"Tea" – Revisiting an American Classic

Tea – Revisiting an American Classic features a staged reading of Velina Hasu Houston’s play Tea, which has been designated an American theatre canon classic. A post-play panel featuring the producer of a forthcoming film based upon the play, the film’s director, and the screenwriter will follow. The play Tea was written in the early 1980s and has enjoyed continuous production globally since its inception. An opera adapted from the play opens at Hawai’i Opera Theatre in 2027. At the end of World War II, nearly 50,000 women left Japan in a mass exodus that dispersed Japanese culture globally. Such a monumental departure never before had occurred in Japan and has never happened since. For Japanese women, it was a time of cultural significance and personal renewal as they challenged systems that historically had disadvantaged women. Upholding their agency, worth, and equity, the women emigrated to various countries, including the U.S. The play Tea focuses on five such women who landed in the American heartland in Kansas.

RSVP