“I cannot be more proud of the urgent, ambitious roster of plays we have lined up for the 2019/20 season. Five remarkable, unique American playwrights -- all fiercely talented women -- are joined by one fabulous Canadian to span the globe and the ages through their work; exploring where we are today as Americans, and global citizens. It's an epic season of challenging, entertaining art that I hope will transform the way we see and participate in our world.”Looking at the roster of female Millennial playwrights whose works have recently been produced to great acclaim in the San Francisco Bay area, I note that:
- Born in 1982, Lauren Gunderson started attracting attention in 2011 with the world premieres of Exit, Pursued by a Bear at Crowded Fire Theater as well as By and By at the Shotgun Players. In 2012, Impact Theatre presented the premiere of her Toil and Trouble while, in 2013, Marin Theatre Company presented the world premiere of I and You along with the rolling world premiere of The Taming (in conjunction with ArtsWest of Seattle). In 2014, Gunderson's drama, Bauer, received its world premiere from the San Francisco Playhouse. The following year Ada and the Memory Engine premiered at CentralWorks followed by the rolling world premiere of 2016's Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley (a joint effort between Marin Theatre Company, Northlight Theatre Company in Chicago, and Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland). Last December, MTC hosted the world premiere of The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley.
- Born in Calcutta in 1982, Dipiki Guha graduated from the Yale School of Drama, where one of her professors (Paula Vogel) described her as "an incredible, nuanced playwright, someone who is smart, political, theatrical and deeply, fiercely emotional. The range of her work is extraordinary." In 2016, when Crowded Fire Theater presented the world premiere of The Mechanics of Love, CFT's artistic director, Mina Morita, stressed that Guha's plays "break open character stereotypes piece by piece to reveal the shared and vulnerable underbelly of our humanity. She creates worlds that exist beyond the traditional psychological realism of most American theatre, and employs the poetry of unexpected pairings and motives to capture a more truthful human experience."
- Born in 1984, parts of Mfoniso Udofia's nine-play Ufot family cycle have been performed by American Conservatory Theater (Her Portmanteau) and the Magic Theatre (Sojourners, runboyrun), which will stage In Old Age at the end of this month.
- Born in 1985, Lauren Yee's local productions have included 2008's Ching Chong Chinaman (Impact Theatre), 2011's The Hatmaker's Wife (AlterTheater), 2015's in a word (San Francisco Playhouse) and Hookman (Encore Theatre). Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Ground Floor hosted a workshop of Yee's Cambodian Rock Band in 2016. In addition to 2019's production of King of the Yees at San Francisco Playhouse, American Conservatory Theater is currently presenting the Bay area premiere of The Great Leap.
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In many ways, The Great Leap was inspired by Lauren Yee's 6'1" tall father, a local legend who grew up in Chinatown’s projects and spent as much time as possible playing basketball. Known throughout the community by his nickname, position, and signature move, Larry Yee was recruited by a UCSF coach in 1977 to join a pick-up team that would play against a professional basketball team in Taiwan.One need not be a basketball fan to cheer The Great Leap, Yee's play about how an obnoxious teenager from San Francisco's Chinatown sparks an international crisis by breaking all the rules of the political and athletic games confronting him during his quest to trace his lineage. The four characters who anchor Yee's story are:
Coach Saul (Arye Gross), the foul-mouthed, trash-talking coach from the University of San Francisco (USF) whose basketball team traveled to Beijing in 1971 (a year before President Richard Nixon made his historic trip to The People's Republic of China) to play against a professional Chinese basketball team. Nearly two decades later, Saul is divorced, living in a small apartment in Oakland, and afraid of the potential repercussions from his ex-wife if he misses a crucial telephone call from his daughter on her birthday.
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| Arye Gross as Coach Saul in The Great Leap (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Wen Chang (BD Wong) grew up during the worst years of China's Cultural Revolution. Chosen by the Ministry of Culture to act as a translator during the 1971 game (and advised to take copious notes about the American team), his textbook English gave him no tools to cope with the gutter slang spewing from Saul's mouth. Wen Chang (who didn't really want the job) was floored by the aggressiveness of the American team and how radically their behavior on the court differed from the norms of Communist China's rigid culture. After the game was over, Saul offered to travel to Beijing and teach basketball to Wen Chang's students when they were ready. Wen's response? "Call me in 18 years." Although, in 1989, Saul's team is scheduled to fly to China for the promised "rematch game," Saul remains remains convinced that no Chinese team could ever beat the Americans.
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| BD Wong as Wen Chang in a scene from The Great Leap (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Manford Lum (Tim Liu) is a 17-year-old motormouth, basketball fanatic, and student at Galileo High School who suddenly flakes out of attending his mother's funeral. Manford (who has a habit of breaking into a facility through its back doors and side windows whenever he is rejected) knew very little about his recently deceased Chinese-born mother except that she loved the Golden State Warriors. The only photo she ever kept showed two men shaking hands at a basketball game. Obsessed with being the point guard for Saul's team when they arrive in Beijing, he barges in on the coach and pleads his case, stressing that (a) Saul's players suck, (b) Manford can shoot 100 baskets in a row without missing a single shot, and (c) Beijing University's players are now seven feet tall.
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| Tim Liu as Manford Lum in The Great Leap (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Connie (Ruibo Qian) is Manford's cousin who is listed in Galileo's student records as his emergency contact. Connie wants to know why Manford hasn't shown up at school for three weeks (which could make him ineligible to graduate). Having spent a year living and working in Beijing, she has a much better idea of what Manford is in for if he doesn't clean up his act.
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| Ruibo Qian (Connie) and Tim Liu (Manford Lum) in a scene from The Great Leap (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
With game day scheduled for June 4, 1989, the audience follows the action as the story bounces back and forth over 18 years. Saul's team arrives in Beijing during the riots in Tiananmen Square and, before their bus even reaches the hotel, Manford has gone missing. A photograph of him in Tiananmen Square soon surfaces, is faxed to Chinese authorities, and quickly published in the local newspaper.
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| BD Wong (Wen Chang) and Arye Gross (Coach Saul) in a scene from The Great Leap (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Manford's impulsiveness leaves Wen Chang stuck with the unenviable task of telling Saul that his best player cannot participate in the game. But Wen Chang has never dealt with someone as stubborn and aggressive as Manford and the power behind the secret the young man has brought to Beijing.
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| Arye Gross (Coach Saul) and Tim Liu (Manford Lum) in a scene from The Great Leap (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
With costumes by Meg Neville and set design by Robert Brill, ACT's action-packed production benefits immensely from the superb sound design by Jake Rodriguez, the fluid projections designed by Hana S. Kim, and Yi Zhao's thrilling lighting design. As Lisa Peterson (who directed the production at a breakneck pace) explains:
“This play is about becoming brave and choosing to stand up against something that doesn’t seem right to you. It has to do with stepping out beyond yourself. That’s a message that we can always use, but I feel like we’re in a moment in history when we are all trying to encourage each other to stand up for ourselves and make the world the way we want it to be -- the way we think it should be -- and not settle. Everybody in the play is crossing a line, but what Manford does takes a lot of guts. In the opening stage direction, Lauren says that the play is written as a game. So I knew that we needed a minimalist, open space where the language would be the primary element, but the space also needed to have something basketball about it.”
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| Manford (Tim Liu) goes for a critical shot as Wen Chang (BD Wong), Coach Saul (Arye Gross), and cousin Connie (Ruibo Qian) watch (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
“I’ve always used basketball as a metaphor in rehearsal. The way the team works together to get the ball in the basket is akin to what it’s like for a cast of actors to play the language of, say, a George Bernard Shaw play. I often bring a ball into rehearsal and have people toss it as they speak a line, just to get used to the idea of throwing words across the stage and back again. It’s a great way of focusing and energizing language. In a way, that’s one of the main jobs of a director: to conduct the play as if it’s a musical score. You pick a tempo, encourage the actors to think faster, and decide when things will pause and when they’ll pick up again.”
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| BD Wong (Wen Chang) and Arye Gross (Coach Saul) in a scene from The Great Leap (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
While the production features a break-out performance by Tim Liu as the hotheaded teenage baller, by the time The Great Leap concludes, some audience members may be shocked during curtain calls when they realize there have only been four actors onstage. But, as Hana S. Kim points out: "Video is very effective at messing up reality. Making something appear and disappear like magic? That’s something that video can do really well.”
Performances of The Great Leap continue through March 31 at the American Conservatory Theater (click here for tickets).
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The San Francisco Playhouse has a hit on its hands with its new production of Yoga Play which, in addition to being a masterpiece of intricate plotting, turns Dipiki Guha's complex and conflicted characters into unwitting engines of farce. In an age where spirituality drives marketing and marketing, in turn, drives spirituality, the executive team at Jojomon (a yoga apparel retail giant) has developed a formidable revenue stream. |
| Ryan Morales (Fred), Bobak Cyrus Bakhtiari (Raj), and Susi Damilano (Joan) confer with Craig Marker (John) in a scene from Yoga Play (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
Having recently returned from a sorely needed sabbatical, the company's CEO, Joan (Susi Damilano), is eager to broaden the product line to include sizes that can be purchased by women larger than a size eight. As much as the company's founder and spiritual leader, John Dale (Craig Marker), wants to keep up with the societal changes triggered by feminists, it hurts him to think about plus-sized women wearing his company's fashions. Though he deeply misses his former "bro" bud, Joan's impressive sales projections for larger sizes help to ameliorate John's wariness.
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| Susi Damilano as Joan in a scene from Yoga Play (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
Shortly after John announces that he is going off the grid for a month, Jojomon is hit with a full-blown crisis due to an employment scandal linked to one of the garment factories it uses in Bangladesh. In a desperate move to salvage the company's reputation and protect its earnings, Joan comes up with a brilliant idea: to have a genuine guru become the company's new brand ambassador. This immediately causes problems for her two top executives.
- Fred (Ryan Morales) is a super stressed out gay man who grew up in Singapore, where homosexuals are subject to caning and can, on occasion, be put to death. As a result, he lived in the closet until he was able to get a student visa to attend school in the United States. Desperate to obtain a green card, he is easily manipulated by Joan and feels like he can never escape the pressure of working for Jojomon.
- Raj (Bobak Cyrus Bakhtiari) is a somewhat clueless middle manager of Indian descent who grew up in the United States and has no understanding of Indian culture. Easily manipulated by his parents, he panics when Joan asks him to get some recommendations from them about gurus who might be able to work for Jojomon.
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| Ryan Morales (Fred) and Bobak Cyrus Bakhtiari (Raj) in a scene from Yoga Play (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
As Joan struggles to find a guru in Los Angeles, she encounters a snarky young Latina yoga teacher named Romola (Ayelet Firstenberg) and eventually manages to bring a guru from a remote area near the Tibetan border back to Los Angeles. When Guruji turns out to be the polar opposite of what Joan needs, she makes a desperate move that kicks Guha's comedy of errors into high gear.
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| Ayelet Firstenberg (Romola), Susi Damilano (Joan), and Ryan Morales (Fred) in a scene from Yoga Play (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
Directed by Bill English (the artistic director of San Francisco Playhouse) with a grand sense of desperation and mischief, Guha's script takes off like a classic chase movie with plenty of laughs along the way. The playwright's solid storytelling delivers startling insights into the inability of some people to meditate without reaching for their phones, the income gap between male and female workers, and the challenges of stepping out of the closet in order to be true to one's self. In short, nothing is sacred. As Mr. English (who makes excellent use of video for this production) explains:
“Yoga Play will be the third play by Dipika Guha to be produced by San Francisco Playhouse. The first two, The Rules and In Braunau, were world premieres in our Sandbox Series. Why are we so attracted to her voice as a playwright? Humans are never the villains in a play by Ms. Guha. False systems of government, economy, society, or religion (never designed to protect or nurture us but to limit and control) serve as antagonists while the yearning people in her plays try to scratch and claw their way out of these corrupt structures. The characters may come into the world of the play burdened by false beliefs, but we can feel their spirits bucking and heaving under the load and determined to break out to breathe and be free. They want to reach up for enlightenment and peace but lack the perspective to see what is holding them back.”
“Guha has a very special lens through which she views our contemporary world. Her lens peels away pretension, artifice, falseness, political correctness, and many of our other pieces of social and personal armor that keep us from seeing the raw, throbbing heart of humanity. She exposes the frail, struggling little furry animals that we are, and loves us at our weakest. Our protagonist, Joan, groomed to be the CEO of a great corporation, collapses spontaneously without understanding why. She is perfectly on track for success and for wealth but, while she facilitates the corporate appropriation of mindfulness and the enlightenment movement, she is completely blind to her own truth. Others around her, wearing the Emperor’s new clothes, play the game and are sucked up in her wake. What a pleasure it is to watch the spirits inside the facades they create learn, grow, and break free. Thanks to our objective distance, we can see how foolish some of our own ideas about happiness are. We can see what the characters often cannot: that we are actually free to unbuckle the chains that hold us back and step into the future.”
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| Ayelet Firstenberg (Romola), Bobak Cyrus Bakhtiari (Gururaj), and Ryan Morales (Fred) in a scene from Yoga Play (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
With lighting by Kurt Landisman, sound and projections by Teddy Hulsker, costumes by Rachel Heiman, and another brilliant set design by Nina Ball, Guha takes her audience on a romp and frolic through the inanity of global retail as it attempts to squeeze more money from every vulnerable wallet on earth. San Francisco Playhouse's talented ensemble keeps the audience laughing as they confront one ridiculous obstacle after another.
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| Ryan Morales (Fred), Bobak Cyrus Bakhtiari (Raj), and Susi Damilano (Joan) in a scene from Yoga Play (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
Performances of Yoga Play continue at the San Francisco Playhouse through April 20 (click here for tickets).
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