Television is happening, advertising, this whole advertising thing is happening. So you have these marginalized peoples and what happens, is it possible to develop a kind of at that moment a crossCultural Community . Is it possible to have kind of a multi Cultural Community that emerged from that moment . And so, in particular, thats what i wanted to explore. And part of the back drop is there was this extraordinary jazz scene happening in that area. Theres this wonderful book called Fillmore Harlem west and also theres several other books that are about that particular era. But thats all happening too, people like billie holiday, count basie, duke ellington, they were all playing in the fillmore district, bop city, plantation club, jacks tavern. Thats another world that i was intrigued by and the fact that there were neisei jazz musicians. Also the no no boys, which im not sure if you are aware of, but one of the story lines in the play is about the character called chet monkawa and h
With some African American actors and i actually had it vetted by august wilson, read it and checked it out for me and theres another fellow who wrote soldiers story, charles fuller, took a look at it for me. I wanted to make sure my bases were covered. But this new play, what i did was, i feel comfortable writing the characters, but you are never sure. One thing that happened was Steven Anthony jones helped me a great deal with the African American character. We took it to sundance and what happens when you go to sundance is you bring some actors and some are given to you. I hadnt worked with the actors who we teamed up with at sundance, both excellent actors but people we didnt know so we didnt have a working relationship. There were moments where we worked where i could tell that the fellow, in particular, wasnt happy with his character because i had him standing there while the African American character went on and on. Finally he said, phillip, i would not stand there and take tha
Question of creating characters, for example African American characters, im also caution i had written another play called johann that was about an African American gi and a japanese wife that got married in post war japan. I wrote that play 20 years ago. I wouldnt do it for about 8 years or so because i just didnt feel comfortable about being a japanese american writing an African American character. You have to think about, too, this whole idea of Political Correctness has both an up side and a very bad down side. One of those is people tend to be very cautious and not want to try things like that. I eventually through my relationship with danny glover pulled it out of my drawers out of the drawer, desk drawer, and read it and danny was instrumental in saying, lets do this. Lets just do this. But, again, it was me working with some African American actors and i actually had it vetted by august wilson, read it and checked it out for me and theres another fellow who wrote soldiers sto
It would be a great challenge to actually write a play for the core company and the core company has two African American characters and i had tailored two of the characters for Steven Anthony jones and gregry wallace. Its interesting that gregory wallace, an African American man, was supposed to play mr. Oge, an excentric neisei who likes literature. I thought it would be an interesting thing to do. But after a while we did a reading and we realized as good an actor as gregory is, it was pushing his limits for him to play a japanese american character in the late 40s. I imagine him as being much older. In the course of writing the play and using various actors, he became younger. This chinese actor is more like a character in his mid to late 30s, excentric, a career bachelor who is into russian literature and who fashions himself kind of patterned after the japanese artists of the 30s and 40s. He has round sort of glasses and a braid. But getting back to the question of creating chara
American characters, i wrote this piece initially for the act core company and i thought it would be a great challenge to actually write a play for the core company and the core company has two African American characters and i had tailored two of the characters for Steven Anthony jones and gregry wallace. Its interesting that gregory wallace, an African American man, was supposed to play mr. Oge, an excentric neisei who likes literature. I thought it would be an interesting thing to do. But after a while we did a reading and we realized as good an actor as gregory is, it was pushing his limits for him to play a japanese american character in the late 40s. I imagine him as being much older. In the course of writing the play and using various actors, he became younger. This chinese actor is more like a character in his mid to late 30s, excentric, a career bachelor who is into russian literature and who fashions himself kind of patterned after the japanese artists of the 30s and 40s. He