"For the Chen siblings, "didn't work out" doesn't begin to cover it. Three scenes later, they find themselves incarcerated in a Chinese prison, forced to play a flawless piano/violin concerto upon penalty of being sent to a reeducation camp. Elsewhere, they must confront an array of racist white guys (played by Murri Lazaroff-Babin), an assimilationist boss, a global surveillance network of nosy elders, CCP-sponsored state saboteurs, and parents who have had them microchipped to track their whereabouts."
""I really, for better or worse, know no other way to write than to write comedically," Lew says. "I've tried, but it doesn't feel authentic to me. I really do have a political pulse that is built into all of my work, but the language of it is comedy. I think the potential impact of it is greater if you start out by laughing and then getting hit"
Profile Theatre presents Tiger Style! as its second production of the season, an absurd, irreverent satire that interrogates Asian American identity, family and cultural heritage, racial inequality, and the model minority myth. The plot follows siblings Albert (Nick Ong) and Jennifer Chen (Evangeline Billups) on a late-in-life "Asian Freedom tour" from Irvine to San Marino and the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone that unravels into incarceration, forced musical performance under threat of reeducation, surveillance by elders, CCP saboteurs, racist antagonists, assimilationist workplace pressure, and parents who microchip their children. The production emphasizes comedy as a confrontational political tool and adopts heightened, over-the-top theatricality.
Read at Oregon ArtsWatch * Arts & Culture News
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