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nwasianweekly.com
August 28, 2004
Photo by Roger Tang
Jia
Doughman (left) and Yvette Zaepfel are among the performers in Pork Filled
Players’ “Red, Pork and Blue.” Roger Tang calls it an unabashedly
left-wing show.
Hamming it up
Pork Filled Players lets APAs flex comedy muscles
By Yayoi
Lena Winfrey
For the Northwest Asian Weekly
If you can believe co-founder Roger Tang, the Asian American sketch-comedy
group Pork Filled Players is named for “its Asian food reference”
and because its actors like to “ham it up.”
Tang, who is constantly cracking jokes, got his theatrical start at Stanford
University, where he designed sets for dorm-mates David Hwang and Philip
Gotanda. According to him, the playwrights added their middle names, Henry
and Kan, respectively, when they became famous and pretentious.
“They got pretty big doing theater,” says Tang dryly, in an
understatement. “We did one of David’s original pieces before
he sent it off to Joe Papp (on Broadway).”
After landing in Phoenix, Ariz., Tang “wandered up here for graduate
school.” Today, his day job is fund-raising for the University of
Washington, where he once taught Asian American history.
Along with partner David Kobayashi, Tang started the comedy group 11:07
Late Night at the Northwest Asian American Theatre (NWAAT) in 1994. In
1997, they created OPM, whose initials, according to Tang, “didn’t
stand for anything.”
The company subsequently moved to Los Angeles.
“Folks down there started calling it Opening People’s Minds,”
he laughs.
After splitting from OPM, Tang and Kobayashi formed PFP, which debuted
in January 1998 and produced two shows annually.
Now, after six years, Kobayashi (also an actor and musician) is moving
to Hong Kong with his new bride, leaving Ed Tonai to manage PFP with Tang.
“Ed was part of The Baseball Bunch,” discloses Tang, “a
(TV) program teaching baseball to young kids and working with All-Stars.
The show went to Japan and helped get Ichiro started in baseball,”
he jokes.
“Ed likes to say he’s part of an Emmy-award-winning television
program,” Tang continues. “Actually, he has an entry on IMDB
(Internet Movie Database, an online listing of actors and films).”
With 20 years of production experience, Tang is used to “putting
together small theater groups,” while Tonai, who also possesses production
capabilities, does most of the group’s writing.
“We have a couple of other writers on board right now,” says
Tang, who hopes to cultivate sketch writing among new trainees.
“People have come and gone,” he laments. “Some folks have
moved ... to L.A. and they’ve been acting down there. Some people
have dropped out of the theater business. ... Dustin Chinn, a writer and
performer ... has been doing stuff ... in New York, where he was producing
a series ... and original material. ... People have gone on to work on
‘Sex in Seattle’ (an episodic theater show about four contemporary
Asian American women).”
“If they go on upward and onward, that’s fine with us,”
remarks Tang. “Of course, if it pays better, that’s no problem
...”
PFP boasts 13 members, with six performers, four writers, two producers
and one tech person.
“We’re a little looser on the actor end than on the writing
or tech end because people can drift off if they have a job opportunity
elsewhere,” says Tang.
Without a permanent home, PFP has been “moving around ... in the
Capitol Hill area and the Theatre Off Jackson (in Chinatown/International
District).” Tang is one of the founders of the Theatre Off Jackson.
But for the first time since its inception, PFP will perform at Bumbershoot
this year.
“We’re pretty excited about that,” enthuses Tang, adding,
“We just hope they don’t throw tomatoes at us.”
He explains, “Our program (‘Red ,Pork and Blue’) is not
for very young children and diehard neocons. This is pretty much an unabashed,
left-wing comedy show. We don’t want anybody to feel that we’re
going to take it easy on Republicans and those that voted for President
Bush,” he snickers.
Tang presages, “Hopefully, this will be the last time we take a poke
at President Bush.”
In addition to Bush-bashing, Tang says there’s “a big strong
thing with Kim Jung Il, the North Korean leader. We throw him up against
the CIA, James Bond ...”
Local politics are targeted, too.
Although PFP is made up mostly of Asian Americans, Tang half-kids that
there are “a couple of token white people. ... We feel we can’t
comment about society and race and the Asian American identity without
contrasting with white people or the majority.”
He adds, “We try to write so it can’t be from anything but an
APA perspective, but we don’t want to do anything that’s been
done over and over and drive it into the ground.”
“Our main purpose,” says Tang, “is (getting) Asian American
actors ... on stage and (giving them) a voice.”
PFP participants include Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Filipino Americans.
Available for hire for community dinners, PFP is scheduled to entertain
an upcoming event of the National Association of Asian American Professionals.
To paraphrase Tang, that’s one giant oink for PFP.
The Pork Filled Players’ performance of “Red, Pork and Blue”
shows at Bumbershoot on Sept. 6 at 3 p.m. at the Seattle Center’s
Center House Theater. For more information, call 206-850-7882 or visit
www.porkfilled.com.
Yayoi Lena Winfrey can be reached at scpnwan@nwlink.com.
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