Silk Road Theatre Project

Last night at the first rehearsal for Yohen, our tenth show, playwright Philip Kan Gotanda described the play as “a love story that acknowledges that love and living in the real world are really really hard.”

First rehearsal is like a potluck of ideas.

Set designer Lee Keenan talked about the play’s setting in Southern California, in one of the neighborhoods where the military mass-settled Japanese/African-American postwar couples. Lee said he grew up around so many children of these unions that he didn’t think about the difficulties they must have had. (In the play, James recalls his father warning “baby’s gonna have both your troubles and then some…”) One of Lee’s research images shows a row of houses all alike, except that one yard is lushly green, while the neighbor’s yard is wilted brown. He talked about the details of Sumi and James’ house and its history-that a spot on the carpet would show where the TV USED to be.

Gardenia Street

Lighting designer Becca Barrett described lighting inspirations in terms of the moods of Sumi and James’ longterm relationship: the fire of intimacy v. the cooler deeper waters of the unspoken.

Carol Blanchard envisioned the clothes of two people working to express who they are, 40 years after the postwar American 1940s, when they had to wipe clean their stories to fit in. In the case of this couple, they’re moving in opposite directions, and Carol’s costume sketches express this in colors.

Meanwhile, Galen Pejeau has a particularly exciting props task on this production, since he gets to develop Sumi’s artistic vision through the pots she “makes” throughout the play. He’s working with Japanese-inspired potters in the Bloomington area to get original pieces.

And dramaturg Lavina Jadhwani posted some fascinating images of “war brides” and Black GIs in Japan. She also recommends the following, for those looking for some educational end-of-summer reading:

Tsuchino: My Japanese War Bride by Michael J. Forrester

Michi’s Memories:The Story of a Japanese War Bride by Keiko Tamura

An Absent Presence: Japanese Americans in Postwar American Culture by Caroline Chung Simpson
Sayonara by James A. Michener

“I don’t think any play changes the world,” Philip said, “but I do believe a good play can make you feel and think deeply… and enlarge the world we live in.”

In anticipation of Philip Kan Gotanda’s play Yohen, we invite you to share YOUR photos and stories of relationships and families that bring cultures together:

According to the 2000 Census, almost 7 million Americans identify as multiracial, and the number of interracial couples quadrupled between 1970 and 1995.

Yohen depicts the marriage of an African-American veteran and a Japanese woman who met after World War II, who learn surprising things about themselves and each other after years together.

What are the cultures that make us? Our country, state, city, neighborhood? Race? School? Religion? Political party? Our secret dreams? We all live in hybrid worlds, and cross boundaries every day.

The SRTP family began with a cross-culture alliance: our founders, Malik Gillani and Jamil Khoury.

Now we’d like to see and hear your stories and photos of cross-cultural families and relationships. Selected entries will be part of an exhibit during the production of Yohen, and will be displayed here on our blog.

To submit your stories, add a “comment” to this post. To submit photos, create an account to make a new post. Or, if you prefer, simply email your photos and stories to litmanage@srtp.org.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Love em or hate em, few childhood memories are as strong as those of the family road trip. Sometimes the destination matters, sometimes what you find along the way is more memorable, sometimes who you drive with defines the journey, and sometimes you just take pictures of funny signs.

To celebrate Durango we want you to share road trip stories and especially photos. Post your road trip stories and photos as comments to this post or email them to me. –Lee

We pulled out a bench from furniture stock and put it in the down right corner of the stage. Far up left three rolling office chairs signfied the “car.” Together, the pieces created our theatrical representation of the space between the parking lot and ticket office for the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. But what did that space look like in real life? The cast, crew and director gathered around curiously as I pulled up the internet on the laptop I use in rehearsal and typed “Durango ticket office” into Google.

The best link by far was from someone who had been to the city recently and posted pictures from his or her trip (though in the couple of days it’s taken me to make this blog entry I can’t find the link any more). The City of Durango Web site, and the D&SNGR site (everyone’s got a Web site these days!) were both helpful for pictures of the city as it is now and as it was in its historical past.

Content with what the vast internet had to offer, I journeyed to the SRTP Google Group - a site we created internally to post pictures and share research and production materials in the show creation period. There I found pictures from our company member Lee Keenan’s family trips to the southwest, including this great dinosaur running over the red hills and - of course - the Durango ticket office!

The amazing technology of the World Wide Web was invaluable to the folks in rehearsal that day for helping us grasp the landscape of where our characters had landed. Seeing the images of the Durango region - particularly the candid family snapshots - really put us in a wonderful mental place for visualizing and understanding the world we were creating. And all this with the click of a few quick search buttons!

On March 24 on the stage of the still-running Our Enemies, the actors, designers and technical team for Durango met for the first time. The assembled included playwright Julia Cho and director Carlos Murillo, as well as company members Carol Blanchard (costume design), Rob Steel (sound design), Rebecca Barrett (lighting design), Isaac Sernoffsky (associate producer), and Jen Shook (literary manager). We were joined by guest designers Marianna Csaszar (set design) and Dan Katz (prop design), and a collection of other staff and crew folks. As always with first rehearsal, it was a wonderful experience to finally see everyone face to face.

After a round of introductions and a lot of business and paperwork, we got to the point of the evening - the text. More than a few of us were giggling out loud at Julia’s hillariously tragic story of the secrets and misconnections between an aging father and his teenage sons on a road trip from Mesa, Arizona to Durango, Colorado. For example:

Isaac: Are you telling me this stupid train is in COLORADO?

Boo-Seng: SO?

Isaac: YOU DIDN’T TELL US THAT!

Boo-Seng: I SAID DON’T YELL. Durango is in Colorado, everyone know that.

Isaac: WE didn’t. We didn’t know that we wereembarking on a trip that actually crossed STATE LINES.

Boo-Seng: LINE. State LINE. Arizona, Colorado. Thassit!

The cast that will bring the piece to life on stage this spring includes Joseph Fornonda (Boo-Seng Lee), Erik Kaiko (Jimmy Lee), Dawen Wang (Isaac Lee), Walter Brody (Ned/Jerry) and Austin Campion (Bob/The Red Angel).

Congratulations are in order for Monica Lopez who is featured in the Sun-Times today in a piece by Hedy Weiss called “Roles of a lifetime: 10 ideal casting choices add realism and enthusiasm to Chicago stages”.

4. MONICA LOPEZ

Monica Lopez is wonderfully fiery, funny and self-assured as Noor, the smart, seductive and conflicted young Arab-American novelist at the center of Silk Road Theater Project’s production of “Our Enemies: Scenes of Love and Combat.” The actress easily goes beyond the play’s zesty politics of identity to get to the universal core of her character. For here is a very attractive, sophisticated, independent-minded woman who makes some ridiculous choices when it comes to men. And Lopez knows precisely how to put on a dress, wrap herself in a sheet and deal with the advances of several very different sorts of seducers.

SEE HER: In “Our Enemies,” running through March 30. Tickets: (866) 811-4111.

read the whole article 

The buzz on Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat has been huge. And now the reviews are coming in.

Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones says, “…if you’re interested in smart new plays, don’t miss this one. It’s the best piece by the hugely talented El Guindi that I’ve seen. And it’s further evidence that Silk Road has real guts…“ 

Check out full text of all the reviews and features  ->

SRTP singled out  in Richard Christiansen’s Chicago Tribune Magazine essay “Where do we go from here?”.

“As recently as 10 years ago, for example, who would have thought that … that the Loop’s liveliest new arts group would be the Silk Road Theatre, a troupe dedicated to showcasing playwrights of Asian, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean background and operating out of the basement in The Chicago Temple…”

Read the rest of the article here. 

Check out this wonderful blog post about SRTP written by Adam Thurman, President of Mission Paradox. Click here.

Posted on Time Out Chicago’s Blog in Theater by Kris Vire on February 1st, 2008

Next Theatre and the Silk Road Theatre Project are coming together tomorrow to present a discussion between Arab-American playwrights Yussef El-Guindi (author of Silk Road’s world premiere Our Enemies, opening March 1) and Heather Raffo (the writer-performer of 9 Parts of Desire, coming to the Museum of Contemporary Art in May as a co-production of Next and the MCA).

Moderated by Silk Road’s artistic director Jamil Khoury, the talk is expected to touch on Arab-American representation in U.S. pop culture and “the emergence of a post-9/11 Arab-American cultural movement.” The discussion, starting at 2pm Saturday at Silk Road’s home in the Chicago Temple building, is free to attend, though reservations are recommended: call 312-857-1234, extension 201 to reserve.

The two theaters are also offering a package deal to see both shows for $50. Though less than six years old, Silk Road has proven adept at making smart partnerships with more established theaters—they’re the driving force behind Looks Like Chicago, a multi-theater subscription offer involving the Middle Eastern/South Asian-focused Silk Road, the African-diaspora–centered Congo Square, Latino company Teatro Vista and Eurocentric Remy Bumppo. Of course, the very fact that Silk Road got a permanent home in the Loop in its second year of existence (paid for by their hosts, the Chicago Temple’s First United Methodist Church) speaks to the company’s people skills and business smarts. I hope we see more of the theater community going the team-up route.