\31 Asian American Plays in 31 Days
\#24 COWBOY V. SAMURAI by Michael Golamco
Travis Park is a high school English teacher and the only Korean American man living in a dusty cowboy town known as Breakneck, Wyoming. And when a gorgeous, whip-smart Asian American woman moves into town, he immediately falls for her; the only problem is that she only dates white men.
In this savagely funny and often moving comic re-telling of Edmond Rostand’s CYRANO DE BERGERAC, one man must choose allegiance between his cowboy friend (a dim, handsome, Caucasian P.E. teaDireccher named Del) and his Asian Brother-with-a-Capital-B (crazed, militant Asian of Unknown Origin, Chester). He must choose between the Asian American and the American within himself – between COWBOY VS. SAMURAI – in a pursuit of a love that may only be as real as the love letters he writes for someone else.
Perhaps the ultimate expression of the AM/AF/WM “triangle”, COWBOY is an exploration of the Asian male psyche. And judging by the interminable AM ramblings in social media, still fairly relevant today. What’s always relevant is the sharp comedic exchanges between the various characters, and its sly sendup of the over-the-top Asian identity holding.
NAATCO, 2005
directed by Lloyd Suh,
Cast: Joel de la Fuente, C. S. Lee, Hana Moon, Timothy Davis. Photo from the NAATCO production.
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