Very funny 'Exclusion' tells serious story of anti-Asian bias, at Arena Stage

DC Theater Arts: Who gets to tell stories, and for what purpose? Those are the key questions animating Kenneth Lin’s Exclusion, now playing in a world premiere at Arena Stage. Lin’s well-crafted, simultaneously very funny and highly serious, script concerns two related stories. First is the story of pogroms and legislation targeting Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century, which lasted well into the 20th. Second is the story of how that history gets transformed into a commercially successful TV series by today’s entertainment industry.