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Theatre Journal 56.1 (2004) 115-117



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Under The Skin: A Festival Of One-Act Plays. By Peeling. Pelican Studio Theatre, New York City. 12 and 13 July 2003.




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Figure 1
Rich Kiamco, Aileen Cho, Sesh Mudumbai, and Celena Cipriaso in Under the Skin. Photo by: Steve Huang.


Peeling's press release described the Under the Skin festival as this Asian American theatre troupe's most ambitious work to date. Loosely organized around sexual attraction, dating, and erotic encounters, the festival of one-act plays examined the psyches of Asian Americans as they face love, lust, identity politics, and culture clashes. These topics are especially tricky for an Asian American troupe to explore and represent, given the history of sexual objectification of Asian Americans in the US. For the most part, Peeling's performances explored these topics in very candid, funny, and profound ways.

Originating out of the 1995 Asian American Writers' Workshop, Peeling the Banana (the East Coast's first pan-Asian, multigenerational—inclusive of all gender and sexual orientations—performance collective) has presented dozens of shows featuring mostly autobiographical material. Peeling—as the troupe now calls itself—stresses performance as a form of grassroots community building. Most of the company members are not professional actors or writers, and the result is fresh, varied, and unpredictable theatre.

Under the Skinconsisted of three programs of eight one-act plays. Say Something was one of the most mature and complex plays in the festival. Written by Dan Bacalzo and directed by Aileen Cho, this play examines an interracial Asian/white gay male relationship. Tim, an Asian American, and Gary, a Euro-American, find their relationship in a rut after six years of relative domestic bliss. Tim is writing a play that mirrors his own relationship and creates the fictional characters David and Jerry, who are both Asian American. These fictional [End Page 115] characters are especially intriguing, because they come to life onstage, often interacting with each other as doppelgängers to the real action between Tim and Gary. When all four characters are onstage, this creates an especially rich mise en scène. Sometimes the fictional couple of David and Jerry participate in a scene-within-a-scene at one end of the stage while Tim—or Tim and Gary—observes at the other end. At one point, David and Jerry completely mirror Tim's and Gary's words and actions. Rather than a mere theatrical device, the presentation of David and Jerry always enhances each scene and contributes to creating a complexity between Tim and Gary without going overboard. In fact, there is a nearly perfect balance and economy to how and when the fictional characters of David and Jerry are featured in this play. For instance, at one point, David and Jerry perform an eroticized role-playing confessional scene featuring a priest and a sinner. This performance could have easily ventured into clichéd territory. However, the commentary (provided by onlookers Tim and Gary) expands the scene, allowing the everyday power struggles and negotiations between domestic partners—often in petty dialogue—to become interwoven with the sexier and more obvious power relations within eroticized role-playing. This interplay between the two couples creates an elaborate tension on stage. Through this showcasing of a wide variety of power dynamics and negotiations, Tim and Gary's relationship takes on additional depth and breadth.

Say Something more than adequately captured the insular nature of Tim and Gary's partnership. Although skillfully rendered, the play could have benefited from placing the couples in a broader cultural context, which would have provided enriching insights. This is hinted at when Tim questions whether Gary will objectify other Asian men if they decide to date outside the relationship. Gary, for his own part, admits that he hardly dated before he met Tim. As an average-looking white man, Gary is self-conscious about his appearance and has found limited dating opportunities. An interesting resonance regarding visuality in gay male culture could have been more fully developed here. For example, the racial...

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