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I conducted this interview with Mia Katigbak, artistic director of the National Asian American Theater Company (NAATCO) as part of my coverage of the first National Asian American Theater Festival (NAATF). Mia is one of the main organizers, and NAATCO is part of the festival�s executive committee, along with Pan Asian Repertory Theatre and Ma-Yi Theatre Company. The feature article on NAATF that I wrote for TheaterMania can be viewed by clicking here. However, there was a lot more that just wasn�t able to make it into the article, so I wanted to post an expanded version of our interview, conducted May 24, 2007.
DAN BACALZO: One of the productions that NAATCO is bringing back for the festival is The House of Bernarda Alba, originally performed in 2000. You�re in the cast this time around, although you weren�t in the previous run.
MIA KATIGBAK: No, I wasn�t. Ching Valdes is back as Bernarda, and I play Maria Josefa, her mother � can you imagine! The last production, I stepped in for two performances for Michi Barall, who was doing Blanca, the maid. But that was just an emergency thing. This time, well Ching stays the same and we all get older around her.
DB: How are rehearsals going so far?
MK: Very well. I�m really excited. It�s a different space, this time, which made some aesthetic choices necessary. It�s not really a straightforward remount, because the Baruch Performing Arts Center is huge compared to Intar, where it played previously. I remember that Chay [Yew, the adaptor and director] had said at that time that he could only see it in the Intar space because it was so claustrophobic. There was this whole thing about after the audience was actually in, the door slammed shut, and the audience was stuck inside the house with the rest of the Bernarda girls! So, it�s been an interesting process. This cast is so fabulous. We really thought that Kati Kuroda who was our original Poncia was key, so it was nice of her to come back to New York from Hawaii to do it.
DB: One of the wonderful things about the entire festival is that people are coming in from all over to take part.
MK: Yay!
DB: Could you recap the way the festival shows were chosen?
MK: What we did was come up with a format with the national steering committee from the Asian American Theater conference held in L.A. last year. We�re not saying that we curated it, because that means you�ve seen everybody�s work. We also aren�t saying �these are the best� � we didn�t want to qualify it that way. For the first festival, our concern was more that it represented as diverse as possible styles, demographic, culture, generations, all that stuff. We told people who were interested to submit their applications to the regional committees, and broke up the national steering committee into West Coast, Midwest, East Coast. We told the selection committee that we wanted a snapshot of Asian American theater across the country, and it was up to them to recommend to us their top five choices that would give us that kind of range. Then we asked for their top nine � and don�t ask me how we came to that number � solo performers. And pretty much, we followed their recommendations. There was also the understanding that the steering committee was automatically in since we put the thing together! So that�s how we came up with the initial roster, and then we amended it a little bit, so that if anybody from New York wanted to present at the same time as the festival, our deal would be that we�d list them and include them in our marketing materials. For instance, Desipina, Fred Ho, and all these other productions timed their shows to be at the same time as the festival.
DB: When you say �steering committee� you mean NAATCO, Ma-Yi, and Pan Asian?
MK: We call ourselves the executive steering committee, because we did all the work! The national steering committee was essentially the same one who put the conference together. At the very beginning of the process, we ran everything by them, as we wanted them to sign off on what we were doing. Then we set off to do the legwork: raising the money, getting the venues and sponsors. I don�t know how people who do festivals every year do this. The fringe? My God, just putting who in what place is mind-boggling.
DB: With the conference and the festival, it seems like this is a watershed moment for Asian American theater. Why do you, personally, feel like the festival is important to do right now?
MK: It�s the culmination of work that started in 2003, with the TCG conference for theaters of color at White Oak. The African American companies there knew their history, and could trace it back to the defining moment for African American theater. And I was like, well what was ours? Is it my failure as a theater practitioner to not know that? And it was sort of the spark for the conversations among us, the Asian American theater companies. And from that really grassroots, almost, idealistic way of looking at things, it sort of snowballed. Because the more you need to talk about it, the more you become aware of what needs to be done. The minute we started to have to put the panels together for the L.A. conference, the minute I had to do a fundraising proposal, I had to think, �Why is this important? If we�ve been working in this field for so long, are we making a mark? Are we contributing to another kind of movement that�s there but hasn�t really coalesced in a meaningful sort of way?�
DB: And the conference fed into the festival?
MK: The conference was such a positive experience, and we wanted to continue that sort of national sustainable network of Asian American theater companies. The more research I did, I found this was not the first time we�ve tried to do something like this. There were also other movements, that basically started with Frank Chin. And then of course, around the Miss Saigon controversy, I was there when we founded APACE, the Asian Pacific Artists for Creative Equality. But that was centered around one issue, and when that issue died down, so did we. How do you sustain it? It�s got to be something that is relevant to Asian American theater artists from across the country, and we all have different issues.
DB: You founded NAATCO in 1989. Can you talk about your own company's development over the years from when you were only doing �the classics� to where you�re now also premiering original work?
MK: Interestingly enough, it took us so long for us to write the charter for the organization. I had been given advice to make sure we know what we want to do now and in the future. So, when I look at our articles of incorporation � we�re going to do this, and this, and this sort of work, and subheadings a, b, c, d, e, f, g. If you go to �z� it says �produce original work in the long term.� But my idea for founding the company was looking at the field and knowing that there weren�t many opportunities for us. I wanted to make sure that Asian American artists had the skills and the experiences. I guess I could be charged with being western-centric in my choice of material, but that was my background. So, I thought, what better repertory to use here in America than the classics, number one. And number two, we don�t get to do it! We don�t get cast. If that becomes the foundation of the company, so that we get perceived as technically skilled, then there will have to come a time when people will say, �oh right, we don�t have to just cast them as Asian gangsters and gooks.� What I wanted to do was develop a very large pool of acting talent so that it becomes undeniable that we can do this stuff, and hopefully other people would start casting these folks from our shows.
DB: Do you feel you�ve succeeded?
MK: To some degree, it has happened. I remember that from the original run of our Falsettoland, Christine Toy Johnson got a recurring role on a soap opera that was not Asian-specific. She was just one of the wives.
DB: So, how did NAATCO move from the classics to original plays?
MK: From this group of people, the pool of talent NAATCO was helping to develop, I was hoping we could encourage Asian American playwrights to write on us. They will see that there are so many possibilities, so it becomes a mutually beneficial arrangement. It�s modeled after Shakespeare and Chekhov, who were writing on people, because they knew who these people were that would be performing their work. That was always the plan for NAATCO to eventually get to a point where we�d be producing original work written by Asian American playwrights on a body of Asian American actors who could do anything. But now NAATCO has a new project that came out of the blue, and I think you have to change according to the needs of the community and your artists. As long as it�s serving Asian American actors, specifically, talk to me about it. We�re going to be producing Jorge Corti�as� Blind Mouth Singing. And that came into being because he saw a show of ours, and said, �this is so far-fetched and you�ll probably say no, but my agent said if I liked your work so much to pitch my show. There are no Asians in it; it wasn�t supposed to be for Asian Americans.� And my response was, �well, Asian American actors can do it.� I guess the bottom line is, question your perceptions about Asian Americans � the stereotypical ones, I mean.
DB: Is Blind Mouth Singing the co-production with Intar that you mentioned to me previously?
MK: No, what you�re thinking of is an upcoming NAATCO project where it�s going to be Eduardo Machado, who is the artistic director of Intar, and me performing in Two Character Play by Tennessee Williams; we�re going to be playing brother and sister. And again, I always feel if people had been more open-minded 20 years ago when we started, and just cast willy nilly brother and sister, different cultures, they�d be so ahead of the curve because that�s exactly what the world looks like, now.
DB: To go back to the festival, I think I mentioned to you previously that the 1998 NAATCO production of Falsettoland is my absolute favorite thing the company�s ever done. Can you tell me a little bit about how that show was chosen to be one of NAATCO�s representations in NAATF?
MK: I wanted to present two very different things, both being realized by an all Asian American cast. Falsettoland, because it was so beloved. I was looking thru the reviews and I started to laugh because everyone said, �Excuse me? Asian Americans being Jewish? Is this a joke?� So, I thought, okay, that would be a really cool one. And then to juxtapose it with a Spanish classic, again being represented by an all Asian American cast. You�ve got these cultures onstage interweaving beautifully. You�ve got Jewish, you�ve got gay, you�ve got Spanish, all living happily up there. So, that was the intent of choosing those two. I could have chosen a lot more if I had the money.
DB: Or the time to produce it!
MK: Exactly! I would have done a retrospective of my favorite NAATCO shows.
DB: One of the nice things about the festival is that you do get to see not just the new productions from out of town coming in, but some of the revivals from New York�s companies. Like Ma-Yi doing The Romance of Magno Rubio again.
MK: When we didn�t know what anyone else was doing, we wanted to make sure the executive committee had a nice roster that represented our hopes for the festival. Tisa [Chang, artistic director of Pan Asian Repertory Theatre], for example, wanted to make sure we were doing something from the Asian American classics. Her choice was Velina Hasu Houston�s Tea, which was very much governed by what we had come up with.
DB: I interviewed Philip Kan Gotanda fairly recently, after that piece in American Theater had come out where he was talking about the younger generation of Asian American artists who didn�t always want to be identified as Asian American. And I wondered if you could comment about why you feel there is still a need to be identified as an Asian American company?
MK: I think it�s important � and my experience with it is anecdotal as I�ve met a couple of Asian American artists who had sort of confessed to me that they resisted being identified as Asian American because they thought it would limit them. One of them specifically, I kind of pursued. I kept calling and calling saying, okay, how about this project or this project, because I really thought highly of her work. She finally said okay, after I think seeing the nature and quality of our work. Coincidentally, in the same production, there was another actor who resisted and interestingly enough because of his looks, he could get cast as Asian, Latino, or Middle Eastern. We would see each other socially, and I started to talk about NAATCO, and he kind of said, �Hmm. Maybe I should check this out.� So, I think rather than finding that it limits them, I think they become invested in the project of making people understand that the limitations that are imposed on us have to be shot apart. But also, I think it�s still a prevalent thing that people make assumptions about who you are because of how you look. So, I feel like, �okay, I�m going to call myself what you think I am, and then I�m going to show you something else.� It�s an age old, centuries old struggle we�ve had, which is how do you account for difference without equating it with �bad.� I get kind of devastated when I get confronted with the same old thing because I go, �Wait a minute! We�ve been working so hard against this! Why do we have to start from scratch again!� It almost seems to me that we�ll be needed as long as there are racial or ethnic tensions, which it seems there forever will be. Someone told me, �Mia, when things are as you want them to be, there will be no need for NAATCO. If everyone really starts to cast for talent, then you�re gone.� And I have to think about that. Is that a good thing? It�s what I want, and then I�ll just do good theater.
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