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2010 Works in Progress |
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American Bamboo |
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The 2010 Works in Progress series continues with this new work in development by playwright Cherylene Lee. Q & A will follow.
American Bamboo dramatizes how a real life family copes with loss in the midst of the Great Depression. Inspired by events recounted by family members’ stories and publications, the author focuses on a single day in the home of the Leung family.
Once prosperous and the center of cultural life for an emerging Chinese American middle class in Los Angeles, the family is struggling to make ends meet—and pay off debts they are suddenly discovering.
The patriarch of the family died suddenly a year earlier leaving the care of his business and home in the hands of Mama, a diminutive but dominant force from the south of China.
Mama is reliant on each of her four children to help hold the family together, especially William, her 19 year-old son who has withdrawn from his studies UC Berkeley, and the vibrant and passionate 18 year-old Holly, who has put her life on hold just as she was prepared to spread her wings.
The greatest sacrifice seems to be borne by Mincie and Monroe—at least according to these adolescent boys. Their older siblings had a sweet life in comparison to what seems to lie ahead for them.
An award-wining playwright, Cherylene Lee 's plays include: MIXED MESSAGES (East West Players, LA, Borderlands Theatre, Tucson, AZ February 2006) ANTIGONE FALUN GONG ( Aurora Theatre, Berkeley, CA.) THE LEGACY CODES (Pan Asian Rep, New York, NY; TheatreWorks, Palo Alto, CA, Hangar Theatre, Ithaca NY) CARRY THE TIGER TO THE MOUNTAIN (Contemporary American Theater Festival, West Virginia, Pan Asian Repertory Theater, NY, East West Players, LA, published in New Dramatists 2000: Best Plays of the Graduating Class, Smith and Kraus, InterACT-Theatre, Sacramento, CA Special 25th anniversary presentation, Pan Asian Rep. NY) ARTHUR AND LEILA (BRAVA! For Women in the Arts, SF; East West Players, LA; Pan Asian Rep., NY, published in Women's Playwrights: Best Plays of 1993, Smith and Kraus) WONG BOW RIDES AGAIN (East West Players, LA), THE BALLAD OF DOC HAY (Marin Playhouse Theater and the Chinese Cultural Center, SF) OVERTONES (Kumu Kahua, Honolulu, HI), and IN THE SPIRIT... a commissioned collaboration with the San Jose Taiko Drummers and Abhinaya Dance Co. (Mayer Theater, San Jose, CA). She has been a recipient of a TCG/NEA Playwright in Residence grant with East West Players, a Kennedy Center Fund For New American Plays grant, a Rockefeller MAP Grant, a California Arts Council Playwriting Fellowship, a Wallace A. Gerbode Play Commission, and two San Francisco Individual Artists Grants (one in literature, one in performing arts) and honored as the 2003 Made in America Award for playwrights at East West Players and the 2003 Anthony J. Haney Fellow at Theatreworks for artistic excellence. Her poetry and short fiction have been widely published. She is currently working on a memoir of her days as a childhood performer in Hollywood, Just Like Really, that was awarded a San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Grant. An excerpt of her memoir will be read at the Torrance Library on April 3rd, 2010.
Works in Progress is a program of the Cultural Services Division of the Torrance Community Services Department. Presented in association with APC Gallery, Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, Chinese American Museum, Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles, El Camino College Community Education, Organization of Chinese Americans/Greater Los Angeles, Palos Verdes Arts Center, South Bay Chinese American Chamber of Commerce, Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce, Torrance CitiCABLE, Torrance Historical Society & Museum,Torrance Memorial Medical Center, Torrance Public Library, Torrance Symphony Association, UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, University Art Gallery CSU Dominguez Hills, Visual Artists Guild, Visual Communications |
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