ABSTRACT
Despite numerous creative and aesthetically superb productions, the EWP continued to suffer from financial difficulty in the 1980s. For example, the attendance rate of Live Oak Store (1983) was 49.8%. Even Asa Ga Kimashita, regarded as one of their most important and successful productions, reached an average attendance of 60%. The low attendance implicates the EWP’s failure to attract a broad community audience and it may also suggest the Asian American community’s lack of interest in theatre. Partly because of the financial difficulties and unstable theatre management, in January 1989, Mako’s artistic directorship came to an end. The first major era of the EWP concluded with the appointment of Nobu McCarthy as the subsequent artistic director, later succeeded by Tim Dang in 1993.
