about
Letter from the founder...
Welcome! Thanks to all of you for being here. Where do I begin? Let me start by saying that no foray into the future as ambitious as this can be undertaken without understanding the history behind it. With that in mind, let me talk briefly about two beautiful pioneering Asian men.
The first man, Dan Kwong, is a southern California performance artist who in April of 1994 started a writing and performance workshop of Asian men that focused on creating autobiographical pieces. It was called, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Asian men (but didn’t give enough of a shit to ask).” Their first performance was a rousing success. People took notice. More performances followed. And the men continued to go through “process,” the self-exploration undertaken personally and as a group that sifted through tons of collective memory and yielded nuggets of pure gold. The performers and pieces matured, and continued to take risks. SOMETHING WAS HAPPENING! THIS SHIT SIMPLY HAD NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE! It was fresh, exciting, relevant, and poignant. These men touched a chord in the community that resonated long and far.
One of these beautiful men was Gary San Angel, an actor and performance artist who started with Dan. He blossomed into a brilliant writer and director on his own. After moving to New York in 1995, Gary put an ad in the Asian New Yorker that advertised the formation of “Peeling the Banana,” another writing and performance workshop for Asian men. I answered that ad, and in November of ’95, met 11 other Asian of all shapes, forms and backgrounds in a basement bookstore of St. Mark’s Place. In the following few weeks, we learned more and more about ourselves and each other, and from our deepest recesses of memory, dew forth pieces of performance art that moved people, and made them rethink their notions of Asian men and Asian-ness.
The group grew. It incorporated women. It toured college campuses. Wherever we went, the reception was loud, and enthusiastic. Performers at home always sold out. To be a part of this magic, to perform in front of sell-out audiences pieces derived from our own personal experience was an indescribable high. Our work was personally and critically successful, and gave something very important to our community.