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{ 241 } BOOK REV IEWS spite Senelick’s helpful fifty-page listing of the original Russian titles of plays (alphabetized according to his own English versions of the titles). The forty-two-page bibliography is very useful for its inclusion of so many journal articles, although this feature is offset by the odd omission of some fairly important books; the privileging of articles would seem to serve the expert better than the student. Among the thousand or so dictionary entries, I spotted only four typos: Aleksandr for Aleksandra Ekster (173), omission of boldface to cross-reference a play title that has its own entry (208), Podrostok given as the Russian title for The Minor (247, but correctly listed as Nedorosl on 478), and “ingenious” for “ingenuous” (507). Sixteen pages of well-chosen photographs enhance this invaluable work. —FELICIA HARDISON LONDRÉ University of Missouri–Kansas City \ A History of Asian American Theatre. By Esther Kim Lee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 264 pp. $99.00 cloth. Esther Kim Lee’s work offers an overview of the history of Asian-American theatre from 1965—the year in which the first Asian-American theatre company , the East West Players, was founded—to the first years of the present century . A well-documented and informed study, it explores the formation and development of Asian-American theatre, placing the Asian-American artist at the center. Lee is a theatre history scholar, and her goal is to introduce the reader to “the most basic facts” about Asian-American theatre, that is, its “causes and effects , the progress, the stasis of its history” (2). Unsurprisingly, her study is based on numerous interviews of those artists associated with Asian-American theatre companies in the U.S. mainland (Hawaii being exempt from her analysis) who partook in what is now a well-established and recognized ethnic theatre in the United States. This perspective is precisely what distinguishes Lee’s work from publications that tend to center on an interdisciplinary, critical, and literary theoretical analysis of Asian-American drama, such as Josephine Lee’s Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage (1997), Dorinne Kondo’s About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater (1997), or Karen Shimakawa’s National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage (2002), to mention a few examples. { 242 } BOOK REV IEWS Lee’s work is divided into eight chapters that follow, chronologically, the key events in the making and development of Asian-American theatre. The first chapter provides background information about the history of Asian immigration to the United States, relating it to stereotypical images of Asians and Asianness in U.S. culture and, subsequently, to their representations on the American stage from the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. Lee devotes the following chapters to her main concern as manifested in the book’s introduction: to provide the reader interested in initiating studies on Asian-American theatre with “the who, what, where, how, and why of Asian American theatre as told by the artists and as interpreted” by the author (6). Chapters 2 and 3 offer a general picture of the contributions by Asian-American actors and the first four major Asian-American theatre companies, respectively. “Actors in the 1960s and 1970s” provides an interesting analysis for the understanding of Asian-American theatre, paying a well-deserved homage to actors by recognizing their role in the innovation and development of theatre, oftentimes diminished by the general trend to give priority to playwrights, directors, producers, and theatre venues. The fact that actors from various backgrounds associated in order to fight racist practices such as yellowface and stereotypical , nonrepresentative images of Asian Americans on the stage was the starting point for the birth of the first Asian-American theatre companies. Chapter 3 is devoted to the first four (and still) major Asian-American theatre companies in the U.S. mainland: East West Players (Los Angeles); Asian American Theatre Company (San Francisco); Northwest Asian American Theater (Seattle); and Pan Asian Repertory Theatre (New York City). This chapter provides more than a survey of these companies; by emphasizing their founders ’ concerns, interests, and agendas, Lee demonstrates how these institutions, and the artists involved...

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