31 Asian American Plays in 31 Days: SEX IN SEATTLE

We’re getting a 20 for 1 deal today, as I focus on the series SEX IN SEATTLE, a rarity in theatre, a serialized soap opera that ran for 20 episodes in the Pacific Northwest. Created by Kathy Hsieh, Moi, Serin Ngai and Amy Villarama, the series focussed on four Asian American women and their love lives and relationships, sometimes touching only lightly on race, sometimes heavily, but always with the emphasis on the relationships they had with other people and with each other. Characterization run the full gamut of personalities (no Asian stereotypes here!) from the prim but eager single to the fun loving jock to the manipulative but lonely queen bitch.

Historically, this series represents the flowering of Asian American theatres at the end of the 20th Century. No longer restricted to just six theatres, literally dozens of Asian American theatres popped up in the late 90s and early 00s, in places like Washington DC, Florida, Vancouver, BC and all points in between. Not all survived, but the dammed up urge to create was unleashed in the 90s to create new modes of work.

Among those new themes and modes was where Asian American identity was not the theme, but were still embedded in the characters’ back story. Primary were stories about love and ambition; characters had healthy, non-fetishized sex lives (both pre-saging newer works such as VIETGONE).

And quite literally, this series may have saved Asian American theatre in Seattle, after the demise of the Northwest Asian American Theatre, as it anchored SIS Productions for a decade (and spun off a daughter production, SEX IN VANCOUVER, for VACT).

ETA: Far as I can tell, this is the longest serialized form of theatre ever done in the US…anybody know of anything longer?