Producers From The United States

"The burqa has different meanings for many women who wear it. I think as Americans we have a tendency to only associate this garment with violence, oppression, and fear without really knowing much about its history or cultural significance. It is my hope that audience members will approach this play with an open mind and an open heart to allow for an alternate perspective that is both positive and meaningful."

"While I’m proud to take risks artistically in my work, at the same time, I’ve had older generations of Taiwanese and Taiwanese Americans who have chastised me for peddling (a phrase I hate) “pain-porn” because I have told my mom’s war-torn story. What a hurtful thing to say to someone who is speaking from the heart and basically laying out the facts of a person’s life. I’ve also had white Americans shaking their fingers at me saying “You’re a bad daughter!”…"

"I have to say though it’s made it easier for white people to seek me out because I am half-white to ask me what they would be afraid to ask a mono-racial Asian American. I generally have intriguing, sometimes difficult, conversations with people about race…"

"In any professional setting, I’m a fish out of water on many levels, not just racially and culturally but also in the work I do, which involves many artistic disciplines…"

"Sound is the connecting energy to our African past. When thrown into the Middle Passage and the babble of languages, then given this foreign language, English, that had to be learned by ear in this foreign land, Africans, even though they spoke different languages, found a connection and an umbrella culture emerging from the different ethnic groups thrown together by the brutal rubric of enslavement."

"Language shifts with each character and with time. We were so close that it was difficult to see the end result. A part of it was looking at sound, how sound and language traveled with people through time."

"How do I treat this character, given my sensitivity toward being a woman and then my ire being a black person — trying to balance those two?...And as an artist, really wanting to be generous of spirit with all of the characters so that I treat them with humanity and with understanding — to be empathetic without being sympathetic?"

"In my opinion, as far as action is concerned, and physical action, the punches and kicks, they don’t really matter. Even shooting a gun. It all depends on, for me, what your intention is, what you put behind it and how it serves the film…"

"I mean there’s something magical about filmmaking and people that work within film. It’s the most beautiful thing, because so many people are coming together and they just think about a common goal. It’s almost similar to the military, but all of a sudden you’ll be in there and you’re about to do something and everybody is thinking about the next person. It’s not always the case, but the films that I’ve worked on it’s been that way, and it’s amazing. It makes you want to work harder…"

"Part of my heritage being Korean, it's going to be interesting going to Korea and answering these questions dealing with North and South Korea. It's difficult to deal with at times, this expectation. Being Asian, every single Asian person in the world expects you to represent them, you know?"

"Because we might not get to truth, we might not get to justice…As, certainly, neither of those really emerged in this saga. But if we as humanity can get to a position of benevolence — which is a greater understanding of one another, empathy for one another, and forgiveness — then that's another beginning."

"Nothing ever stops me. Certainly coming into Hollywood, I knew that there would be certain limitations. But I also couldn’t play a woman or I couldn’t play a white hero. To play Asian and to speak with accents because I speak Japanese, it never really bothered me. All I always look for in every piece is how can I use this piece to move to the next step? So the worst thing about playing Asian bad guys would be to not be remembered…"

"One was my movement, which I’m very conscious of in films, especially coming from martial arts. Think about how many times a character is seen just sitting or walking or standing, it’s a lot of time in film and it says so much about a character. So I’ve always been keen to pay attention to movement and that was one thing he said he noticed. Never have I heard a director talk like that about me. And also he said that the eyes were important because it really has to come through the make-up. So he was interested in those two aspects especially…"

"One thing I have to say about Japanese anime is that there’s a certain sort of tone there that bypasses the Asian part. And the characters really turn into something more Western. I’d like to see a true Japanese character. We don’t need to make the eyes look round, we don’t need the light in her hair. We can have dark hair and the eyes look like mine. They can be speaking English. We have Asian-Americans. And certainly there are plenty of people from Hawaii that are very Asian and totally local. It’s part of America…"

"I love these characters that have a duality to them. I wanted to be Han Solo not Luke Skywalker. It’s more realistic for me, nobody is that square, especially in today’s world. We all have two sides to us, and that’s what makes us human. I love the movies where everybody was an outlaw in some way…"

"Hollywood was a detour, although my mother was an aristocrat from Tokyo who ran away to join the theatre, so acting is in my genes. I've played a lot of bad guys, including a torturing acupuncturist in my first B-movie, but one of my favourite roles was a surfing grandfather from Hawaii in the film Johnny Tsunami. My father's family are Hawaiian, so it was the closest to my own personality."

"I’m the most peaceful when I go to Hawaii because I fit in there as a biracial or “hapa” person. No one there questions my Asian-ness, and in fact, I feel my ethnicity is embraced and accepted…"

"“My parents helped me and they hurt me…My mom was extremely pro-Black, and I believed her. My dad is Senegalese, and I grew up around my dark-skinned cousins and just thought that they were the most beautiful women in the world. I was surrounded by beautiful dark people. And then middle school hit, and I was like, Oh, they think I’m ugly. They think I’m big. They think I’m unattractive. I went back to my mom like, ‘What the f—k?! Y’all lied to me my whole life. What is this?!’ I started realizing, Mom, you’re light-skinned. So I don’t know what you were talking about. It’s not like you can relate to being dark. And your hair is not the same texture as mine. So what do you know about telling me I’m beautiful? Why would you lie to me? That definitely had an impact on how I saw myself."

"I did not, but that’s just my experience. I know a lot of people who do, and that’s where the burden of representation comes in. I’m sitting here telling my specific story, but though I wasn’t comfortable with that, there are thousands of people who are, or thousands who don’t have access to the funds to have surgery."

"The ‘pretty privilege’ can give you access to spaces, just like your able body gives you access. But it makes impossible beauty standards for many other trans girls who are struggling with that right now."

"There was such a dearth of films like that…And the high-school teen movie is a genre that I love. Everything at that age is so heightened and dramatic, and high-school movies capture that so perfectly. But those films are all white, too; there’s no black teen movie genre that exists in the same way."

"“I was trying to stand out, trying to be the class clown and be super-funny. But everybody thought I was lame and hated me…I’ve experienced that real sense of feeling out of place plenty in my life."

"My grandmother gets who I am, so when you ask me about people who don’t understand, or people who are on their bully pulpits saying you shouldn’t accept people, I’m like: “What’s happened to you that, of all the things you can talk about, of all the injustices in the world, the one thing you want to concentrate on is trans people living their truth? How is that harming you and your identity? How I identify has nothing to do with you, and how you identify has nothing to do with me. Right? So live your life and let me live mine."

"…I found the world of nonprofits funny to begin with just because having worked there, you see that people are so altruistic and they're so benevolent and they're pretty selfless and you're working generally for a great cause.But the atmosphere within the work environment can be oddly competitive. People want the credit. Sometimes they don't listen to the people they're trying to help. And for me, this white guilt is so prevalent at this nonprofit. And they're so - they treat the kids as this pity party. And for me, I would hate to work in an environment like this, but it's ripe for comedy."

"The ball culture is a space started in uptown Manhattan, in Harlem. It was created by a group of black trans women and drag queens who were tired of being pushed out of white drag spaces, where they kept on being upstaged and not given titles. The titles were favored to white queens, white queens who embodied Western culture's idea of beauty and femininity more than the black and brown queens did. So Crystal LaBeija created the scene, and it has become this kind of community space — one where a lot of orphaned people, homeless folk, trans and queer people gather together in houses…"

"Consider the fondness with which people look back on the actress Drew Barrymore’s appearance on the David Letterman Show in April 1995: 12 April was Letterman’s birthday and Barrymore was on the show, describing – among other things – her recent fondness for nude dancing. Although 20 years old at the time Barrymore spent the interview playing by turns the role of a confident sexual woman and a naughty little schoolgirl."

"Do I like women sexually? Yeah, I do. Totally. I have always considered myself bisexual. I love a woman's body. I think a woman and a woman together are beautiful, just as a man and a woman together are beautiful. Being with a woman is like exploring your own body, but through someone else."

"I don't eat meat, fish or dairy, but I love fake bacon. It's the best of both worlds."

"I'm from the streets of New York," he said. "I have a tattoo in my handwriting that I say: Those who say, don't know. Those who know, don't say. Your power and influence is largely based on what a steel trap your mouth is.""

"...I was born and raised in Spanish Harlem and lived in New York most of my adult life. My life, my music and career started here. The fact that I no longer live in New York doesn’t mean I don’t consider this amazing city my home. I walked and lived in these streets for most of my life..."

"My life has been a privilege. I come from a very humble family. No one in my family was an artist or worked in film…I’m not special. I completely understand that what I did, anyone can do it … I learned to do the things I love to do when I didn’t want to do them."

"To my mom, I was a pain in the ass. To my dad, I was the light of his eyes. And to me, I was awkward," he said. "I had glasses. I weighed two pounds. My dad always told me, and as God's honest truth, 'Son, we're ugly. Work on your personality.'"

"The stereotypical usage of any culture, any ethnicity, is based on fact or truth. The difficulty is that that’s the only fact and truth that they use. So therefore, it becomes, “Oh, everyone’s like that,” and everyone isn’t like that. Stereotypes are stereotypes. They’re just one-dimensional characterizations of what the person who’s depicted represents, and that’s the difficulty of what I learned as I moved older into the late ‘50s, early ‘60s, and I was 13, 14…"

"We must stop using the word “race” as a cultural determinant and start using it for what it really is. It is a unifying word. There’s no two ways around it. The Caucasian people will have to accept the fact that the changes of diversity on the planet are constant, and that we propagate ourselves at a higher rate. So as far as I’m concerned, people, come to terms with it. You want to really understand the future? You’re going to have to understand that there’s only one race, and that’s the human race. Period."

"Each song is like a short movie...And each character is different."

"I have been blessed that I wasn't pigeonholed into that. Those roles didn't come to me because I didn't have an accent. They'd ask, 'Couldn't you do it a little more feisty, fiery, Latin.' I'd respond with, 'I'm sorry, were you getting Jewish fire? Because I am Latin.' Even though I am very tied to and close to my heritage, I learned Spanish in college, I didn't grow up with it. Growing up in South Texas is different from Miami or L.A. where it is a necessity to speak Spanish."

"It’s a myth that you can’t have it all…When I was younger, I got some great advice: you can have it all—just maybe not all at the same time…That doesn’t mean you should stop trying to balance everything and strive to be the best you can be every day."

"Fight against typecasting? All the time. There’s a truth in the stereotype, that’s why it becomes a stereotype but the problem starts when it’s the only thing you see. When it comes to Latinos in the US, the truth is they [Americans] know very little about us."

"History echoes. We mustn't ignore the past, because we're constantly reliving it. Just like the seasons that these farm workers organize their lives around, it's all a big cycle."

"It was bad enough in 2013, and it's worse now. My approach to political theater is that the way to the mind is through the heart. If you can touch the heart, then people will come to the ideas themselves. The American idea of social equality and human respect has to be constantly defended from generation to generation. What happened to the Japanese is echoed tragically in what's happening to Latinos on the Mexican border. Those are prison camps and in some ways the Trump administration is declaring war on Latin America. It's a struggle, but I'm also an optimist and I know it won't last forever."

"We were and still are recreating our own reality. Our vision is that we have been a hard working, courageous people. There have been three prevalent images of the chicano in this country— 1) the pachuco, a violent, urban vato loco; 2) the farmworker, a passive peon, Don Juan-Yaqui brujo type; and 3) el Spanish grandee or Latin lover type."

"People would call us "dirty Mexicans." I remember going to a movie in Reedly where we weren't allowed to sit in the Anglo section. We were told by the ushers to sit with the rest of the Mexicans, because this section was reserved for whites. Those are things you never forget."

"My parents were migrant farm workers who moved between Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. I was born in Delano and that's where the ranch was. For my dad, this was the high point of his life. The whole family was very proud of the fact that he had a ranch and we had family events out there. When we lost it at the end of the war it was a tragedy. We were back on the migrant path, and I remember asking my older brother, "What happened? We used to be rich." And he said, "We weren't rich, we just had the ranch and it wasn't even ours." He was older so he was wise to the fact that the Japanese-Americans had been forced out. I realized with a shock and a sense of guilt that we'd taken over somebody else's ranch and they'd been imprisoned in a camp."

"I just think she’s masterful. She gets such incredible answers that these famous people haven’t said to anyone else, which requires this diabolical scheming but also tremendous empathy. It’s a very specific kind of puzzle."

"I got out of my record deal just so I could connect two cultures together."

"We figured out that these singers go to specific studios to record in Bollywood all the time. So if you’re a studio engineer, you see these singers on a daily basis. We reached out to the studio, pretending to have a lot of money, pretending to have a project coming in from Hollywood and saying we’d like to record with them, but we want this singer."

"Critics absolutely serve no purpose."

"“I don’t care how sexy or beautiful any woman is. At the end of the day, she has to take her makeup off. At the end of the day, she’s more than just pretty.”"

"I will not be a mystery to my daughter. She will know me and I will share my stories with her—the stories of failure, shame and accomplishment. She will know she's not alone in that wilderness."

""There is an emotional abandonment that comes with poverty and being Black,”"