PROGRAM 26

SATURDAY, MAY 1 | THE MIKADO PROJECT | 9:30 PM | DGA 1

THE MIKADO PROJECT DATE: SATURDAY, MAY 1 TIME: 9:30 PM VENUE: DGA 1 BUY TICKETS

THE MIKADO PROJECT
(United States, 2010) Dir.: Chil Kong; Scr.: Chil Kong, Erin Quill, Ryun Yu
Video, 84 min., color, narrative

Oh, how funny this “art imitating life” thing can be. For ten years, Seattle transplant Chil Kong (POLLEN, Festival 2006) has been living the life described in his narrative debut feature THE MIKADO PROJECT: inheriting actor Soon Tek Oh’s Society Heritage Players troupe in 1999, he and a group of acting and writing colleagues re-engineered the troupe into the Lodestone Theater Ensemble, an edgy (and sometimes raunchy) alternative to the more established East West Players. Concluding its run last winter, Lodestone served as an incubator for new talents, and a venue to rework traditional themes and ideas. Kong himself has been busy when not running the Ensemble, as his resume of acting and directing credits attest (not to mention his decidedly manic appearance on a nationally-televised game show a couple of years back). All that and more is on full display in this filmed adaptation of a past Lodestone presentation, a mind-fuck of an overhaul of the Gilbert & Sullivan drama The Mikado. This iteration of The Mikado, told largely as a series of back-stage intrigues and min-dramas, is perhaps the perfect vehicle through which to filter modern-day attitudes about art, integrrity, and commerce.

Kong himself manages to insert himself into the picture…okay, not literally, but in dorky theater artistic director Lance Liu (Allen C. Liu), Kong could not have come up with a more spot-on doppelganger. Lance, head of the local Angry Buddha Theater Ensemble, is inspired to stage The Mikado as a means of shedding the Ensemble’s endless litany of “protest theater” that has come to define its existence. Liu has other headaches to contend with: the Ensemble’s meal ticket Jace (David McInnis) jumps ship for a primetime TV gig, the rent money has run out, a 60-day lien has been placed on the property, and a hoped-for NEA grant that would keep the Ensemble solvent is not at all assured. Lance has great difficulty selling his troupe (Tamlyn Tomita, Eric Quill, Yuri Tag, Ryun Yu) on the merits of staging the play, and in integrating newcomer Teddy (Raymond J. Lee) into the troupe. When Jace re-emerges on the scene proposing to star in the play (reworked to accentuate his star-power, of course), the cast nearly mutinies en mass. All the while, Lance’s own traditional vision for the play fails to skew with the talents of those around him. With the play set to preview five days hence, will everything come together, or…

If you haven’t seen Lodestone’s version of this story, then we’re not gonna tell you how this ends. What we will say is that THE MIKADO PROJECT serves as a perfect send-off to a groundbreaking local theater company. Its willingness to skewer conventions and ability to finesse the inherent limitations of presenting live theater on film echoes the ethos of its creators. It also whets the appetite for future endeavors from Kong and his many Lodestone cohorts now spread to the winds.
— Abraham Ferrer

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COMMUNITY CO-PRESENTERs: 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors; TeAda