Roberta Uno Asian American Women Playwrights Scripts Collection

Summary: A play based on a composite of facts experienced by Japanese Americans during World War II.

Summary: In an imaginary country in Central America an unusual friendship develops between the dictator and the American ambassador.

Summary: The Toda family breaks apart as they are moved from assembly center to concentration camp to segregation center.

Summary: A young visitor from the States disrupts the sabbatical of a middle aged professor and his wife in London.

Summary: Kenzo, a Japanese American professor coming up for tenure at a small mid-western college, alarms his wife Sheila and his sister Vivian by suddenly joining the anti-Vietnam war movement and falling in love with a young student radical.

Summary: The women in the English department of a small college, in a series of shady alliances and betrayals, deny tenure to one of their colleagues.

Summary: In a monologue the "Cassandra of Watergate" tells the story of her meteoric rise and fall and her abiding love for her husband.

Summary: Harriet suffers from dementia and watches as her daughter and grandson sell her home and shut down her life.

Summary: Mishima, obsessed by death, tries to fashion his life into a work of art.

Summary: Picasso leaves middle-aged Cleo for her young niece Danielle.

Summary: In Lisbon a birdman rescues the last human child as an earthquake puts an end to the civilized world.

Summary: Urban storytelling and street mythology-based on Aoki's childhood, growing up "mixed up as chop suey" with street gangs in Long Beach, California, and her fifteen years of experiences as a community organizer and teacher in Watts, East L.A., Hunter's Point, the Mission, and Chinatown. A look into the lives of "other" Americans and a fearless portrayal of Aoki's roots among L.A.'s urban tribes. A one woman show.

Includes articles and correspondence. Summary: This is the true story of the first mixed marriage in California, the public outrage over this union and its subsequent impact on the descendants today. It is a story of forbidden love between a Samurai and the Archdeacon's daughter that made headlines across the country in 1909.

Summary: A jazz poem/play depicting the life of Jack Kerouac, novelist of the Beat generation, as narrated by the ghost of jazz musician Charlie Parker.

Includes two versions of the script. Summary: A comedy of errors results when a reclusive painter receives an unexpected visit from a former fellow art student with a penchant for faux pas and prone to accidents.

Includes two versions of the script. Summary: A comedy of errors results when a reclusive painter receives an unexpected visit from a former fellow art student with a penchant for faux pas and prone to accidents.

Summary: Dramatizes the picture-bride wedding of a pregnant Filipino girl and a seventy-year-old manong in L.A.

Summary: Dramatizes an aggravated assault by a homeless person reacting to the prejudices of society in the forms of an aged benefactor, a deli owner and two cops.

Summary: A comic drama of a Filipino musician in an Hawaiian band raising his marriageable daughters in the mid-west with his matriarchal wife.

Summary: A comic drama of a Filipino musician in an Hawaiian band raising his marriageable daughters in the mid-west with his matriarchal wife.

Includes a copy of the play and a playbill for the Northside Theatre's March 1988 production. Summary: A project stemming from an acting workshop for all ages in which participants' various stories depicted a day in the life of working families with school age children, all of whom have their own daily trials and tribulations.

Summary: Set in war-torn Philippine Islands where a family together with the townspeople flee from the Japanese to the mountains, regaling and astounding the teen girl coming of age with various folklore and superstitions.

Summary: An off-beat Frank Capra-style comedy in which a poor writer wins the affections of a woman in a dead end affair with a rich editor.

Summary: A spoof on a newswriter scouring the woodsy northern California forests for the elusive Bigfoot when he encounters a woman in a silver suit.

Two versions along with several reviews. Summary: A couple tries to retain the good memory of their recalcitrant son for a reporter who, in flashbacks, recalls the boy in her high school with a similar cultural struggle.

Winner of Bay Area Playwrights Festival 1993 Ten-Minute Play Contest.

Summary: An immigrant reveals the opportunistic resourcefulness that all foreigners rely on or learn in America by pursuing a green-card marriage with a first-generation Asian woman.

Contains the script and a complete synopsis of the play. Summary: One-act dealing with art patroness Mabel Dodge, D.H. Lawrence, and other artists. Set in l922 in an artist's colony in Taos, New Mexico.

Summary: A woman fantasizes about her Muse and/or lover while surrounded by the many characters in and out of her life, all portrayed by friends who bear remarkable resemblances to each other.

Summary: A one-man one-act play depicting the visit of a man beset by averageness to his mute (unseen) quadraplegic friend who could have been more. Events reveal that their childhood dreams had been their commonality until the first man's prejudice overcame friendship.

Summary: Friends once sharing a commune in California reunite for the Stones concert and display their joy and frustrations over stasis, sellout, support and lack of it, and the repercussions of one couple's open relationship.

Summary: Spoof on the nuclear family of the fifties where the housewife gains self-confidence when confronting a heavy-breather phone caller, her husband conquers fear of fire, and their daughter dispels the mother's maniacal fear of tabloid scare tactics.

Summary: The test-run of homing pigeons coincides with the return of a wayward daughter to her parents, as observed by the son who never left and resented his responsibility.

Summary: A neighbor girl and her younger sister entreat the neighbor lady to re-tell her son's tale of wartime love, but get the truth instead.

Two versions. Summary: Details a woman's initial encounter with varying influences during high school: a liberal white teacher and a rigid African American teacher with a handicap.

Multiple versions. Summary: During the turbulent 1970s, a Filipino family tries to make ends meet in various quirky ways, disregarding that world events affect their own lives.

Multiple versions. Summary: During the turbulent 1970s, a Filipino family tries to make ends meet in various quirky ways, disregarding that world events affect their own lives.

Multiple drafts contained. Summary: Haunted by the parables of her family's past, a Filipino-American woman struggles to define her personal and professional future amidst the lingering prejudices of modern America.

Multiple drafts contained. Summary: Haunted by the parables of her family's past, a Filipino-American woman struggles to define her personal and professional future amidst the lingering prejudices of modern America.

First of three versions. Summary: Dramatization of the controversy behind the Vietnam Memorial interspersed with scenes of those affected by it.

Second of three versions. Summary: Dramatization of the controversy behind the Vietnam Memorial interspersed with scenes of those affected by it.

Third of three versions, a 10 p. interview with Barroga, preview and review of productions of Walls. Summary: Dramatization of the controversy behind the Vietnam Memorial interspersed with scenes of those affected by it.

Summary: Historical drama set in mid-Wisconsin in the 1850s; an odd Indian woman in Victorian dress descends on the Indian agent and his wife and with her multi-lingual skills circumvents a skirmish with local Indians while befuddling the agent and charming the Indian maid in their house.

Summary: In Jul of 1876 the wife of the unseen General George Armstrong Custer maintains that her husband is a national hero and will be president as she manipulates niece, maid, officers and the press with her cunning.

Summary: This comedy explores the possibility that Horatio met the Players for Hamlet, because Hamlet felt overwrought from all that was rotten in Denmark. Written in verse, with a holiday song to be danced and sung in Elizabethan style, or not.

Revised copy and first draft. Summary: A patient dying of cancer tries to seduce his nurse on his birthday.

Includes advertisement for March 10,1998 reading of the piece at The Augusta Savage Gallery, UMass Amherst.

Summary: This short one-act children's play tells the folk tale of the Balinese Monkey God Hanuman in three different episodes, and reveals the change of relationship between man and beast over the centuries. The play consists of three characters: the Tourist who learns the tale, the Tour Guide who tells the tale and changes at each encounter, and the Monkey who enacts the tale.

Summary:Inspired by the true incident of a Reuters reporter who was arrested in Peking in retaliation for the arrest of Communist party members in Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution. He got ill and met a woman doctor, and it began a story about what might happen if the two actually fell in love, the effect it has on her family, and on him.

Early draft of "The Treasure Box". Summary : A young English man, Johnny Kent, brings his father's ashes back to Hong Kong to find out about the truth about his family, from a Chinese family that helped raise him. His dead parents, now ghosts, watch his journey from Limbo, and try to interfere with his discoveries in the living world.

Summary: Misha, a political prisoner wrestles with his conscience Masha, in attempt to remember the crucial moment that occurred before he was accused of assasinating a political leader. His mental battle and his conscious battle occur on the stage at the same time.

Part of Ailing Acts.

Includes programs from two staged readings. Summary: The story of a young British man who returns to his birthplace of Hong Kong to discover an unknown family tie upon his father's death. The setting is a sanatorium cell where an old Chinese man awaits release from confinement.

Formerly called the Junk Bay Tale several drafts, along with correspondence with script advisors and reviewers. Summary : A young English man, Johnny Kent, brings his father's ashes back to Hong Kong to find out about the truth about his family, from a Chinese family that helped raise him. His dead parents, now ghosts, watch his journey from Limbo, and try to interfere with his discoveries in the living world.

Summary: A lonely housewife seeks romance in the Virtual Running Room of her local gym.

Summary: Tells the story of a young South American man's journey through the United States and into the heart of Chinatown. There he falls in with, and into the arms of, a mother and her daughter and learns the meaning of home. An American love triangle.

Summary: This play is a coming-of-age tale of a Chinese girl growing up in the middle of the desert, surrounded by her brother, an absent father, and a mother who never wants her daughter to feel the pain of womanhood.

Summary: Incorporates hula and theater to break down stereotypes of Hawaiian Natives and challenge myths that the tourism industry in Hawaii has created. The structure consists of vignettes, short scenes, poetic interludes, and moments of visual imagery.

Summary: A play which employs music, fantasy, and epic storytelling to explore issues of multiculturalism.

Multiple versions, along with playbill and article on playwright with focus on this play.

Final version.

First of three versions.

Third of three versions.

Summary: Believed to be the first use of authentic pidgin dialogue in a play by an Asian American writer, For You A Lei depicts the struggle of a Chinese widow as she copes with bringing up a family of four in a Chinatown setting in Hawaii. Though poor, the children in the family show sibling and parental loyalties and derive happiness from simple pleasures such as lei making with a Hawaiian playmate.

Two versions. Summary: A young Chinese woman tries to find her own solution when faced with the problem of making a choice between a disapproved interracial marriage or a loveless arranged union. The play is set more than half a century ago in the 1930s when interracial marriages were not readily accepted.

Semifinalist in Nantucket Short Play Competition. Contains two copies. Summary: A continuation of the Grimm fairy tale, "The Fisherman and His Wife." A timid Fisherman is granted his ambitious wife's wish to be God.

Two copies contained. Summary: History of Filipino Americans in the United States, presented through drama, music, and dance.

Earlier draft of the "The Mirror". Two copies contained.

Two copies contained. Summary: The racist Headmaster of an inner city elementary school dominates the spirits and minds of his staff and students until they learn how to fight back.

Summary: Two halves of a Filipino American girl struggle to reconcile their identity.

Summary: On an isolated island in the Philippines, a woman is tried for infidelity.

Finalist in fifth annual Women at the Door Staged Reading Series, Famous Door Theatre. Summary: An elderly rich woman in orange County tries to order an eternal slave from Egypt from her afterlife. Instead, she is taken on a freedom ride through history.

Summary: History of Filipino Americans in the United States, presented through drama, music, and dance. "Windows," published in Concepts (1987). Summary: Basis for "Holes" and "The Mirror." A traditional Filipino American sister attempts to stop her unconventional younger sister from running away with a white sailor.

Includes two reviews.

Includes a review.

Summary: A one woman, 40 minute, dance theater work where Maura's once white-identified self concept receives a shattering blow in the form of a family secret. In her search for explanations, Maura simultaneously exposes the shame fear she held for her own Vietnamese heritage as a young girl and the developing pride that grew as she turned into a young woman. The resulting piece is a stimulating multi-media journey into an understanding of "self" in a society heavily reliant on categories.

Summary: An exhilirating multi-media work created in collaboration with writer Ava Chin. It brings together many voices in an exploration of the Asian American experience fron a bi-racial perspective. The work overflows with movement both striking in its athleticism and alluring in its aggressive sensuality.

Summary: A Filipino political emigre, searching for an apartment in New York City on the eve of the 1986 Philippine Revolution, answers an advertisement for a sublet on the Lower Eastside and finds herself entangled in people's lives as confrontations erupt in an art gallery opening.

Includes reviews and programs. Summary: a Filipino nanny comes to the United States to take care of a thoroughly assimilated and Americanized Filipino boy and becomes a catalyst for his mother's painful confrontation with a Philippine past she'd much rather forget and the American present to which she's escaped.

Summary: When Daphne Wakata encounters her old classmate, Grace, working in a fancy hotel, she assumes that she is just another loser. But when Grace ties Daphne up in the isolated penthouse suite and forces her to deal with Daphne's past influence on Grace's life, the roles of servant and served are revealed to be not quite what they seemed.

Summary: In this work-in-progress several themes are explored including cultural displacement and sexual and ethnic identity.

Includes a publicity brochure.

Includes a publicity brochure.

Folder contains various essays, scripts, and work materials such as play schedules.

Summary: The story of the lives of the Blue family, a Native-American and African-American family living in rural southern Alabama.

Multiple drafts. Summary: A young woman confronts her co-dependence as the ghostly effects of her father's alcoholism haunt her own personal life.

Version 1 of 3. Summary: An African-American brings his Japanese immigrant bride to meet his family in New York, only to discover that the American dream and its fabled melting pot is more myth than reality.

Version 2 of 3. Summary: An African-American brings his Japanese immigrant bride to meet his family in New York, only to discover that the American dream and its fabled melting pot is more myth than reality.

Version 3 of 3. Summary: An African-American brings his Japanese immigrant bride to meet his family in New York, only to discover that the American dream and its fabled melting pot is more myth than reality.

Cover of American Theatre Magazine from March 2010.

Includes reviews and program note. Summary: A Japanese patriarch struggles to come to terms with his country's defeat in World War II and the consequences that it brings to bear upon his family, including his daughter falling in love with an African American soldier.

Includes playbill for show.

Contains a copy of the play Bliss.

Contains two copies, both with notes and annotations.

Formerly "The Melting Plot". Summary: Five Amerasian women explore the history of their creation and identities through one of the group's search to find her American father. Commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club, New York.

Contains copy of play with annotations.

Includes a review of this play. Summary: Under threat of having to care for his retired and recalcitrant parents on his own, an unmarried Japanese American businessman is forced to enter a charm school in order to learn how to find a wife in the midst of women's liberation.

Contains detailed notes on characters and locations for the production of Glimmer.

Two copies contained, one with annotations.

Contains a rough draft of Jonah's Faith, heavily annotated.

Contains various flyers and pamphlets for presentations Velina Hasu Houston participated in.

Version 1 of 2. Summary: Beseiged by the raucous mistress of her philandering husband, a native Japanese woman tries to commit parent-child suicide by walking into the ocean with her two small children. The play examines domestic dysfunction and the idea of cultural defense and how it figures in the judging of the woman's crime.

Version 2 of 2. Summary: Beseiged by the raucous mistress of her philandering husband, a native Japanese woman tries to commit parent-child suicide by walking into the ocean with her two small children. The play examines domestic dysfunction and the idea of cultural defense and how it figures in the judging of the woman's crime.

From a 2011 production of Kokoro. A playbill, containing the cast, script, props used, and reviews.

Various materials contained, from schedules for play to a Certificate of Registration for "Cross"

Contains various materials, including newspaper clippings, some correspondences, articles for research, and receipts.

Includes a review of this play. Summary: This play examines the journey of a spiritually bereft woman and her husband adrift in a materialistic world. The couple's malaise is torn wide open by the wife's attempt to solve their problems by adopting a baby through independent means.

Includes notes and research inquiries from Velina Hasu Houston.

Contains flyers and posters for organizations and plays Velina Hasu Houston was involved with.

Contains playbills and pamphlets for productions put on by Velina Hasu Houston, alongside other presentations she contributed to or was a part of.

Multiple drafts. Summary: A lyrical look at the life of Hawaiian princess Ka'iulani who was half Hawaiian and half Scottish.

Contains various projects initiated by Velina Hasu Houston.

Contains various essays and books on Indigenous Americans, specifically the Blackfoot tribes (the Piikuni, the Kainah, and the Siksika).

One of two versions. Summary: Four Japanese women and the spirit of a fifth struggle to come to terms with their lives as immigrants in a small Kansas town and with the histories that brought them there in the wake of the tragic suicide of a member of their expatriate community.

One of two versions. Summary: Four Japanese women and the spirit of a fifth struggle to come to terms with their lives as immigrants in a small Kansas town and with the histories that brought them there in the wake of the tragic suicide of a member of their expatriate community.

Contains Synopsis, character breakdowns, and incomplete drafts of play.

An annotated copy of the play.

Contains an essay written by Velina Hasu Houston.

Summary: After their mother's death, three Japanese American sisters fight over her legacy and confront the extramarital affair that produced one of them, a Eurasian loner who was their mother's favorite child.

Summary: A fresh-off-the-jet Japanese woman comes to L.A. after having skipped out on her wedding. Determined to live successfully in America, she becomes politicized by a rash of Asian hate crimes happening in the community while she also tries to figure out the difference between love and friendship in her personal life.

Multiple annotated copies included.

Contains only a review. Summary: A Japanese boy's attempt to win his girl's hand without becoming a samurai first forces him to play with all the courtiers to guarantee his triumph.

One of four versions. Summary: Looks at the tensions within a family and a community in the tumultuous days preceding World War II; a three-act drama.

One of four versions. Summary: Looks at the tensions within a family and a community in the tumultuous days preceding World War II; a three-act drama.

One of four versions. Summary: Looks at the tensions within a family and a community in the tumultuous days preceding World War II; a three-act drama.

One of four versions. Summary: Looks at the tensions within a family and a community in the tumultuous days preceding World War II; a three-act drama.

Two copies contained.Summary: a children's play about Samoan children adjusting to life in Honolulu.

Two copies contained.Summary: a children's play about Samoan children adjusting to life in Honolulu.

Summary: This piece charts the beginnings and continuation of a psychological state of floating, focusing on the refugee experience of being on water.

Summary: A one hour, one woman show about Vietnam, this piece explores questions of memory, personal and political violence and dislocation. The central narrative parallels and contrasts one Vietnamese family's life in Vietnam with their life in Southern California after the war. The play stages memories of Vietnam, which are reflections not only on the devastation of war but also on the tender moments people share every day in spite of and in the midst of war.

One of three copies included.

One of three copies included.

One of three copies included.

Summary: The play explores the conflicts between three middle-aged (40s to 50s) Chinese-American sisters who as children in the 1960s, performed together in a Las Vegas nightclub act, but who dealt with the passing of that childhood spotlight in very different ways.

Summary: a two-act play with music, about herbalism in the early 1900s.

Summary: Act One a three-act series of interrelated one-act plays(includes Delta Pearl).

Summary: Acts Two and Three of a three-act series of interrelated one-act plays.

Summary: A one-act play about survival and sacrifice in a confined space.

Summary: A two-act play on inter-racial marriage.

Summary: A short one act play about renewal.

Summary: A one-act play about a Chinese-American cowboy whose descendants rent a bus to Las Vegas.

Summary: A two-act play about a Chinese man caught between Chinese, Yurok, and American cultures in the 1870s.

Includes photos from productions.

Two versions. Summary: Depicts the revolt of children and the law of family.

Summary: the conflict of Rose Moy between consenting to the match-making arrangements for her to an accepted son of a Mandarin, her own desire to pursue a career, and her final submission as a filial daughter to her father's wishes.

Summary: A Lama priest and his coterie of young priests chanting hymns to heaven to the young man seeking refuge from the evils (the blue serpent) and the goodness (the white serpent) within himself.

Incldues reviews and flyers of shows by Genny Lim.

Summary: Laid out like a Greek tragedy, the story follows a young Chinese laborer who tries to redeem his family's name in the Hawaiian sugarcane plantations of the 1880s only to find himself fatefully enslaved in the very obsession which killed his father.

Summary: A poetic drama that explores the psychological and spiritual journey of a Chinese woman who lived in the 1600s to become a great healer and saint in Mexico.

Published inBitter Cane and Paperangels: Two Plays by Genny Lim, Spring 1991, Kalamakee Press. Also published in Unbroken Thread (ed.) Roberta Uno, UMass Press 1993.

Published in Bamboo Ridge, Spring 1986, Bamboo Ridge Press.

One of two different versions.

Second of two different versions.

Incldues reviews of shows by Sharon Lim-Hing, alongside correspondence with Roberta Uno.

Summary: a group of five Asian American queer women (4 lesbians and 1 bisexual) sit around after dinner. Each character represents a type (bisexual, mixed-heritage, butch, femme, intellectual), yet each character is shown to be more than just a type. The five women discuss topics pertinent to them. Controversial subjects such as racism, bisexuality and intimacy are treated with respectful humor, then quickly dropped as the next conversation topic rolls around. The play ends as the five women go their separate ways, two as a couple, two as friends, and one to a date.

Incldues reviews of shows by Nikki Nojima Louis.

Includes a review and playbill. Summary: A three-part oral history piece with music presenting the history of Japanese Americans.

One of Two versions. Summary: Explorations through oral history, story, poetry, song and movement of Asian American female identity.

Second of Two versions. Summary: Explorations through oral history, story, poetry, song and movement of Asian American female identity.

Incldues a brochure.

Summary: A tragi-comedy in two acts, this play focuses on the lives of three women with a common goal. As they paint a room in a San Francisco Victorian, their separate lives unfold romantically, materially and spiritually.

Includes review in High Performance, 1992.Published in Times Edition; Singapore.

Summary: A soldier who returns home to Hiroshima, is spat on because he returns home alive. He sees his disfigured wife for the first time. He insists he will take her to his new home, but when he shudders at the sight of the disfigured half of her face, she refuses to go and escapes into the hills. To be read as poetry.

Summary: Sampachi (called Sam Patch by Americans) returns back to Japan on one of Commodore Perry's ships, but would be put to death by Shogun if caught. He sneaks into his family home on Bon night, while all are dancing and paying respect to family ancestors.

Summary: Through a health agency the American government offers to provide plastic surgery to Namilo, but the Japanese spurn charity. Why offer aid to 50 when 50,000 need plastic surgery? Should she accept the offer?

Summary: This performance piece uses the music, surrealistic text, and the Japanese dance form, Butoh, to illustrate the experiences of the main character, who struggles with the confines and barriers of language.

Includes press releases with quotes from reviewers.

First of two versions in collection. Summary: The home of the Dalai Lama is vividly evoked in a madcap taxi ride through Dharamsale, India, introducing us to Tibetan aristocrats, Hindi movie stars, child beggars and Buddhist monks. The Dissident: searching for ancestral wisdom in China, Sam is drawn to the Himalayan plateaus where she meets a Buddhist nun with haunting accounts of post-Tiananmen Tibet.

Second of two versions in collection. Summary: The home of the Dalai Lama is vividly evoked in a madcap taxi ride through Dharamsale, India, introducing us to Tibetan aristocrats, Hindi movie stars, child beggars and Buddhist monks. The Dissident: searching for ancestral wisdom in China, Sam is drawn to the Himalayan plateaus where she meets a Buddhist nun with haunting accounts of post-Tiananmen Tibet.

Summary: Searching for ancestral wisdom in China, Sam is drawn to the Himalayan plateaus where she meets a Buddhist nun with haunting accounts of post-Tiananmen Tibet.

Summary: a play about the disappearing values in Japanese American life. Family conflicts arise when a man assumes he understands his Japanese heritage and is confronted with a crisis that makes him choose between his Western values and those he believes he has found in his study of Japanese culture. He must choose between life and death for his father and determine how to care for his surviving mother.

Summary: When World War I ended many women in Hawaii quit their wartime jobs to settle down and raise kids. Effie Wong retired and found herself with a baby girl in a traditional Chinese family with a post-war, post-partum depression. On Mother's Day she faces an ailing mother-in-law, remembers her mother's painful death, and confronts her failure to bring a son into her husband's family.

Published in Redneck Review of Literature, #XXIV, Spring 1993, pg. 37.

Contains several articles, reviews, and playbills for shows by Bina Sharif.

First draft.

Summary: A one-act about two New Yorkers completely lost in their own narrow, isolated world.

Contains only reviews and a photograph from the production. "Blow Job" was taken from another play, "Dreamland," and included in "Fire." Includes reviews, radio broadcast, press release and a poster.

Includes a playbill. Summary: An extremely unhappily married older couple who stayed together for years without ever understanding each other. The man gives in to the woman's furious complaints.

Includes a brief review.

First draft. Summary: This play is experienced in the mind of an Arab woman living in America during the Persian Gulf war of 1991. She is watching the non-stop carpet bombing of her native city, Basra.

Final draft. Summary: This play is experienced in the mind of an Arab woman living in America during the Persian Gulf war of 1991. She is watching the non-stop carpet bombing of her native city, Basra.

Early draft. Summary: This play is about the everlasting complication and difficulty of relationships and fantasy of something, no matter how vague as being better somewhere else.

Two drafts of the version included. Summary: This play is about the everlasting complication and difficulty of relationships and fantasy of something, no matter how vague as being better somewhere else.

Two versions, along with production notes, a review and a playbill.

Final draft of play. Summary: A play which begins as a love story between an Indian woman and a British gentleman and turns into a horrific tale of everlasting colonization of Indian soil and soul by the British Empire.

Two early drafts. Summary: A play which begins as a love story between an Indian woman and a British gentleman and turns into a horrific tale of everlasting colonization of Indian soil and soul by the British Empire.

First draft of a one-act play.

Expansion upon the one-act play "Rats in a Tunnel".

Final draft.

Contains several articles, reviews, and playbills for shows by Diana Son.

Summary: Janie tries to find sure footing on the line separating her life as a child and adult after her mother is hit with a stroke. She returns to the small town where she bolted from to care for her much-changed mom. At the same time, Janie's childhood friend Ellen tries to decide if she should cut in or stay out of Janie's precarious dance.

Summary: Four Asian American women respond to the sexual stereotyping of them as geishas, exotic virgins, china dolls and suicidal Miss Saigons. They reveal their experiences as: a preppie whose mother forbade her from eating kimchee; a woman who feels ugly because she doesn't look like the girl on the macadamia nut bottle; a flirtatious lesbian who ends up dateless because no one suspects she's queer, and a Korean American woman who doesn't understand it when her boyfriend tells her that he loves her in Korean.

Includes playbill from Soho Rep production. Summary: A modern reworking of the Procne and Philomela myth in which two sisters are forced apart then reunited through the ferocity of their will and ingenuity. Procne is brokered into marriage with the warrior king Tereus who later rapes Philomela and hides her away. Philomela sends a robe to Procne in which she weaves the story of what happened to her. Procne rescues Philomela as Tereus gives them chase. As he and his army close in, the sisters are transformed into birds and escape through flight.

Summary: A migrant family from the Philippines in trying to adapt to the American way of life, violate their true nature. The compromises they make and the conflictual tensions they face compel them to become "queer." Second prize winner in the 1996-1997 Con Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature for full-length play.

Contains playbills for "Hybrid Vigor"

Includes production brochure. Summary: 45 minute multimedia theatre piece following a Japanese American family of four from World War II up to 1992 fifty years later.

Summary: Two women in their twenties, one a Chinese immigrant named Anita, and one a W.A.S.P. named Victoria befriend each other one lonely evening in a bus-stop in the San Joaquin Valley in the mid 1960s.

Includes brochure and reviews.

Summary: An eighty minute one-woman tragicomic exploration of the myths and taboos assigned to mixed "bloodedness" and a coming to terms with dual Japanese Anglo Saxon American racial and cultural identity.

Contains articles, reviews, and playbills for shows by Emiko Tamagawa.

Includes letters, reviews and publicity information on the play. Summary: A one-act play that looks at the Japanese American internment through the perspectives of four different women.

News-style monologue.

Summary: A term paper written by Mary Kimoto Tomita, "Dear Kay" is a series of letters based on real letters that shed light on what it was like to be a Japanese American woman before, during, and after World War II.

Contains articles, reviews, and playbills for shows by Motoko Tsubakawa.

Summary: a psychological tragicomedy highlighting the bureaucratic life of a young Japanese American woman in the early 1980s. Two acts.

Contains articles, reviews, photos, and playbills for shows by D.A. Tsufura.

Monologue from "Pieces of a Whole."

First of three versions, along with cast lists and playbills for three staged readings in 1987, 1988, 1993, and one production in 1994 of this play (included in Play and Playwright Documentation); a lengthy synopsis. Summary: A Japanese American teenager inherits a box of origami cranes from a grandmother she has never known. Her determination to discover the meaning of the gift leads her to confront her family's tumultuous, hidden past.

1992 Version. Summary: A Japanese American teenager inherits a box of origami cranes from a grandmother she has never known. Her determination to discover the meaning of the gift leads her to confront her family's tumultuous, hidden past.

1994 Version. Summary: A Japanese American teenager inherits a box of origami cranes from a grandmother she has never known. Her determination to discover the meaning of the gift leads her to confront her family's tumultuous, hidden past.

Contains information about shows written by Alice Tuan.

Summary: Trixi Chan is trying to hook a reluctant Jay Sepastapol into commitment. As they drive along Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park, her car breaks down in front of Crown Goose, a local stripping bar. There they meet zany characters such as Deavere Nicole, a stripper who is trying to fuse the two personas of woman (neutered intelligence, or bimbo slut); Harry, an older gay man who navigates the night as a cop; Bos, a quiet sad man waiting for Patty the Firegirl to drive to Mexico; Bos' Sexual Conscience who acts out his inner desires. Trixi is stripped of her facades after her night at Crown Goose. This is a girl-loses-car, girl-loses-boy, girl-gets-car-fixed, girl-drives-away with-another-boy story reflecting the stature that car/machine has in the Los Angeles personality.

An earlier draft of the two versions included.Summary: This is an expressionistic play that takes place in a rather warped Dim Sum restaurant in Los Angeles Chinatown. Bunny Ling, one of the "cart girls" has been smuggled into the country and enslaved. She is taken by Charlie, a vile, self-loathing waiter, who has contempt for white people and a penchant for porn. The restaurant's Cook works in a dark, cavish basement, mixing his secret ingredients for delectable dumplings, which at one point come alive. Joyce, a homeless woman, is addicted to the Cook's dumplings and collects coins outside the restaurant for her dumpling fix. Daisy Lee, a former porn star, is being cut up by Dr. Harvey, a man who has promised a cure for her. From the netherworld, Dumpling Ghost, Muse and Dr. God descend upon the restaurant and realize their own limitations in a foreign world. This is a tale about eating and being eaten.

Fifth draft. Script includes notes for set. Summary: This is an expressionistic play that takes place in a rather warped Dim Sum restaurant in Los Angeles Chinatown. Bunny Ling, one of the "cart girls" has been smuggled into the country and enslaved. She is taken by Charlie, a vile, self-loathing waiter, who has contempt for white people and a penchant for porn. The restaurant's Cook works in a dark, cavish basement, mixing his secret ingredients for delectable dumplings, which at one point come alive. Joyce, a homeless woman, is addicted to the Cook's dumplings and collects coins outside the restaurant for her dumpling fix. Daisy Lee, a former porn star, is being cut up by Dr. Harvey, a man who has promised a cure for her. From the netherworld, Dumpling Ghost, Muse and Dr. God descend upon the restaurant and realize their own limitations in a foreign world. This is a tale about eating and being eaten.

Two versions in archive. Summary: General Sun, a once-powerful commander in the Chinese Nationalist army, turns 100 years old in the San Fernando Valley, where family and culture is breaking down. He lives with his son Ho Ping and family. Known as Yeh Yeh (paternal grandfather) he longs to escape the modern world which can no longer absorb him: his grandson Sonny is the quintessential Valley Dude, his daughter-in-law Ni Lee has frozen from the failure of her ice-skating daughter, his own son Ho Ping treats him as a child. His granddaughter, Twila, returns home after a five year absence and triggers a thaw in the Sun family. Monkey King and Eight Pig, two mythic characters from Chinese folk tales, as well as Buddha and May Lee, his "death muse", try to woo Yeh Yeh to the other side while his grandchildren try to recover from being casualities of Asian overachievement and growing up different in suburbia.

Contains playbills, photos, and an article about shows written by Roberta Uno.

Contains a detailed listing of all scripts collected for Roberta Uno's Asian American Script Archival collection. Also contains an article writing about Roberta Uno's Archival collection.

Earlier of two included versions.

Later of two included versions. Includes articles about the success of this play.

Contains articles reviewing plays by Denise Uyehara.

Summary: Full-length play about two sisters, one domesticated and one with the power of flight, who reunite after 15 years to deal with their telepathic, dying mother. The play takes place in the present and the characters are Japanese American. (Note that Hiro's ability to fly is magical, real and metaphorical and should be achieved in production without cables and other technical distractions.)

Summary: Beni is a Japanese American woman wants to visit Italy, but Sam, who is a mixture of several ethnicities and a lover of Asian cultures and languages, tries to get her to delve into her "own heritage" first. To complicate matters Beni is trying to end a highly-sexed relationship with her neighbor Paul, a Japanese/Chinese American who is picking up African drumming. She also finds herself intrigued by a silent Asian woman who leaves messages in red chalk on the sidewalk and walls. Hobbies confronts the various shades of multiculturalism. It examines a person's right to study another culture as a journey towards self-identification as well as the danger of taking on a hobby to satisfy an ethnic fetish.

Contains articles reviewing plays by Ermena Vinluan.

Includes staged reading flyers. Summary: a story about inter-generational conflict within two families-Filipino-American and Afro-Filipino-American-and takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1972. Gemma, a young college student becomes politicized against the Vietnam War when her beloved brother and cousin-a Navy medic and a Marine-return home as casualties of war. She visits her shell-shocked, heavily medicated cousin in his room. She also visits her brother who is imprisoned in a U.S. military jail. Gemma clashes with her mother and aunties-immigrant warbrides from the more popular World War II-over traditional values, parental authority and a very politicized America of the 70s. When Gemma's invalid cousin unexpectedly explodes into self-destruction, it is a mixed blessing of pain and consciousness for all.

Summary: A historical drama in three acts with Prologue and Epilogue about plantation life in Hawaii in the 1930s and the labor struggle of Filipinos and other ethnic communities.

Summary: Play is about the experiences of individuals from the Filipino- American Community from 1946-66. Based on the original play, "Warbride".

Contains resume of Lucy Wang, alongside playbills, articles, and summaries of her shows.

Includes production flyers. Summary: A heartbreaking comedy that opens with the Lim family celebrating their new status as American citizens. Each family member pursues their distinct , glossy vision of the Great American Dream : Julie dreams of starring with Robert Redford, Daisy lands a cooking show on TV, Henry dreams of running his own business, Mark fantasizes about jamming with Mick Jagger, and Alice spreads Christianity like butter. The race is on for who can and who is a Chinese American and a bona fide American.

Includes a with review and playbill. Summary: Tapir Inc. dares you to play a fast-paced game of liar's poker. In "Junk Bonds," a young Asian American woman fights her way into the clubby, high rolling world of Wall Street. Immense wealth, glamorous career and intoxicating power are at stake in pursuit of a fat slice of American pie. This dizzying play flies along with a biting blend of money and mistrust, bluff and betrayal. Come see the ferocious comedy that prefigured the scandalous headlines. The play has 2 acts and 6 characters.

Notes this play being the recipient of Roger L. Stevens Incentive Awards and the first Katherine and Lee Chilcote Award for Most Innovative Play With Socio-economic Significance. Includes a with review and playbill. Summary: Tapir Inc. dares you to play a fast-paced game of liar's poker. In "Junk Bonds," a young Asian American woman fights her way into the clubby, high rolling world of Wall Street. Immense wealth, glamorous career and intoxicating power are at stake in pursuit of a fat slice of American pie. This dizzying play flies along with a biting blend of money and mistrust, bluff and betrayal. Come see the ferocious comedy that prefigured the scandalous headlines. The play has 2 acts and 6 characters.

Summary: Story about how a Chinese American/Jewish American couple struggle to redefine themselves and their family.

A collection of monologues written by Lucy Wang.

Summary: Story about LYNDON WU's struggle to please his father without losing his self. With Chinese, American, Chinese-American and Wall Street cultures clashing and threatening all relationships, LYNDON must look beyond traditional solutions to prevail.

Summary: Trayf, the Yiddish word for non-kosher food, serves as a metaphor for happiness as a Chinese American Woman looks to her past and present in two Jewish American men.

Contains resume of Nancy Wang, alongside playbills, and articles about her shows.

Includes two reviews and a brochure. Summary: A humorous journey that follows the relationship between a man and a woman through several reincarnations. Trapped between love and fear, dream and reality, remembering and forgetting, each tries to figure out: "Why am I back, and why with you?" and "what am I supposed to remember so I don't have to come back again?" This play uses dream, mythology and folktales as well as an interdisciplinary approach of theater, eclectic dance movement and a musical fusion of Asian, Western, recorded and live instrumentation.

Summary: This stylized theater piece reveals the internal conflict of a Chinese American woman whose identity is split between her Chinese culture and her American world. The struggle between Asian consciousness and White consciousness takes place in an elevator and incorporates poetry and some movement.

Contains resumes, biography, play synopses, interviews, photos, and articles written by and about Elizabeth Wong.

Summary: The 80 year old matriarch of two Chinese American families dies - or does she? A two-act comedy about family secrets and attempts to keep them.

Television Script Series.

Version one of two in collection. Summary: An alien force has taken over the American legal system and people are turning into potatoes.

Version two of two in collection. Summary: An alien force has taken over the American legal system and people are turning into potatoes.

Summary: Loosely based on the life of silent film star Anna May Wong, chronicles four decades of her struggle within the Hollywood film system.

Four versions, along with synopsis, brochure, playbill and review. Summary: The struggle of a Chinese American television reporter to cover the escalating unrest between Blacks and Koreans in New York City.

Four versions, along with synopsis, brochure, playbill and review. Summary: The struggle of a Chinese American television reporter to cover the escalating unrest between Blacks and Koreans in New York City.

Four versions, along with synopsis, brochure, playbill and review. Summary: The struggle of a Chinese American television reporter to cover the escalating unrest between Blacks and Koreans in New York City.

Four versions, along with synopsis, brochure, playbill and review. Summary: The struggle of a Chinese American television reporter to cover the escalating unrest between Blacks and Koreans in New York City.

Summary: Masculinity and intergenerational conflict is explored on the golf course. Four captains of industry tease, play, and joke with each other about their fortunes as they get ready to tee off.

One of two versions in collection. Summary: Chronicles the ten year friendship between two women, one Chinese and the other Chinese American, culminating in the l989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. A full-length, one-act drama.

Second of two versions in collection. Summary: Chronicles the ten year friendship between two women, one Chinese and the other Chinese American, culminating in the l989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. A full-length, one-act drama.

Articles, brochures, and reviews of "Letters to a Student Revolutionary".

File contains floppy disc, which contains all workshop versions, final draft, cast list, and cover. Summary: Rendition of the Prometheus myth. Prometheus defies Zeus in order to bring fire to his Mudstick friends. As punishment, Zeus condemns him to the chains of Mt. Scythia for eternity. Even with the urging of his cousin Hephastus to offer an apology for what he has done, Prometheus refuses and accepts his punishment. While incapacitated, his Mudstick friends tell him stores and perform renditions of his encounters with Zeus. Finally, when the Mudsticks offer to take his place, Zeus is moved by their compassion and reverence to Prometheus and frees him.

Contains play synopses and resume of Karen Tei Yamashita.

Summary: Performance piece utilizing Japanese movement, dance and theater forms, especially Butoh, to satirize stereotypes and self-perceptions of Japanese American woman.

Summary: Performance piece utilizing Japanese movement, martial arts, Noh and circus to satirize stereotypes and self-perception of Asian males.

Summary: Performance piece styled after Bizet's opera Carmen, satirizing the Japan America trade conflict, cross cultural confusion and the good/bad roles of Japanese and American women.

Contains biography, resume, playbills, and photos of the works of Wakako Yamauchi.

Summary: Social outcasts are thrown together in America's concentration camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. In theis changing

Summary: Woman visits her single daughter and has a delightful dream of love and desire.

Summary: A Japanese woman with an unworkable dream is exiled to an American desert. Her survival depends on keeping her dream alive. An eleven year old girl watches and grows up in that year of observation.

Summary: Chiang Ching, widow of Mao Tse Tung, languishes in a prison hospital. Through her recurring dreams and nightmares she relives her past and her tumultuous climb to the top and her downfall.

Two versions included.Summary: An elderly stroke victim, relying on her daughter for creature-comforts, has stopped talking and, turning inward, tries to ferret out the truths of her life.

Summary: An ancient mask comes to haunt a spinster. Endowed with a history of jealousy and revenge, it slowly brings back its bitter past paralleling the spinsters own life and engulfing her.

Two versions. Summary: A widow, struggling to support her children on a farm during the depression, hires a violin-playing itinerant; both mother and daughter fall in love with him.

Two versions. Summary: A widow, struggling to support her children on a farm during the depression, hires a violin-playing itinerant; both mother and daughter fall in love with him.

Summary: The residents of this dead end street are all losers in the eyes of mainstream society, but their lives work as they make painful adjustments and discover the meaning of love.

Summary: Two Japanese Americans stranded in Japan before World War II are bound together by the English language, a pair of skis, and a Shirley Temple doll. They fall in love, survive the deprivations of a terrible war, return to America and in the midst of plenty, they divorce.

Summary: An episodic play about a Japanese American woman from the afternoon of her seduction at 17 to 67 when she meets her lover again (using the music of the time).

Copy and original draft. Summary: An old man recalls the two days he spent in Tuscon in his youth.

Summary: Two sisters, one a domineering spinster, the other a terminally ill divorcee, come to terms with their past while planning a short trip.

Includes reviews on file, along with a flyer for the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts' November 1992 production. Summary: Social outcasts are thrown together in America's concentration camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. In theis changing, limiting environment, they take charge of their lives and make choices. that dark night".

Contains play synopses, resume, biography, and photos of Gerri Igarashi Yoshida.

Summary: A one-act play with music based on the well-known Japanese folktale about a boy found inside a peach by an old childless couple who grows up to fight the Evil Demon with the help of three animal friends: dog, monkey and pheasant.

Summary: One-act comedy examining the relationship between two Asian American actors who are trying to "make it" in the Big Apple.

Summary: The baptism of the first grandchild occasions a family reunion where unresolved past conflicts arise. Two act domestic drama.

Summary: Examines the relationship between a Sansei daughter and her Nisei father over a thirty year period; from a five year old questioning her racial identity, a college student rebelling against parental values to an adult and mother who comes to accept who she is and who her father is.

Summary: A two-act play about two sisters who get together during the Christmas holidays. A dinner party turns into disaster when the older sister's husband accuses the younger sister's date of being a homosexual.

Two copies included in AV:6.

VHS includes Naomi Iizuka Interview.

Two copies included.

VHS includes Maura Donohue Interview.

Two copies included.

Two copies included.

Two copies included.

Contains copy on VHS and Hi8.

Includes a master copy on VHS, alongside 2 VHS copies and a copy on Hi8

Two copies included.

Two copies included.

Two copies included.