Velina Hasu Houston

"Ichigo ichie... each encounter in life happens only once."

Playwright Bio

Velina Hasu Houston was born on May 5, 1957 on a military ship on international waters en route from Japan to the United States. "Her father, Lemo Houston, was African-American/Native-American originally from Linden, Alabama. Her mother, Setsuko Takechi, is originally from Matsuyama, Ehime, a provincial town in Shikoku Island." (Palacio Magazine) Houston is of Japanese, Blackfoot Pikuni Native American Indian, African American, and Cuban heritage. Her family now also reflects Hawaiian, English, German, Vietnamese, Chinese, Argentinian, Irish, Italian, and Scottish ethnicities. She grew up in Junction City, Kansas, an Army town of approximately 700 immigrant Japanese and European women and their military husbands of different ethnicities. Houston proudly identifies as a multicultural, multiethnic person.

Houston completed her undergraduate degree in Kansas before moving to Los Angeles. She obtained an MFA in Playwriting, Screenwriting, and English from University of California, Los Angeles. She obtained her PhD in Critical Studies in Cinema/TV/Theatre/English from the University of Southern California, where she currently works as a Distinguished Professor of Theatre in Dramatic Writing, Director of MFA Dramatic Writing Head of Undergraduate Playwriting, and a Resident Playwright. Houston was the first person of African descent and the first multiethnic person to be named as a Distinguished Professor.

As a playwright, Houston has written over 28 works in theater and opera in addition to her contributions to TV and Film. Her work represents the most-produced theatre pieces about the Japanese female experience in the United States. Though she writes on many themes, her theatrical repertoire is largely inspired by her multicultural identity and Japanese heritage. In particular, Houston calls upon her mother's recollection of Japanese folklore to employ magical realism in her work. In an interview, Houston guessed that "95%" of her plays featured a ghost.

A black and white image of the Houston family portrait. Houston, as a baby, sits in her Japanese mother's lap. Her older brother, a young child wearing a suit, sits in front of her African American and Native American father, also wearing a suit.
Houston as a baby alongside her mother, father, and older brother. Image from "Photographs" on Houston's website.

Featured Play: Tea

Synopsis

Click here for a full overview of the play.

“Four women come together to clean the house of a fifth after her tragic suicide upsets the balance of life in their small Japanese immigrant community in the middle of the Kansas heartland. The spirit of the dead woman returns as a ghostly ringmaster to force the women to come to terms with the disquieting tension of their lives and find common ground so that she can escape from the limbo between life and death, and move on to the next world in peace—and indeed carve a pathway for their future passage. Set in Junction City, Kansas, 1968; and netherworlds.” (Dramatists Play Service)

A black and white image of five Asian women wearing 1960's garb. Four of the women sit around a low table, drinking tea and conversing pleasantly. A fifth woman stands to the side and looks down at them.
A color image of five Asian women sitting around a low table, drinking tea. All of the women wear 1960's garb. The woman the center wears a white kimono with the others wear colorful American clothing.
Top: Image from Hero Theatre webpage "Support Tea." Bottom: "Tea, With Music," Photo by Michael Lamont.

"Everyone has an alibi for silence."

Sample Activity

This play comes with a very rich historical setting that makes it a well-suited text for an interdisciplinary theater and social studies unit. In this unit, the students could learn about the responsibilities and processes of a dramaturg then step into that role to create a dramaturgy packet of their research pertaining to the play’s setting. Rather than every student making one large packet on the entirety of Houston’s world, the students could work in small groups to flesh out different aspects of the text (i.e. garments, food, ceremonies and holidays, cultural values, language, historical context) then present to the full class.

Discussion Questions

  1. Who should play the characters in “Tea?”

  2. What cast does the play demand to tell the story as Houston intended?

  3. Can actors of different races or cultural backgrounds ethically and adequately fulfill these roles?

  4. What is the role of tea in this play? What is the role of tea in Japanese culture?

  5. How does Houston’s shared experience with the play’s characters uniquely impact the story being told?

  6. How does each character's costume reflect both their personality and relationship with America?

Selected Plays

Four women of varying ethnicities and skin tones stand side by side on a beach. They are wearing vintage-style bathing suits.
“Velina Hasu Houston’s play Bliss was performed as a book reading at the USC Fisher Museum of Art, which featured several photographs from the “Posing Beauty” exhibition. - Photo courtesy of USC Fisher Museum of Art” (Moore)

Bliss

“Schatsi looks white, but is actually Afro-German and a fraternal twin to Dagmar, who is darker skinned. Their sheltered life is shattered when their father dies and they move to Los Angeles with their German mother, Inge. Schatsi struggles to come of age in a world rife with myths and stereotypes that burden her flight, estrange her from family, and lead her to commit an extraordinary act.” (Theatre, Film/TV, Etc.)

In writing this play, Houston was inspired in part by the personal story of a friend. The Daily Trojan documented an anecdote during a post-performance Q&A of a reading of Bliss at the USC Fisher Museum of Art:

"One of these girls [who I grew up with] was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, but half-black [...] For most of my career, I’d written about the tensions of Asians and blacks and Asians and whites. She asked, ‘When are you going to write about our family?’ So I started to look into it.”

This play would provide students with the opportunity to develop a closer understanding of identity, racism, colorism, and what it means to be white-passing. After defining and discussing those topics within the scope of the play, the students could develop short monologues responding to the prompt, “Who am I?” The monologues could be shared voluntarily within the class or become part of a larger devised piece.

A man and woman stand on a simple theatrical set against a blue background. The man is dressed in a suit. He is grabbing the arms of the woman, whose back is to the viewer.
Image from a 2014 production of Kokoro (True Heart) by the University of Southern California School of Dramatic Arts.


Kokoro (True Heart)

“Yasako, a young Japanese mother, struggles to adapt to the very foreign culture of the United States. Feeling hopeless after discovering her husband’s infidelity, Yasako feels that oyako shinju, or parent-child suicide, is her only honorable escape from a world that does not accept her. Yasako truly believes that the outcome to such an act is not the finality of death but a chance for herself and her daughter to reunite with their family on a spiritual plane of existence. But Yasako survives the suicide attempt, and she learns that she is being tried for the murder of her daughter." (Dramatists Play Service)

The inner turmoil and daunting choices Yasako has to make within this play would be a strong vehicle for a theater class to explore character motivations and objectives. A thread of classroom activities exploring Yasako’s character might be to define character motivations, followed by Role on the Wall (in which the students would write Yasako’s characteristics, behaviors, actions and motivation on a life-size outline of a person), then Conscience Alley (in which one student as Yasako walks down two parallel lines of students where one side encourages her to commit oyako shinju and the other discourages her).

Kokoro would also pair well with Tea because of its many common themes.

Body of Work

Theater

  • Asa Ga Kimishita (Morning Has Broken) (1981)

  • Tea (1982)

  • American Dreams (1983)

  • Thirst (1986)

  • Necessities (1991)

  • The Matsuyama Mirror (1992)

  • Japanese and Multicultural at the Turn-of-the-Century (Radio Play) (1994)

  • Kokoro (True Heart) (1995)

  • Hula Heart (1996)

  • The Lotus of the Sublime Pond (1997)

  • Ikebana (Living Flowers) (2000)

  • Mister Los Angeles (2000)

  • Shedding the Tiger (2001)

  • The Ideal and the Life (2002)

  • Waiting for Tadashi (2002)

  • The Eyes of Bones (2003)

  • The Peculiar and Sudden Nearness of the Moon (2006)

  • "Bloody Hell (Or, I Wouldn't Change A Thing About You" as part of MESSY UTOPIA (2007)

  • Calling Aphrodite (2007)

  • The House of Chaos (2007)

  • Civilization (2009)

  • "Mother Road" in THE DNA TRAIL (2010)

  • Calligraphy (2010)

  • Turbulence (2010)

  • Bliss (2011)

  • Cymru Am Byth (Wales Forever) (2011)

  • Cinnamon Girl (Musical) (2012)

  • Tea, With Music (2012)

  • The Intuition of Iphigenia (2012)

  • Cause Celebre (2013)

  • Jonah and the Whale (Opera) (2013)

  • A Spot of Bother (2014)

  • The Last Resort (2014)

  • Another Perfect Day (Opera) (2015)

  • Like the Flow of a River (2015)

  • The American Women (2015)

  • Empress Lily (2016)

  • Hum the Bee (2016)

  • Little Women (A Multicultural Transposition) (2016)

  • The Mexican Friendship Circle at Border Field (2016)

  • Aloha 'Oe (Musical) (2017)

  • Para Sol (2017)

  • Pride and Prejudice (A Multicultural Transposition) (2017)

  • Queen of Hearts (2017)

  • Setting the Table (2017)

  • The Heart of Those Machines (2017)

  • The Hotel Play

  • Brown Girl in the Ring

  • The Haiku Workshop

  • The Immigration Cycle

  • Where Shadow Chases Light as part of Crossing Borders


IN DEVELOPMENT:

  • The Certainty of Tides

  • Begali Harlem

  • Iphegenia at JFK

TV & Film

  • Path of Dreams

  • Rising Soul

  • Kokoro (True Heart)

  • Hiroshima, Dance

  • Tra La Land

  • The Peculiar and Sudden Nearness of the Moon

  • Desert Dreamers

  • Hothouse Flowers

  • Summer Knowledge

  • Kiki’s Delivery Service

  • Golden Opportunity

  • The Puzzle Place

  • Hishoku (Not Color)

  • Kalito

  • Journey Home

  • War Brides

Books

  • The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women

  • But Still, Like Air, I’ll Rise

  • American Political Plays

  • Unbroken Thread

  • American Dreams

  • Tea: A Novel

  • Short Plays For Young Actors

  • Writer’s Block Busters

  • Eight Plays for Children

  • Intersecting Circles

  • Multicultural Monologues for Young Actors

  • Asian American Drama: Why We Write

  • The Beiging of America

  • Red & Yellow, Brown & Black

  • Monologues for Actors of Color

  • Contemporary Women’s Plays

  • Playwriting Master Class

  • Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

  • Life as a Playwright

  • Mixed Race 3.0: Risk and Reward in the Digital Age

  • Dream of the Water Children: Memory and Mourning in the Black Pacific

  • Green Tea Girl in Orange Pekoe Country

Additional Resources

Readings

Breslauer, J. (1991, July 7). Hues and Cries : For playwright Velina Hasu Houston, it’s neither black nor white but a varied palette that
 touches her Amerasian sensibilities; she draws on her own remarkable background in her new play, ‘Basic Necessities’. Los Angeles
 Times. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-07-ca-2854-story.html
Goodman, W. (1987, October 21). Theater: 'Tea,' End Of Trilogy. New York Times, p. 23. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/21/theater/theater-tea-end-of-trilogy.html.

Haedicke, S. (1994). “Suspended between Two Worlds”: Interculturalism and the Rehearsal Process for Horizons Theatre’s Production
of Velina Hasu Houston’s Tea. Theatre Topics, 1(1), 89–103.

Hara, E. (n.d.). Transnational theatrical representation of the aging: Velina Hasu Houston’s calligraphy. Angelaki - Journal of the
Theoretical Humanities, 22(1), 93–102. https://doi-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.1080/0969725X.2017.1285984

Jung, B.-E. (2017). Female Spaces of Hybridity as Resistance in Velina Hasu Houston’s Plays. Hyeondae Yeongmi Hyi’gog, 3, 211.

Midgette, A. (2007, June 17). Steeped in Female Bonding, Shared With a Troubled Ghost. New York Times. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/theater/reviews/31tea.html

Bibliography

Biography. (n.d.). Retrieved April 11, 2021, from http://www.velinahasuhouston.com/

Houston, V. H. (2007). Tea. New York: Dramatists play Service.

Kokoro (True Heart). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://dramaticarts.usc.edu/kokoro-true-heart/

Moore, C. R. (2011, October 4). Play raises issues of contemporary racism. Daily Trojan. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://dailytrojan.com/2011/10/04/play-raises-issues-of-contemporary-racism/

Photographs. (n.d.). Retrieved April 11, 2021, from http://www.velinahasuhouston.com/photographs.html

Saltzman, S. (2001, December). The Centering Force: An interview with Playwright Velina Hasu Houston. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from http://www.totaltheater.com/?q=node/395

Shirley, D. (1991, January 29). STAGE REVIEW : ‘Tea’ and Empathy : Velina Hasu Houston’s Heartfelt Stories of Japanese War Brides. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-01-29-ca-104-story.html

Episode 11: Velina Hasu Houston [Audio blog interview]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://beyondthelightspodcast.com/episodes/episode-11-velina-hasu-houston

Stier, J. (2020, February 17). A Conversation with Velina Hasu Houston. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://medium.com/players-performers-portrayers/a-conversation-with-velina-hasu-houston-221aa8a5182c

Tea. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=3687

Theatre, Film/TV, Etc. (n.d.). Retrieved April 11, 2021, from http://www.velinahasuhouston.com/theatrefilmtvetc.html

University of Southern California. (2020, February 25). Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://dramaticarts.usc.edu/velina-hasu-houston/

Velina Hasu Houston theatre profile. (n.d.). Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://www.abouttheartists.com/artists/20145-velina-hasu-houston

Web Page compiled by Ruthie Ostrow (2021)