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Performances
Fresh Words & Actions: "Mixed Messages", by Cherylene Lee
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Performances
Fresh Words & Actions: "Mixed Messages", by Cherylene Lee
When a physical anthropologist of mixed ethnicity (Chinese, Japanese, British) discovers that her skull proportions bear a remarkable similarity to La Brea Woman, a nine thousand-year-old fossil, she believes she has found an important clue that will revolutionize the accepted theory of when and how humans first arrived in North America. Her research is complicated when a mixed descendant of the Chumash tribe wants La Brea Woman turned over to him under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
As they research La Brea Woman's past, both are forced to confront their own identities as people of mixed heritage. Their stories are juxtaposed against a chorus of student voices from LA City High School who describe their own backgrounds of mixed ethnicity.
Cherylene Lee's plays include Wong Bow Rides Again (EWP, 1987), Arthur and Leila (EWP, 1993), and Carry the Tiger to the Mountain (EWP, 1999) among others. She was the 2002 TCG/NEA Playwright in Residence at EWP and awarded EWP's 2003 Made in America Award. Her play, Antigone Falun Gong will premier at the Aurora Theater in Berkeley, California, in April 2004.
In collaboration with East West Players' Writer's Gallery