Mark Taper Theatre presents The Square

The Mark Taper Forum's Asian Theatre Workshop is proud to present the world premiere of THE SQUARE. This epic project is written by playwrights Bridget Carpenter, Ping Chong, Constance Congdon, Kia Corthron, Maria Irene Fornes, Philip Kan Gotanda, Jessica Hagedorn, David Henry Hwang, Craig Lucas, Robert O'Hara, Han Ong, Jose Rivera, Diana Son, Alice Tuan, Mac Wellman and Chay Yew.

Immigrant men learning English by reading street signs. A gang of Polsih chidren taunting a Chinese girl. A man servant and his Caucasian boss in a weekly haircutting ritual. These are only some of the riveting tales that transpire in a town square. Through the eyes of sixteen American playwrights, come and experience the myriad colorful and passionate stories, histories, politics and relationships between Asian and non-Asian Americans in this country over the last hundred years. It's a theatrical event not to be missed!

The cast includes Marcus Chong, Dennis Dun, Arye Gross, Emily Kuroda, Soon-Tek Oh, Saundra Quarterman, Elizabeth Ruscio, Barry Del Sherman, Elizabeth Sung, Jodi Thelan, Tamlyn Tomita and Greg Watanabe.

This production is directed by Lisa Peterson, and conceived by Chay Yew and Lisa Peterson. Set Design by Rachel Hauck. Light Design by Geoff Korf. Costume Design by Joyce Kim Lee. Sound Composition by Nathan Wang.

THE SQUARE performances begin June 29 through July 16 only. Tuesdays through Sundays at 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m.

General admission $20.00. Students $15. Please call 213-628-2772 or visit us at www.TaperAhmanson.com.

For groups of 10 or more, please call 213-972-7231 for a group rate discount.

THE SQUARE will be performed at The Actors' Gang located at 6209 Santa Monica Boulevard (at El Centro Avenue; one block east of Vine) in Hollywood. Valet parking is available.

THE SQUARE is commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum's Asian Theatre Workshop.

Below please find a more detailed essay on THE SQUARE written by ATW
Scholar-in-Residence, Dorinne Kondo:

THE SQUARE

The Square marks a critical development in Asian American and U.S. theater history. It is the first work of its kind- -sixteen interwoven meditations on the relations between Asian Americans and non-Asian Americans, at once epic and episodic--produced by a major regional theater. First staged as a workshop in 1997 through the Taper New Works Festival, The Square is here presented in full production.

Upon the founding of the Asian Theatre Workshop, Director Chay Yews first priority was to commission established and emerging playwrights in American theatre to address the relationships between Asian Americans and non-Asian Americans in a single theatrical piece. The Square came to life one day through a conversation between Yew and Lisa Peterson. Riffing on an article about an environmental performance staged in a park by Peter Handke in Germany, the two conceived a play set in a fictitious park based on Columbus Park in Manhattans Chinatown. Asian Theatre Workshop then commissioned eight Asian American and eight non-Asian American playwrights to create a theatrical forum of perceptions, experiences, and relationships of the Asian American community with non-Asian Americans in a ten-minute piece that used the park and its environs as its setting. Adding the element of chance into the mix, writer Mac Wellman suggested that the creative process be constructed as a game. So, combining randomness and order in a manner reminiscent of the surrealists le corps exquis , Yew and Peterson chose four parameters for the playwrights: historical periods (1880s, 1920s, 1960s, and 2000), thematics (destiny, history, chaos, tradition), number of actors (1-4), and the racial make-up of characters (Asian, non-Asian or mixed) and drew the choices for each playwright from a hat. To spark the writers ideas, the Workshop supplied them with observations from Columbus Park, a map, a timeline, an historical sketch. The results are pieces as various in style and tone as the playwrights themselves.

Yet throughout, we hear insistent rhythms and discern recurrent themes. Director Peterson calls The Square a choral piece animated by intersection, interruption, provocative juxtaposition. A character from one play reappears, walking through another piece from a different moment in history. Motifs recur. Tasting blood. Blind men. The snip, snip of a pair of scissors. The painful and sometimes comic struggle to learn English. The erotics of master-servant--or doctor-patient--relationships. Gay sexualities. Attraction, identification, hostility, alliance, among people of different races and class positions. These become metaphors for a larger existential and historical horizon of immigration and racism, of loneliness and love, of the (im)possibility of connection.

The Square stages the relationships of Asian Americans with other communities and enacts our contemporary dilemmas around issues of race and power. Like any collective identity, Asian American is intersected by multiple forces: diaspora, sexuality, class, gender, among others. And historical and demographic changes--interracial marriage, children of mixed race, post-1965 immigration--create an increasingly complicated, multiracial landscape. The playwrights voice these complexities and articulate visions of both danger and promise. Indeed,The Square contains the promise of our futures in its own structure. The product of interracial collaboration, it is alive with unexpected connections, startling contrasts, and vibrant multiplicity. Mac Wellmans invocations of endless return underline the nostalgic longing of people in diaspora. Han Ongs depiction of Chinese men struggling to learn English highlights the poignancy of the lives of Asian immigrants. Philip Kan Gotanda questions the attitudes about race we assume others to have. Maria Irene Fornes explores Asian-Latino interaction and the ways people of color can poignantly mimic dominant cultural stereotypes of each other. What counts as an authentic ethnic? asks David Henry Hwang. Craig Lucas sees love between men as an avenue of escape from racial and ethnic tradition. Diana Son explores the erotics of interracial, mistress/ servant relations, where tenderness is undercut by betrayal. Bridget Carpenter explores the exasperated affection of mother-daughter dynamics, introducing us to two fierce, funny Asian American women. Ping Chong describes American custom and our histories of slavery and anti-Asian sentiment through the eyes of a visiting Chinese envoy, thereby exposing the barbaric nature of our own past. Jose Rivera reveals a fragment of this past, seeing the possibility of connection even in the face of dangerous racial hostility. A comedic turf war becomes a metaphor for race relations in Robert Oharas exploration of Asian American/ African American conflict and alliance. Nuanced by deception, the tenderness animating a gay relationship coexists with race and class hierarchies in Chay Yews play. Jessica Hagedorn explores the erotics of mistress/ maidservantrelationships in an Orientalist den of iniquity. Intertwined African American and Asian American histories reverberate through the life of a mixed-race child in Kia Corthrons play. The violence of our collective history possesses Constance Congdons characters. And Alice Tuan reinvokes the epic sweep of The Square and leaves us with a metaphor for historical change.

The Square represents Asian Theatre Workshops mission to foster challenging new work. Since its establisment in 1995, ATW has commissioned numerous Asian American playwrights to write new plays and solo works. Among its productions are Hymn to Her, a celebration of Asian American female voices; Alice Tuans Ikebana, in association with East West Players; Word UP!, a festival of Asian American solo performance; Chay Yews A Beautiful Country, with Cornerstone Theatre and East West Players; Denise Uyeharas Maps of Body and City with Highways Performance space; Two at the Too, with Alec Mapa and Sandra Tsing Loh. ATW has staged readings of new plays by established and emerging Asian American playwrights. Many have gone on to production at the Public Theater, Berkeley Reprertory Theatre, East West Players, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Asian American Theatre Company, among others.

This production brings to fruition the inaugural project of the Asian Theatre Workshop. Spanning120 years of Asian American history, telling stories that still haunt us, engaging the voices of sixteen leading playwrights and the performances of twelve talented actors, The Square gives life to the creative visions of artists who are changing the face of American theatre.