STAGE : After the Fall : In light of the ‘Miss Saigon’ imbroglio, Asian-American theater artists assess their standing

Sab Shimono, whose Broadway credits include “Mame” and the original cast of “Pacific Overtures,” was one of the Asian-American actors who auditioned a year ago for the Eurasian pimp role when tryouts were held for the upcoming Broadway production of “Miss Saigon.”

When Shimono met with the production’s casting people, he was asked to perform a song from the show.

“I told them I needed more time (to become familiar with the music),” he recalls. According to Shimono, the casting agents told him to buy the original-cast recording and get familiar. “That sounded to me like an encouraging sign,” he says. Unfortunately what followed, Shimono recalls, was not only discouraging but a distortion. He feels it paved the way for the “Miss Saigon” producers to claim they’d made the effort to find Asian-American talent.

In a letter to “Miss Saigon” producer Cameron Mackintosh, casting agent Vincent Liff wrote, “Sab Shimono was the first to admit he couldn’t cut it vocally.”

“They weren’t really looking,” Shimono said. “The bottom line is they don’t want us, even though the talent is out there.”

Shimono may or may not have been a suitable choice for the controversial role that will be played by white British actor Jonathan Pryce, but his comments about the mainstream stage world’s attitude call to attention the particular plight of the Asian-American theater community.

In the wake of the “Miss Saigon” imbroglio--and with Philip Kan Gotanda’s “The Wash” opening Thursday at the Mark Taper Forum--the Asian-American theater community is guardedly optimistic about its future on the American stage of the ‘90s. “Spirits are higher than ever because of the situation. I see people talking to each other. The family has become stronger,” says Shimono, a 25-year veteran of the stage and screen who appears in the film “Come See the Paradise” and plays Nobu in “The Wash.”

“That is not to say there isn’t a long road to be traveled,” adds playwright Gotanda.

Limited opportunities for and discrimination against Asian-American artists is still the rule. Stereotypical portrayals abound. Actors’ Equity’s ultimate decision to reverse itself and allow Pryce to perform here after some of its own members protested Equity’s original ban--and after Mackintosh threatened to withdraw “Miss Saigon” with its $25 million in advance sales--stands for many in the Asian-American community as one more loss in the fight for “truthful” representations and equal stage opportunities.

There are Asian-American stars of stage, film and television--albeit few. There are four full-time Asian-American theaters in the United States: New York’s Pan Asian Repertory Theater, San Francisco’s Asian American Theatre, Seattle’s Northwest Asian-American Theater (all founded in the ‘70s), and Los Angeles’ East West Players (founded in 1965). There are also several part-time producing companies in North America such as Toronto’s Can-Asian/Sansei North Productions and Paper Angels Productions in Chicago.

There are plays being produced on mainstream stages, such as the Taper and the Los Angeles Theatre Center, and Asian-American artists are affiliated with some of these institutions. But compared with other minority communities currently waging battles of their own against decades of racism, Asian-American artists face a unique situation.

Ironically, at a time in which reparations are being made to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II, Asian-American artists are not always perceived as an aggrieved minority. The success of Asian-American assimilation--and the community’s accrual of political clout--has exacerbated this situation.

A close look reveals that success is unduly limited for Asian Americans, who, along with African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans, are often excluded from consideration for traditionally white, “classical” or non-race-specific roles.

Asian Americans are also still fighting to play Asian roles on Broadway and to have Asian-American plays seen as potential profit-makers in New York and elsewhere. The institutional connections remain embryonic.

“People are in positions of executive secretary at best, not in the position to set policy,” says Mako, a co-founder of East West Players and one of the Asian-American community’s most prominent theater artists.

Even when a show is a critical and financial success--such as the Manhattan Theater Club production of “The Wash” or Wayman Wong’s “Whiskey Chicken” at the Asian American Theatre--it isn’t guaranteed an afterlife, a Broadway run, or even, in some cases, an agent for its author. “If ‘The Wash’ was other than an Asian show, some producer would have picked it up,” says Shimono. “It was the same with (Gotanda’s) ‘Yankee Dawg You Die’ at (New York’s) Playwrights Horizons last year.”

When “Miss Saigon” opens in New York in April, it and the 1990-born “Shogun” will be the first predominantly Asian musicals to hit Broadway in nearly 15 years, since the 1976 run of “Pacific Overtures.” Before that, you have to go back to 1958’s “Flower Drum Song” to find Asian males playing the leading Asian roles on what many artists of color still refer to ruefully as the Great White Way.

In fact, while much of the “Miss Saigon” debate was couched in terms of freedom of “artistic expression” and non-traditional or “colorblind” casting, actor George Takei suggests that “the most dramatic example of non-traditional casting would be an Asian male in an (Asian) lead on Broadway.”

This would be in contrast to the practice of white males playing Asian leads, a dubious tradition that includes Yul Brynner in “The King and I” in 1951, David Wayne in “The Teahouse of the August Moon” in 1953, and Ed Kinney and Larry Blyden in another cast of “Flower Drum Song.”

Asian-American men have never been cast in “white” roles on Broadway, although they have had a few such Off-Broadway opportunities.

Had “Miss Saigon” involved a white in, say, a potentially African-American or Latino role, the consensus among Asian-American professionals is that the outcome would have been different.

“That’s yellowface with the Jonathan Pryce character,” says Takei, who plays Sadao in “The Wash” but is more widely known as Sulu of “Star Trek.” “That’s unthinkable with a black part. Yet not only did that happen, it prevails.”

“The idea of blackface is not tolerated anymore, but yellowface is,” concurs Shishir Kurup, director of LATC’s AsianAmerican Project. “Black performers have made more of an inroad, but Asians aren’t yet (thought of) as part of American culture.”

There is a history of protest against the American stage’s legacy of “yellowface.” An earlier battle was waged by a group of Asian-American artists against a 1970 Lincoln Center production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Good Woman of Setzuan,” which cast white actors in Asian roles. Three years after the show, Lincoln Center’s casting was ruled discriminatory in a suit with the New York State Human Rights Appeal Board.

In two days of hearings last month--held as part of a compromise response to “Miss Saigon”-related complaints--the New York City Commission on Human Rights weighed concerns of creative freedom against the need to address unequal opportunity in the theater.

Writers, actors and others charged that not only were there plenty of Asian-Americans capable of fulfilling the demands of “Miss Saigon” roles but that the theater in general was still, in the words of Pan-Asian Repertory artistic director Tisa Chang, “a white male old boy network.”

A question now under discussion in the Asian-American artistic community, as members search for ways to derive positive value from the “Miss Saigon” experience, is how the situation could have come about in the first place. While many have been quick to blame the “old boy network” and all the discrimination that implies, others feel the Asian-American community should share the blame.

“In part it’s our fault, because we have been quiet,” says Takei. “It’s true, we have a long ways to go. Generationally, we’re still at that point where we’re trying to enter in. The immigrant generation works hard and puts the next generation to school. It’s the next generation that starts producing the artists. Other communities have been here longer.”

“The Asian community is the one that’s been least prominent on stage and in film,” says Kurup. “The Asian community is very polite, not as vocal as they have been lately. It’s part of the immigrant mentality. You’re not taught to go into the arts.”

Even within LATC’s AsianAmerican Project, says Kurup, there have been differing views on the best course of action. Indeed, AsianAmerican Project founder Dom Magwili resigned over comments made by LATC producing director Diane White during the heat of the controversy. “Not everybody felt the same way,” Kurup says, “but everybody was for people being aware of what the problem was, and everybody felt Mackintosh was wrong.”

Takei also feels participation on the audience side of the proscenium is essential. “The other part of my soapbox to the community is that we need to be visible in the audiences as well,” he says. “The community is affluent, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be supporting the arts.”

San Francisco-based Gotanda, whose plays always focus on the Asian-American experience, calls the “Miss Saigon” affair “an issue whose time had come.”

“It brought to the public’s eye a lot of issues that needed to be talked about, and it politicized the Asian-American performing community,” he says. “ ‘Miss Saigon’ has come to mean all the other things: casting, opportunities, what’s being done and how are we being portrayed, the dilemma and plight of being an Asian-American artist.”

“There’s more of an awareness within the Asian-American community,” says Eric Hayashi, artistic director of the Asian American Theater in San Francisco. “Young Asian Americans are starting to think about opportunities in the theater as a vague possibility. A decade ago we could put out a casting call and get 25 (actors), today it’s upwards of 100.”

Along with the inroads, argues Gotanda, come obligations.

“Asian-American stories are sexier than they were a couple of years ago,” he says. “In telling these stories, its important that we have input in the production so that when they are on stage, it is a truthful portrayal.”

Well-meaning liberalism is not enough, Gotanda argues. “We have to say, ‘This is simply not true.’ ”

“The issue that’s larger is the nature of the Asian-American presence in American theater, films and television,” says Takei. “What we’d like to see is the depiction of Asians, and particularly Asian-Americans, in a more honest, realistic vein.”

“It’s interesting what the press does to us,” adds Shimono. “They (say), ‘The Japanese actors were outstanding,’ but they never give them a name. They have a tendency to lump us, group us into one, make us faceless. Maybe its hard for them to grab who’s who.”

Some observers see progress, but not nearly enough. “There are more roles, but even the quality of that leaves something to be desired,” says Takei. “We occasionally see extras or jurors popping up but we don’t see a lawyer on ‘L.A. Law.’ ”

The root of the problems, he suggests, is larger societal attitudes, mirrored on stage. “As the economy gets lean, there is scapegoat finding,” says Takei. “The bashing of Asians is becoming a very serious issue.”

The defense against increasing racial polarizations may come, for Asian Americans, out of the experiences of 1990. “It has unified Asian-Amerian actors and a lot of the minorities in their thinking,” says Shimono. “This could happen to any group.”

“Asian-American actors have begun to realize it’s good to speak out,” says Gotanda. “It doesn’t pay to sit home and be silent.”

“With the politicization comes an added responsibility to look closely at what we’re asked to play,” says actress Diane Takei (no relation to George), who is married to Gotanda. “Are the roles racist or demeaning? Do I want to see Asian-American women as sexual objects for the white man? It’s a real dilemma society has placed on Asian-American actors. We go to school. We train. But do we want to play these (demeaning) roles?”

While East Coast figures dominated much of the coverage of the “Miss Saigon” controversy, Gotanda is especially pleased with the response on his own home turf.

“People were very involved on the West Coast. My sense was that the climate in the Bay Area--in terms of press and the community--was more supportive than in New York, where they were sometimes publicly attacking David (Hwang, author of “M. Butterfly”) and (actor B.D.) Wong for taking a stand,” he says. “The difference has to do with the political clout of Asian Americans in California.”

The hurdles to be surmounted now include financial, institutional and attitudinal changes. “The next step is to get a touring company and have a run,” says Shimono. “The good thing is the Taper and LATC are doing Asian pieces now. But the only way we could really prove ourselves in the mainstream is to do a run Off-Broadway or on.”

Asian-Americans artists also need to continue to make other inroads. “The next step has to be producing,” says Kurup. “We have to start getting into positions of power--writing for ourselves, being responsible for our own destiny and having people in creative places where we make the decisions.”

The most important change of all, however, will be when Asian-Americans are no longer subject to racism and prejudice. Until then, the way to combat myths is by creating plays that present a more accurate and less prejudiced view of Asians and Asian Americans.

“The hope that I have for American culture is in the emergence of Asian-American playwrights who can tell our story in a way that others can recognize themselves in it,” concurs George Takei, a native Angeleno and longtime civic leader who also is on the LATC board.

He says the center’s Asian-American Theatre Project--whose mission includes the development of scripts--is still in a “gestation period.” Started in 1988, it was the last lab to be created at the theater center and, unlike the resident Latino Lab, it has yet to have one of its works staged at the downtown complex.

Like LATC, the Taper is also nurturing new plays by Asian-American writers in its New Works Festival. However, “The Wash” is only the second Asian-American-oriented script to make it to the main stage--”Sansei” was the first in 1989--and the Taper has no Asian Americans on its artistic staff.

“I feel more responsible about nurturing youth--Asian-American actors, directors and playwrights--now,” says Nobu McCarthy, who is the artistic director of the East West Players and plays Masi in “The Wash.” “I would like to focus on that, so people won’t tell us, ‘We looked and we couldn’t find anybody’--which is not true.”

To help bring about the vision that she and Takei share, McCarthy has asked playwright David Henry Hwang to design a writers’ workshop, part of which he may teach, for her company this spring.

“We have three or four prominent writers,” says Kurup, whose AsianAmerican Project has two scripts potentially headed for LATC’s annual new works festival.

“Now there has to be more of a response from powers that be, to do their homework and be sensitive,” admonishes Gotanda. “Go see Asian-American works. Pay attention, be familiar with the new America. Assumptions you’ve had are no longer appropriate. This is a difficult time in America in terms of race relations. It’s not just (about) Asian Americans, it’s an American dilemma.”