2004
Five skilled actors enact post World War II Japanese brides of Americans – facing military prejudice, leaving home, crossing the ocean, enduring 20 years in Kansas.
Read MoreTea Silk Road Theatre Project, at the Loop Theater. In Japanese society, drinking tea is not only a pastime but a religion and an emblem of nationalist pride. It serves a no less mythic purpose in Asian-American playwright Velina Hasu Houston's Tea, set in the late 60s in a backwater Kansas military settlement that features "wide-open plains and narrow minds." Here four Japanese war brides--stripped of their native comforts and customs--host a tea ceremony in remembrance of a fifth whose suicide has sent ripples through a divided community.
Houston's attempt to distill the experiences of thousands of postwar immigrants into five complementary characters initially suggests a Japanese version of The Joy Luck Club. But her efforts to give them life are palpable, and she takes pains to consider the racial and sexual politics of the era without flaunting its social consciousness. Director Lynn Ann Bernatowicz emphasizes the cultural rifts with a staging that draws heavily on the Noh tradition, employing stylized movement as a bridge between scenes grounded in grim everyday rituals. Houston tries to put her characters' struggles in context with two perfunctory scenes in which they envision themselves as their husbands and children, but the women's stories are gripping enough: multifaceted portrayals by Roxanne Lee and Erika Winters anchor the talented ensemble. The theme of cultural extinction haunts Tea: Houston's women drink to both love and loss, sipping cups of warm tea to cut a Zen path between a troubling past and an unpromising future.
Read MorePolitical idealism, personal desire, and economic pragmatism all wrestle in Mohsen Yalfani’s Guest of a Few Days. Two friends, separated by divergent paths, and the woman who binds them reunite in post-revolutionary Iran. A love triangle ensues amidst painful truths and political fallout, as dreams are rekindled and ridiculed.
Performed as part of Saving Face Festival
Read MoreA blossoming partnership with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs propelled Silk Road Rising to spearhead the Saving Face Festival, a showcase for Chicago’s Asian American theatre artists. This festival found an ad hoc alliance of seven nonprofit theatre companies coming together to present a range of Asian American stories. These stories deliberately undermined the cultural imperative of “saving face,” with its proscriptions against airing “dirty laundry.” Indeed, participants set out to give a new face to Asian American representation—one that airs our authenticity, complexity, and diversity, while safeguarding individual expression.
Read MoreThe Gempei War: A Cycle of Noh Plays investigates the messy aftermath of war, as told in three classic Japanese plays. Tomoe tells the story of a female samurai, unable to forgive her master’s final betrayal. In Atsumori, a war-weary samurai is changed forever after being forced to kill a young musician. And in Ataka, a great general is brought to self-degradation by his brother’s paranoia. Long overlooked in the cannon of classic theatre, these ancient but timeless texts are given new life by a vigorous adaptation for the modern stage.
Read MoreIn a series of 36 interlocking scenes, Naomi Iizuka’s new play explores the relationship between the imaginary and the real. Iizuka’s story unfolds into a progression of visual symbols, objects, and human relationships that reveal the power of perception. Set in the Asian art world, the story focuses on the discovery of a one-of-a-kind Japanese pillow book, a diary of a court lady, that turns the academic field of Asian antiquity upside down. As scholars, art dealers and reporters clamor over the finding, we realize that everything is not as it seems.
Read MoreFor those not familiar, Tea follows the lives of five Japanese “war brides,” who, along with their American servicemen husbands, were settled by the US military in the seldom-hospitable environs of rural Kansas.
Read MoreOuting The Middle East, Chicago Reader, February 13, 2004
Read MoreTea is overall a great production. The play gives us an intimate look at Japanese customs, marrying outside one’s race and the social backlash that comes from doing so.
Read MoreThe only thing more impressive than a new theater company’s inaugural production being a brilliant success, is them following it up with another gem. Back to back treasures means it’s no fluke.
Read MoreThis smart but didactic play by Velina Hasu Houston rises above its limitations through the impassioned performances of the company, as directed by Lynn Ann Bernatowicz.
Read More[In] witnessing these women's often troubled, invariably complex lives -- lives in which they existed in a sort of limbo as they attempted to straddle distinct cultures and fend off a profound sense of isolation -- you become aware of just how difficult the transition to a new society can be for any "outsider."
Read MoreSet in 1950's small town Kansas, Tea tells the story of four women who come together to clean the house of a fifth after her tragic suicide upsets the balance of life in their small Japanese immigrant community. The spirit of the dead woman returns as a ghostly ringmaster to force the women to come to terms with the disquieting tension of their lives and find common ground. Her destiny requires she escape the limbo between life and death, and move on to the next world in peace, carving a future passage for the others.
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