere, but a little worried how a Japanese horror film will go over at a Latino festival. “They may just want to skewer me," he laughed, "because I’m going to have to explain why I made it in Japanese.”

For more about “Tales From the Dead,” and future festival showings, visit talesfromthedead.com.

Tales From the Dead: You Just Crossed Into the J-Zone

Film Review by Patricia Lamkin
Special to Asia

Jason Cuadrado may call his first film, “Tales From the Dead,” a J-Horror homage, but it gives a nostalgic nod to his other fascination, “The Twilight Zone.” “It was so great!” Cuadrado said. “Bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people. J-Horror works with the same themes, so they seem like a natural match.”

Filmed in Japanese with an all-Japanese cast, “Tales” is an anthology of four ghost stories: Home Sweet Home, Chalk, The Dirty Business of Time and Shoko the Widow. The stories are introduced by the character Tamika, (Leni Ito), a young medium who can hear and see the dead. As the film opens, a disgruntled wife named Shoko (Nikki Takei) goes out to get away from her disappointing husband Jiro (Hiro Abe). Tamika picks up the hitchhiking Shoko who has become stranded in a remote wooded area due to a flat tire. As they drive in the night to the next town, Tamika tells each of the tales, based on her personal involvement, or what the spirits have told her.

A spine tingling, and engrossing drama, “Tales” happily foregoes the gratuitous gore and violence of low budget horror films today. “I didn’t personally approach this as a horror movie, or character,” said actress Leni Ito. Nikki Takei agreed. “What I liked about this script was in growing up in Japan, ghost stories are always a dark spirit with a grudge, ” she said, “but this is more about Karma.”

In the first tale, "Home Sweet Home," Tamika and her sister Manami (Kiyoko Kamai), investigate a haunting at the home of a couple (Eiji Inoue, Masami). The couple has been celebrating the return of their troubled runaway son Kenji (Daisuke Tomita), found mysteriously paralyzed in a hospital, unable to even speak. As Tamika walks through the house, she “sees” that the previous owners were murdered there, and are connected to the new residents by an ironic twist of fate. With J-Horror, “you always walk in, and it seems like a detached haunting,” Cuadrado explained. “Then as the story progresses, you realize there are people attached to the haunting, and the ghost is trying to say something, or get back at the person who caused it,” he said.

But “Tales” can be as much about complex characters as it is about ghosts. For example, in "Shoko the Widow" a woman is pressured by a “Widow’s club” to kill her husband. “My character wanted to step up in her life to marry someone who is successful and it didn’t happen,” said Takei. “So she’s not vicious, or evil, but she’s frustrated.”

The four tales resemble the short narrative format of “Zone,” but the hallmark feature is the framing story (Tamika and Shoko driving) shot in black and white, while the stories remain in color. Like Rod Serling, Tamika narrates with a resonating detachment, which Ito conveys disarmingly well, with a creepiness that defies her youth.

In the Faustian tale, "The Dirty Business of Time," a suicidal man named Yoshi (Yutaka Takeuchi) meets a stranger who offers to buy moments of his time for large sums of money. “Almost all of 'Dirty Business' was shot as if it were on stage,” Cuadrado said, emulating the Zone's fifties studio format. The classic story is balanced with gritty film noir acting from Takeuchi and Mark Ofuji as Ebisu, the Devil.

It's not just the innovative “J-Zone” blend, or A-film performances that make “Tales From the Dead” rise above the nihilistic chop and shock low-budget screamers that inundate audiences today. It's the character-driven, well-woven tales that are as much film noir thriller as they are horror. And they actually have a message. “The dead speak,” says the films tagline. I strongly suggest giving the dead of “Tales” a good listen.

Civic Light Opera for South Bay Cities Presents a Visually Stunning “Miss Saigon”

By Patricia Lamkin
Special to Asia

It was a full house at the 1457-seat Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center for the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities May 3rd opening of “Miss Saigon.” The production, which runs through May 18th, comes complete with a life-sized helicopter, pink Cadillac and a sizable cast of 31, half of which are APA actors. Based on Giacomo Puccini’s famous opera “Madame Butterfly,” Alain Boublil and Claude Michel Schonberg’s pop opera transfers the cross-cultural love story between an Asian courtesan and an American officer from 1890’s Nagasaki to the Vietnam War in the chaotic days leading up to the fall of Saigon.

Director and Associate Producer Stephanie A. Coltrin included several “Miss Saigon” alumni in her cast, from national tours and Broadway. Veterans Eric Kunze and Jennifer Paz, revisit their roles from the First National Tour, bringing some depth to their stock romantic leads. As the handsome G.I., Kunze breathes life into toy soldier Chris, while Paz’s powerful voice adds emotional punch to Kim’s defiant ingénue. Broadway vet Bonifacio Deoso. Jr. charismatically recreates the hard-hearted Thuy, yet still evokes our sympathy for the jilted cousin once betrothed to Kim. Misty Cotton, also coming from Broadway and the First National Tour, returns to CLO as Chris’ troubled wife Ellen. Cotton is well cast - the potency of her voice giving a slightly overbearing quality to her character. One of the highlights of the production is Kevin Bailey as the Engineer. Bailey maintains a consistently high performance level in a very demanding role, selling the French-Vietnamese barker with the shrewdness of a P.T. Barnum.

It was my first time to see and hear “Miss Saigon,” and it’s not my favorite musical. I found the recitative (sung dialog) at times onerous, and the overall score lacking the neatly woven leit motifs of Boublil and Schonberg’s predecessor, “Les Miserables.” Richard Maltby and Boublil’s prosaic lyrics at times venture into the cliché, like Chris’s declaration, “Christ, I’m an American, how could I fail to do good?” But memorable duets with counter melodies are plentiful, the highlight of this production being I Still Believe between leading ladies, Kim (Paz) and Ellen (Cotton).

While “Miss Saigon” may not be the perfect musical, it famously makes up for its shortcomings in spectacle, and the CLOSBC production serves up a feast for the eyes. Technical Director Christopher Beyries effectively coordinates the talents of Set Designer Lucky Cardwell, Lighting Designer Darrell Clark, and Sound Designer John Feinstein, to create a visually stunning theatrical experience. From the show’s convincing opening illusion of a helicopter flying over our heads, to the “real thing” appearing for the chaotic G.I. exodus in the Act I finale, the stage is always filled with vibrant color, texture and beautiful compositions. Despite some unpolished moments from the 18-piece orchestra, conduced by Musical Director Alby Potts, the dancers, lead by Dance Captain, Mark Oka, deliver the stylized movements of Choreographer Karen Nowicki with aplomb, whether performing the militaristic movements of the Viet-cong in The Morning of the Dragon, or the Vegasy glitz of the Engineer’s American Dream.

For Executive Director and Producer James Blackman III, “Miss Saigon” represents a return to the epic style shows CLO was once known for, and greener pastures since 9/11. “This is a very good show for us, and business is really good,” he said. “I couldn’t be happier with the quality, I couldn’t be happier with the cast, and for me, this has been a really long time coming.” Established in 1991, the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities went on to become the largest civic light opera in Southern California. But after 9/11, audiences “disappeared,” said Blackman, because they were, “so terrified by Fox news screaming out orange terror alerts, and our proximity between the harbor and the airport – it really frazzled my market. It’s been a tough 6 years. This is the first time [since then] I’ve done something big, and broad and epic-y,” he said.

Blackman attributes the production’s success to Director Stephanie Coltrin’s vision, and proudly points out that she is the first woman to direct “Miss Saigon” in the United States. “It’s always directed by a man,” he said. “I think the estrogen point of view of ‘Miss Saigon’ is brilliant,” he said. In the seedy Dreamland Night Club opening, Coltrin, “moves those prostitutes as texture and negative opportunity, as opposed to sexually titillating,” Blackman explained. “The prostitution is looked at as a last resort, as opposed to, from a male point of view, ‘oh look, naked girls.’ Taking the familiar narrative of the Vietnam War, Coltrin, “emotionally played [it] one foot back, and the love story is played one foot forward. That’s where we get so much tenderness,” he said.

Tickets to “Miss Saigon” range in price from $40 to $60. For more information, visit www.civiclightopera.com or call (310) 372-4477. CLOSBC is a not-for-profit cultural arts institution dedicated to the presentation of uniquely American musical art forms.

Jennifer 8 Lee Goes “On the Road” for Chinese Food

by Patricia Lamkin
Originally published in Asia the Journal of Culture and Commerce, April 18, 2008
Photo courtesy of Jennifer 8 Lee

“There are actually more Chinese restaurants in this country, than McDonalds, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Wendy’s combined,” said Jennifer 8 Lee at a recent presentation in Pasadena. With that opening statement, and the aid of a projected photo documentary, Lee began sharing her amusing anecdotal journey across six continents, in which she uncovered Chinese culinary mysteries big and small. The result of her 18 months of travels and research: The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (Twelve Books), wherein Lee argues that Chinese food might be more American than apple pie.

Before beginning her talk, the New York Times reporter, dubbed as a “conceptual scoop artist" by NPR, held up her digital camera to add the audience at Vromans bookstore to her fortunecookiechronicles.com blog. Yes, now even we will be part of her story. Having covered such heavy topics as crime, politics, poverty, the environment, and technology, Lee takes on her latest– Chinese food - with as much passion and vigor.

Lee’s fascination with Chinese food began on March 30th, 2005, the day that the 110 Powerball players won second place. “It happened all across the country, not just in one locale,” she said, “so it wasn’t just like one group using the same number.” When the winners came to collect their money the next day, and were asked where they got their numbers, one after another, each revealed, “from a fortune cookie.” Lee was so intrigued by this that she decided, “I’m going to find the factory where that came from,” as well as the winners and restaurants.

And so she set out “on the road,” like a Chinese American version of Charles Kuralt, reporting the off-beat, small town encounters, chocked full of quaint tales life Americana, or oddball trivia of Chinese culinary history. For example, who was General Tso, and was “General Tso’s Chicken” really his favorite dish? The answer: He was a military hero who helped end the Taiping Rebellion, and no, he did not eat the sweet and spicy fried chicken dish that bears his name. In fact, explains Lee, in Tso’s rural hometown of Xiying in Hunan province, his descendants have never even heard of the dish. Why? It's American.

Lee found this to be a recurring theme with other dishes as well, and it became the message of her book. She wanted people reading the book to think twice about what it means to be American. “A lot of this food that we think of as exotic or foreign is in fact largely indigenous to America,” said Lee. “Chop Suey, General Tso’s Chicken, Fortune Cookies, Beef with Broccoli, guess what? Mostly served in America, Chinese people look at it and are very confused,” she said.

While Kuralt went in search of the unsung American heroes, Lee found a few of her own along the way, such as the Powerball winner in Wyoming who founded the International Elvis Presley Fan Club at age 16. “She actually has a lot of hand written letters from Evis from when he was serving in Germany,” Lee said. “And he is a very bad speller.” Then of course there was Steve Yang, the guy in San Francisco who actually single handedly coordinates the writing and printing of all the tiny fortunes made for fortune cookies in the U.S. He hires writers whose ideas come from American movies and popular culture rather than ancient Chinese proverbs. One of Lee's favorites: "Try not, do, or do not, there is no try," which is of course not Confucius, but the Jedi Master Yoda. Lee also celebrates the humble, colorful places she passed though, like Caledonia, Minnessota, population 2, 965, – a place Lee cannot resist revealing is the “wild turkey capital” of the state.

Born in New York City, Lee attended Harvard University, where she took after the rest of her number loving family and studied economics and applied math. But it was journalism that was her true calling. “I had an epiphany the summer between high school and college, that what I wanted to do for the rest of my life was to be a journalist,” she said. “It was a high school summer journalism workshop. I was interviewing a young guy who had tried to commit suicide twice because he was he was a young, gay, black teenager. And literally in the middle of the conversation as he was telling me about his attempts, I was like, ‘I could do this for the rest of my life.’

As for her obsession with Chinese food and quest for those fortune cookie makers, she explained that it was Freudian. “I realized that it was ultimately a journey to understand myself,” she said. “I am Chinese American. I get this question all the time, especially in New York City, where the taxi driver asks you, ‘Where’re you from?’ and I’m like, ‘I’m from here.’ And he’s like, ‘No, no, where’re you really from?’ I’m like, ‘I really am born and raised in Manhattan.’ And I know what they’re asking. Sometimes if I’m in a good mood I’ll give in, and I’m like, ‘I’m genetically Chinese.’ The point is, someone may look at me and think that I am foreign, but if you close your eyes you clearly hear someone who is American.” But with Lee, it is not just a matter of how she sounds, but all of those uniquely American things that appealed to her “on the road.” That for me said it all.

Dengue Fever Shares Musical Journey

by Patricia Lamkin
Originally published in Asia the Journal for Culture and Commerce, April 4, 2008. Photo courtesy Tracy Blackburn.


Dengue Fever’s Cambodian rock is looming large these days. This rising alternative L.A. band has been touring, getting on film soundtracks and was recently featured on NPR. But the real fascination is their multi-faceted music, and its biggest influence: the sounds of 60's Cambodian pop singers Ros Sereysothea and Sinn Sisamouth, and their Khmer spins on Western rock favorites.

After the takeover by the communist Khmer Rouge in 1975, Ros and Sinn, along with many other Cambodian musicians were tragically murdered or died in labor camps. The bloody Pol Pot regime left an estimated 1.5 million people dead; music was banned and many recordings destroyed. Cambodia's musical traditions were virtually lost.

In the moving documentary, “Sleep Walking Through the Mekong,” director John Pirozzi traces Dengue Fever’s 2005 musical pilgrimage to Cambodia, where they honored the music they had come to love so well, by letting the people of Cambodia hear it again. Band members Ethan Holtzman, Zac Holtzman, David Ralicke, and Senon Williams attended a recent screening at the Echo Park Film Center, to talk about their musical influences, and Cambodian adventure.

“The whole film was shot in 10 days, and it was this intense experience because we were doing so much every day,” said Willliams, the band’s bassist. “The word spread that we were there, and the Cambodian culture is real warm, so for us it was just exciting, and like open arms.” “It was like making an elaborate home movie,” said farfisa player Ethan Holtzman.

It was during a six-month backpacking trip through Southeast Asia in the 90’s, that Holtzman first heard Khmer pop music. He loved it. When he got back to L.A., he and his guitarist brother Zac decided to form a band based on Ros and Sinn’s musical style. They contacted their longtime friend, Williams to sit in on auditions for the lead singer. Williams, too, had visited Cambodia, back in 1995. “I got this panicked phone call from Zac saying, 'oh man, we've got all these singers lined up, can you play bass?'” Williams recalled. “And the funny thing was that I knew the tunes already. I had collected stacks of tapes. Next thing you know, I'm sitting in, and next thing you know, I'm in.”

The singer who won the audition was native Cambodian Chhom Nimol, whose lilting voice had made her a regular performer for the Cambodian King and Queen back home. She also had musical ties to Sinn Sisamouth: her father had performed with the “King of Khmer Music” himself.

Like their Cambodian mentors, Dengue Fever has taken the traditional vocal and melodic elements of Khmer brought in by Chhom, and fused it with 60's American surf music, R&B and the haunting distortions of psychedelic rock. To this mix they add a hodge-podge of international and 60's styles. "We're all into 60's,” said sax player Ralicke, “Ethiopian music as well,” he said. The songs are written mostly in English, translated by Chhoml and a Cambodian musician in Washington D.C. they found on the Internet who speaks fluent English. “We'll send him English lyrics and then he'll translate them into Khmer,” Williams said, “and then Nimol will chop those up again, and there you have it - a song.”

As the Cambodian audiences in the film heard their old familiar songs, they joyfully sang along, “We played everything over there,” said Williams, “but I think it was the old Cambodian stuff that folks really reacted to.” Ralicke helped put this into perspective. “It's like the equivalent of our Beatles songs, you know,” he said. According to the documentary, the music is ingrained in Cambodian culture, and represents a time for the people when life was good and prosperous.

The devastation left by the Khmer Rouge is freshly felt in the film, as the band explores the city of Phnom Penh, and visits a music school devoted to preserving Cambodian musical traditions and dances. The school was located in a ghetto apartment building. “It was basically a gutted building where it was just packed,” said Williams. “People were cooking in the hallways, and we go into this room, and it's all these little kids that are singing amazingly,” he said. “I don't know if the movie fully captures what it was like at [the school],” said Ralicke, “because they performed for a while for us, before we did anything. It was pretty overwhelming. They were exceptional,” he said.

The film also shows the band playing with some of the surviving music masters of Cambodia. With the DVD release of the film will come a soundtrack album. “Not all the master musicians we played with are in the film,” said Williams, “there's going to be a lot more of our collaborations with them on the soundtrack.”

Now the band is gearing up for a European summer festival tour to promote their latest album, Venus on Earth. Each song is like a wonderful 60’s “flashback.” The droning guitar and farfisa organ of “Seeing Hands” is reminiscent of the Doors, with echoes of Henry Mancini in the guitar and sax combo of “Sober Driver.” The toe-tapping duet between Chhom and Zac Holtzman in “Tiger Phone Card,” conjures pleasant images of Frankie and Annette singing in a beach party film.

An audience member remarked about a Cambodian man in the film who said Dengue Fever should play in all the different provinces. “He was saying how it was very important for their county, and it's very healing,” said Zac Holtzman, “and we're trying to act on that - that was one of the most important lines in the whole film,” he said.

For more information on Dengue Fever’s upcoming tours, or screenings at Echo Park Film Center, visit: http://www.myspace.com/denguefevermusic, and
http://www.echoparkfilmcenter.org/

Handicapped Actor Follows His Dream

by Patricia Lamkin
Originally published in Asia the Journal of Culture and Commerce, February 15, 2008.

Kama (Joseph Kim) and Keiko (Sachiko Hayashi) comfort Namiye (Mari Ueda) in East West Players premiere of "Voices from Okinawa," by Jon Shirota. Photo by Michael Lamont.

East West Players (EWP) has announced the World Premiere production of “Voices From Okinawa,” starring Joseph Kim, an accomplished actor who also happens to be hard of hearing. This will mark Kim’s first major role on stage.

Artistic Director Tim Dang was first exposed to Kim’s talent from his work in the workshop reading of “Voices from Okinawa” back in March, 2007, and was aware of his impairment during casting. "It was never a factor in the [casting] process,” said Dang. “He is a strong actor who plays the role extremely well and that is what matters. Because it was never an issue to him, it was never an issue with us."

Kim portrays the complex character Kama Hutchins, an American of one quarter Okanawan descent. “The character goes back to Okinawa to discover his Asian roots,” said Kim. “He's proud to be Asian, but his knowledge of his culture and [American-Okinawan] relations is just surface deep.” As Kama learns more about the Okinawa people, he is able to mediate between the two cultures. “This is exactly what happened to me when I went back to Korea. Even my aunt in the play is similar to my aunt back in Korea, whom I lived with. She is suffering from Alzheimer’s now and this play is dedicated to her.”

For Kim, who has been 40% deaf in both ears since birth, the experience with EWP has been, “amazing and professional,” he said. “Tim Dang is a master at the craft of directing, and I think this in part is due to the fact that he was also trained as an actor. The best directors were all actors,” he said, citing Elia Kazan as a famous example. In working with directors, Kim has learned that despite any preconceptions they may have about his disability, "if I make good strong choices from the beginning they'll know what I am capable of."

Kim doesn’t feel his hearing entitles him to special treatment. Letting people know about it is more out of courtesy to them. “I know from experience that it helps others to know that I’m not ignoring them if my back is turned to them when they speak to me,” he said. “I simply can't hear them and if they know this in advance their feelings don't get hurt.”

Despite the challenges, Kim has learned to work with his handicap as an actor, and knows he must raise the bar in what he brings to the stage. “I HAVE to pay attention more onstage due to my impairment,” he said. “This is just a reality.” For example, if he can’t hear his fellow actors, “I have to read lips or just follow the basic flow so I know when to come in with my line,” he said. “[But] I think it's made me a better actor and more grateful of the faculties I do have.”

Kim did not always pursue his dream of acting. He started out as a movie columnist and editor for the International Herald Tribune/Joonang Ilbo Newspaper based in Seoul, Korea. But he soon found out that journalism was not his true calling. “There is a book called ‘The Artist's Way’ that discusses the issue of ‘the career of our dreams’ vs. ‘the shadow career,’” he said. “When we're afraid to go into the career we ‘really’ want, we instead go into a career that mirrors our dream job, which is called the ‘shadow career.’ In my case, acting was my dream job, but I was too scared to go into it due to the lack of financial security. So instead I chose the next best thing, which was to write a movie column,” he said. But the monotony of rushing to meet one deadline after another only made Kim miserable. “Plus, I was terrible at writing,” he said.

It wasn’t until Kim joined a local theatre production of Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap," that he realized how much he wanted to be an actor. “While onstage I felt an excitement that was so absent in my ‘shadow career’ of journalism. I quit the next day and moved back to the states to start training,” he said. Since then Kim has appeared on ABC’s Golden Globe nominated drama "Brothers and Sisters" and CBS’s Emmy Award winning soap, "The Young and the Restless."

Kim attributes much of his success to powerful role models in his life, especially a white-haired cop named George Hardman, who was his childhood karate teacher. “One day he pulled me aside and told me, ‘Joey, you're a good kid and you're damn good. Don't let anyone ever tell you that you’re not,’” Kim said. “Probably the most proud I've ever felt in my life. His encouragement gave me self-confidence,” he said, “but he also put me in my place when I got out of line. Self-confidence with humility are like peanut butter and jelly.”

Despite a Master of Fine Arts degree in acting from UCLA School of Theatre, Film & Television, Kim has strong feelings about graduate study for actors. For aspiring actors, he recommends a more nitty-gritty approach: “Acting has to be learned on your feet,” he said. “[Graduate school] is like having a ‘shadow career.’ Instead of taking the plunge and becoming a poor actor, we take the softer road and spend 3 years in a make-believe bubble.” Meanwhile those who took the other route, “already have 3 years more experience in networking, getting an agent/manager and booking jobs,” he said. “Real work and a side acting class provide the groundwork you need to get up and running.”

For Kim, those classes were with Los Angeles teachers Salome Jens and Lesly Kahn. Salome Jens, who studied under Lee Strasberg, is member of the Actor's Studio and, “a regular Broadway headliner,” he said. “Lesly Kahn is probably the most successful teacher in Hollywood today. Both of these women have been role models, and like my cop karate teacher instrumental in all my successes,” he said.

And for those who are disabled, who have a particular goal or dream they wish to pursue, Kim has some powerful advice: “I'd tell them the same thing a D.C. cop told a shy, angry kid so many years ago... ‘You're perfect just the way you are, don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.’ Sometimes just hearing that we are is all we need to strive for greatness.”

“Voices from Okinawa” runs from February 13th to March 9th, 2008 at the David Henry Hwang Theater at the Union Center for the Arts, 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. EWP holds an American Sign Language-interpreted performance for every production. The ASL-interpreted performance of Voices from Okinawa will be held, Sunday, March 2nd, 2008. Tickets are $20 for deaf and hard of hearing patrons. For tickets call East West Players at (213) 625-7000 or visit www.eastwestplayers.org.

Kama (Joseph Kim) and Keiko (Sachiko Hayashi) waltz as the students spy on them. Photo by Michael Lamont.