ABSTRACT
Asian Americans make up a pan-ethnic, multi-generational, and culturally diverse racial category. This introduction surveys some of the major events of Asian American history as well as reflects upon how theatre is integral to Asian American culture and representation. It identifies the ten historical milestones, including early Asian performers in the late nineteenth century, exclusion laws, U.S. imperialism in the Philippines and Hawai’i, Japanese American WWII incarceration, Asian American theatre practices of the 1960s and 1970s, Southeast Asian refugees, activism and Asian American theatre, post 9/11 Islamophobia, and COVID-19 anti-Asian violence, that will be illuminated in the book. If history is particularly important in understanding Asian American experience and identity, then theatre produced by, for, and about Asian Americans has a foundational place in making this history come to life. Asian American theatre is as diverse and multifaceted as the histories and experiences of Asian Americans offstage, and reflects multiple and fraught tensions between conventional identity and radical thinking, as well as between commercial and artistic, political and aesthetic, representational and experimental theatre-making.
