Revisiting the Melting Pot: Immigrant Perspectives in "The Jamaican Wash Project"

-
Posted by Selena Chau, A.C.T. Web Development Fellow

L to R: Darryl V. Jones, Kehinde Koyejo, Carl Lumbly, Halili Knox, Britney Frazier, Bert van Aalsburg, Edris Cooper-Anifowshe, Philip Kan Gotanda, Awele Makeba, and Steven Anthony Jones. Photo by Diane Takei Gotanda.

Learn more about upcoming performances at A.C.T.'s The Costume Shop
In January, as part of A.C.T.’s ongoing activation of San Francisco’s thriving Central Market arts corridor, A.C.T.’s Costume Shop theater hosted The Jamaican Wash Project, a staged reading of a new play about the failing marriage of two immigrants with previously compatible traditional values—and the opposing marital advice offered by their two adult daughters. The project united two longtime A.C.T. collaborators and Bay Area residents: playwright Philip Kan Gotanda and A.C.T. Associate Artist Steven Anthony Jones.

Jones, a former A.C.T. core acting company member and current artistic director of Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (LHT), directed the reading. The cast featured Oakland-based actor Carl Lumbly, currently performing in SF Playhouse’s The Motherf**ker with the Hat, and included Bay Area notables Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, Britney Frazier, Darryl V. Jones, Halili Knox, Kehinde Koyejo, and Awele Makeba. Together, these stage artists helped develop this adaptation of Gotanda’s acclaimed 1985 drama The Wash, with the original Japanese American family reset as Jamaican immigrants.

Audiences will remember Gotanda from his many works illuminating the Japanese American psyche, including After the War, commissioned by A.C.T. and presented on our mainstage in 2007, with a script specifically written with A.C.T. core company members in mind, including Jones. In his role as LHT artistic director, Jones engaged Gotanda in LHT’s Developmental Lab, where a new script was developed, and the artists discussed both commonalities and differences in cultural traditions and experiences.

Gotanda told the San Francisco Chronicle that The Wash focuses on “old-school traditional values butting up against new American social values. The idea of adapting the play to another family of color was to look for areas of commonality, as well as areas of dissonance. “There has to be a specificity to it. This is not a melting pot or blind casting.” Jones added, “The strongly patriarchal traditions of the Japanese and Jamaican cultures are a common thread, but the rituals and routines that reinforce those traditions are what sets them apart, and that’s where the universality of Philip’s text was put to the test.”  After each of the two January readings, the audience joined the creators and cast in a thought-provoking Q&A session.

The Costume Shop, A.C.T.’s new Central Market neighborhood performance space, is dedicated to new works, innovative performance projects, and reimagined classics and welcomes audiences to engage with the art of theater through performances, discussions, and events. The Costume Shop continues its exciting lineup of events and performances this year with A.C.T. productions and works by local arts organizations featuring prominent Bay Area theater talent. Many performances are free of charge.

Gotanda shares the experiences he gained with The Jamaican Wash Project—including his explorations in cultural and racial adaptation—with a lecture at Reed College later this month. 
Location: 1117 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102, USA

Popular posts from this blog

“To Be or Not to Be”: The Iconic Speech’s Origins, Interpretations, and Impact

-
Image
By A.C.T. Publications Staff The opening line of Hamlet ’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy is theater’s most iconic, most referenced quote. What’s less known is the famous speech’s history, with Hamlet ’s earliest publications offering varying versions of its language. Also questioned is its meaning—is Hamlet contemplating suicide or is he weighing the consequences of murder? Though definitive answers are unlikely to arise, the questions “To be or not to be” asks have kept audiences, scholars, and actors engaged for centuries. Hamlet ’ s "To be or not to be" speech as it appears in the three original editions of the play. Photo by Georgelazenby. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. The first edition, or First Quarto (Q1), of Hamlet was published in 1603. Because the text is much shorter than later editions and its language is less poetic, it is nicknamed the “Bad Quarto” by scholars. “To be or not to be” in Q1 reads as: To be, or not to be—ay, there’s the point. To die, ...
Read more

The American Sound: The Evolution of Jazz

-
Image
By Cecilia Padilla There is nothing so uniquely American as jazz music. In its simplest form, jazz embodies the essence of the American people: bold and inventive. The improvisation of the jazz ensemble can even be seen as a metaphor for the American democratic ideal: musicians playing solos have the liberty to express themselves as long as they adhere to the overall structure of the tune—individual freedom but with responsibility to the group. The evolution of jazz music also carries with it the social development of our nation from slavery to the swinging songs of World War II. Musically, jazz contributed immensely to the way contemporary musicians approach instrumentation, composition, and vocal arrangements. It is difficult to find a popular tune today that does not derive from such jazz icons as Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk. Jazz is the great equalizer; for more than a hundred years, it has been the common ground between blacks and whites, me...
Read more

A Hell of a Businessman: A Biography of Joe Glaser

-
By Simon Hodgson Born in 1897, Joe Glaser was the son of a successful Russian Jewish physician in Chicago. He originally intended to follow a similar career and entered medical school, but after passing out in the operating room, he realized he wasn’t cut out to be a doctor. He started off in business selling used cars, but found better luck managing prizefighters. In his biography of Al Capone, Laurence Bergreen notes, “Glaser’s power to fix fights earned him a reputation as a sage of boxing, especially among reporters.” With advanced word as to which fights were fixed, Glaser could predict the results—and even the number of rounds—of many bouts in Chicago. His connections with organized crime continued in his next career change, when he began running nightclubs and whorehouses in the South Side for the Chicago Outfit, the powerful underworld gang led by Capone. Glaser’s tendency toward illegal action nearly ended his career. In 1928, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for ...
Read more