This season's theme of 'breaking ground' was selected to coincide with our actual ground breaking plans of moving into a new space," said Artistic Director Tim Dang, of East West Players (EWP) in Los Angeles. The company will stage it's final season in the current Silverlake location, before opening it's new space in the Union Center for the Arts in downtown LA, for the 1997-98 Season.
EWP's 31st season begins with Kander and Ebb's harrowing musical hit Cabaret, running from Sept. 5-Oct. 27. Following is Ikebana, a world premiere by Alice Tuan, Nov. 21-Dec. 22. Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arranging, which serves as a metaphor for Chinese American women who are coming to grips with their pasts, families and their hidden secrets in a creation that is constructed according to ikebana principles.
Making it's U.S. "mainland" premiere, is Hawaiian playwright Edward Sakamoto's The Taste of Kona Coffee, the ninth play of Sakamoto's to be produced at EWP. The play depicts the struggle of Japanese Americans living in Hawaii on a Kona-coffee plantation, as they fight to shake off old-world traditions in the face of the constraints of neo-colonialism. The play will run concurrently with an exhibit The Kona Coffee Story: Along the Hawaii Belt Road, at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown LA, Jan. 16-Feb. 23.
Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang brings the revival of his first play F.O.B. to EWP, April 3-May 11. Two Chinese Americans come into contact with a Chinese exchange student who is "fresh off the boat."
The season will close with the world premiere by Linda Faigo-Hall, Woman From the Other Side of the World, about a Filipino-American single mother living in New York, who hires a nanny from the Philippines to care for her Americanized son. The nanny and the boy form a special, magical relationship that helps him discover his roots, running June 5-July 13.Tickets for Cabaret and subscriptions are available by calling the EWP (213) 660-0366.
-- By Blair Glaser
