Aside from trying to consume more books, I want to consume more theater, and not just musical theater because Short One and I are good on that front.

Billiam and I took advantage of the Berkeley Rep’s Under 30 discount again to watch Naomi Iizuka’s Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West. (Yes, last week was a bit like Asian American Culture Week for me – And the Asian Am Film Festival comes up next week! Aiyah!)

One has to be careful in stepping blindly into a crusade to like theater. At least with books, you can put them down if you dislike them. With plays, you can walk out if you’re really not into it, but that’s always a bit of an exposed, public act. At least for me, I feel a sort of pressure to enjoy something so established, respected, and esteemed as theater. So I’m naturally cautious when it comes to picking out plots I’ll enjoy. Because in my mind, sometimes the actors can see your face and feel your reactions, and it becomes a private moment, and whether they deserve it or not, they might have it in for people like you when you don’t enjoy their work. I just have it “in” for the arts, but in a positive way. I want them to grow, so I feel somewhat responsible when I don’t like something I don’t know a whole lot about, like I alone am responsible for the steady decline of Broadway attendance.

Strange Devices seemed like a good place to start in terms of non-Broadway theater. The plot involves Meiji revolution Japan (1880s) and American travelers (western influence) on Japan. Then Japanese Americans turning the tables on the Westerners enamored with the East. And possibly propelling the back-and-forth to tip toward the Japanese again. It’s a dense tale of Orientalism that probably couldn’t be fully appreciated by just any audience. Just like I can’t stand true blue full-on Shakespeare at the Globe (and I’ve been there, falling asleep to King Lear), the nuances of Asian-Western relations just aren’t for everyone. Strange Devices is most enjoyed by a mind open to the idea that one might roll their eyes to an American White woman married to an emotionally unavailable husband.

It doesn’t kick off all hunky dory, which is why I like a lot of theater. How it can’t waste time in the same ways movies are sometimes so pumped with filler. I liked Strange Devices a lot, but the affinity wasn’t immediate. I had to talk things through with Billiam before I could firmly say “I like it.” It was a kind of slow arrival, like with Where the Wild Things Are. I had to explain that Bruce McKenzie played both the photographer and the professor, and that I didn’t like him as the photographer at all. And we had to verbally confirm that Teresa Avia Lim’s awful Japanese accent was justified in the story.

There’s something nice about being reminded what a wave of influence a piece of technology has, particularly when that piece of technology is not “the Internet.” I never did any focused study on Japan, just Japanese Americans in concentration camps, so it was enlightening to see the similarities and differences of perceptions of majority, culture, and “travel.” I think it’s a great play to analyze, and it’s one of those few performances that’s worth preserving the program for. There are many bits of history I want to learn more about thanks to the play.

The set was really impressive, at first seemingly shaped like a studio with extreme perspective. Then it goes deeper to reveal a geisha’s dressing table. Then it becomes the inside of a vintage camera. Then it becomes a swanky hotel bar. I could have done without the super bright “flash” from the camera at scene changes, but the one thing I loved from the get-go was the set design. Kudos to the mind with that much creativity and ability. It’s pretty mind-boggling to think about the people who make these things fold into wings with minimal storage space.

I wish people who travel a lot would hear dialogues like these. I speak from the knowledge that sometimes I’m that annoying tourist, and I’m making subconscious judgments on other people’s cultures based on how wide my eyes are getting. I say Strange Devices is a great work to see for those curious about cultural influence over history.