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  • "A Period of Extreme Uncertainty":A Conversation on Pandemic Theatre by AAPI Companies in California
  • Janine Sun Rogers (bio) and Sean Metzger (bio)

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to theatre, but it has also ushered in a wave of innovation.1 In its wake, performance-makers have reimagined the relationships between artists and communities and rethought the long histories of racialized violence many companies were formed to address. Organizations mobilized to devise reparative creative practices in the face of a post-millennial reinscription of yellow peril discourse, exemplified through neologisms such as "kung flu" and the preponderance of physical violence, particularly against community elders and those otherwise vulnerable or in precarious situations.

The particular impacts of the pandemic on ethnic theatres are still in the process of being assessed, although the national BIPOC BITOC Theatre Surveys have provided useful information.2 Our more focused study on theatre companies throughout California has revealed how these organizations have innovated with new media technologies, recalibrated relationships with audiences and artistic collaborators, reflected on the ontological nature of theatrical work, and expanded possibilities of performance practice. How does Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) theatre function to address precarity and loss even as it opens new vistas of experience in a changed world?

The following dialogue consists of excerpts from a research project that addresses AAPI theatre workers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, conducted by Sean Metzger and Janine Sun Rogers in consultation with Snehal Desai of East West Players. Part of the project involved qualitative interviews conducted on Zoom from January through April 2022 with representatives of the following organizations in northern California: Bindlestiff Studio, Chikahan Company, Community Asian Theatre of the Sierra, Contemporary Asian Theatre Scene, EnActe Arts, Eth-Noh-Tec, Eugenie Chan Theater Projects, First Voice, Ferocious Lotus, Kearny Street Workshop, Naatak, and Theatre of Yugen. Southern Californian companies interviewed were the following: Artists at Play, Asian Story Theater, Cold Tofu, East West Players, FilAm ARTS, Grateful Crane Ensemble, and TeAda Productions. The interviews illustrated the vibrant activity of [End Page E-89] Asian American performance-makers in California as well as the wide range and depth of community engagement and service these organizations provide. The interviews also provided evidence to support three recommendations to the state legislature: first, to increase state funding opportunities for AAPI cultural workers, given the wide range of work that these people and organizations do, in order to meet shifting technological needs; second, to fund experts required to maximize the use of those technologies; and third, to offer major grants to fund archiving for these companies, which constitute the rich cultural heritage of AAPI communities in California.

The research was supported by UCLA's Asian American Studies Center, which received significant funding from the California Asian American & Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus and individual donors to launch the AAPI Policy Initiative. The initiative addresses the impact and fallout of the pandemic on AAPI communities. Eighteen members of the faculty and their students across the UCLA campus conducted research and formulated recommendations, which will be presented to the caucus in the winter of 2023.

Given limitations of space, the dialogue that follows uses a selection of the participants' words to illustrate some of the adaptations that AAPI theatre groups made to adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as to mark several of their continuing concerns and desires. Featured are eight of the companies interviewed, with truncated versions of the prompts that were used to generate discussion.

Janine and Sean (J&S):

How has COVID-19 and this historical moment impacted your organization?

Naatak:

We do six productions every year. And of course, they are all stage productions. We had finished our first production, Neil Simon's Rumors. It wrapped up on March 1st, 2020. By that time, people were talking about COVID, and we were wiping down the audience seats after every show. By March 17th, 2020, two weeks after our live show finished, the Bay Area went into lockdown, so we were forced to cancel the rest of our season.

We have a very large and loyal audience, and we didn't want to tell them...

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