Acting Workshops NYC NY New York Acting Workshop- Theater Group
Year Zero
McGinn/Cazale Theater
Mason Lee in Year Zero.
Michael Golamco neatly incorporates that thesis into Year Zero to show that all stories of immigrant identity struggle are part of the same story. But it takes time for the brother and sister at the center of this tenderly observed play, produced by Second Stage Uptown at the McGinn/Cazale Theater, to realize that they are not alone.
Vuthy is a 16-year-old Cambodian-American in Long Beach, Calif., whose mother fled the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s and has recently died. Played with goofy vulnerability by Mason Lee (son of the film director Ang Lee), Vuthy is a high school outcast: I am too Cambodian for the black and Latin kids, and I am not Cambodian enough for the Cambodian kids.
His older sister, Ra (Maureen Sebastian), is a student at Berkeley whose clear-cut path now seems less certain. Her well-meaning boyfriend, Glenn (Peter Kim), a Chinese-American doctor, may be too far up the Asian hierarchy to understand her. She is increasingly drawn to Han (Louis Ozawa Changchien), the muscled bad boy who grew up next door and knows more about their mothers past than Ra or Vuthy.
These characters are cut from familiar molds, but Mr. Golamco and his appealing cast bring fresh nuances, tempering the earnestness with unassuming charm. Will Frears brisk production balances minor-key comedy and affecting drama.
Like other recent plays â€" “Yellow Face, American Hwangapâ Year Zero explores Asian identity issues with humor and sensitivity. Mr. Golamco views all four characters with equal compassion, coaxing his orphans to move forward by looking back.
Year Zero continues through June 13 at the McGinn/Cazale Theater, 2162 Broadway, at 76th Street, fourth floor; (212) 246-4422, 2st.com.
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Sixteen-year-old Vuthy (Mason Lee) is having a rough time of it in Michael Golamco's "Year Zero," presented as part of Second Stage Theatre's Uptown Series. It's not that he's a Dungeons & Dragons playing geek at the Long Beach, Calif., school where he doesn't fit in. His main problems are coping with his mother's death and having to move in with a family friend because his sister Ra (Maureen Sebastian) won't take him to live with her and her yuppie boyfriend, Glenn (a winningly goofy Peter Kim), in Berkeley. From this scenario, which resembles a particularly thoughtful ABC Afterschool Special, Golamco spins a delicate portrait of lost souls attempting to discover their roots and navigate awkward relationships with one another.
Director Will Frears has staged the episodic play with a gentle hand and elicited finely crafted performances from his ensemble. Particularly satisfying is Lee as the young hero. He captures Vuthy's geeky qualities with infinite charm, and during eruptions of anger or sullen bouts of poutiness he impressively manages to reveal the complex combination of confusion and vulnerability that underlies the character's unpleasant behavior.
Equally impressive is Sebastian's nuanced turn as Ra, who's dealing not only with her brother's moodiness but also her growing awareness that she didn't really know her mother, a woman who fled the Khmer Rouge while pregnant with her daughter. Sebastian also delivers cunningly whenever Ra has to deal with Han, an ex-flame just out of prison to whom she's still uncomfortably attracted. Louis Ozawa Changchien imbues Han with both an edge of menace and charismatic good nature.
Although Golamco has overwritten the first half of "Year Zero," the second half proves to be incisive, both dramatically and thematically, leading to a haunting and hopeful climax
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Few things stir the Chicago soul like the opening of a new theater with the world premiere of a very smart, sweet, honest and uncommonly moving new play. You willl love the comfortable, 116-seat Studio Theater, newly carved inside the historic Biograph Theater. And you wont be able to watch “Year Zero a play about Cambodian-Americans that manages to be both arrestingly fresh and comfortingly accessible, without concluding that its 34-year-old author, the Los Angeles-based Michael Golamco, is a significant new dramatic voice.
This is also a significant leap forward for the Victory Gardens Theater, which is diversifying its stable of playwrights by developing scripts and writers through this grant-supported Ignition initiative kicking off the 2009-10 season. In the case of the Gardens, where most of the attached writers have reached a certain age, that diversification necessarily includes writers under 40.
In the case of Year Zero, which focuses on the everyday struggles of the teenage and 20-something children of the Cambodian immigrants who arrived in the U.S. in the early 1980s, following the rise of the Khmer Rouge, the Gardens has found an ideal play to ignite this exciting new initiative.
Article Resources:
http://actingclassesnyc.net/
http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/theater/reviews/03year.html?ref=reviews
http://www.backstage.com/bso/reviews-ny-theatre-off-broadway/year-zero-1004094133.story
http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/the_theater_loop/2009/09/year-zero-in-the-victory-gardens-studio-igniting-new-era-at-new-venue.html
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