THE BUTCHER'S BURDEN

San Francisco-Asian American Theater Company, in association with the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, presents the world premiere of The Butcher's Burden by Harold S. Byun (a writer and performer with the 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors, an Asian Pacific Islander American sketch comedy group). The play runs May 6 through May 23, 1999, at SOMAR Cultural Center, 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco. Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays, 8:00 p.m., and Sundays, 7:00 p.m. Tickets are priced $16-21 with senior, student and group discounts available. For information or reservations, please call 415.440.5545, e-mail aatc@wenet.net or visit http://www.wenet.net/~aatc.

The Butcher's Burden is directed by Kelvin Han Yee (A Great Wall, Chalk). The cast includes Noel Benoza (Blade to the Heat, Yellow Fever), Michael Chih Ming Hornbuckle (the 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors), Genevieve Lee, Tamlyn Tomita (The Karate Kid Part II, Joy Luck Club) and Greg Watanabe* (Philip Kan Gotanda's Life Tastes Good).

In olden times in Korea, the butchers were an untouchable class to a Buddhist society that viewed their killing of beasts as staining their hands forever. For Lee Hae-Sun, the daughter of butchers, life was determined from birth, always outside, always unclean. But with the help of a kindly printer, Park Sun-Woo, the irrepressible Hae-Sun acquires a new set of birth papers and with them, a new identity free from aspersion. Her deepest wish fulfilled, she revels in her youth and discovers a world of colors and songs outside the blood and screams of the slaughterhouse. But Sun-Woo wants more than her thanks; if he can't possess her, then he'll betray her. He never wanted to murder her.

Now older and in America, Sun-Woo heads a sketchy P.I. service he founded in the 1950's to hunt down butchers who forged new identities in the chaos left by the occupying Japanese. No longer in the butcher-hunting business, Sun-Woo-with the help of man-hater Sophia and coked-up voyeurist Will- plays god of the Korean American community by digging up and manufacturing the secrets and scandals that create a new butcher class. But he has terrible secrets of his own, and Hae-Sun returns as an avenging ghost, playfully tormenting her betrayer to near madness. She summons the hapless but likeable Raymond Kim to be her hands and voice, to expose Sun-Woo and secure her justice. Ray wakes up one morning without memory, and finds he's been hired by Sun-Woo to reopen the defunct Butcher Files. But what Sun-Woo intends as a wild-goose chase becomes for Ray a "lives-and-deaths" encounter in this karmic comedy.

Harold S. Byun has been writing and acting with the 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors since the group's inception. He has written pieces for seven feature productions and over 130 performances with the ensemble. The Butcher's Burden is his first full-length play. His poetry has also been published in several journals. Other theater credits include David Henry Hwang's F.O.B., Noel Benoza's Right Between the Eyes, and American Seoul. He also appeared in co-starring roles on Nash Bridges, and several regional commercials.

This play is part of Asian American Theater Company's Emerging Artists Project. The Emerging Artists Project was established to nurture and create opportunities for emerging Asian Pacific Islander American playwrights, directors and actors

Asian American Theater Company was founded in 1973 as a playwrights' workshop sponsored by the American Conservatory Theater. The company is dedicated to the production of New American plays by dramatists of Asian Pacific Islander descent. Throughout its history, AATC has served as a home for numerous Asian Pacific Islander American playwrights, directors, actors and designers, including Frank Chin, Margaret Cho, Dennis Dun, David Henry Hwang, Philip Kan Gotanda, Amy Hill, R.A. Shiomi and Judi Nihei. After more than a quarter of a century of pioneering Asian American theater arts, AATC is poised to chart new directions for Asian Pacific Islander American theater arts into the new millennium.

Members of the press are invited to the May 6 opening night performance. For press reservations, please call 415.440.5545.