Having just come from Los Angeles and specifically from LAX, a large international airport, this article intrigued me. While I shuffled around the larger terminals scavenging for food I noticed tightly wound lines of asians waiting to check in their luggage (carts and piles of boxes) to travel across the ocean to Asia. Being a large city on the very Western coast of the United States, LA seems to be a buzzing with Asian culture and influence. Just walking down the street there is a noticable population of Asians. In line with what we’ve been exloring in class, I am thrilled that there is such thing as an Asian American Theatre Conference in LA. First of all, I didn’t know there was much theatre in LA, let alone a swinging enough scene to throw together a large successful conference celebrating and acknowledging the immense cultural imortance of this group of people. I think this piece of the article is a wonderful highlight;
Assaf said that global political shifts that began with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have led Arab American and other Asian American artists to develop new, more complex images of themselves to counter the simplistic ones that often dominate the mass media. “I think it comes directly out of a need for self-representation,” Assaf said. “It’s coming out of ‘Hey, wait a minute, this image that you’re getting is not who we are.’”
The theatre conference also addressed Asian American Female Comedians and their struggles to fit into a culture and a gender that holds them to certain limiting exectations. Gotta appreciate that.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-asian-american-theater-20110322,0,7828702.story
