Barroga reviews

Honolulu Star-Bulletin January 17, 1995 by John Berger [Kumu Kahua Theatre]
CHALLENGING 'TALK-STORY' RECEIVES EXCELLENT PRODUCTION

There's some unintended irony involved in the local premiere of "Talk-Story," but don't blame Kumu Kahua or playwright Jeannie Barroga. It's just a matter of timing.

First, much of the story focuses on the racial prejudice Filipinos encountered in California in the 1930s, but Dee Abano (Maria T. Quiban) seems to find it alive and well in contemporary San Francisco when she's kept waiting for restaurant table. Do conditions today really equate the institutionalized legally enforced racism of the '30s -- even in California?

It's also ironic that "Talk-Story" comes here shortly after Frank DeLima again took hits from people who find his portrayal of Filipino culture and mannerisms offensive. "Talk-Story" illuminates the tenuous line separating character from caricature.

This is an entertaining and challenging production. Barroga and director Kati Kuroda freely scramble time and space, reality and fantasy in following fledgling journalist Abano as she uses the stories her father told her as material for her newspaper column.

Quiban is good in a demanding role. Lito Capina is excellent as her father, Frank.

Capina's characterization is as rich and fully detailed a portrayal as is likely to be seen anywhere this theater season. There's no sense that Capina is working at acting, yet he covers a range of emotions. Warren Fabro likewise gives an exceptional performance as Frank's older brother, Pedro.

Frank's stories recall his childhood in the Philippines, his experiences as a bachelor in pre-war California, and his wartime adventures back in the Philippines. Other subplots involved Dee's alienation from traditional Filipino culture, her childhood relationship with her often-absent father, her feelings as an American-born Filipino visiting the Philippines, and her reaction to contemporary anti-Asian racism.

At heart she's a romantic. Among her interests are Hollywood film classics from the 1930s and '40s -- ironically, an era not known for sensitivity in its portrayals of Asians and African-Americans. She's also prone to exaggerate when recounting her experiences to her friend, Clara (Sheri "Squirt" Wilson). Did she really dazzle her editor (Eric Seabury) and handsome reporter Lon Quinn (Brian Messner) with a '40s-style hard-boiled proposal for a column on Filipinos? Or did the paper simply need something to fill space, or pick her to fill an affirmative action quota?

Quiban is bright, spunky, and occasionally strident as Our Heroine -- insecure men might find it comfortable to take the easy way out and label Dee Abano a "bitch." It's not that simple.

This isn't the first time Kumu Kahua production in which white characters tend to be either foaming racists or well-intentioned bumblers. Quinn fits the latter category; he obliviously refers to Akira Kurasawa as a "Jap" director, and is generally clueless in relating to Dee's concerns either as a Filipino or simple as a woman, Messner carries off that thankless assignment; Seabury plays a number of cookie-cutter [sic] racists as well as two more sympathetic roles.

Hawaii residents are probably more aware than most mainlanders of the daunting conditions Filipinos faced before World War II. American race laws made it almost impossible for Filipino women to immigrate; Frank isn't exaggerating when he tells his daughter of the 20-1 male-female ratio. Barroga also mentions that American laws prohibited marriages between whites and other races years after Hitler was dead, and that the United States invaded the Philippines in 198 and crushed the Filipino government.

The staging of "Talk-Story" is as striking as its content. Joseph D. Dodd's minimalist set is stark and adequate; titles projected on a screen announce each change of locale. Laura Keaunui's costumes and Keith Kashiwada's choice of music contributes further in the establishment of time and place.

As usual, the Kumu Kahua playbill doesn't include a glossary. The performance of Capina and Fabro go a long way in transcending the language barrier.

Hawaii residents should be familiar with Frank's tales of hard work, frugality, racial prejudice and taxi dancers. Anyone who isn't should be sure to see "Talk-Story."

Honolulu Hawaii-Filipino Chronicle February 1, 1995 by J. P. Orias
'TALK-STORY' HAS A SURE PINCH IN THE HEART. . .

The reputable reviewers of Honolulu agree on its excellence on all aspects of the theater -- script, production design, directing and acting. What tops all these is the playwright's subtle message of self-empowerment. . . Her plays deal with Filipino-American duality and finding ways of defining it. They echo the unwritten challenges posed by immigrant parents to their children. They reveal racial experiences and comedic characterization set against the backdrop of American politics, culture, and economics. They talk about multi-ethnic sensitivities prejudices, and biases. They perpetuate the cultural myths of the Filipino in American as an individual as well as a race. Above all, they give the Filipino-American a renewed sense of self-esteem...in reference to her candid way of treating inflections and characteristics and her unorthodox dialogue on serious issues, [Barroga's] writing on these subjects provides personally a catharsis for her and hopefully a path for self-empowerment for others.

Honolulu Advertiser January 17, 1995 by Joseph T. Rozmiarek [Kumu Kahua Theatre]
VIBRANT FILIPINO-THEMED 'TALK-STORY'

'Talk-Story' by Jeannie Barroga focuses on the Filipino immigrant experience -- a group she describes as Asian, but not Chinese or Japanese, and who want to be known for something other than the color yellow or a thousand pairs of shoes.

The central character is Dee Abano, a first-generation American daughter in love with old movies, but caught up in an identity crusade. She is also a newspaper copy assistant beginning a series of articles on the Filipino experience, most of which are based on her father's colorful and often-told stories.

The situation gives Barroga the opportunity to rapidly bounce between Dee's contemporary experiences and those of her father and uncle in the Philippines and California. Simultaneous histories unfold: the men confronting discrimination with pride and humor, and Dee challenging lingering prejudice and ignorance with fierce determination.

What evolves is the clear message that all coping methods come with a price. The older brothers drift into bitterness and denial, while Dee exhausts herself defending against unintended slights.

Eventually Dee learns the real truth behind her father's stories and discovers that both of them have used fantasy to escape from a reality that is often imperfect.

Barroga's success is that her play is both revealing as a racial experience and a vivid character study -- with strong performances that keep it from becoming a treatise.

Director Kati Kuroda gets good work from her small cast, keeps a lively tempo, and assures that the melange of times and places remain distinct, but blend into an integral whole.

Maria Quiban is vibrant as Dee, showing her complicated mixture of bravado, yearning, and fantasy. She's alternately a young Katharine Hepburn, hopeful child, and daydreamer -- a too-tightly wrapped a modern woman who convincingly comes a bit unraveled.

Lito Capina is excellent as Frank Abano, her father. Capina brings abundant, spontaneous humor to the role, rattling away in a mixture of languages with a melodious voice and wonderful expressions. But there is always a clear dignity in the man that keeps Frank from becoming merely a clown. Rather, Capina correctly makes him intelligent and creative, but also a bit of [a] irresponsible rascal.

Warren Fabro is good contrast as the sober Uncle Pedro, aging from a suave young buck to a scolding and abrupt, old man. Brian Messner is appropriately worn down as Dee's boyfriend, Eric Seabury successfully takes on a series of small parts that all reflect a similar intolerance. Sheri Wilson has the least developed role as Dee's friend, largely a plot device to manufacture conversation rather than monologue.

The actors work on Joseph Dodd's stark, but creative, stage set that allows for rapid scene changes and memory vignettes behind a dark scrim.

"Talk-Story' bring an excellent new voice and perspective to Kumu Kahua's repertoire of plays relevant to Hawaii's audiences.

Palo Alto Weekly Theater review (Palo Alto, CA) April 8, 1992 by Julia Smith
[TheatreWorks, Palo Alto, CA]
Talking a good story

Considering that the Bay Area has one of the largest Filipino populations in the United States, and considering that said population is largely overlooked by, well, by just about everybody and everything, it seems more than appropriate that TheatreWorks' Stage II series is presenting the world premiere of "Talk-Story," a surprisingly original approach to this particular minority's American assimilation.

While black, Asian and Hispanic theater companies have taken root and bloomed in the loamy soil of our regional states, the tale of the Filipino has remained virtually unexplored. As one of the characters in "Talk-Story" points out, what do most Americans know about the Philippines except Subic Bay and Imelda Marcos's shoe collection? Precious little.

Playwright Jeannie Barroga, a member of TheatreWorks's artistic staff, has written an effective stage play on this subject. While there are little knots and tangles in it, it is nonetheless one of the better original scripts produced locally.

For one thing it doesn't beat you over the head with the humbling struggle endured by these proud people at the hands of the insensitive whites whose nation they have adopted. Not that there was any shortage of said insensitive white or humiliations. Not that these aren't proud people. And it isn't that Barroga candy-coats the ongoing struggle the Filipinos have wrestled with for some six decades.

To be sure, there is anger in "Talk-Story," but it is presented in context and balanced with enough wisdom and humor to render it all the more understandable to the outsider. Rather than confront the audience with an in-your-face diatribe of racial injustice -- an angle that Spike Lee, for example, has used to exceptionally good effect in his work -- Barroga's work makes us share the anger and indignity no matter what our race or nationality.

The play's structure seesaws between the past and present, between the real and imagined. While disconcerting, and even confusion at first, the rhythm of the script does establish a pattern, and simple theatrical devices help guide us through the patchwork story of the Abano family's first half-century in America.

The central character is Dee (Earlene Somera), an aspiring journalist who desperately wants to tell her father's story in print. On the tiny Cubberley Center stage, the action moves from her room to her editor's office to her father's hotel in short vignettes told from her point of view and then from her father's. Somera, the prototypic slip of a girl, handles her character quite well, although her performance lacks a certain polish.

Jo Limon, as her father Frank, musters a man of decency and conviction. His narrations are among the play's most charming moments, as he stands upstage and tells of slights and insults suffered with grace and righteous indignation, and Dennis Geniblazo crosses downstage, portraying Frank, a young immigrant in the '30s, dazzling in his sartorial finery, dazzled by a white woman, damned and threatened by a territorial white man for touching a white woman.

The small cast also includes Gayle Rucker as Dee's (black) friend and Brian Williams as Lon Quinn, a co-worker of Dee's who shares her love of old American movies and becomes her (white) lover. The inclusion of these two characters allows for additional appropriate observations on the uneven balance of racial tolerance propagated in this country up to, and including, today.

But "Talk-Story" isn't just a serious moral lesson. It is, for the author, director Marc Hayashi and TheatreWorks itself, viable and entertaining original theater on a small scale. Imagine that.


Palo Alto Weekly Theater review (Palo Alto, CA) May 27, 1992 by Diane Sussman
[Foothill College Studio Theatre, Los Altos, CA)
A proud and angry woman Playwright Jeannie Barroga has found her voice -- and it's razor-sharp and emphatically ethnic

As a Filipino-American growing up in the predominantly white city of [Milwaukee], Jeannie Barroga remembers her adolescence as a time of smoldering anger and outrage.

Tired of watching her parents humble themselves in the face or racially-directed insults, and tired of explaining how the culture of the "the little brown brothers' from the Philippines differs from that of the Chinese or other Asian groups, Barroga initially lashed out at the people closest to her. "All my life people have been asking me, 'What's your problem? Why this chip on your shoulder?' I was angry all the time."

But out of this stormy adolescence Barroga found her voice -- and put it to work writing plays that rail against racism and injustice. "For a long time I didn't even know that the basis of my anger was race," she said, "But when you see your parents swallow their pride front of you, you take it in. Maybe they couldn't say what they wanted, but I can." Now, at an age she declines to specify, Barroga has written more than 50 plays -- "I stopped counting at 50," she says -- the bulk of them about the problems that arise when cultures collide. "Clashes between cultures make for the strongest themes," she said, "That's what moves a play, what give it tension."

Barroga's most recently staged production was "Talk-Story." Performed in April (1992) by TheatreWorks at its Stage II Theater. The story centers on Dee, a young Filipino-American journalist who aches to see her father's stories in print, little realizing that the stores are wishful braggadocio, appropriated from his brother.

Barroga has been with TheatreWorks since 1985, when the she joined the company as its first literary manager, a job that requires her to read hundreds of scripts each year. In addition, she is TheatreWorks Spectrum artist and co-director of Discovery Project, the company's program to find and stage plays by local artists. Barroga also teaches dramaturgy at Asian American Theater in San Francisco.

Despite the growing success of plays by black, Asian and Hispanic playwrights -- David Henry Hwang's "M. Butterfly" and Luis Valdez's "Zoot Suit" come to mind -- Barroga remains a rarity among rarities: A Filipino woman playwright. A recent survey of playwrights of color conducted by Non-Traditional Casting Company in New York found only 10 Filipino playwrights in the country. Of these, four -- including Barroga -- are women.

Unlike the Chinese or Japanese, Barroga believes Filipinos suffer from an "invisibility factor" -- either mistaken for Japanese or Chinese, or seen as cultural dependents of the United States. "I don't think Americans have an image of Filipinos," she said. "If faces aren't seen, they aren't distinguished. Every time I date someone who's not Filipino, they say, 'Is that person Filipino? Am I getting better.?'"

In "Talk-Story", Dee gives voice to this feeling in a conversation with her editor: "But think of it!" she argues. "No one realizes we're the largest Asian group in California. We're forgotten! And you -- the first kids on the block -- print it up and bust that myth wide open."

But not everyone is willing to accept Barroga as spokesperson for the Filipino-American experience. Filipino groups have criticized her for using the language Tagalog in her plays instead of Ilocana or Cebuano. And when her play "Eye of the Coconut" opened in San Francisco, one reviewer wrote that "if Barroga thinks she is the voice of the Filipino community, she squelched it."

Barroga was so upset she "went underground" for weeks, refusing to answer her phone or talk to anyone. "It got my dander up," she admits, "You write a play to tell a story and then you're not cultural enough."

After two weeks of "ruminating, evaluating, and going to the beach," she stopped worrying about the criticism. "I had to ask myself, am I doing this for the reviews, or for the voice? And who is anyone to say that my voice is not valid? There comes a point when any writer has to know when to heed the comments and when to adhere to the vision."

Besides being damned for not being culturally pure enough, she has been damned for being culturally myopic, too narrowly focused only on issues of interest to Filipinos. It is a charge she dismisses, "I like to think that my plays are multi-ethnic, that they speak to everyone," she said, "At the same time, I want to remind people that it's still a Euro-centric world and that there is another culture to be recognized here."

She attributes her resilience -- and stubbornness -- to her heritage. "People need to know that Filipinos can take a lot," she said. "In 'Talk-Story,' there's a line that describes us being 'like a bamboo bent in the wind.'"

Her next play, tentatively titled "Dimitri" tells the story of a foreigner besotted by the notion that America is a true melting pot of well-blended cultures. "He has that dream," says Barroga. But the dream begins to wane as he searches for a 'green-card' wife, and realizes that she will not the blonde-haired, blue-eyed American woman of his dreams, but a darker person like himself. "The play asks, who is American? And w hat does it mean to be American?" said Barroga.

Here Barroga pauses for a moment. "Have I just given away my next play? Maybe I should stop talking now."

Times Tribune Peninsula Style (Palo Alto, CA) June 22, 1992 by Jane Ayres
[Foothill College Studio Theatre, Los Altos, CA]
The way the family told it Filipina-American playwright uses both cultures to tell her 'Story'

In 1989, when Jeannie Barroga's mother decided to make a return visit to the Philippines after an absence of 42 years, daughter Jeannie invited herself along.

"I noticed that people would sit around during the brown-outs, which are frequent there, and tell each other stories, stories that were strangely familiar to me," says the diminutive Filipina-American playwright during an interview at TheatreWorks. Barroga found the genesis of "Talk-Story," which plays Saturday and Sunday at Foothill College Festival of the Arts, from those rollicking, heavily embroidered stories she heard family and friends indulge in.

Barroga has been literary manager at TheatreWorks since 1985 and is a founding director of the company's Discovery Project, which seeks out works by local playwrights. The indefatigable dynamo also teaches playwriting at {Brava! For Women in the Arts], in San Francisco and works the counter an Auntie Pasta in her neighborhood in San Francisco's Russian Hill -- as well as another counter at a nearby dry cleaners.

In her spare time, she writes plays -- 50, at last count. "I've always found plays easier to write than short stories, novels, articles of things like that," says Barroga, who has been a journalist in Milwaukee, where she is from, and in Palo Alto for the Grapevine.

Barroga wrote about many other things, even tried a play about Irish-Americans, "The
Royal Toonans," before she gathered the focus to write about her own specific experience as a Filipina-American.

"A Jewish-American director (here she laughs at the hyphenation) suggested I write a play about one of the family stories I was always telling, she says. "Why would anyone be interested in a Filipino man living in Milwaukee who likes to play Hawaiian music and has three daughters who all want to marry white men?" she quotes the reply she gave at the time.

"My first play just came to me in an afternoon," Barroga says. She speaks unhurriedly and laughs fast, a caustic, cleansing laugh. Two of her plays have become cable TV plays. "Give me six months," she told her then husband. After five months and 30 days, she had a play accepted for production on cable TV.

Barroga came to the Peninsula from her hometown of Milwaukee in 1972, went home to get married in '75, then came back in '79. "I feel like the Bay Area and the Peninsula is my home, rather than Milwaukee, because more things that have nurtured my writing have happened here."

In "Talk-Story," Barroga has a character named Frank whose amusing tales keep his daughter, a would-be newspaper columnist, vastly amused and entertained.

"Frank is somebody I admire," Barroga says thoughtfully. "He represents the majority who had the stamina to leave home, go 10,000 miles and make it here -- sort of like that Chinese 'gold mountain' theory. American was supposed to make good."

In "Talk-Story," Dee is [dating] a white man, Lon, and the couple have trouble making it work. "There is a resiliency that mixed couples can develop," Barroga says, "But these particular people didn't have that little extra. Dee metamorphoses, adding a kind of strength. She was hard to write."

Barroga likes to develop her plays in workshops or readings, finding that listening to actors of color give her a chance to play with the lilt of a particular voice. She has had plays produced at East West Players and Northwest Asian American Theater in Seattle, the Asian American Theater in San Francisco, Portland's Horner Performing Center, TheatreWorks, and El Teatro Campesino in San Juan Bautista.

"I'm an outright eavesdropper," Barroga says. "I'll be sitting at a café and hear a phrase from somebody at the next table. It sparks a memory from my own life. I start working on the problem of how to portray that moment, of how it felt when it was happening to me. . .and then the rest of the play just grows from that moment, like a plant."

"I'm sitting on a new play now," she says. "And I keep trying to find time to write it. Whenever I get a split second, I write down my thought, and then I throw it all into a folder. Later I close all the doors and write for 24 hours straight."

Mercury News Arts & Books Profile (San Jose, CA) June 11, 1992 by Kathleen Donnelly
[Foothill College Studio Theatre, Los Altos, CA]
{Talk-Story} Finding the point of tension, where people tell the truth

Jeannie Barroga remembers her family calling her to dinner as she was growing up in Milwaukee. The voices are faint in her memory, though, because she didn't hear them when they called her the first time, or even the second time. It wasn't until the voices got strident enough to penetrate the world Barroga was busy writing about that she would look up from her work and head to the table.

Barroga is a San Francisco-based playwright now, but back in Milwaukee she was just a kid who kept journals and loved putting words on paper.

The coming weekend, Barroga's play "Talk-Story" receives a production by Palo Alto's TheatreWorks Stage II as part of the Festival of Arts at Foothill College. The play draws on Barroga's Filipino-American heritage and centers on Dee, a young Filipino-American journalist who strives to get her father's stories published, without realizing that he has embellished his own role in them.

The production is a reprise for TheatreWorks, were Barroga works a sliterary manager and co-director of the Discovery Project, which seeks work from local playwrights. Barroga who also teaches writing through Brava! For Women in the Arts, has had some success in seeing her own work staged. Last year her plays received 12 productions, including two by San Francisco's Asian American Theatre. She traveled to New York in February, where her play "Rita's Resources" was performed in workshop at the Pan Asian Repertory, and another workshop for the play is planned at East West Players in Los Angeles this summer.

Were you one of those kids who started writing at an early age? "Yeah, pretty much as soon as I saw these little scratchings could mean something, I was enthralled. This sounds silly in a way, but I remember starting my journal when I was 7 or 8 years old, and I still have them. . .I was always relating incidents. I wanted to remember things. I would sort of pick an incident of the day. Usually it was some authority figure telling me not to do something. When I look back and read them, it was always some sort of run-in with an authority figure."

Is your writing still about run-ins with authority figures? "Not so much that as. . .making a point. I guess I like the scenes about making a point. Of course, tension is what creates drama and storytelling. I like starting at that point of tension, because that's when people say things without the reserve, you know? They kind of get past the politeness and say what's really on their minds. That fascinates me."

Why did you choose to write plays? "I tried short stories and fiction and the only time I would start to blossom and then pen would really start to move is when I was writing the dialogue. I always felt like it moved the story along a lot quicker. The narrative - there's a different type of brain muscle you use for that. I love reading it, I just don't have any patience writing it."

What's the best part of working on a play? "The real thrill is finishing the play. . .When I know it's coming to an end, I set myself up my little rewards. I have maybe a bottle of [champagne]. I will have squirreled away maybe $5 for a movie. Or I'll buy something really outrageous like endive and a piece of salmon. You know, it's just like my night, I'm going to eat what I want. I'm going to drink what I want. . .And essentially, it's just work after that."

Do you think of yourself as a Filipino-American playwright? "It's funny. Because there are none, it kind of sets you apart. It's like, here's this Filipino with a third leg. I don't know. I have a mixed reaction to it. But, yeah, I think it's important for people to know that there is a Filipino-American playwright."

You've been both praised for writing about Filipino-American culture and criticized for not being culturally pure enough in your writing. How do you feel about that? "I thought,'Yeah, well, great. I don't see anybody else doing it.' Yeah, I was pretty defensive. But then I'd say in my little talks to myself, 'You know, Jeannie, you put yourself in this position. If you were less vocal, if you didn't write, if you didn't espouse your ideas nobody would be pointing fingers at you.' But the second question is, is it worth it? And the answer is always 'yes.'"

Oakland Tribune Stage Review (Oakland, CA) April 7, 1992 by Heather Clancey
[TheatreWorks, Palo Alto, CA]
{Talk-Story} Father and daughter spar in Asian play

It would be difficult to find a more topical play than "Talk-Story," a Palo Alto TheatreWorks production which focuses on the role of the Asian American in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The production, though marred by difficulties with timing and less-than-fluid scene transitions, leaves the audience with much to mull.

The script, by Asian American Theater affiliate Jeannie Barroga, explores the close relationship between Dee Abano, a Filipino-American woman who aspires to be a newspaper columnist, and her father, Frank, a likable drifter who has more or less lied his way through life. The action shifts from present to past and back again, progressing through a series of tall tales told by father and daughter. Both unabashedly embellish incidents in their lives to make reality conform more closely to their dreams.

Voices of reason are found in Dee's best friend, who also copes daily with racial and sexual discrimination, and her uncle Pedro Abano, who advises Dee not to take on the whole world in her crusade for racial equality. [Somera] as Dee is at her best when she adopts Dee's storytelling persona: a sophisticated, passionate woman of the world reminiscent of numerous Katharine Hepburn roles. Her scenes with Lon are among the most compelling and humorous in the production.

As Frank [Limon] is a quiet, deliberate presence. He delivers Frank's fanciful stories of heroism with the unique enthusiasm of a parent trying to please a child. And Dennis Geniblazo's multi-dimensional portrayal of Pedro Abano, accompanied by a vast library of gestures and sounds, brings life to every scene he enters. Marc Hayashi, resident director of the Asian American Theater Co., does an admirable job of weaving Barroga's vignettes into a cohesive, if rough, production. His device of having Dee don a feathered, '40-ish hat whenever Dee is about to launch into a less-than-factual interpretation of recent events is especially effective.

The resolution of "Talk-Story" is open-ended. It becomes obvious that mere talk cannot stave off reality forever.

"Face the music, Dee. Running is not always the answer," Frank says in a rare moment of candor.

Although the audience knows that ultimately this is the best advice, it can't help yearning for a good yarn every now and then.

Times Tribune Theater Review (Palo Alto, CA) April 7, 1992 by Linda P. Jacob
[TheatreWorks, Palo Alto, CA]
Prejudices examined in 'Talk-Story'

'Talk-Story' written by Jeannie Barroga, a world premiere production by TheatreWorks, offers an intimate peek into its characters' psyches, where frustrations and dreams serve to masquerade pain and truth.

"Talk-Story" narrates the Filipino immigrants' confrontation with prejudice, especially in the 1930s and '40s. It raises social issues while attempting to project both sides of issues with gripping sensitivity and striking a delicate balance between opposing convictions.

Directed by Marc Hayashi, the play relates a daughter's reaction to her father's stories and the price she pays for believing in his dreams. Earlene Somera in the role of Dee Abano, the daughter, is a brilliant actress. Her talent is revealed in the sincerity of her portrayal and in the contrast of moods: from irreverent and feisty to sweet and caring. Joe Limon as Frank Abano, the father, offers a vivid representation of a man caught in the maze of prejudice.

The card game scenes where Limon indulges in impassioned exchange with pedro, performed by Dennis Geniblazo, are among the most potent in the play. Geniblazo and Limon, acting as brothers, break into arguments about their game differences of opinions concerning Dee. The quarrel is an eloquent assertion of old Filipino traditions and values.

The rest of the cast complete the solid performance: Richard Edgar in various roles, Brian Williams as Lon, and Gayle Rucker as Clara.

Asian Week Arts & Entertainment (San Francisco, CA) April 24, 1992 by Beverly R. Pichache
[TheatreWorks, Palo Alto, CA]
'Talk-Story' - A Filipino Tale of Dreams and Delusions

'Talk-Story,' written by Filipino playwright Jeannie Barroga, is about the dreams and delusions of a young Filipino American woman who in the frequent absence of her father finds the strength and comfort she needs in his stories of bravery and strength during his life in the 1930s as a Filipino immigrant in America.

Times Tribune Theater review (Palo Alto, CA) April 25, 1986 by Carl Maves
[Foothill College Studio Theatre, Los Altos, CA
When Stars Fall Mrs. Custer the real ego behind the general

You know those dramas where a central character everybody talks about and reacts to remains offstage? Usually that strategy is just a gimmick, and a frustrating one at that. But in Jeannie Barroga's "When Stars Fall," the strategy, for once, really works.

Barroga's invisible pseudo-protagonist is the ill-fated Gen. George Armstrong Custer. By keeping him in the wings, the playwright is able to give us a new, unexpected Custer, a Custer who in large part is the creation of his ambitions, conniving wife, Libbie.

Libbie is Barroga's true protagonists, and as portrayed by Jennifer Adams, she is a true monster, too. Adams' Libbie is the sort of obsessed "little woman" who relentlessly devotes herself to promoting her less-than-brilliant husband's career while dauntlessly blinding herself to his shortcomings.

Custer "has no vices," Barroga has Libbie say, "that I can see." That's phrased with nicely concise irony, as is an exchange between Adams and Craig Hamilton as Custer's choleric military rival, Benteen. Her husband doesn't drink, Libbie insists. "No, Benteen agrees, "not well."

Thursday night's preview of "When Stars Fall" revealed an imperfect but engrossing play that offers an interesting sidelight on American history. Barroga memorably exposes Libbie the image-conscious publicity hound in the scenes with her cousin, Becky, played by Rebecca Finkel, and in her manipulative treatment of Ev Haletky's Eliza, a cook and ex-slave in whom Custer has taken a more than passing interest.

But there's another, more appealing side to her, one that comes out in a strangely moving encounter with Tony Williams as Charley, the lonely frontier scout. Williams is quite wonderful, charging the conversation with a subtle but unmistakable erotic tension that Libbie can't help but find attractive. We catch a glimpse here of Libbie the lost romantic, the soft creature buried under the enameled surface.

Directed by John McDonough, "When Stars Fall" is a production of Palo Alto's Playwright Forum and obviously a work-in-progress. Some of its rough edges are rather attractive, as when Dianne Melton comes on as Calamity Jane for no very cogent reason except that Barroga has written some funny stuff for Jane which Melton delivers in fine, raucous style.

A more serious deficiency is the role Paul Rosenberg plays, a common solder whose character is widely inconsistent. But the play's major flaw is also, paradoxically a measure of its strength.

This happens at the end, 25 years after the massacre at Little Big Horn, when the aged Libbie is besieged by snide reporters and walks out in a huff. But this won't do. What we emotionally need at this point is a soliloquy for Libbie, not necessarily long but passionate, telling us what it's like to cherish the memory of a man who foolishly led 196 men to their deaths.

Barroga has even hinted that Libbie was to some extent responsible for Custer's Last Stand in that she inflated her husband's ego to where his judgment was affected. Wouldn't it be well to end with her partial realization of her own culpability? But even if she ends still bind, she must be given a final word. We serve it, Adams deserves, the play deserves it -- "When Stars Fall" is just too good to dwindle away in a huff.

The Philippine Review Entertainment (Stockton, CA) December 1993 by Leatrice Perez
[Edison Drama Department, Stockton, CA]
Edison High presents "Kenny Was a Shortstop"

The Edison Drama Department is practicing a new learning method for the students by allowing them to direct a play this fall for the community's viewing pleasure. Student Lucien Rose Maghirang Palomares, a two-year drama student directed the Asian-American play "Kenny Was a Shortstop" under the direction of her drama teacher, Sandra Castanon-Ramirez.

"Kenny Was a Shortstop" is a play written by Filipina-American playwright Jeannie Barroga, a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area and whose other plays, such as Kin, Eye of the Coconut, Rita's Resources, Talk-Story and Walls, which was performed in Stockton last June, have been performed throughout California and in Seattle, Washington.

"Kenny Was a Shortstop" is a play based on an actual killing that happened on Stockton's Charter Way in June of 1990. The pain is reenacted as a reporter, played by Khamkhoune Souvannarack, goes to the heart of the situation many years later to talk to the parents of the victim, played by Jules Escalona and Elizabeth Manipol. This tragedy relives the sorrows in the reality of the brutal death. Roel Suasin acted in the flashback of the dead boy.

Seventeen-year-old Lucien Rose M. Palomares directed her first play and stated, "Being the director has taught me more about my Filipino culture and values. It was a new learning experience for me and a great privilege to see that my fellow students from the Edison High School Drama Department are quite talented."

The devoted students from the drama department worked very hard to keep the play exceedingly successful by attending the class and staying after school for publicity, rehearsals, and for building the props and sets. Through all this challenging work, students have found ways to make the job enjoyable and exciting. They have learned more about the Filipino values, backgrounds, and morals and also at the same time feel what the characters felt according to the script. The dedicated actors and actresses for this play were all first year drama students. They hoped the exciting adventures they experienced were also felt by the viewers.

The play was first performed for their Scholarship Night on November 12th at Antonio's Banquet Hall on West Lane for $10.00 a person and again at the Edison High School Auditorium on November 19-20 for $3.00 per adult.

San Francisco Weekly Stage (San Francisco, CA) May 15, 1991 by Dennis Harvey
[Brava! For Women in the Arts, San Francisco, CA]
Women Times Three from Brava! [Kenny Was a Shortstop]

Brava! For Women in the Arts is launching its new Mission District house with the "Women Times Three" program of three one-acts in double-billed repertory, starting off with Harold Pinter's A Kind of Alaska and Jeannie Barroga's new Kenny Was a Shortstop (which will be replaced by h. Teirrah McNair's Up the Ante starting May 24). Both these works are less than fully realized, but they're still absorbing, within their limits, and quite well-produced. . .

Taking off from a recent news story about the gang slaying of a Stockton teen, Jeannie Barroga's Kenny Was a Shortstop echoes her Asian American Theatre disaster Eye of the Coconut in that it throws more issues into the air than it fan bring together. Still, this is a much stronger piece of writing (and direction), powerful in detail if not in overall dramatic design.

Kenny (Michael Ordona) is the slain youth, a high school loner "reckless enough. . .to get himself killed by a gang looking for someone else," Cora (Janis Chow) is the journalist interviewing mourning parents Nan (Wilma Consul) and Tommy (Ron Muriera) in search of the "human side" to the tragedy, a news-bite packaging that slams against their bitterness.

Through she manages the very good performers and the text's complicated flashback structure with some panache as a director, Barroga never connects the story of a dreamy adolescent outcast to the seemingly unrelated topic of gang violence. Barroga overcomes this sketchiness on a scene-by-scene basis with her precise sense of domestic drama, but more development might turn this solid piece into a home run. (continued through June 2 at the Brava Studio Theatre in S.F.)

photo caption: Michael Ordona, Wilma Consul and Ron Muriera (l to r) in a game of life and death in "Kenny Was a Shortstop (Photo by Jason Potts)

Asian Week (San Francisco, CA) May 17, 1991 by Don Lau
[Brava! For Women in the Arts, San Francisco, CA]
"Kenny Was a Shortstop", But Is Still a Hit

How would you feel if your son was accidentally killed during a youth gang shootout which was detailed in a newspaper story taking up about 1/6 of a page?

The legacy of such grief is explored in Jeannie Barroga's "Kenny Was a Shortstop" at San Francisco's Brava! Studio Theater. The one act play is based on a true incident.

On July 15, 1990 in Stockton, California, Leobardo Barajas, an 18-year-old Filipino youth, was accidentally gunned down with another person during a gang war shootout. Five other people were wounded. The accused are 12 members of a Filipino youth gang, Bahala Na ("Anything Goes"). The accused face 348 criminal counts. The defendants entered their pleas on April 15, 1991.

Relatives and friends of wounded victims are usually overlooked by the media in its reportage of these unfortunate events.

"Kenny" gives the audience a glimpse into the hearts and minds of the parents who continue to mourn the untimely death of their son, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Cora (Janis Chow) is a reporter who interviews Tommy (Ron Muriera) and Nan (Wilma Consul) over a period of time for an indepth article on the aftermath of their son's murder. Michael Ordona portrays the late Kenny in flashbacks which build a jigsaw portrait of a youngster frustrated by racism that blocks both his career choices ("I'm not a g--k[y] geek!") and his pursuit of an Asian girl who prefers white Americans because "I have to have standards." The boy feels like "leftovers instead of prime beef" and decides to become a rebel with a cause: To strip off the barnacles of the so-called "model minority" image by being a bad boy.

Kenny's one fleeting moment of glory was a double play when he was a shortstop on the school baseball team. The irony, of course, is that an Asian American kid, who vainly tried to assimilate in White America, was able to achieve a nanosecond of distinction in baseball, an all-American sport. Kenny's mom wants that one bright instant of happiness to be described in Cora's story to counterbalance the negative press. It isn't.

"[H]eart, mind? Where is it? Not in this 'sixth of a page'. . .[He looked like them, and they killed him. They gang together because that world out there MAKES them! And THAT's the real enemy . . .That's what makes the war,]" Nan cries out.

Base Hit

The only major problem with "Kenny" is that it's only one act. Ron Muriera does a credible job as the aloof fisherman father who wonders what went wrong with his son. Wilma Consul gives a good performance as the mother whose grief boils just beneath the surface. Michael Ordona is a Filipino James Dean. Finally, Barroga handles both the subject matter and the cast with just the right amount of sensitivity to effectively dramatize the anguish of the forgotten victims of gang violence without fortifying the stereotypes that the mainland media foster about so-called "Asian gangs."

"Kenny" may have been a shortstop, but it's definitely a hit.

["Kenny" was part of a "Woman Times Three" series of one act plays which showcase San Francisco women directors.]

photo caption: Ron Muriera (left) and Michael Ordona in "Kenny Was a Shortstop", a world premiere written and directed by Jeannie Barroga (Photo by Jason Potts)

Philippine News Arts/Entertainment (San Francisco, CA) May 15-21, 1991
[Brava! For Women in the Arts, San Francisco, CA]
Showcase of promising Fil-Am theater artists ["Kenny Was a Shortstop"]

Among the best and promising of Filipino theater artists are in the cast of "Kenny Was a Shortstop", a new one-act play by playwright Jeannie Barroga, which premier[ed] on May 10 and continue[d] until May 19 at Brava! Studio Theatre at 2180 Bryant Street in San Francisco.

Veteran actors Ron Muriera and Michael Ordona team up with Teatro ng Tanan artist Wilma Consul in portraying a Filipino-American family bereaved by the senseless killing of their son Kenny (Ordona) in a gang shooting. Janis Chow, another long-time actress at Asian American Theatre Company, completes the cast as a columnist interviewing the parents, discovering many things about them and herself.

"'Kenny' was based on a true story and every Filipino knows the pain of loss in such an ugly tragedy," Barroga says. "Our actors are able to emote the controlled anguish of typical Filipino parents as they confront a sad reality and remember the best memories of, and simple joys about their son."

Ron Muriera is the only Filipino member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and has appeared, among others, in "Seeing Double" and in AATC's "Rosie's Café." He is the incoming company manager of TnT and will be going to the Philippines for a collaborative production of the Mime Troupe and the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) in 1992.

Michael Ordona studied at Julliard School in New York City and has appeared in various (read: non-Filipino) roles in "Family Devotions," "Beijing Legends", and "A Question of Loyalty." "Kenny" will be his first Filipino lead role.

Wilma Consul, fresh from the success of her stage debut as Natalie in Teatro ng Tanan's "Kin/Kamaganak" has produced, emcee'd and participated in various cultural shows in the community and at San Francisco State University where she is a graduate student in broadcast journalism.

"Kenny" is the play opener of Women Direct's inaugural showcase of "Woman Times Three," featuring one-act plays staged by three talented multicultural women-directors: Jeannie Barroga, H. Teirah McNair and Pat Beaupre.

Barroga is a prolific Filipino playwright. Her plays have been read and staged at various theaters in the Bay Area.

photo caption: Michael Ordona, Wilma Consul and Ron Muriera in "Kenny Was a Shortstop", a world premiere written and directed by Jeannie Barroga (Photo by Jason Potts)

Philippine News Arts/Entertainment (San Francisco, CA) May 15-21, 1991
[Brava! For Women in the Arts, San Francisco, CA]
Showcase of promising Fil-Am theater artists ["Kenny Was a Shortstop"]

Among the best and promising of Filipino theater artists are in the cast of "Kenny Was a Shortstop", a new one-act play by playwright Jeannie Barroga, which premier[ed] on May 10 and continue[d] until May 19 at Brava! Studio Theatre at 2180 Bryant Street in San Francisco.

Veteran actors Ron Muriera and Michael Ordona team up with Teatro ng Tanan artist Wilma Consul in portraying a Filipino-American family bereaved by the senseless killing of their son Kenny (Ordona) in a gang shooting. Janis Chow, another long-time actress at Asian American Theatre Company, completes the cast as a columnist interviewing the parents, discovering many things about them and herself.

"'Kenny' was based on a true story and every Filipino knows the pain of loss in such an ugly tragedy," Barroga says. "Our actors are able to emote the controlled anguish of typical Filipino parents as they confront a sad reality and remember the best memories of, and simple joys about their son."

Ron Muriera is the only Filipino member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and has appeared, among others, in "Seeing Double" and in AATC's "Rosie's Café." He is the incoming company manager of TnT and will be going to the Philippines for a collaborative production of the Mime Troupe and the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) in 1992.

Michael Ordona studied at Julliard School in New York City and has appeared in various (read: non-Filipino) roles in "Family Devotions," "Beijing Legends", and "A Question of Loyalty." "Kenny" will be his first Filipino lead role.

Wilma Consul, fresh from the success of her stage debut as Natalie in Teatro ng Tanan's "Kin/Kamaganak" has produced, emcee'd and participated in various cultural shows in the community and at San Francisco State University where she is a graduate student in broadcast journalism.

"Kenny" is the play opener of Women Direct's inaugural showcase of "Woman Times Three," featuring one-act plays staged by three talented multicultural women-directors: Jeannie Barroga, H. Teirah McNair and Pat Beaupre.

Barroga is a prolific Filipino playwright. Her plays have been read and staged at various theaters in the Bay Area.

photo caption: Michael Ordona, Wilma Consul and Ron Muriera in "Kenny Was a Shortstop", a world premiere written and directed by Jeannie Barroga (Photo by Jason Potts)

Bay Area Reporter Theatre review (San Francisco, CA) May 16, 1991 by Deborah Peifer
Women Direct (Kenny Was a Shortstop) [Brava! For Women in the Arts, San Francisco, CA]

The director is a relatively recent innovation in the history of western theatre. Although there are vague references to a traffic manager in the Middle Ages and indications that playwrights in the Renaissance might have suggested line readings, staging tended to be controlled by the simple fact that memorizing lines was not the done thing in European theatre.

As a consequence, actors had to move down to the prompter’s to hear their whispered lines, so they could declaim them to the house. With the rise of realism, it became necessary to put someone in the house to see how the thing looked. Do I need to say that the man in charge, has, for the most part, been a man or did you guess that?

Women are still fighting to work as directors, fighting a system that still assumes ‘man-in-charge’ unless forced to consider an alternative. The decision of Women Direct and Brava! For Women in the Arts to showcase the work of local women director is a good one, whose time has long since come.

Women Times Three consists of two programs: A Kind of Alaska and Kenny was a Shortstop from May 10 to May 19 and Up the Ante and A Kind of Alaska from May 24 to June 2. Both program are presented at the newly opened Brava Studio Theatre, 2180 Bryant St. in San Francisco. Because of the fine work exhibited in the first program, I feel comfortable recommending the second as well.

Separate Agendas

Kenny Was a Shortstop, written and directed by Jeannie Barroga, is the story of parents attempting to make sense out of the accidental murder of their son. Cora, a newspaper reporter, has come to interview the family in order to find some connection between the boy’s life and his death.

However, Nan’s memories are so different from Tommy’s that they might easily be recalling two different lives. And their separate agendas are at war with Cora’s interest in laying to rest some of her own ghosts, while writing a story that her editor will accept.

Barroga the writer has chosen flashbacks and innuendo as her way of commenting on the mutability of memory and experience. I was particularly struck by this when Cora, who has taken a lot of time to get to know the family so that she can report the truth, admits that her editor may change the focus, and her truth, in ways that she cannot control.

Barroga the director serves the text well, using split focus to remind us visually of the thematic values in the text. The acting is solid and, in the case o Wilma Consul’s Nan, quite effective. Consul moves easily between the mother who wishes to make sense of her son’s short and unhappy life and the wife who wishes to bring about some posthumous reconciliation between her memories and Tommy’s.

David Allen Jr.’s sound design for both shows deserves special mention. His realistic additions of bird song and sirens enlarge the worlds of each play. The minimal set is effective and allows the actors to claim our undivided attention. Brava has inaugurated its new studio with a pair of well-crafted pieces. Whatever follows will have much to live up to.

Philippine News review (San Francisco, CA) May 1991
by Rene M. Astudillo, Contributing Editor
Kenny Was a Shortstop – Short Filipino Play Says A Lot
[Brava! For Women in the Arts, San Francisco, CA]

“Kenny Was a Shortstop,” by Filipino writer Jeannie Barroga, is based on a true story. On July 15, 1990 Leobardo Barajas, 18, was killed with one other person in Stockton, California. The 12 accused are members of a Filipino youth gang called Bahala Na (“anything goes.”).

This one-act play is about the past and present. It reminisces significant facets of Kenny’s life before he was fatally shot. Occasional flashbacks paint a vivid picture of Kenny (played by Michael Ordona) as lacking in self-confidence and unable to deal with failure and frustration. When he gets jilted by the girl he likes, he slips into a non-conformist personality as a way of getting the attention he wants.

However, the flashbacks merely provide the basic scenario for the play. The real setting is about a Filipino Chinese journalist (Janis Chow as Cora) who interviews Kenny’s parents (Wilma Consul as Nan and Ron Muriera as Tommy), hoping to interject a “human interest” twist in the murder story. In the beginning, Nan volunteers all information, complete with Kenny’s scrapbooks. She goes all out, including pressuring Cora to stay for dinners, to make sure that the newspaper story will be the “perfect” one last memory of Kenny. Tommy, on the other hand, was more aloof, hardly responding to Cora’s questions.

Nan was not pleased with Cora’s first article and demands that a proof of succeeding stories be first presented to her.

In her last visit to the couple’s house, Cora was treated to an interesting twist she had not expected. Cora accuses Tommy of not having given enough attention to Kenny. Tommy, in turn, says that he himself needed some attention for Nan. Like Kenny, Tommy says he was also a baseball player. “But you never asked,” he says to Nan. In an outburst, Tommy reveals that Kenny was not his son, that Nan was two months pregnant when he married her. Embarrassed by what she was hearing, Cora begged to leave, but only after Nan had asked her to “leave out” from her newspaper story the “new information” that had surfaced.

The play ends with Nan asking Tommy to pick just one bitter melon from the garden. It will just be dinner for two.

Barroga’s script is an effective mix of the past and the present, being able to tell Kenny’s story while dramatizing the couple’s own. It is a realistic mix of Filipino culture (of hospitality, backyard gardening, and adobo – the popular dish) and the American way of life (baseball and fishing for leisure, among other things). It depicts a Filipino American household of conservative parents and “Americanized” children. It speaks of the Filipino pride that shuns damaging “scandals.”

Ordona as Kenny is believable as a Filipino growing up in America. Consul (with a curly wig) and Muriera (with that baseball cap), faking a strong Filipino accent, are almost real and certainly funny. Chow could very well be the journalist of Channel 7. It was a cast efficiently put together, under the able direction of the scriptwriter herself.

“Kenny Was a Shortstop” is a short play that mirrors a lot.

The Stockton Record REVIEW (Stockton, CA) June 20, 1993 by Diane Runion
[Asian American Repertory Theatre, Stockton, CA]
"Walls" helps break down divisions between us

Memorabilia of Vietnam War years hang from orange-and-white parachute silk in Stagg High School's auditorium lobby. Central Valley Vietnam Vets organized the art-show memorial. It sets the mood and tone for Asian American Repertory Theatre's production Jeannie Barroga's drama "Walls."

Little of the traditional theater buzz breaks the contemplative atmosphere surrounding a production as quietly thought-provoking as the black-granite Vietnam Memorial itself.

Ray Newman directs "Walls" with a similarly quiet touch. A narrow, shiny black strip forms a long triangular outline at the front of the stage. A teddy bear, flowers, medals, photographs placed along that line tip the audience. The fourth wall -- that space between audience and performers -- represents the Vietnam Memorial wall.

The play begins with a blond, long-haired man unfurling a flag. He puts it in a holster and holds it nearly motionless for the play's two-hour duration. Dan Magginetti makes his acting debut in this powerfully poised, symbolically loaded position. Dressed more like a war protester, he will gradually reveal that he keeps vigil to honor members of his wiped-out company.

Twenty-one people visit the wall: parents, veterans, the news media, the designer. Two dead soldiers move in spectral light from the audience and over the wall.

Controversy surrounded the wall's design and construction. Kerry Ito plays Maya, the 21-year-old architecture student who designed. Many vets objected to the designer of "their" memorial being an Asian woman who had nothing to do with the war.

The play's power grows from the small vignettes played out in front of the wall. Personal conflict shows some of the diverse walls humankind builds. However, the production loses some power with occasionally mushy diction.

Scruggs (Mike Kiley) represents the vets who object to design and designer. Buddies Dave (David Nelson) and Stu (Fel Tengonciang) no longer share their lives since Stu served in Vietnam, shipping body bags home. Dave didn't go to war.

A mother and father face their son's memory as a name chiseled in the stone. Julie (Erin Wells) struggles to understand a war she protested and the sacrifice of two boyfriends honored there.

Newscasters bicker over personal image and non-involvement. A paraplegic in a wheelchair argues with the war nurse who stayed stateside and who outranks him. More walls.

The play is as spare as the 58,000 names simple engraved by order of their death[s]. The production employs minimalist scenery, mimed props and action. When people stand before that polished granite wall in Washington, they see themselves reflected.

Members of AART's audience will also see their own reflected history. So will our community. When cast members read a roll call of local names, the impact is visceral. Ironically, by building one open-ended memorial wall, we may have begun the healing process of tearing down walls that divide us.

photo caption (June 25, 1993): BRIDGE-BUILDING: Jo Watts, left, and Ray Newman in "Walls", a drama centered around the Vietnam War Memorial [that played] at Stagg High.

Tracy Press SHOWCASE (Tracy, CA) June 25, 1993 by Angela Becker, Press Guest Critic
[Asian American Repertory Theatre, Stockton, CA]
"Walls" pays tribute to lives lost in Vietnam

Vietnam. For many people the name of this small country triggers a variety of emotions. For some Vietnam veterans the name may conjure up memories filled with sadness, regret or resentment. For others, it may instill a defensive pride, or anger over the way many were treated upon their return home. And for all who mourned the deaths of the tens of thousands who died there, a deep loss is felt, one that will never be forgotten. It is for these and other reasons that "Walls," a play by Jeannie Barroga, has been created.

The Asian American Repertory Theater in Stockton is producing Barroga's play at Stagg High School Auditorium. Directed by Ray Newman, the play revolves around the Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C., and how it came to be.

The human element is expressed very well through the characters in "Walls." At one point Maya, the young artist who designed the memorial, must defend her integrity as an artist. At a press conference she explains why [she] felt the plan is effective, by saying, "The strength of the design was in its understatement and its simplicity." The same can be said for this play.

Opening night last week included a special audience member: Barroga, the play's author. A resident of San Francisco, Barroga has been a successful playwright since 1981 and has authored many productions. At the end of "Walls" the cast gathers on the stage and one by one calls out a name and its location on The Wall. Barroga explained who those names were. "The names at the end were people I went to school with," said Barroga. "One of the real messages of the play was that war shouldn't have to happen in order for there to be memorials."

Among the characters in the play are the parents who grieve the loss of their sons; loyal patriot, whose tribute to his fellow comrades-in-arms is shown by his acting as a color guard at the memorial; two ghosts, Dan and Jerry, who watch visitors come to the wall and talk about the past, often adding a bit of humor to the drama; Julie, an old classmate of Dan and Jerry, the girl who loved them both. Julie had protested the war and how tries to come to grips with the reason their lives were lost. There's also Stu, a Chinese-American who served in the war in the disturbing capacity of taking care of the bodies and sending them home.

Last, but not least, is Maya. She's the 21-year-old Chinese-American college student who designed the memorial. Her character represents the many prejudices and resentment of others who protested the choice of Maya as designer.

Throughout the two-hour performance, the audience is drawn into the story and into each character's life. The set design is simple and strong in its lack of an elaborate set, avoiding distraction and enabling viewers to bring their minds that much more into the action. Filled with symbolism and related themes -- based on the walls of fear, prejudice and hatred -- the story serves as a cartharsis. It's possible that it helped in healing the author's own soul, for it also acts as a personal tribute to her high school classmates that were killed in the war.

Among the wonderful cast were Dan Magginetti who plays Terry, the flagholder; Erin Wells who plays Julie; Valerie Martinez who plays Sarah the nurse; Ben Szeto and Alex Hernandez who play Dan and Jerry; and Kerry Ito who played Maya. The diverse cast was well-chosen and the characters represent many perspectives. The actors are wonderful in their emotion-filled performances and, despite the intense heat and lack of air conditioning on opening night, they held the audiences full attention.

For anyone with an interest in the Vietnam war, or who just loves a great drama, "Walls" is the play to see. It is as much a healing to watch as is a visit to the Wall itself.

Stockton Record (Stockton, CA) June 18, 1993 by Brian McCoy
[Asian American Repertory Theatre, Stockton, CA]
"Walls" attempts to bridge gulf of Vietnam War

The Vietnam War left deep, indelible scars on the American psyche. Even last month, 20 years after the United States withdrew from Southeast Asian, controversy clouded President Clinton's visit to the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial. The 58,000 names inscribed on "The Wall" were at the heart of the issue. Likewise, those who died in Vietnam area at the center of "Walls", Jeannie Barroga's dramatization of the memorial's creation. Asian American Repertory Theatre open[ed] its production "Walls" at Stagg High School's Manlio Silva Auditorium.

Director Ray Newman acknowledges that "Walls" carries a special significance for him. The Modesto resident was in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam war during a 25-year career that stretched from the Korean conflict to the late 1970s. Newman wasn't stationed in Southeast Asian. "When all my friends were going to 'Nam, I was going to Turkey," he said. Having spent those years in uniform gives him a different perspective.

"When you're in the military during a conflict like that, you spend an awful lot of your time justifying the reasons why you're over there," Newman said. "In my heart of hearts, I wished -- as did nearly every other military man -- that we weren't there. You're kind of torn." Since its dedication nearly a decade ago, The Wall has become the focal point of understanding the war. "Walls" focuses on some of the people --living and dead, real and fictional -- whose lives were changed by the memorial. "Everything sort of centers around The Wall and around the effort to get it built," Newman said. "It's also the story of a couple of Vietnam veterans who come back from the war and they're not home yet. The walls that they're really discussing are the walls we build around ourselves."

There were plenty between the veterans and Maya Ying Lin who, at age 21, designed the memorial. She, Newman said, had no personal ties to the conflict: "She had no friends in Vietnam, didn't know anybody who went there." What veterans really objected to was Lin being a young Asian woman, Barroga said. "So my purpose was to show divisions not just between people but between ideologies, art vs. the establishment."

The Bay Area playwright spent two years researching the controversy and three days writing the first draft. San Francisco's Asian American Theatre Company premiered "Walls" in 1987. The work has been produced at Stanford and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, which will include "Walls" in an upcoming anthology of Asian-American women playwrights. Barroga's script so moved Newman that he agreed to commute from Modesto each night for rehearsals and make his directing debut.

"I got to know the guys at Asian American Repertory when we did "Teahouse of the August Moon" at Stockton Civic," Newman said. "Everyone in the cast kind of became one big family. When I do things down here in Modesto, they come see (me) and when they do things up there, I come see them. They've been asking me to direct something for them. When they gave me the script, there was no way I couldn't." Newman has extensive acting credits in San Joaquin County. This winter, he portrayed what he called the "token Caucasian" in AART's production of Philip Kan Gotanda's "A Song For a Nisei Fisherman."
"But this is the first time behind a production," he said. "I am having a great time. It's fun to watch (the actors) grown. They've really come a long way. There are really about five or six people in this who have never done any acting before."

The multi-racial cast of 18 has discovered the Vietnam War memorial plays a key role in enabling America to come to grips with the Vietnam experience. "It was such a terrible time and The Wall has just sort of become the catalyst for people to put all that aside," Newman said. "The vets need to know that's all behind us, they just need to be honored for the effort."

photo caption: "WALLS" Cast members Dan Magginetti, left, Aaron Teixeira and Erin Wells.

Entertainment (Stockton, CA)
[Asian American Repertory Theatre, Stockton, CA]
"Walls" recreates special moments

On June 18, 1993, at Stagg High School, Manlio Silva auditorium, Stockton, California, the Asian American Repertory Theatre presented the fourth production of WALLS by Jeannie Barroga, a young Filipina playwright. The inspiration for the play was a notable group -- a whole generation from the '60s and '70s -- that came together on a long narrow peninsula in Southeast Asia called Vietnam.

The story WALLS, which received two standing ovations at its opening Friday night -- one for the play and one for the playwright -- carries the audience through the historical two-year background of the controversy behind the building of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and moves the audience forward to the day of its dedication in 1984 -- all the time painting a human canvas of the American affected by that war, both living and dead.

Controversy surrounding the building of the memorial hinged on not only the reason for it and design of it, but also on the 21-year-old architecture student, Maya (played by Kerry Ito) who happened to be a Chinese-American, and whose design entry won over those submitted by other candidates.

Ray Newman, the Director, said, "The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, a black granite wall with more than 58,000 names carved on it began a healing process that is still going on today. The play is not just about that wall. It's about other walls: walls of fear, prejudice and hatred, walls to keep out those thing which cause us pain, to protect us from things we would rather not face; walls that keep us apart. I have enjoyed watching this cast, as fine a group of actors and technicians as I have ever worked with, building their characters and develop a passion to present a play that will honor all those who served in Vietnam." The background to the Stockton production is varied and dramatic. There were 21 roles portrayed by 18 actors. The Artistic Director, Val Acoba, had solicited scripts from playwright Jeannie Barroga of the Bay Area and chose WALLS which, since 1987, had three productions and is scheduled for publication this September.

The local Filipino-American actors were Fel Tengonciang, who played Stu, a veteran who found he no longer shared a life with his buddy who didn't go to war and couldn't understand him; Ken Alfonso played Rich, a newsman; Alfonso Cabrera, a parent who visits the Wall with his wife to see their son's carved name; and Alex Hernandez, who stepped in two nights before opening after a full day of cramming for the role of Jerry, one of the ghosts.

To set the mood for the play, memorabilia such as photos of veterans in Vietnam, letters, poetry, flags, etc., some gathered from as far as Sacramento, were displayed in the lobby by Terry Andree and other VV's. Andy Rallojay, Jr., a Filipino-American Vietnam veteran helping with the lobby display, heard the rehearsal and went home inspired and wrote a touching poem recollecting his experience, framed it and placed it in the lobby for all to read. On opening night, the audience, resembling much of the cast itself, saw a play unfold telling finally their stories and/or expressing some of their feelings about the war. By the end of the play, the 'tolling of names like a bell in your head' brought tears to Andy and the twenty or so vets and audience members and even to the cast itself, as some of the names called were those of sons, brothers and friends who were Stocktonians and former students at Stagg High School.

A special night had happened; a special moment was re-created that accomplished the same thing as in Washington, D.C. before the real WALL.

photo caption: (L-R) Ben Acoba, Fel Tengonciang, Val Acoba, and Alfonso Cabrera; (Far left) Andy Rallojay with Jeannie Barroga and the Vietnam Veterans.

Modesto Bee (Modesto, CA) January 18, 1994 by Leo Stutzin
[Asian American Repertory Theatre, Modesto, CA]
"Walls" Cathartic drama at war memorial

"I have friends on the wall," Ray Newman tells. Newman, white-haired and soft-spoken, tells of spending 22 1/2 years in the Army before retiring and settling in Modesto in 1979. "When all my buddies were going to 'Nam, they sent me to Turkey. People I served with are on the wall." Newman's phrasing is shorthand. His friends aren't on the wall. Their names are. The names of Americans who died in the military adventure that swelled from a small and advisory role into a major conflict whose divisive impact on the United States was exceeded only by the Civil War. Those bonds underlie Newman's willingness to direct the Asian American Repertory Theatre's production of "Walls", which open[ed] Saturday in the Modesto Junior College Little Theatre.

The play looks at the background and the impact of the Vietnam War Memorial wall in Washington, and treats the wall as a metaphor for continuing divisions in American society. . ."People [at AART] had been bugging me to direct a play for a long time," [Newman] says. "I kept putting it off because of all the hours involved. Living in Modesto and holding down a full-time job doesn't mesh easily with commuting to Stockton nightly and investing the effort that goes into directing, especially directing a complex venture with a large cast. "They handed me the script," he tells. "After I read it there wasn't any way I could turn it down."

It was written by Jeannie Barroga, a Bay Area playwright with substantial national credits. The production went up last July in Stockton. The response was "very good," Newman says. Even the city's Vietnam veterans organization lent a hand, decorating the lobby with memorabilia of the war. "When we went over to talk to them about some involvement, they were leery," Newman recalls. "So we invited them down to the first reading. From that point on we had nothing but the highest praise and support from those guys."

Many of the play's 24 characters are based on real people, Newman says. Some fought in the war, others didn't. "One character, Stu, never made it to 'Nam," Newman tells. "He was in Hawaii loading body bags, a traumatic situation. A buddy rings him to the wall in hopes that the experience will open him up and they can get back to being the kind of friends they were before he went away." Another is a young woman who comes to find the names of two boyfriends she lost in the conflict.

After last summer's response in Stockton, bringing the cast together for another staging in Modesto was no problem, Newman says. "They jumped at the chance to do it again. I polled all the people and almost all said, "Don't worry about it. We'll clear our schedule[s]'" For the few actors who couldn't make it, finding replacements was no problem. Although the play is being produced by an Asian-American company, the performers span the American gamut. "We have Asians, blacks, Caucasians, Filipinos, Hispanics," Newman says. None stands out as the star. As in war, all have important parts to play.

"Walls" [was] the first attraction in MJC's Little Theatre Arts and Lecture Series for the spring semester.

photo credit: Sheridan Beuving, Fel Tengonciang, David Nelson is Asian American Repertory Theatre's Vietnam drama

Modesto Bee Living review (Modesto, CA) January 27, 1994 by Leo Stutzin
[Asian American Repertory Theatre, Modesto, CA]
"Walls" remembers war's pain, division

Catharsis may be great for the psyche, but it's not necessarily wonderful for the stage. No one can doubt the sincerity that Bay Area playwright Jeannie Barroga poured into "Walls", a drama about the meaning and history of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington. And it's impossible to question the commitment and effort that has gone into Asian American Repertory Theatre's staging of "Walls", which opened Friday at Modesto Junior College.

The performances are passionate and the interlocked stories ring of truth, if not freshness. But a sprawling play that unfolds in short episodes poses too many barriers to engagement, either of the mind of or the emotions. For many viewers, thought, those barriers may be easily brushed aside by strong feelings about the Vietnam War, its victims and its consequences, and about the wall that commemorates the human toll of over a decade of American involvement.

The play's central narrative revolves around the struggle to erect a memorial to U.S. combatants, and particularly to the 57,939 who died. In the late '70s, only a few years after Richard Nixon turned over the failing battle to South Vietnam, the wounds of domestic division were still raw. The idea of any monument was controversial. When the judges of a national competition chose the design of a 21-year-old Yale architecture student, Maya [Ying] Lin, the roar of controversy became thunderous. To many backers of the war, the thought of a memorial devoid of heroic resonances was [sacrilegious].

Playwright Barroga summarizes the skirmish that ensued in the vignettes employing Lin, project supporters, project opponents, and the press. Lin, depicted as a shy woman with unshakable convictions, rejects any compromise. Some foes, ostensibly aided by Ross Perot's money, would prefer no monument rather than a black granite wall engraved with the names of the dead. Between them are compromisers who would supplement the wall with a flag and a statue. Their squabbles alternate with anguished scenes which focus on visitors to the wall -- veterans, parents, lovers -- and flashes of black humor via the ghosts of two soldiers. There is inherent poignancy in a parent's tears, in the terrors that plague the minds of men who saw friends die, in the guilt-driven hysteria of a vet who spent years handing corpses and body bags. To elicit a response, Barroga needs only to lay out suggestions and depend on the memories of anyone who experienced the era. With most subjects, such shallowness would be disastrous. In "Walls" it is only disappointing.

Ray Newman, a Modestan who spent 20 years in the Army without seeing Vietnam, directed the earnest and competent performance. The most affecting member of his cast of 22 is Dan Magginetti, as a vet who comes to the wall on a days-long vigil, holding the Stars and Stripes. Magginetti stands on stage throughout the two acts, supporting a heavy flag. Other effective roles come from Fel Tengonciang, Erin Wells, Kerry Ito, and Jo and Tom Watts, among others. Asian American Repertory Theater is based in Stockton, where it originally staged "Walls" last summer. The show is the troupe's first in Modesto.

Amherst Bulletin (Amherst, MA) October 25, 1991
Walls
[New World Theatre, Amherst, MA]
photo credit: Ana Claire Meyer, left, and Michelle-Christine T. Hendrix star in "Walls", a play about the creation of the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial in Washington, D.C. presented by the New WORLD Theater at Bowker Auditorium, UMass Oct. 24-26 at 8 p.m. and Oct. 27 at 2:30 p.m. Panel discussions on the impact of the war on Southeast Asians will beheld Saturday and Sunday.

Hampshire Life (Amherst, MA) October 19, 1991

photo credit: Jeannie Barroga's WALLS tells the story of the struggle of architect Maya Lin (Ana Claire Meyer, left) to realize the creation of the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial. The New World Theater presentation begins Thursday in Bowker Auditorium, UMass.

San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA) April 28, 1989
by Bernard Weiner, Chronicle Staff Critic
[Walls Premiere Reviews]
A Dramatic Reflection of the Wall: Viet Memorial as Dramatic Grist
[Asian American Theatre Company, San Francisco, CA]

As playwright Jeannie Barroga reminds us in "Walls", which premiered Wednesday at the Asian American Theater Company, the opening of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. not only provided the means for a national healing process -- unleashing an emotional power that not even its most fervent supporters could have envisioned -- but it also, inadvertently, wound up fanning the old flames of division about the war.

In 1981 an eminent panel of architects and artists unanimously selected the nontraditional, nonpolitical design of Chinese American Maya Lin - a simple, black marble V, rising from beneath the ground, on which the names of all the U.S. dead would be engraved. There was an outcry from conservative veterans' groups, who wanted a more traditional monument, preferably designed by a Vietnam vet. Lin, to them, was unacceptable -- not only was her design abstract but she was an architecture student rather than a practicing architect, was only 21 (too young to know the war firsthand), a woman, and, to some vets, she looked too much like the enemy fought in Vietnam. Finally, this opposition forced significant changes: Lin's monument was built but an American flag and a traditional status of three U.S. soldiers was placed opposite it, thus marring the simple harmony and unity of Lin's brilliant, form-meets-function design.

Clearly, politics won out over art. That's part of Bay Area playwright Barroga's message in this somewhat plodding, overwritten but often absorbing play. Another part is a fairly tired statement about how people erect walls around themselves; and the necessity for breaking those down.

The play, directed by Marian Li on Sandra Howell's abstract wall-like set, unfolds on at least two tracks: the evolving growth of a quiet, shy artist Lin (Janis Chow, in a touching performance), as she shepherds her design through all the political mine fields, and the cathartic impact the wall of names ha son those who come and stand before it.

In the play, Lin explains why she chose reflective black marble panels on which to engrave the names of the dead: You are forced to see yourself at the same time you are reading the names -- you can't help but reflect on that war. We meet six visitors to the memorial, of various ethnic hues, who break off in pairs to confront one another: an Army nurse (Geneva Baskerville) who found ways not to go to Vietnam, a sergeant (Lewis Sims) who lost his legs, a vet (Charles Shaw Robinson) who stands silent vigil with an American flag, a woman (Maura Vaughn) who mourns two dear friends, a veteran (William Ellis Hammond) who is close to catatonia as a result of his close contact with the slaughter, and his buddy (Ron Dorn), who tries to get him to talk.

Barroga occasionally captures real drama in these fairly cliched confrontations -- and the actors are strong -- but tends to undercut the strength of these scenes by her overwriting and her Psych 101 bromides. Like, the information-conveying scenes revealing the political and media machinations -- involving an administrator (David Kudler), a veterans' leader (James Reese), and a news-hungry Chinese American reporter (Sharon Iwai) -- are awkwardly structured.

Finally in her attempt to create a noncontroversial script, she removes much of the starch from the confrontations. The pro-Vietnam War argument is barely mentioned, and her one protester merely wants to apologize. So much for joining the issues.

photo credit: William Hammond (left) and Charles Robinson in a scene from 'WALLS' at the the Asian American Theater Company

San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA) April 27, 1989
by Scott Rosenberg, Examiner Theater Critic
Hit-and-miss 'Walls' Instant poignancy raises barriers in Vietnam-art drama
[Asian American Theatre Company, San Francisco, CA]

Public art can be as divisive as the "Tilted Arc" of rusted steel that sculptor Richard Serra confronted Manhattan office workers with. Or it can be as healingly cathartic as the AIDS quilt. Today, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington seems unquestionably to fit the second category. But less than a decade ago, as its design and execution became a vortex for the competing interests and wishes of politicians, veterans' leaders and artists, it threatened to collapse into one final note of discord in the long saga of Vietnam War-related disputes.

"Walls", a new play by Jeannie Barroga that opened Wednesday at the Asian American Theater Company, tries to capture that moment when the monument's future was impossible to predict -- when it was hard to picture how the winning design by a 21-year-old Chinese American architecture student at Yale, a black-granite wall etched with the names of the war dead, could crystallize a nation's remorse. The story of the fight over the monument's design could make for a fascinating dramatic study of the politics or art. But that story, though present in "Walls", is buried -- immured, you might say -- by the playwright's broader, poorly focused ambitions.

"Walls" is really two plays. One -- you could call it "The Education of Maya Lin" -- traces the fate of the designer's elegant modernist solution to the problem set by the competition: How do you produce a "nonpolitical" memorial to the most politically charged of wars? The idealistic student (Janis Chow) gets a crash course in the compromises of public-sector life. She's caught between the memorial's director (David Kudler), the veterans' leader (James Reese), the veterans who want a statue and a flag rather than a wall, the secretary of the Interior and the press, as represented by scoop-hungry Vi (Sharon Iwai).

While there's hardly any suspense in these events -- we know from the abstract black slabs of Sandra Howell's set, if we're otherwise uninformed, that the monument will raise its money, gets its permits and be built -- Barroga has a sharp eye for the artistic issues. And though the playwright plainly sides with Maya Lin in her plea to preserve the harmony and integrity of her design, she allows the statue-craving, flag-waving vets to have their say, too.

What "Walls" lacks is a sense of its own harmonious integrity. The sage of the monument's birth is interspliced with scenes of veterans and other visitors facing up to their pasts and to one another as they stare into the reflective face of the memorial wall. These scenes amount to a barrelful of dramatic capsules, some effective and some perfunctory, all arranged within "Walls" with little sense of logic, chronology or interrelation.

The characters are paired off. Embittered, flag-hoisting Terry (Charles Shaw Robinson) has to bring himself to talk to ex-radical Julie (Maura Vaughn), who only wants to apologize. Ex-street gang comrades Stu (William Ellis Hammond) and Dave (Ron Dorn) have to get to the bottom of Stu's traumatic wartime experience. Nurse Sarah (Geneva Baskerville) and wheelchair-bound sergeant Morris (Lewis Sims) have to find common ground as scarred but not hopeless survivors. Hovering behind them all are two ghosts of veterans (Michael Racela and Eric Cazenave), who egg the living on toward reconciliation while humming bits of "Surfing Bird."

The purpose is to show us how many walls still remain from the Vietnam era, keeping us all apart. But unless you have a very high tolerance for instant poignancy achieved at little cost, these scenes may leave you climbing the walls yourself: They're too visibly didactic. Only Baskerville and Sims are able to create full characters rather than human placards urging brotherhood.

Director Marian Li might have done well to speed up the many transitions (blackouts are hardly needed after each scene, since we can see the actors take position on the abstract set anyway). At times some of the actors confuse low volume with intimacy; even in as small a theater as the Asian American's new home, in which "Walls" is the second production, it helps to speak up. On the other hand, several of the performances --notably Chow's earnest Maya and Racela's jaunty ghost, along with Sims and Baskerville -- find extra life in Barroga's writing when you least expect it.

The Vietnam wall has become a powerful symbol; a sort of mass-participation memorial. Its design is, as Maya Lin declares in "Walls" truly democratic. "It's strong in its understatement," she argues, "It's strongest in its simplicity." "Walls" would benefit from a more rigorous adherence to its subject's design principles.

photo credit: Janis Chow, left, Geneva Baskerville and Lewis Sims in Jeannie Barroga's 'WALLS' at the the Asian American Theater Company

Asian Week (San Francisco, CA) May 5, 1989 by Don Lau
Some Hits, Misses in AATC's 'Walls'
[Asian American Theatre Company, San Francisco, CA]

Israel is not the only country with a "wailing wall." The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is a contemporary wailing wall where Vietnam veterans and civilians alike confront the specters of "coming home" and "ending the war." The story behind the building of the wall -- and the tearing down a few walls -- is told in a new docudrama play appropriately entitled "Walls". Jeannie Barroga, a Filipino American playwright, wrote the two-act play in two time frames: (1) one day in the life of the memorial, and (2) the history of the memorial's design and construction.

The latest version of "Walls" opened last week at the Asian American Theater Company's new theater at 405 Arguello. It is scheduled to run through June 4. The play was previously staged as an AATC workshop reading in May 1988. Marian Li directed both versions of "Walls." Unfortunately, the only Vietnam veteran in the original cast, Charles Branklyn, who played the wheelchair-bound Lee Morris, is missing from the new stage production. The absence of veterans deprives "Walls" of the hues of gritty, gut-wrenching realism that an all-veteran cast would have given it as in the case of "Honey Bucket," a play written by another Filipino, Mel Escueta, himself a Vietnam veteran. Why not? Simple. The "Walls" cast wasn't there.

But the war was also fought on the home front. Thus the nonvet cast members depict, with an eager sincerity, the emotional trauma of Nam here at home. The stage production "Walls" '89 is refined version of the staged reading. But "Walls" '89 does have problems. Barroga's repetitive emphasis on women's rights and blacks' rights was overdone. The scene (or rather mini-scenes) of tow blacks, a nurse haunted by her guilt for avoiding serving in Nam (Although she treated wounded and dying soldiers shipped home from Nam), and a wheelchair-bound former soldier who is afraid to touch the wall, loses much of its dramatic impact due to the butcher block approach and the overly repetitive emphasis on the plight of black Vietnam veterans. The implication is that blacks were the only ones who have problems flowing from Nam. Barroga repeats the same mistakes she made in the workshop version with her piecemeal, jigsaw puzzle scenes that carry the audience on a hopscotch ride back and forth through time. "Walls" needs to be patched up. Barroga emulates a William Faulkner stream-of-consciousness approach in the play's continuity. Unfortunately, she goes overboard.

To be fair, it should be noted that Barroga has sewn up a few of "Walls" seams from the previous workshop version. Although she continues to cut up the scenes into bite-size portions that alternate with an annoyingly jarring effect, there are slightly fewer mini-scenes and thus fewer bumps on the road. As soon as one characters says something important, the scene literally and abruptly shirts to another and then another. The editing (or lack thereof) results in a jarring rock video effect on the audience. Scenes in a play are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Once the pieces fall into place, a clear picture should emerge or depict what the playwright intended to communicate to the audience. In "Walls", however, the pieces of the puzzle are cut into smaller pieces and appear to be scattered across the board. When one tires to put the butchered pieces back together, as "Walls unfolds, a murky picture emerges. The pieces are strewn across time and space with little logic or chronology. It is a pity that Barroga has retained this jumpy approach to flashbacks in "Walls" '89. Her dialogue is too good to be chapped up like a stalk of celery.

Up Against the Wall

There is a fiery history behind the design and construction of the wall, which became a microcosm of the war itself. The lightning rod of the altercation is Maya Lin, the 21-year-old Chinese American architecture student at Yale who won the national competition with her controversial design of the memorial. Janis Chow gives a strong performance of Lin's struggle and angst in trying to preserve the harmony and integrity of her design against vets who feel betrayed that someone who looks like the enemy designed the memorial. This dramatic portrayal is visually supported by Sandra Howell's set, a zig-zag black marble-like clone of the memorial sans names.

Maya complains of the media hype on the irony of an Asian American woman designing a monument memorializing an Asian war. Ironically, Maya was born in 1959 -- the same year as the first American casualty in Vietnam. The vets on the memorial administrative panel complain that the design looks like black belt, does not honor all of the vets who served in Nam and does not fit in as a traditional white monument like the Washington Monument. Vets and right-wingers alike called the Vietnam memorial "a black wall of shame -- perfect for those who lost the war."

The play's most powerful scene depicts an Asian American Vietnam veteran's homecoming. Stu is portrayed by William Hammond, star of the recent AATC production, "Rosie's Café." Although he gives a moving portrayal of the troubled veteran, Stu might as well have been a white character. The special circumstances of being an Asian American soldier in an Asian war weren't explored at all. How did Stu feel about this? How did the natives feel about him? Did they see him as a real American? Or one of them? Was he mistaken for the enemy? We'll never know. Hammond delivers a powerful performance depicting the effects of Stu's delayed stress. He hasn't come home yet. Dave, Stu's black friend from the streets, brought him to the Memorial wall in the hope that Stu would break through his wall of silence. We slowly learn the shocking truth behind Stu's silence. His job was to monitor the American body bag shipments home. "I can tell how much each one weighs now." In a vivid flashback he relives the horror of opening one of the body bags -- which propels him home as Dave looks on. Stu breaks down in Dave's arms.

Vets, however, aren't the only ones suffering from delayed stress syndrome. Julie, the blonde antiwar protester, pays her respects to her two boyfriends (Dan, an Asian, and Jerry, a Caucasian), who died in Nam. Their ghosts are drawn to the Memorial Wall because she is there. (It is curious that the interracial relationship between the Asian American Vietnam veteran ghost, Dan, and Julie was casually mentioned but not explored in the play.) In another touching scene, Terry, a vet who maintains a quiet two-day vigil at the Memorial Wall, and July slowly break down the walls between them -- with the subtle encouragement of Dan and Jerry. Some of the walls in "Walls" were transformed from barriers into conduits of communications. The Vietnam Veteran Memorial became a wailing wall for veteran and non-veteran alike reflecting their similarities and differences.

Barroga concludes "Walls" in an ingenious finale. The 12-member cast forms a living wall that faces and touches the Memorial Wall. "It's so warm -- as if it's living," comments one character. The audience "becomes" the Wall as the cast "touches the Wall.

photo credit: Asian American Theater Company's "Walls" stars Charles Shaw Robinson, Janis Chow, Maura Vaughn, Lewis S. Sims, and Geneva Baskerville. (Photo by Cynthia Wallis)