Breaking Down the Asian Stereotype

“One of the characters cross-dresses,” said Vernon Takeshita of his social comedy “Performance Anxiety” (opening Wednesday at East West Players in Hollywood). “Another adopts a female stereotype. Another is Asian-American, gay, sexually repressed, married with two cardboard children--and plays his own nurse in his office. Anyway, that’s just the first scene. Then it gets complicated.”

Although it’s purposely ambiguous, Takeshita’s title refers to a real-life sexual dysfunction. “It has to do with an idea in the play,” he noted, “that if you think too hard, it doesn’t work. But the piece is also an Asian-American farce dealing with identity and social relationships. Asian-Americans have almost made a staple of kitchen-sink drama--which relies on a confessional form of theater, reducing every play experience to reaffirming that ‘We’re just like you.’ ”

When it comes to traditional sexual stereotypes, the first-time playwright, 24, feels “the perception ranges from one horrendous vision of bestiality to something almost scientific and genderless. In the ‘70s we were (seen as) a model minority. I think there’s a great danger in that--reducing people to a myth, a cultural sameness. So one of the things I hope to do in the play is set up theater that doesn’t allow people to generalize.”

Although the setting is modern society, Takeshita (who’s studying for his Ph.D. in history at Columbia University) makes no attempt to generalize there either.

“No one can say, ‘I am the model of the Asian-American community,’ fulfill his duty and express that community to the rest of the world. I’m only hoping to set up a series where characters are dealing with their identity and sexuality--and wanting to be accepted from a larger societal point of view.”

Alberto Isaac directs Sab Shimono (“Yankee Dawg You Die”), Timothy Dang and Ren Hanami.

THEATER BUZZ: Where pregnancy goes, so goes Laura Bogard. No sooner had the actress wound up a run in “Company” at East West Players than she was offered a role in “It’s a Girl!” (at the Odyssey Theatre), John Burrows’ and Andy Whitfield’s sparkling new musical about five pregnant British women battling a nearby nuclear waste dump. Bogard’s character, Eve, is an over-30, first-time mom. In real life, so is the actress.

At the time of the casting, she was hardly showing. Now, four months later, Bogard is definitely--um--out there. Singing. Dancing. Growing . “I’m so grateful to be working--and going through this experience with five women,” she said. “You want to talk about your skin stretching, your stomach getting fat. And they’re all so supportive. They watch the baby move, put their hands on my stomach.”

When Junior starts kicking midshow, so much the better.

“I feel so perfect out there,” the actress said happily. “Not fat, not short. I walk around all day feeling like a cow, then I go to the theater and everything’s OK. Being spiritual, I think there’s a reason I’m supposed to be here--on that stage, with those women. Of course, I’m taking special care, precautions, wearing a pregnancy belt. And my husband’s been wonderful about it. My mother’s a little worse. She says, ‘What are you doing to my grandchild?’ ”