AURORA | Truth is at the heart of Theatre Esprit Asia’s creative mission.
The troupe’s founders tout the company as Colorado’s first Asian-American theater company. It’s an organization where actors, writers and directors who have been overlooked on stages across the metro area can finally flourish.
“We wanted to have a forum for Asian-American actors and artists and writers to be able to voice their stories,” said Tria Xiong, one of the company’s two founders and artistic directors. “I feel like these artists haven’t been given the opportunity in mainstream theater here.”
But the company is about more than a specific ethnicity or a single culture. When the company kicks off its inaugural season at the Vintage Theatre in Aurora next week, the deeper message will be about honesty and accuracy.
“Theater is about truth-telling,” said Maria Cheng, one of TEA’s two founders and artistic directors. “You don’t have to be Asian to tell an Asian story truthfully, but in our cultural and theatrical history, so much of what the majority culture knows about Asians is not told from an authentic Asian place. That’s all I want.”
Cheng points to classic American musicals like “The King and I” and “Flower Drum Song” written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, New Yorkers of Jewish and British descent. The Tony Award-winning musical “Miss Saigon” was penned by Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil, two white French men. Those romanticized classics have their value, Cheng said, but there’s a startling vacuum when it comes to stories that come from an authentic place.
“I think there’s some things that we, as Asians, can say more truthfully,” Cheng said.
That goal came relatively abruptly for Cheng and Xiong. The two were both actors in the Vintage Theatre’s 2012 production of “The Joy Luck Club,” an ambitious drama that included nearly 20 Asian American actors. The show was a milestone on several levels — it was the first Vintage show in the company’s new facility on Dayton Street in Aurora. Moreover, it was the first show in Colorado to include so many Asian Americans in its cast.
“I hadn’t done a stage show in over seven years,” said Xiong, who had built up an impressive resume in film and television before moving from Los Angeles to Denver. Her work in drama had ended when she made the move. “It was the only production that I saw that featured Asian-American actors at the time, and I felt compelled to be a part of it. It also fell in line with where I was emotionally and spiritually.
“I wanted to get back into the arts,” Xiong added.
The show held a similar draw for Cheng, a former teacher who moved to Colorado from Minnesota in 1999 after retiring. Cheng, who grew up in the hilly stretches around Hong Kong, was living in the mountains and focused on writing when she decided to audition for “Joy Luck.”
That show opened to critical acclaim and, more importantly, a profound response from the local Asian community. Dozens of Asian-American actors came out of the woodwork to audition for parts. Many audience members from the community came to the theater for the first time, drawn finally by a story rooted in their own culture and experience.
The effect was overwhelming, and it drove Xiong and Cheng to draw up plans to keep the creative momentum going.
“We’d been told that ‘Joy Luck’ was not going to be a successful show. We just got to questioning why isn’t there an Asian-American theater company in Colorado?” Xiong said. “The idea started last June. A month later, we drew up a budget and asked friends and family for donations. A year later, we have a fully functioning board of directors.”
More impressively, the company has a season of three shows on tap for the coming months, all of which will run in the Vintage Theatre. The common theme in the three TEA shows is America – its past, its future and its singular social fabric. There’s Rick Foster’s “Dust Storm,” a coming-of-age drama about a Japanese teen living in an internment camp during World War II. “Spirit and Sworded Treks,” written by Cheng and directed by Xiong, is a comic exploration of a Chinese-American woman’s struggle to balance tradition, culture and identity in contemporary America. “99 Histories” written by Julia Cho and directed by Denver theater veteran Christy Montour-Larson is a tender look at a daughter’s pained attempts to reconcile with her conservative Korean mother.
“We deal with all of these issues. All of these plays are set in the United States of America, regardless of the generation of the Asian character,” Cheng said, adding that part of the troupe’s mission statement deals with “provocative original stories from new voices.” “We want to tell contemporary stories. We’re not interested in telling classical Asian stories … It’s about now.”
The response from the local creative community has already been overwhelming. Due to overwhelming demand, Cheng and Xiong decided to double-cast TEA’s first two productions, “Dust Storm” and “Spirt and Sworded Treks.” They’re hoping that enthusiasm continues, and spreads to the wider community.
“The only times that I’ve seen an Asian-American represented on the stage at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts has been in a traveling production. That, to me, is just not enough forward thinking,” Xiong said, adding that the company is also targeting a new kind of audience. “A lot of Asian-American folks don’t go to the theater … We would like to change that.”
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at 720-449-9707 or agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com