Interviewed by Jeanne Hartman

Velina Hasu Houston, prolific writer and one of the most widely produced Asian American playwrights, is receiving the Rainbow Award on March 24^th from the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival at The Electric Lodge in Venice, California.   The other ladies who will be honored that same evening are Suzanna Guzman (Maverick Award), Charmaine Jefferson (Integrity Award) and Joan Benedict Steiger (Eternity Award).   For more information about this Gala evening and other Festival performances go to http://www.lawft.com.  

Ms. Houston has written many pieces concerning the female Asian immigrant experience of integrating into American life and society, as well as broader themes. She creates and provokes her audiences to learn and experience the challenges of the non-Asian American woman as well.  Ms. Houston invites the audience to see how both cultures deal with similar universal challenges.  Ms. Houston repeatedly finds new ways to demonstrate the diversities, while allowing you to go into the mind of each fascinating female character.

The playwright wrote in her notes, for one of her many published plays, “Absolute truth, however, is an illusion.”  These words evidence her ability to look at many sides of what people call truth, or their version of truth.

When asked about receiving the Rainbow Award Ms. Houston replied, “I am honored to receive this award and to have this recognition from the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre festival.  As a transnational, multiethnic, and multicultural individual, the worlds of my plays often reflect the diversity of my background.  In my plays, often East meets West both in form and substance.  I am grateful that the consciousness of theatre art in the United States evolves to embrace voices that move beyond the “kitchen sink” drama and beyond characters that reflect a narrow mainstream of United States society.  The United States is a nation full of diverse cultures and cultural expressions that we are learning to accept into United States theatre art and not to label as different or foreign.  Recognizing that theatre art’s form and substance do not have to be conventional to be accessible or truly American is an important part to expanding the voice of such theatre art.”

Beside her busy writing schedule, Ms. Houston also is Professor of Theatre, Director of Dramatic Writing, Associate Dean of Faculty and Resident Playwright at the School of Theatre of USC. 

To the young playwrights that she teaches at USC, Ms. Houston offers this advice, “There are so many pieces of wisdom and heart that one can pass on to emerging playwrights, and perhaps just as many such things that one cannot pass on, that young artists must learn for themselves in the process of maturing their craft and coming to terms with life’s adventures and lessons.  One thing I do like to tell them is that they must write from passion.  If they do not feel a great deal of passion for a character and a story, they should abandon that idea.  These things should not be forced, but driven by the same intensity of desire that a protagonist has towards achieving her objectives.  I also believe that young writers must stay true to their individual style and voice.  Regardless of where they choose to study – in a graduate program or elsewhere on their own, they should be willing to learn and navigate constructive criticism with grace and precision, but they also must maintain the integrity of their own voice.”

Ms. Houston shared that at the age of five, she knew she wanted to write.  Even though her mother told her that Japanese immigrants cannot yearn to be artists, she did not let her mother’s advice deter her.   She penned her first play at age eleven and continued to write plays through her teenage years. 

She shared about her first experience of hearing her play being performed, “The first time I saw one of my plays being performed before an audience, I felt nervous and uncertain.  I felt that audience members might decry the unusual humanity, geographies, and cultural landscapes of my work or find them controversial because they often included the collision / coalescence of East and West.  I also felt hope – the hope that in some small way audience members would walk out feeling just a tiny bit differently than they had when they entered.”

Ms. Houston’s new play, Bliss, will be part of a USC Fisher Gallery exhibition, “Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present,” October 2011.  She is also working on a newly commissioned project with the Los Angeles Opera based on the biblical mythology of Jonah and the whale.   In 2012, Ms. Houston’s play, Tea, will have its 25^th anniversary production at East West Players in Los Angeles in the fall of 2012 and in Japan there will be a staging of a special presentation of her play Calligraphy. 

Despite such a busy schedule, Ms. Houston still manages to find time for herself,  “I like to read poetry.  Often, I like to moon-gaze and every spring I like to celebrate o-hanami (cherry blossom viewing) at Balboa Park.  I like to walk my son’s dog, Kenta, a Shiba Ken.  Occasionally, I get a massage.  I love to cook; it’s therapeutic.”

With such a vast knowledge and experience both as a busy playwright and professor of theatre the last words go to Ms. Houston “I believe that theatre art is a site in which culture transforms.  By culture, I am referring to the idiosyncrasies, language, food, customs, and phenotypes that define a population.  Historically, national boundaries helped to determine these definitions, but, with the advent of global perspectives, boundaries have begun to dissolve and the nature of identity is becoming dynamic.  The cultural geographies of my plays are sites where new ideas are fomented and cultivated.  Traditional notions of nationalism, culture, family, and race transform from the myopic to the global / glocal; the American environment is no longer solely American and the Asian environment is no longer solely Asian.  Culture evolves in transnational worlds that represent the past, present, and future.  I extend this culturally transformational element in my plays that adapt Greek myths into contemporary drama.”

Contributing writer JEANNE HARTMAN, the Actors Detective, coaches  professional actors in Los Angeles and teaches actors, directors and writers  in Hong Kong.  She can be contacted at www.JeanneHartmanActorsDetective.com. 

Her book, The Right Questions for Actors, is written in an inter-active book style that supports actors. Veteran actors call it their “new Bible” when it comes to preparing for auditions.  It is available at her website and on Amazon.

Her studies at the Juilliard School, and with Lawrence Parke, Barbara Loden, Mark Travis and training at Centre Lyrique Int’l with Lotfi Mansouri add to Ms. Hartman’s ability to discover which technique is best for each student.  Ms. Hartman’s acting experience on stage across the country, and  in front of the camera, prepared her to become a respected acting coach and teacher in demand by actors, directors, writers, agents, managers and producers.