Friday, October 10, 2014
Organizing Home: Building Asian American Community in Philadelphia
HowlRound: Home: Here…There…Where? The theme of this year’s National Asian American Theater Festival and Conference (aka the “ConFest”) strikes a particular chord for me, a fourth-generation Japanese American, born and raised in what from a distance now seems like a mecca of multiculturalism in LA, confronted with stark black-and-white racial dynamics and a desire to connect with Asian American community when I moved to Philadelphia two decades ago. - See more at: http://howlround.com/organizing-home-building-asian-american-community-in-philadelphia#sthash.vCLwgN0a.dpuf
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I have read a lot of articles questioning contemporary art's ability to have social and political influence in our society so I found it inspiring to read the viewpoint that arts may be able to mobilize people through emotional draw in a way that petitions and protesting are not as equipped to. This National Asian American Theatre Conference is something I had never heard of, but it sounds like a really great opportunity for Asian America theatre artists to come together. This blog post focuses much more on what Asian theatre artists are doing rather than on their exclusion from mainstream theatre, but many articles on News from the 'Real World' have been focusing on racism and the lacking progress in theatre. Just as is largely the case with African Americans in theatre, Asian Americans are often only cast if the role depends on the character being Asian, and this needs to be addressed. Although this blog article isn't so much focused on that, the fact that there is at least an organization of Asian theatre artists is important in this context.
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