San Diego Asian American Repertory Theatre

For AART Performance Opportunities, events and upcoming meetings, please see our Season Page for Audition information

Amazing Free Tai Chi classes at the Taiwanese American Cultural Center on Convoy St on Wednesdays nights 7:30-8:30.

Filipino Culture Night - San Diego State University - this was great!

Starts:07:00 PM, March 23
End Date:10:00 PM, March 23
Location: Don Powell Theatre
FCN (Filipino Culture Night)
Filipino Cultural Show, Co-Sponsored by AB Samahan

For more information, visit http://www.case.sdsu.edu or call (619) 594-6551.

Sponsored by Cultural Arts and Special Events and Associated Students.

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From the NY Times - -

July 25, 2006

Mako, 72, Actor Who Extended Asian-American Roles, Dies
By MARGALIT FOX

Mako, a distinguished stage and screen actor who was widely regarded as having blazed the trail for Asian-Americans in films, on television and in the theater, died on Friday at his home in Somis, Calif. He was 72.

The cause was esophageal cancer, his wife, Shizuko Hoshi, said.

Mako, who used only one name professionally, was born in Japan and came to the United States as a teenager. An Academy Award-nominated actor, he was also a distinguished presence on the Broadway stage, winning a Tony nomination in the leading role of the Reciter in the original cast of “Pacific Overtures.”

Mako earned an Oscar nomination for “The Sand Pebbles” (1966), in which he played opposite Steve McQueen. Among his other films are “Conan the Barbarian” (1982), “Conan the Destroyer” (1984), “Seven Years in Tibet” (1997), “Pearl Harbor” (2001) and “Memoirs of a Geisha,” released last year.

“Pacific Overtures,” which opened in 1976 at the Winter Garden Theater, was Mako’s Broadway debut. With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, it told the story ofCommodore Matthew Perry’s American expedition of 1853, which renewed Japan’s contact with the West after more than two centuries of almost complete isolation.

Though Mako was a nonsinger, his authoritative presence set the tone of the show from the moment he delivered its opening lines:

In the middle of the world we float,

In the middle of the sea.

The realities remain remote

In the middle of the sea.

Reviewing the musical in The New York Times, Clive Barnes wrote, “The leading role — that of a Reciter who occasionally plays a part in the action — was brilliantly taken by Mako.”

Makoto Iwamatsu was born on Dec. 10, 1933, in Kobe, Japan. When he was a young child, his mother and father moved to New York to study art, leaving Mako in the care of his grandparents. He joined his parents in New York after World War II.

Intending to become an architect, Mako began his studies at the Pratt Institute. One day, a classmate asked him to help design and build a stage set. Mako quickly succumbed to the theater’s hypnotic pull — so much so that he seldom went to class and, as a result, lost his student draft deferment. After two years in the United States Army, he enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he studied acting.

In the 1950’s and well beyond, there were few roles for Asian actors on the American stage or screen. Those parts that existed were often demeaning. Typically written in pidgin English, they portrayed stock figures like houseboys, coolies, laundrymen and white slavers. Mako, who began his career playing small roles on television shows like “McHale’s Navy” “77 Sunset Strip” and “I Spy,” was often similarly cast.

In “The Sand Pebbles” he played Po-han, a Chinese coolie who spoke broken English. But most reviewers hailed the performance, saying it transcended the role’s stereotypical confines.

In 1965, Mako helped found the East West Players, the nation’s first Asian-American repertory company, based in Los Angeles. He was its artistic director until 1989. In 1980, he directed the first two plays on Asian-American subjects to be produced at the Public Theater in New York: “The Music Lessons,” by Wakako Yamauchi, and “FOB,” by David Henry Hwang.

Besides his wife, an actress, director, dancer and choreographer, Mako is survived by their two daughters, Sala Icsman of Hamburg, N.J., and Mimosa Skelton of Camarillo, Calif.; a sister, Momo Yashima, of Los Angeles; and two grandchildren.

Despite the progress Asian actors made during his lifetime, Mako remained adamant that many barriers still existed. As he explained in an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 1992:

“I go into a young film director’s office these days and he says, ‘Hey man, I know who you are. I grew up watching “McHale’s Navy.” ’ And I think, ‘Oh boy, here we go again.’ ”