All ‘Roads’ Lead Home

For Gary San Angel, the road to the world premiere of “Roads to Travel” began in Southern California and took many twists and turns across the country before making its way back to the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

About six years ago, San Angel, a performance artist who was a founding member of Irvine’s Theatre of Color, signed up for a 12-week workshop called Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Asian Men, put on by Los Angeles-based performance artist Dan Kwong. The workshop, backed by a Los Angeles Cultural Arts grant, was designed to give Asian American men a way to deal with issues of identity. Of the about 30 men, nine--San Angel, Radmar Agana Jao, Hao Chorr, Royd Hatta, Mark Jue, Darrell Kunitomi, Alex Luu, Yoshio Moriwaki and Hwang Pham--completed the workshop and went on to perform at the Japanese American National Museum.

Afterward, San Angel moved to New York City, where, in 1995, he launched his own workshop, Peeling the Banana. This group incorporated stories of Asian American men and women and first performed off-Broadway in 1996. The following year, members of the New York and Los Angeles groups came together for joint performances in New York and at Highways in Santa Monica.

San Angel connected with Kwong again when he was invited by Kwong to collaborate on another grant project, this one in Philadelphia. There, San Angel formed two new groups, Gener-Asian Next, a writing and performing workshop for teens, and Something to Say, a workshop for Asian American men and women.

This week, three members of the original Los Angeles group (Kunitomi, Jue and San Angel) will be joined by three East Coast men (Dave Lin, Bert Wang and Ed Lin) to perform at LATC.

Los Angeles native San Angel, 28, talked with The Times about his grass-roots movement to give Asian Americans an opportunity to talk about their struggles, and the impact of the performances on his life.

Question: Did you know Dan Kwong before you began this workshop?

Answer: I had seen him at the Japan America Theater for his “Monkhood (in Three Easy Lessons)” show. I was also taking a performance art class at UC Irvine, and he had come down as a guest artist to critique our work. (Laughs.) The piece I was doing used this windshield, and it cracked while I was carrying it. It cut me, and his main critique was I needed to be more careful about my body and to think about sane choices.

Q: What happened at the workshop?

A: The first exercise is the basic one: You write down five things that you love about being an Asian male and five things you hate about being an Asian male. Some real key things about what you struggle with come out--about what you appreciate, what you value.

At the time I thought, “These would be the kind of questions you’d get from a self-help book.” But he just did it in such a way that you felt safe and open enough that these questions allowed me and the rest of the guys to open up in a way that we never did in our lives.

For me, it was like putting a mirror to yourself. You get to see all the great things, but you get to see all the ugly things too.

Q: How did Peeling the Banana come about?

A: I went to New York for love, and I felt there was something missing and wanted to continue the workshop. In New York, there was a different feel because [the participants] were not performers; no one dedicated their careers to writing or performing. It was a much more eclectic mix. The issues people wrote about seemed to come from the same place: There was a very strong sense of Asian male sexuality; the sense of feeling isolated and emasculated.

When we brought on work with women, it became this dialogue between Asian men and women.

What makes this work important--what makes it real and different from theater--is that the stories are real. I realized once you cross the boundaries into theater, it can lose its impact.

Q: What brought about the first joint performance in New York?

A: In 1997, I was missing the original guys. I said it would be so exciting to have this summit where these two groups could process and perform the material.

We had no budget. We all stayed in one little apartment, and we performed at this little shoe-box space at the Asian American Writers Workshop. We performed with the Peeling the Banana--men and women--and we integrated the Los Angeles people into the new works being created at the time.

Q: What took you to Philadelphia?

A: Dan had another grant and said, “Do you want to work with me in creating a workshop in Philadelphia?” That was the first time we came in as peers and equals. We worked together to create this space for some of the folks in Philly.

They wanted to continue and asked me if I wanted to come back to do something for youth. I was touched that this other community was requesting our presence.

Q: Where will you go from here?

A: The folks who continue [to perform together] have made the same kind of commitment as I’ve made as sort of an obligation, a desire not to see this flame die.

My focus right now is writing grants. What I’d love to do is document the history of the work and the people who’ve been involved and create a model for other communities so people can establish these workshops in different communities and build them and sustain them.

BE THERE

“Roads to Travel,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St. Today-Saturday, 8 p.m. $15. (213) 485-1681.