In Search of Bruce Lee

APA sketch comedy troupe takes a road trip in Spike Rhee’s Get on the Bus

By Ji Hyun Lim
AsianWeek Staff Writer

Bruce Lee — icon or stereotype? In the 30th anniversary season of the Asian American Theater Company, 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors premiered the play Spike Rhee’s Get On the Bus at the Noh Space in San Francisco on Oct. 3.

The 11-member ensemble hammed it up with wildly satirical antics about a group of random and not-so randomly chosen Asian Pacific Americans who have won a free, all-expenses paid road trip to Seattle to visit Bruce Lee’s grave.

This motley crew of APAs, most of whom are struggling to understand their ominous, prophetic dreams of Bruce Lee, include a gay couple, a parsimonious Chinese American apartment manager, an aspiring actress, an uptight accountant with her subservient, jobless husband (who, by the way, was an Asian American Studies major) and a sexually depraved man played by the irrepressible Michael Premsrirat. Their escapades on the way to Seattle lead them to find deeper meaning about how their lives are intertwined with the life of Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee — both a legend and a stereotype as “The Kung Fu Master” — is lauded and reproached for his ability to make us cringe with cheesiness yet think about our own strength. He is insightful and shrewd, yet slightly ridiculous, with his endless stream of proverbs.

The dynamics of the three couples — accountant and passive husband, gay couple, and actress and penny-pinching Chinese American — lack any real dimensionality and the relationships of the couples to each other are not fully developed. But the comedy stays vigorous and edgy, similar to the energetic buffoonery of Saturday Night Live. The actors usually hit the beat, but sometimes miss it by being overly rambunctious with their lines. I felt that the actors should either make it a complete physical comedy — expressive and overt — or stay subtle like Michael Hornbuckle, whose brilliant interpretation of Spike Rhee, the benefactor of the trip and “the smartest man in San Mateo,” was reminiscent of Harvey Keitel’s infamous Mr. Wolf in Pulp Fiction.

Certain moments were wonderfully extreme: the suburbanites who live and die by the mall, sucking people in along the way, provided one of the funniest moments in the show. Also excellent was the bus stop interaction of the accountant/Asian American Studies couple, where they used their special skills to help solve the identity crises of some wayward APAs and to figure out the bill.

Though some of the actors missed a cue or two in the first half, the performances were highly charged. The audience let loose with gut-busting laughter at characters like Premsrirat’s sexually virile cell phone ho, whose charisma and costume were superlative.

As an ensemble, Premsrirat, Hornbuckle, Harold S. Byun, Valiant Chow, Rhonda Gravador, Rania Ho, Todd Nakagawa, Greg Watanabe, Pearl Wong and Peter Wong had great chemistry. Most of these actors have been working together since 1993 and have been dubbed the APA version of the early 90s Fox sketch comedy show In Living Color. Spike Rhee’s Get On the Bus was their first attempt at sketch comedy with a story line.

Director Ron Muriera kept his choices on stage simple, with minimal props and movement. The Noh Space makes for an intimate venue, though the show could have been slightly more interactive given the smallness. The dialogue was simple, with witty text, and the director’s choices were a safe platform for the performers. Muriera said that timing and delivery are key in a play like this, with humor giving the meaning an extra punch.

“It’s over-the-top satire,” said Watanabe, who played Bob — the character who was most moved by prophetic dreams of Bruce Lee. “We’re exploring or exploding stereotypes.”

Watanabe explains that a lot of comedy doesn’t have to be satirical but situational: normal people find themselves in a dilemma outside the realm of normal experiences, pushing their characters to the extreme. The 18MMW attempt to create a “deeper laugh” within a space of APA self-actualization.

Principal writers Gravador, Hornbuckle and Premsrirat point out that the script wanted to avoid any overt explanation of APA stereotypes. Working in collaboration with Muriera, the script was pounded out in three weeks, followed by a series of re-writes until the performance.

“We try to avoid Asian American Studies 101,” Gravador explains.

Ho adds, “Bruce Lee represents a strong Asian role model, both as a hero and a punk.”

“What’s great is that even beyond overt messages or scenes, words or content, there’s the fact that there’s all of us representing an array of different Asian ethnicities and characters,” Ho said.

Overall, Spike Rhee’s Get On the Bus plays with proverbs and ancient Asian philosophy, pushes APA stereotypes and roles and even has some basic crotch-injuring slapstick comedy.

It’s more than just a road trip, so go ahead and “Get On the Bus.”

Reach Ji Hyun Lim at jlim@asianweek.com.