‘GREEN CARD’: DRAWING ETHNIC PARALLELS

JoAnne Akalaitis is a woman of many questions.

“How is America now? What was the success story of the first immigrants? Has it changed? What does it mean to learn English, to be in California, to be an illegal alien, to be tortured, to get political asylum? What is political asylum?”

Playwright Akalaitis--a brisk, serious woman sporting blue glasses and short, spiky hair--paused for breath. Issues of immigration and immersion into American society are at the heart of “Green Card,” opening under her direction May 29 at the Mark Taper.

“There are characters like a Jewish man, Marshal (Nguyen Cao) Ky (former premier of Vietnam), a made-up character who’s a diplomat’s wife, a detained alien, a Salvadoran cleaning lady, a CIA agent,” she continued. “But basically, everyone plays everything.

“The foundation is Ellis Island, the Jewish man’s story at the beginning of the century. Then it shows what in the Jewish man’s story is reflected in the refugees in L.A.--or any other place in the United States. Like sneaking across the border, persecution. It also deals with habits, attitudes toward foreigners, starting in the 19th Century with anti-Catholic, anti-European, anti-Semitic--and up to anti-Asian, anti-Hispanic.

“The victims have changed,” she said with a shrug, “that’s all. One of the things we’re trying to do in this play is make that parallel, to show that being a Jew on the outside of society (Chicago to New York) was a lot like being a Guatemalan or Salvadoran outside L.A. society.”

Akalaitis has reinforced that point by casting actors “who are clearly Asian or Hispanic and having them play a Jewish person with a heavy accent. It’s exciting to confront the audience with that, the conflict of images. What are the cliches of the Asian, the Jew, the Hispanic, of California? We take all those characterizations, those cliches--and explode them.”

And yet, she stressed, “the play is not polemical, agitprop. This is just a theater piece that incorporates a lot of style and styles and music and dancing and film and slides. . . . For instance, the stage is transformed into a jungle with slides: In the second act it becomes the Third World, Southeast Asia or Central America. The projections are on the floor mainly: slides of immigrant’s faces, maps, Mayan gods, a Cambodian temple.”

Her voice trailed off. “I’ve said too much. So much of this really is the impact of seeing; if you describe it all, why go to the play?” (However, Akalaitis did venture some hints on the eclectic musical agenda: Panamanian, Salvadoran, Balinese and Vietnamese folk music, David Bowie and Brian Eno, Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Diamond and Jimmy Cliff.)

Akalaitis (Chicago-born, Stanford-educated and currently New York-based) was originally introduced to the project two years ago by Taper associate artistic director Ken Brecher, who suggested “doing something about all the different people who live in L.A.”

Since that idea took hold, Akalaitis--armed with a Rockefeller grant--threw herself into literary research (from the Statue of Liberty to Vietnamese customs) and real-life studies on the “multi-ethnic” streets of Los Angeles.

“It was really important to be here, meet these people, look at L.A.,” she noted. “And since I was coming as a stranger--and without any fear--I felt free about going into the different neighborhoods and restaurants. Consequently, I know quite a bit about this city.”

Those impressions are apparently more dear to Akalaitis than her actual script, which she calls “important, but not a sacred object. See, I don’t consider myself a writer. My artistic identity is not tied up in that. If I write something, it’s because the script has to be written, as opposed to a burning need to write. If anybody asks what I do, it’s always ‘director.’ Though on my tax form,” she added wryly, “it’s ‘director/writer/actress.’ Hopefully, the multiplicity of my occupations will make them more benevolent toward me.”

Although for many years Akalaitis was solely an actress, the other outlets have been developing more and more since her 1970 co-founding--with Lee Breuer, Ruth Maleczech, David Warrilow and Philip Glass (Akalaitis’ former husband)--of the Mabou Mimes.

(The company, she reports, is going strong: Last year she directed its production of Kroetz’s “Help Wanted”; this summer she will travel with “Through the Leaves” to the 1986 Israel Festival.)

“I’m just a basic working person,” Akalaitis said with a shrug. “I get a job and I go there.”

(She recently returned from Boston, where she directed Genet’s “The Balcony” and where, in 1984, she staged a controversial black version of Beckett’s “Endgame” that brought down the playwright’s wrath. The situation was resolved with printed statements in the program from the playwright and from the theater, and Akalaitis maintains “it was one of the most thrilling experiences of my life.”)

“I like to get away from New York,” Akalaitis continued, “though I don’t like to leave my children (aged 15 and 17). But being in theater means partially being a role model for them--so I’m so thrilled now that they’re interested in my work, that it’s not something weird, odd. At one time it was not so clear what it was.”

“Green Card,” she said, will create no such confusion, “although it is not a play in the normal sense: There’s not a narrative, a

beginning, middle and end. It’s more like a collage. Some of the material is funny, some satirical, some very grim. Some is linear and silent, some is explosive. And there are always at least two things happening onstage at once--sometimes three, four, five things. Sometimes two people speak at the same time. Sometimes action is happening in the audience while it’s happening onstage. It’s a very demanding kind of theater, where the audience really has to listen--and make a lot of choices.”