But Still Like Air

About the Contributors

About the Contributors JEANNIE BARROGA Barroga has been writing plays since 1981. She created the Playwright Forum in Palo Alto, California in 1983, and since 1986 has been the literary manager at TheatreWorks, a regional theater also located in Palo Alto. Her play Eye ofthe Coconut premiered in Seattle in 1987. Her play Walls was produced at the Asian American Theater Company in San Francisco in 1989 and is published in Unbroken Thread: An Anthology of Plays by Asian American Women (1993, ed. Roberta Uno). Talk-Story premiered at TheatreWorks in 1992. Her latest play, Rita's Resources, ~as produced at Pan Asian Repertory Theater in New York in 1995. Her work has also been presented on San Francisco Bay area cable television specials, and a book, Two Plays, was published in 1993. LIA CHANG (cover photographer) A fourth-generation Chinese American born and raised in San Francisco, Lia Chang has worked extensively as an actress in film, television, and on the New York stage. As a portrait and performing arts photographer for KYODO News, her work has been widely published and exhibited. Her solo exhibit, '1\sian Pacific Americans in the Workforce and the Arts," commissioned by APALA, was featured simultaneously in several locations in Washington, D.C. and New York City to commemorate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in 1996. Copyrighted Material 516 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS PHILIP KAN GOTANDA Gotanda's plays include The Wash, Fishhead Soup, Yankee Dawg You Die, Song ofa Nisei Fisherman, and The Ballad ofYachiyo. His work has been produced nationally at such theaters as the Asian American Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, Berkeley Repertory Theater, and East West Players. His many honors include a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Lila Wallace-Readers' Digest Writer's Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Gerbode and McKnight Foundation fellowships, and the Theatre Communications Group/National Endowment for the Arts Directing Fellowship . Gotanda has collaborated with composer Dan Kuramoto on a fulllength spoken-word piece entitled in the dominion ofnight and in performance with a beat-retro jazz combo, "the new orientals." He wrote, directed, and is featured in The Kiss,a short film presented at the Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin and Edinburgh International Film Festivals, and the San Francisco International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Gate Award. He has also written and is directing an independent feature film, Gioconda Smile. Gotanda resides in San Francisco with his wife, Diane Emiko Takei, an actress, director, and producer. He is currently serving a PEW Charitable Trust-Theatre Communications Group National Theater Artist Grant residency at Berkeley Repertory Theater. VELINA HASU HOUSTON Houston is an award-winning writer of plays, cinema , television, poetry, and critical essays. Her body of plays includes the internationally acclaimed Tea, Kokoro,Asa Ga Kimashita, Necessities,The Matsuyama Mirror, and many others including commissions from the Mark Taper Forum,the Asia Society, the Lila Wallace-Readers' Digest Foundation, and others. Her work has been presented at many venues in the U.S. and Japan, including the Old Globe Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, the Smithsonian Institution, A Contemporary Theatre, Negro Ensemble Company, and Nippon Hoso Kai. She has written film for Columbia Pictures, Sidney Poitier, PBS/KCET, and others; and she is chronicled in five U.S. and Japanese documentaries. Houston has edited one other drama anthology: The Politics ofLife (Temple University Press, 1993). Her many awards for excellence in writing include two Rockefeller Foundation fellowships. A screenplay version of Kokoro has been optioned by Tina Chen. Houston is completing a novel based on her play Tea, an anthology of writings by Amerasians, and a book about film and multiethnic (mixed race) identity. She is an associate professor and director of the playwriting program at the University of Southern California School of Theatre. A Phi Beta Kappa, she holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles and is completing her Ph.D. She resides in Santa Monica, California, with her children, Kiyoshi and Kuniko-Leilani. Copyrighted Material ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 517 HUYNH QUANG NHUONG Huynh's childhood in a village of the Central Highlands in Vietnam was evoked poignantly in his successful first book, The Land I Lost (1982). He has also written Wandering Clouds (1995). His plays include South African Mother, Nostalgia, and Rain in the Mountains and Lightning at Sea and have been presented at the Maplewood Barn Theatre (Columbia , Missouri), the...