A play on stage at the Intiman Theater has a very familiar storyline. A wealthy white family returns home a final time before selling their estate. But in “Two Mile Hollow,” the actors playing the white family are Asian.
It’s a story nearly as old as American theater itself. A rich white family living by the water works out its rich white family problems on stage.“I wanted to do an exercise to see if I could write also a ‘white people by the water’ play,” said New York-based playwright Leah Nanako Winkler. “Yeah, that’s how I started writing the play.”That’s when an AAPI theater in Los Angeles approached her about fully staging the play, but only if the actors playing the rich white family were Asian.
Then in 2019, it won the American Theater Critics Association’s annual $10,000 Francesca Primus award.“It’s such an exciting world that Leah has created to kind of hold a mirror up to the white patriarchal theater,” said Wesley Fruge, Intiman’s newly minted managing director.“So, I think changing the script and flipping the narrative is a really important part of reflection,” he said.
“I just wanted to be silly and act kind of like a fool on stage or something like that,” said Ray Tagavilla, a Filipino actor seen on many Seattle stages. Tagavilla plays the prodigal son back home after making it big in Hollywood. It is unusual, he said, to be playing a white character on stage.“What I love about this play is that it really puts you into the position of someone that I’ve never been this character before. How do you act white? How do you even do something like that? And I’m still learning.”
If seeing Asians and other actors of color on the stage in unfamiliar roles is, well, unfamiliar, buckle up. Intiman is creating a home for theater that challenges and reflects us all.“Even in 2014, Emma Stone played an Asian person in ‘Aloha,’ you know,” she said. “So, it’s my way of kind of serving them with fun, like a taste of their own medicine.”There’s still time to see “Two Mile Hollow.” It’s on the Intiman stage through Saturday. And it will be online for one week after it closes.
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