“Teahouse Of The August Moon” was one of the most interesting, exciting shows I’ve directed. A terrific, satirical script, a good movie with some contemporary P. C. issues, and a chance to say something.
In the film of “Teahouse” the role of Sakini, an Okinawan villager who is an interpreter/guide to the occupying Americans, is played by Marlon Brando, in full “Japanese” makeup, with a sort of Japanese accent, and the main Japanese female, Lotus Blossom, is a compliant village woman who has a quasi-romantic relationship with an American soldier. In my reading of the play I found no real romantic scenes, so I decided to work to change the sensibility of the play and the view of the Japanese characters.
I cast the wonderful Asian-American actor Ernest Abuba as Sakini and worked with him to emphasize Sakini’s droll, Trickster-like side. Always helpful but with his own agenda. Kowtowing but always with a wink. Not subserviant but equal. Having fun but not at the expense of others, including the Americans, and always watching out for the other villagers. No accent. This was probably the first professional production of “Teahouse Of The August Moon” in NY, or anywhere, really, with an Asian Sakini, with no makeup and no accent.
I cast the terrific Japanese New York actress, Ako, as Lotus Blossom, and we worked to make her a more expressive presence in the play, and I made it a point to make sure Lotus Blossom was friendly and helpful and entertaining but not stereotypical, that is, not exotic, nor subservient. And no romance. At the end she does a Japanese dance to an American song in the Japanese teahouse they all built together. And that said it all for me, two cultures coming together, simply, with no makeup and no extraneous romance between East and West getting in the way of a good story.
The Broadway production and the film were of their time, and fine, for that, but this production was of, and for, its own time, a new and different time, and was fine, I believe, for all of that.
