The 2020’s
Return to History and Archive
2020-2022
EWP Presents Daniel Ho & Friends
GRAMMY-winning musician Daniel Ho performed in concert on December 19th, 2020
Featuring artists Keali’i Ceballos, Kanani Toji, Randy Drake, and Lydia Miyashiro Ho
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East West Players presented multiple GRAMMY-winning musician Daniel Ho in concert on December 19th, 2020. The streamed event featured an evening of Aloha spirit with Daniel’s Hawaiian melodies featuring artists Keali’i Ceballos, Kanani Toji, Randy Drake, and Lydia Miyashiro Ho. It was one of the first events on the East West Players’ stage since the shutdown began. The accompanying album was nominated for Best Global Music Album at the 64th Annual GRAMMY Awards!.
Today is My Birthday
By Susan Soon He Stanton
Directed by Lily Tung Crystal
Produced by Theater Mu with support by East West Players
Streamed February of 2021
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Emily, a 29-year-old would-be writer, retreats home to O’ahu after Manhattan finally gets the best of her. But trading one island for another doesn’t help. When she stumbles into a gig as an actor on a shock-jock radio dating show, she falls for her fake love interest and finds herself strangely determined to turn that fantasy into reality. Told through a playful combination of phone calls, voicemails, and live radio spots, Stanton’s quirky show illustrates life with a thousand friends on Facebook, but no one to talk to on a Saturday night.
Directed by Lily Tung Crystal and starring Katie Bradley as Emily, Today Is My Birthday was produced by Theater Mu, Minnesota’s only pan-Asian performing arts organization, with support by East West Players, and streamed February of 2021.
From Number to Name
Directed & devised by Kristina Wong
Streamed April 10 and 11, 2021
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What is incarceration? What is freedom? What is forgiveness? From Number to Name is the culminating production of a writing and performance process exploring incarceration, undoing prison politics, and restorative justice in Asian Pacific Islander Communities. The ensemble, comprised of the formerly incarcerated members of API RISE, their families and supporters, share real stories from life on the inside while re-imagining the future of the criminal justice system and freedom for our communities. This production streamed on April 10 and 11, 2021.
1 Hour Photo
Written & performed by Tetsuro Shigematsu
Co-Produced with Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre (vAct)
Directed by Richard Wolfe
Streamed June 12 to 20, 2021
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1 Hour Photo is a true, moving portrait of a Japanese Canadian man’s quest to find beauty in the depths of a savage century, as he journeys from finding love in a WWII incarceration camp to rebuilding his life as a scientist, businessman, and father. A heartfelt exploration of a life well-lived, 1 Hour Photo employs the use of intricately crafted miniatures to explore the artifact of Mas Yamamoto’s life inside and beyond internment.
Navigating this new world of social distancing spawned the innovative solution to bring vAct’s award-winning production 1 Hour Photo across Canada and to EWP. vAct collaborated with a Vancouver based film production company, Brightlight Pictures, to produce a high quality, 75 minute cinematic adaptation of 1 Hour Photo accompanied by a live talkback with Tetsuro Shigematsu.
Co-produced by East West Players and Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre (vAct), 1 Hour Photo was directed by Richard Wolfe and streamed June 12 to 20, 2021.
The Sitayana (or “How to Make an Exit”)
Adapted by Lavina Jadhwani
Co-Produced with San Francisco’s EnActe Arts and New York City’s Hypokrit Productions
Streamed September 25 to October 17, 2021
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The Sitayana is an artful transposition of the Hindu epic The Ramayana told from Sita’s point of view. Part epic tale, part coming of age story, The Sitayana is the ultimate breakup play. Audiences attending the livestreamed viewings were given the choice of one of three unique incarnations of Sita from whom they will hear her story (Amar Chitra Sita, Sita’s Mehndi Party, and Sita’s Slumber Party) which questions traditional gender roles, subverts idealized views of femininity, and ultimately centers Sita as a hero within her own epic journey.
East West Players in partnership with San Francisco’s EnActe Arts and New York City’s Hypokrit Productions presented The Sitayana as livestream and on-demand viewings from September 25 – October 17, 2021.
Kaidan Project: Alone
By Lisa Sanaye Dring & Chelsea Sutton
Co-Produced with Rogue Artist’s Ensemble
Directed by Sean Cawalti
App launched in September 2021, with an in-person outdoor haunt on October 16, 2021 at the Union Center for the Arts
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As a follow up project to 2017’s Kaidan Project: Walls Grow Thin, East West Players and Rogue Artists Ensemble produced Kaidan Project: Alone, an augmented reality app in a new experiemental and multimedia form of theater. Kaidan Project: Alone is a five episode, intimate ghost encounter where your choices propel you through terrifying looping stories of spirits toward a confrontation with the fears of isolation inside us all. Directed by Sean Cawalti, the app was launched in September of 2021. To kick off the app’s launch, Rogue Artists Ensemble presented a one-day-only outdoor haunt, THIS ALLEY IS HAUNTED, on October 16, 2021 at The Union Center for the Arts featuring live actors, design and puppetry elements from the 2017 production Kaidan Project: Walls Grow Thin as well as a haunted house, masked characters, photo ops, and more.
Running
By Danny Pudi
Co-Produced with San Francisco’s EnActe Arts and New York City’s Hypokrit Productions
Directed by Arpita Mukherjee
Streamed February 2022
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Running follows Danny as he sets out to uncover the story of his estranged father. He pieces together journal entries and old cassette tapes, reconnects with his father’s old friends, and broaches hard conversations with his mother. What starts as a mission to solve the puzzle of his father becomes a complex, funny, and vulnerable journey of self-discovery and acceptance. Running was presented by East West Players in partnership with San Francisco’s EnActe Arts and New York City’s Hypokrit Productions. Danny Pudi’s playwright debut was directed by Arpita Mukherjee and streamed February 2022.
Assassins
By Stephen Sondheim & John Weidman
Directed by Snehal Desai
Ran from March 17 to April 2, 2022
2022
The 56th Anniversary
Season
Here. Us. Now!
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A darkly comic Tony-award winner that examines the motives of the nine notorious Americans who took their shot at the President of the United States. This wickedly subversive spectacle explores the national fixation on celebrity and its violent intersection with the American dream. Directed by Snehal Desai with music direction by Marc Macalintal, this production was originally set to premier March of 2020. The original production performed its invited final dress rehearsal before having to be postponed due to the pandemic. Assassins made its return two years later, premiering March 17, 2022 and safely closing April 2.
Interstate
Book by Melissa Li & Kit Yan
Music & Lyrics by Melissa Li
Poetry & Additional Lyrics by Kit Yan
Directed by Jesca Prudencio
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Interstate is an Asian-American pop-rock poetry musical that follows Dash, a transgender spoken word performer who becomes internet-famous along with his best friend Adrian, a lesbian singer-songwriter.
Fueled by the allure of fame and a desire to connect with their community, Dash and Adrian embark on a road trip across America for their first national tour. Their fiercely political and deeply personal music touches Henry, a transgender teenage boy living in small-town middle America, and he finds solace in their art as he struggles with his own identity and family. After blogging about the band and documenting his own gender journey, he decides to set out on a quest to meet his heroes in person, hoping to find answers to his own struggles.
Interstate is a touching story about how two transgender people at different stages of their journey navigate love, family, masculinity, and finding a community in the era of social media. Interstate is based on the true story of Good Asian Drivers, a queer band active from 2008-2010.
The Great Jheri Curl Debate
By Inda Craig-Galván
Directed by Scarlett Kim
March 17 - April 2, 2022; Opening Night March 20, 2022
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The invention of the Jheri Curl marks the end of the world. When she takes a job in Mr. Kim’s Korean-owned Black beauty supply store and the posters start talking to her, Veralynn might finally come to know her true calling.
The Great Jheri Curl Debate was developed in the East West Players’ Playwrights Group and was a finalist for the 44th annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival.
The Brothers Paranormal
By Prince Gomolvilas
Directed by Jeff Liu
November 17 - December 11, 2022; Opening Night November 20, 2022
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After a nationwide increase in sightings of “Asian-looking ghosts,” two Thai brothers struggle to launch a ghost-hunting business. The two brothers–one born in Thailand and the other in the American Midwest–are called to investigate the paranormal hauntings at the home of an African-American couple displaced by Hurricane Katrina in this supernatural thriller. EWP multi-produced playwright and teaching artist Prince Gomolvilas pens a suspenseful, humorous, and compassionate exploration of the trauma of leaving home, whether crossing the country, the globe, or over from the other side.
Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord
By Kristina Wong
Directed by Chay Yew
A Co-Production with Center Theatre Group
February 12 - March 12, 2023
2023
Season 57
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Season 57 opened to great acclaim with the co-production between East West Players and Center Theatre Group, Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, presented at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City.
On Day 3 of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kristina Wong began sewing masks out of old bed sheets and bra straps on her Hello Kitty sewing machine. Before long, she was leading the Auntie Sewing Squad, a work-from-home sweatshop of hundreds of volunteers—including children and her own mother—to fix the U.S. public health care system while in quarantine. It was a feminist care utopia forming in the midst of crisis. Or was it a mutual aid doomsday cult?
As the demand for masks abated and we began to return safely to space, Pulitzer Prize finalist Kristina began to put her life together post-pandemic cult leadership. With hilarity and boundless generosity, she invited the audience in on her work building community in isolation, while reflecting on what we’d been through and imagining what we wanted to become in this Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle award winner for Outstanding Solo Show.
On This Side of the World
Music & Lyrics by Paulo K Tiról
Directed by & Co-Created with Noam Shapiro
May 11 - June 4, 2023; Opening Night May 14, 2023; Extended to June 10, 2023
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During the 56th Anniversary Season, East West Players presented On This Side of the World as a staged concert reading at Boston Court on July 30, 2022.
On This Side of the World became our second show of Season 57. A woman flies from the Philippines to America with a one-way ticket and a suitcase full of stories. Each story is collected from immigrants who came before her—tales of overseas workers, young lovers, and gossipy church ladies; snapshots of undocumented immigrants, millennial princesses and first-generation Americans. Suspended above the ocean, she replays these stories in her mind as she searches for the courage to embrace her future. This world premiere musical gives voices to Filipino immigrants navigating old lives and new beginnings, eight-thousand miles from home.
On This Side of the World was one of eight musicals selected from 349 submissions for the National Alliance of Musical Theatre (NAMT) Festival of New Musicals in 2020 and one of eight musicals chosen from 145 submissions for the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat in 2022.
The show was met with such success, it performed a sold-out, extended run. By popular demand, the show recorded a cast album on August 1, 2023. The On This Side of the World: World Premiere Cast Recording, recorded at Studio 770 in Brea, CA, was funded by the support of our audience members on Indiegogo and released on June 5, 2024. It is the company's first cast recording since Imelda: A New Musical (2005).
Spring Awakening
Book & Lyrics by Steven Sater
Music by Duncan Sheik
Based on the Play by Frank Wedekind
Directed by Tim Dang
October 26 - November 19, 2023; Opening Night October 29, 2023; Extended to December 3, 2023
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The revolutionary Tony Award winning best musical that took the world by storm. In 1891 Germany, repressed, adolescent students stumble into adulthood as clumsily as they do into each other’s arms. With obstinate parents unwilling to guide them, young Melchior and Wendla explore their desires for each other, while Melchior’s dear friend Moritz fumbles dangerously through his own coming-of-age. This generation-defining musical is a rock anthem to all the “guilty ones,” poignantly exploring the dark, passionate, and twisting journey from adolescence to adulthood.
Spring Awakening was directed by Artistic Director Emeritus Tim Dang, his first production at EWP since La Cage Aux Folles (2016). Dang's interpretation of the show intentionally cast a multi-ethnic cast comprising mixed race performers in conjunction with the show's emphasis on a next generation of diverse, loud voices.
This production also marked Tamlyn Tomita's EWP mainstage debut.
