Playwrights’ Arena presents The New Pages Lab reading of “Alien Being” by Ken Narasaki, directed by Alberto Isaac, on Monday, Jan. 12, at 7:30 p.m. at Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles.
Two strangers collide in this world and get knocked right into outer space. Featuring: Keiko Agena, Tom Atha, Haruye Ioka, David Johann Kim, Emily Kuroda, Greg Watanabe, and Ping Wu.
Narasaki is an actor/writer and former artistic associate and literary manager at East West Players. As an actor, he has performed in over 50 plays in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and elsewhere, and appeared in TV shows, including “Up All Night,” “Kickin’ It” and “Trophy Wife,” and such movies as “Only the Brave” and “Eat with Me.”
As a playwright, his “Innocent When You Dream” won the 2007 Kumu Kahua Pacific Rim Playwrights Award, and was named Critic’s Choice by The L.A. Times and Pick of the Week by the L.A. Weekly in 2007; it was presented at the Smithsonian in 2008 for the Day of Remembrance observance. “The Mikado Project” (in collaboration with Doris Baizley) won the 2008-09 Pacific Rim Playwriting Award and was produced by the Lodestone Theatre Ensemble in 2007; it has been adapted as an independent film by Chil Kong. “Ghosts and Baggage” was produced by Zygote at the Los Angeles Theater Center in 1998, and had staged readings at EWP, Japanese American National Museum, Mu Performing Arts (Minneapolis), and Audrey Skirball Kenis Theatre Projects. His work has been published in Disorient Journal and Prick of the Spindle.
His stage adaptation of John Okada’s “No No Boy” received a 2009 California Civil Liberties Grant, and was produced by Timescape Arts Group at the Miles Memorial Theater in Santa Monica in 2010.
Isaac has directed critically acclaimed productions of “Innocent When You Dream” and “Ghosts and Baggage.” Other directing credits include “Art,” “Yankee Dawg You Die,” “Women from the Other Side of the World,” “The Maids,” “Hughie,” “Performance Anxiety,” “Yellow Fever” (East West Players), “Claim to Fame,” “Trojan Women,” and”10 to Life” (Lodestone Theatre).
He co-directed with Mako such award-winning plays as “And the Soul Shall Dance,” “Station J” and “Manoa Valley.”
As an actor, his credits include “Equus,” “The Three Sisters,” “Rashomon,” “Pacific Overtures,” “Twelfth Night,” and “Accomplice” at EWP and “Last of the Suns” and “Fish Head Soup” at Berkeley Rep.