For one performance a week, my favorite the early matinee, masks are required. It was deja vu all over again!
I joined Rick and his neighbor Jacky at the East West Players to watch a Sondheim musical Pacific Overtures. The story begins in 1853 with Commodore Perry’s arrival and the westernization of Japan, skipping over all the wars and ending on a optimistic note and the song “Next” with cast members dressed as Ohtani, Pokemon, “gyaru”, “bijinesuman” etc. The staging was super and the cast was very good too. I’m glad to have gone especially as I’d never seen this group that has been performing in LA for 60 years, and I didn’t even know about this venue.
Here’s a write-up of the theater from the EWP website:
East West Players’ current home is in the upper three levels of the Union Center for the Arts in the northwestern end of the Little Tokyo Historic District. The Union Center for the Arts was formerly the Union Church. It was completed in 1923 and served as the combined home of three Japanese American congregations.
With the onset of World War II, it was in front of this building that residents of the district joined the residents of Terminal Island, whose community had been razed 48 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1942, residents of the district were among the 10,000 people sent to the War Relocation Center in Manzanar. Only permitted a single suitcase to last them their internment, many district residents stored their personal belongings in the Union Church until they would be able to return to their homes after the war. However, most of those transported to the internment camps lost all of their property, and were unable to return to living in their old community after the war, scattering the former resident population throughout the city.
Some murals overlooking the parking lot.
