Art for the artist's sake

Mu Performing Arts, as many other arts organizations, is built on the idea that performance is about more than simply entertainment. At some point in our lives, most of us have been affected on an emotional level by a play, a film, a piece of music, or any of the myriad of other arts that accentuate our world. Sitting in an audience, we feel a connection with the characters and the story that draws us into a different world, or even gives us a greater understanding of our own.

But what about the actors on the stage? The playwrights? The other creative artists involved with bringing a production to life?

Throughout Mu’s 18-year history, we’ve heard a common expression of gratefulness from our Asian American artists. Mu gives them a place to call home, a place where they can display their talents in a supportive environment, a place where they can tell their own stories without the added pressure of navigating the ever-present issue of race in casting. On our stage, they are not just creating an experience for the audience, but living it for themselves.

The power of performance is the inspiration behind Mu’s Stories Program, a workshop series for youth that explores personal experiences through creative expression. Over the past year, Mu teaching artists have worked with a variety of schools and Asian American youth organizations to help students develop plays based on events, observations, and their own memories. With the Stories Program, students are given the same opportunity that Mu actors get when they take the stage: the opportunity to share who they are, and communicate their thoughts and feelings on their own terms. More than simply telling a story to an audience, they are empowering themselves.

Recently, Mu’s Artistic Director Rick Shiomi traveled to California to work with students from the Korean Resource Center in Los Angeles. At the end of the weekend-long workshop, students performed their work and held a discussion about their experience in the Stories Program. You can view a video of their performance below. If you don’t have 47 minutes to watch the entire video, try 14:25 for a representative example.

MU Workshop-h264 from Korean Resource Center on Vimeo.

Seeing through color in casting

In the current issue of Stage Directions magazine, Iris Dorbian writes about the ever-present issue of colorblind and other “non-traditional” casting in theater. While we live in a 21st century world where an increasingly multicultural society is a reality, many theater companies still struggle with reflecting that reality on stage. . . and with a variety of consequences. On one end of the spectrum, theaters that only rarely cast non-white actors may be labeled as “gimmicky,” trying to capitalize on a pretense of equal opportunity. On the other, those that regularly feature multi-racial casts may be expected to explain themselves and their specific casting decisions to a public that in many ways still views African Americans, Latinos, Asians, etc on stage as some kind of ulterior political or moral statement, even if the theaters are simply choosing the best performer for the role.

Somewhere in this discussion of cast and color lurks an even more frustrating issue: white actors in roles designed for actors of other races. Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s may have been bad enough in 1961, but it is a practice that still occurs today.

Just this past March, Mu Performing Arts and Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) held a discussion about the issue of “yellow face” in theater in response to CTC’s production of Mulan Jr, which had cast white actors as Chinese characters. While CTC explained the trouble in hiring Asian actors to fill those roles—it was an unprecedented and prolific few months of Asian American theater in the Twin Cities, with three shows requiring heavily Asian casts going on more-or-less all at once—the topic does stir up a variety of questions:

• Is the apparent “shortage” of Asian American actors a result of a theater culture that does not encourage their talent, or perhaps a higher expectation of the level of talent an Asian American actor must possess in order to be deemed worthy for a role?


• In presenting a culturally specific story, what level of responsibility does the theater have in maintaining cultural relevance and sensitivity?


• Is it more “acceptable” for Asian characters to be portrayed by white actors in the theater world than, for example, an African American or Latino character would be? Why?


• What role does the audience play in the way that Asians are portrayed on stage?

At Mu, we pride ourselves in creating opportunities for Asian American actors that they may not have elsewhere. But we also look forward to a day when we have to compete with theaters built in the traditional Western canon for their talents, when we have to lose an actor to a rival company because he or she was chosen to play Hamlet.

Answers. . . anyone?

I have two girls who love singing, acting and performing. My oldest is 10 and my little one, 7 years old. They were recently in a production of The King and I, which ran at the Bloomington Civic Theater, and just loved the experience. After the show’s run the girls excitingly asked me what and when their next project might be. Being a dedicated mother I began surfing the net for any opportunity I could find for Asian children. My search led me to what seemed to be a million pages. It was difficult to distinguish between the sites that were reputable and those that were questionable but I eventually found my way to trusted casting web pages such as backstage.com and actorsaccess.com.

Throughout this process I learned how complex the industry is, but more importantly I learned that there are very few opportunities for Asians, especially Asian children. I was greatly discouraged and wondered how it could be that a group as diverse as this and with so many amazing stories to tell could have so little representation in the entertainment industry. This endeavor has left me with many more questions than I started out with.

Can people not relate to Asian stories and images?

Is the Asian experience not associated with the American experience?

Are Asians not perceived as being as talented?

Is the Asian “look” not sellable?

When a call for audition states, “diversity is very important to us,” is that just window dressing?

We are so much more than Kung Fu and chop suey. America’s Best Dance Crew (ABDC) has shown us that Asians can dance (and darn well). Ang Lee has proven that Asians can direct Oscar worthy movies that are not martial arts related. Comedians such as Bobby Lee and Aziz Ansari have demonstrated that Asians are hilarious, and the list goes on and on. This is why I am so dumbfounded to learn that commercials rarely look to cast Asians to sell goods, movies roles are seldom written for Asians, or stories about the Asian experience (outside of war films) are rarely developed for mainstream America’s viewing pleasure.

What do you do when you have smart, sweet, respectful and articulate children who want to do something but can’t because their image is not mainstream enough? How do you tell your Asian American children they are not “American” enough to play an American? So many more questions than answers. . .

by Kaohly Her