The Birth of Chinatown 90210
June 29, 2007
Shortly after I graduated from college and moved to Los Angeles in the mid-90s, I started taking playwriting classes at East West Players, the oldest and most distinguished Asian Pacific American theater.
Most of my fellow classmates were like me: young, passionate and determined to become writers and artists who would embody the next generation of voices for the APA community. More than 10 years later, most of those future writers have moved on to other pursuits. This is a tough business, and at some point many just give up.
But as the cliché goes, perseverance pays off. It certainly was the case for Mark J. Jue, who was one of my classmates. Jue was working on a play entitled Chinatown Correspondent — a piece set in the San Francisco of the late 1960s about a Chinese American reporter who starts his own Chinatown-based newspaper and is sucked into a murder investigation alongside his niece, an aspiring reporter and girl Friday.
“The idea for the play came to me back in the ’80s, when I was in college,” Mark explains. “I went to work part-time for a Chinatown paper in San Francisco [the now defunct East West News], and I remember two things. One, the phone was always ringing. People were always asking for favors like, ‘Come and cover my kid’s piano recital.’ The other thing is people didn’t think it was a ‘real’ paper. They thought the reporters working there weren’t good enough for the dailies, but that wasn’t true.”
Although Jue had a staged reading of the play at East West Players in 1994 and won the C.Y. Lee Writing Award in 1997, there wasn’t any interest in producing the play. So Jue put the script away but continued to work in APA theater and even won an award this past spring at the annual East West Players’ awards gala for his numerous years of volunteering at that institution.
Flash forward to February of this year. Three Asian American actresses — Carin Chea, Cindy Sakumoto and Pamela Woo — decided to start their own theater company. They came up with a name for their company, Chinatown 90210, which acknowledged both their Asian American-ness and also the influence of ’90s pop culture, with a nod to that era’s hit TV series Beverly Hills 90210. Now, they only needed a play to produce.
Sakumoto and Woo knew Jue from working at East West Players, and he had also taken theater classes with Chea, so they asked if he had anything they could read and consider.
“I told them that I had this really old play,” Jue said.
The three women loved it, especially its depiction of strong Asian American female characters. Mark finally had his long-awaited first production, though even he was initially skeptical. “They were first starting out, and they had no resources,” Jue said. “Even going to the first audition, I was grumbling. But the people who came in to audition were very impressive, and I saw how hard everyone was working and just realized, ‘It’s about the work, stupid!’”
I can attest to the fact that starting any sort of theater venture is difficult and requires everyone to pitch in above and beyond. When I visit the small Glendale theater where the play will open in two days, Mark is sweeping the stage, director Peter Kuo is changing the gels in the lights, and various cast and crew are running around, doing everything from emptying the trash to making last-minute costume adjustments.
Having been around the world of theater for so long, Mark understands the challenges and work that still lies ahead but hopes people will support the show.
“I hope the audience comes and has a good time,” he says. “I hope they realize how important community media is to our lives. This being a small production with everyone giving of their time and efforts, I hope they realize it’s a true labor of love. No one’s getting a penny, especially me.”
Chinatown Correspondent runs June 23, 30 and July 7 at 8 p.m. and June 24, July 1 and 8 at 2 p.m. Luna Playhouse, 3706 San Fernando Road, Glendale. Tickets: $20, discounts for five or more. RSVP: 310.838.8862 or email Chinatown90210@gmail.com. For more info: www.myspace.com/chinatown90210.
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