A staged reading of “Brown Girl in the Ring,” a new musical by Velina Hasu Houston and Nathan Wang, will take place on Monday, June 3, at 7 p.m. at East West Players, 120 Judge John Aiso St. in Little Tokyo.
What happens when two worlds that differ in class and race clash, and a young woman is caught in the middle – in the ring – trying to figure out where she belongs? “Brown Girl in the Ring” centers on the journey of Afro-Cuban Japanese Olivia Takahashi Fuentes in the aftermath of the sudden death of her parents, the closure of her high school in Kansas, and her unexpected and precipitous move to Los Angeles, where she must contend with a Japanese relative she has never met before and an Afro-Latino low-income medical world where she chooses to volunteer.
Houston has written more than 30 plays, including “Tea,” “American Dreams,” “Calligraphy,” “The DNA Trail,” and “The Intuition of Iphigenia.” She and Wang recently collaborated on “Tea, with Music” at East West Players.
Cast: Esperanza America, Tiffany-Marie Austin, Takayo Fischer, Ren Hanami, Maegan McConnell, Arthur Ross, Katy Tang
Director: Michael Arabian. Producer: Giselle Gilbert. Production stage manager: Bernice Mendez. Graphic design: Michele Thompson.
Producing partner: East West Players. Community partners: East West Players, Pasadena Playhouse, California African American Museum.
The development of this theater project and this special presentation is supported by an Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences grant from University of Southern California.
Admission is free and on a first-come, first-served basis.
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