By Judy Soo Hoo
Lodestone Theatre Ensemble, the critically-acclaimed Asian American theater company co-founded by former Asian Week columnist Philip W. Chung, launches its tenth and final season with Ten To Life, a collection of four one-acts written by four writers who have a history with the company. One of the writers, Judy Soo Hoo, reflects on her ten years with the company and what to expect from the new show:
It’s been ten years since Lodestone Theatre Ensemble premiered my play Texas in a small theatre in North Hollywood in 1999. Texas told the story of two brothers who take an unsuspecting college student into their trailer in the hopes that this student will change their fortune, but instead they become transformed by the arrival of this stranger.
Texas was a departure for typical Asian American theatre in many ways. Deeply troubled, flawed, and orphaned with deep psychological scars from the traumatic wars in Southeast Asia, the two brothers at the heart of my play were hardly the picture of a modern Asian American model minority. But it appealed to what Lodestone wanted to produce. Lodestone’s goal was to stage edgy work that pushed the envelope of traditional Asian American Theatre in profound ways. Texas was produced in three weeks as a mile-a-minute, fly-by-the-seat experience in guerilla theatre. What I tapped into was the exuberance of an artistic company that was willing to confront and expose the messiness of life.
Originally started by Soon Tek-Ok as The Society of Heritage Performers, a Korean American troupe, the company evolved into the pan-Asian American Lodestone in 1999 under the artistic leadership of theater artists Phillip W. Chung, Alexandra Bokyun Chun, Chil Kong and Tim Lounibos with a commitment to produce new works and interpretations of classics with Asian Pacific American actors.
Flash forward ten years to 2009, and five plays later with the company. As resident playwright, many of my full-length and short plays have been produced by Lodestone. Lodestone encompasses a sensibility that goes beyond the characteristic Asian American stories of intergenerational conflicts to embrace controversial topics such as sex and violence. In another play of mine, Beastly Beauties of American Monsters, a woman scientist is attracted to and commits necrophilia-sex and violence all in one. Another play, Solve for X, a re-imagining of the Phaedra story, is set in an urban, upwardly mobile globalized Asian American family, in which the stepmother starts an affair with her stepson that ends in devastating yet liberating results. Both plays complicate Asian American sexuality not as objects or stereotypes, but as subjects with complex and conflicting emotions.
As resident playwright, Lodestone provided a space for me to grow creatively and artistically. Not every show was successful, but that did not matter as much as the experience of creating and doing art was, and speaking the unsayable taboos. The sheer joy and terror of the experiment was thrill enough.
Last year, I joined a writing collective that included writers who have worked with Lodestone in various capacities in the past to envision and to create a show that would launch Lodestone’s tenth and final season: Nic Cha Kim had been a resident producer since 2004 and the writer of Trapezoid, a play in Lodestone’s ninth season; Annette Lee kicked off the second season with her play A Dirty Secret Between The Toes and Tim Lounibus co-founded Lodestone and was co-artistic director for five years.
As writers, we decided to create stories incorporating ten-year motifs which were influenced by everything from The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, but in uniquely Lodestone fashion: risky, compelling and entertaining. As co-artistic director Phillip W. Chung said about Lodestone’s sensibility in comparison to East West Players, the granddaddy of Asian American Theatre, “We’re the younger sibling that still lives in our parents basement smoking pot and listening to Led Zeppelin all day.” That would be Ten To Life.
In May, Playwrights Arena, another Los Angeles theatre company that produces new work, plans to honor Lodestone with an award to celebrate its contribution to Los Angeles Theatre. The company may be ending its existence after this season, but the work of theatre is to provoke, and to create work that questions society. As I, other members and the community bid adieu, I still think theatre does what Film and TV cannot: To be concerned about issues that consumes and divides the community and to not flinch, and to create unsympathic characters who fail terribly as well as create characters who dream expansively.
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Judy Soo Hoo is a writer. Her play Texas was Lodestone’s inaugural production back in fall 1999 and she has gone on to become the company’s most produced playwright.
Ten To Life runs May 2-June 7, Fridays & Saturdays at 8 Pm, Sundays at 2 Pm at GTC Burbank, 1111-B W. Olive Ave., Burbank, CA 91506 (inside George Izay Park). Tickets are $16, $14 for students/seniors and $12 for groups of 10+. All Sunday performances except June 7 are pay-what-you-can (with $1 minimum). May 2 opening night tickets are $25. For more info: www.lodestonetheatre.org or (323) 993-7245.
Lodestone will also receive the Playwrights Arena’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Los Angeles Theater Community at its annual Hot Nights in the City fundraiser on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009, at Ultra Suede in West Hollywood, CA. Scheduled to present the award to Lodestone are James Kyson Lee (Heroes) and Tamlyn Tomita (The Joy Luck Club). For more info and tickets go to: www.playwrightsarena.org
