In third grade, Stefanie Lau’s class received an assignment to map Los Angeles’s Chinatown. Wandering around a block, they jotted down alley names and sketched landmarks. “Of course, everyone’s maps looked different,” chuckled Lau, who now serves as Artists at Play’s co-producing artistic leader. “Everyone had a different scale.”
Free-flowing creativity grounded in community is at the heart of Artists at Play’s inaugural playwriting group, “The Neighborhood Project,” which has commissioned four playwrights to write plays based on current or historic Asian diasporic enclaves in L.A. County. Each artist is paired with a community partner and encouraged to build relationships as they write their plays.
“Part of our vision is spending time in those neighborhoods, visiting different businesses, or spending time with folks who live and work in the neighborhood,” explained co-producing artistic leader Marie-Reine Velez. Activities might include attending community programs, chatting one-on-one or in story circles with residents, researching archives, or simply observing how people move around the area. “We want nuanced storytelling that is rooted in the communities,” Lau added.
The four playwrights include Aditi Pradhan, with a play taking place in Little Bangladesh in Central L.A.; Carolyn Huynh, whose play will explore the San Gabriel Valley, a region in eastern L.A. County, along the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains; Katherine Chou, who will write about Little India in the southeastern cities of Artesia and Cerritos; and Sarah Cho, who will delve into the iconic Koreatown in the center of the city. The cohort is meeting monthly between June and November, with workshop readings to be held in Downtown L.A. (and potentially within the neighborhoods) next January and February.
The intent is to enrich both the artists and the communities, and to shed light on Asian diasporas in America. It is already paying dividends. Said Velez, “I found out that Carlos Bulosan hung out less than a mile away from where I currently live,” referring to the seminal Filipino American author. “There’s some amazing history that we have here that even a lot of Angelenos don’t know about, so we hope to contribute to that.”
