Token Theater 首次亮相“扎克·埃夫隆”

精英同性恋文化的酒吧、派对和健身房以白人为主的四十年后，大卫·李 (David Rhee) 的戏剧《扎克·埃夫隆》(Zac Efron) 仍在与种族主义作斗争。

In the realm of online dating, openly stating preferences such as “No fats, femmes, or Asians” (“no FFA” for short) was once commonplace. This exclusionary language, sometimes expanded to include Blacks (“No Asians, no Blacks”), was prevalent enough on dating apps like Grindr to serve as the primary example cited by former chief content officer Zach Stafford when announcing the app’s ban on discriminatory language as of September 19, 2018. The phrase was often justified as a statement of the dater’s preference rather than an expression of racism, fatphobia, or misogyny. However, as one author theorized in Sparks Magazine, “It reconstructs the Asian identity as a ‘type,’ allowing this ‘preference’ to be interchangeable with one’s racial and ethnic identity.” Perhaps even more deplorable than the individuals who used such language was the community that accepted it.

在在线约会领域，公开表明诸如“禁止脂肪、女性或亚洲人”（简称“禁止FFA”）之类的偏好曾经很常见。这种排他性语言有时会扩展到包括黑人（“没有亚洲人，就没有黑人”），在 Grindr 等约会应用程序上非常普遍，成为前首席内容官扎克·斯塔福德 (Zach Stafford) 在宣布该应用程序禁止歧视性语言时引用的主要例子2018 年 9 月 19 日。这句话通常被认为是约会者偏好的陈述，而不是种族主义、肥胖症或厌女症的表达。然而，正如《火花杂志》中的一位作者所言，“它将亚洲身份重建为一种‘类型’，使得这种‘偏好’可以与一个人的种族和民族身份互换。”也许比使用这种语言的个人更可悲的是接受这种语言的社区。

“Why is white the primary color of gay male beauty?” asked Jimmy Nguyen in the Advocate in 2011. Observing that the bars, parties, and gyms of elite gay culture are predominantly white, Nguyen highlighted the unique irony of being a racial minority within a historically oppressed minority community that nevertheless upholds white supremacy.

“为什么白色是男同性恋美的主要颜色？”吉米·阮 (Jimmy Nguyen) 在 2011 年《倡导者》杂志上问道。阮观察到精英同性恋文化的酒吧、派对和健身房以白人为主，他强调了作为一个历史上受压迫的少数族裔社区中的少数族裔的独特讽刺之处，但仍坚持白人至上。

“In part, that’s because racial minority groups still are not fully integrated into the queer sphere. It’s also because power in America (gay or straight) has historically been concentrated in white hands. But mostly, it’s because the men considered most attractive, by the most people in our country, are ‘all-American’ white,” he wrote, admitting, “The irony for me is that I’m one of those gaysians mainly attracted to white men.”

“部分原因是少数族裔群体仍未完全融入酷儿领域。这也是因为美国的权力（同性恋或异性恋）历来都集中在白人手中。但主要是因为我们国家大多数人认为最具吸引力的男人都是“纯美国”白人，”他写道，并承认，“对我来说具有讽刺意味的是，我是那些主要被吸引的同性恋者之一。白人。”

In a culture that stereotypes Asians as passive and submissive—the antithesis to ideals of whiteness, wealth, and heroic muscularity—what’s a gaysian to do to find love? And what happens when the thing that you obsess over looks nothing like you?

在一种将亚洲人刻板印象为被动和顺从的文化中——这与白人、财富和英雄肌肉的理想相反——同性恋者要做什么才能找到真爱？当你所迷恋的事物与你一点都不像时会发生什么？

“Growing up in the 80s, when I went out to the bar with my Caucasian friends, I kind of disappeared. I didn’t really exist for other people at the bar because that’s not what they were looking for,” says Alan Muraoka, Sesame Street actor and Emmy Award–winning director of Token Theatre’s first full-length live production, premiering this week at A Red Orchid Theatre.

“在 80 年代长大，当我和白人朋友一起去酒吧时，我就消失了。对于酒吧里的其他人来说，我其实并不存在，因为那不是他们想要的。”《芝麻街》演员、艾美奖获奖导演艾伦村冈 (Alan Muraoka) 说道，该作品是 Token Theatre 首部现场制作的长片，本周在 A红兰花剧院。

Forty years later, David and Wai, two gay Asian men in their 40s stymied by racism, the pandemic, and the mundane woes of modern life and dating apps, are still struggling in David Rhee’s play Zac Efron, cowritten by Wai Yim. David (Hansel Tan) wants two kids, a white picket fence, and a husband who looks like Troy Bolton (Efron’s character in High School Musical). Wai (Yim) is a YouTube influencer who reads tarot online to legions of horny horoscope enthusiasts. A contemporary gaysian Bert and Ernie, their bickering and bantering is the crux of a play that makes light of a demographic as specific as astrologically obsessed queens with an online German housewife following, and as broad as second-generation Americans desperate to fit in with their peers and win the approval of their immigrant parents. They’re just two guys looking for love in an onerous world.

四十年后，大卫和韦这两个 40 多岁的亚洲同性恋男子，在种族主义、流行病、现代生活和约会应用程序的世俗困境中苦苦挣扎，在大卫·李 (David Rhee) 与韦严 (Wai Yim) 共同编剧的戏剧《扎克·埃夫隆》(Zac Efron) 中挣扎。大卫（汉塞尔·谭饰）想要两个孩子、白色尖桩篱笆和一个长得像特洛伊·博尔顿（埃夫隆在《歌舞青春》中扮演的角色）的丈夫。 Wai (Yim) 是一位 YouTube 网红，他在网上为大批饥渴的占星爱好者解读塔罗牌。当代同性恋者伯特和厄尼，他们的争吵和戏谑是这部剧的关键，这部剧充分考虑了特定的人口群体，比如痴迷于占星术的女王和网上德国家庭主妇，以及广泛的第二代美国人渴望融入自己的群体。并赢得移民父母的认可。他们只是两个在繁重的世界中寻找爱情的人。

Zac Efron could not be more different from what Rhee originally envisioned for Token Theatre’s debut production: an all-Asian edition of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

扎克·埃夫隆 (Zac Efron) 与李最初对 Token Theatre 首部作品的设想截然不同：桑顿·怀尔德 (Thornton Wilder) 的《我们的小镇》(Our Town) 的全亚洲版。

“Asian Americans kept on being told we’re not part of this town, we’re not part of this country, so my idea was to cast East Asian and South Asian people and have them dress up initially in their traditional cultural clothing. As they become more Americanized, little bits and pieces of their costumes start getting ripped off, and you see them wearing jeans underneath. It ends in death, and I wanted that to be a parallel to the death of their culture,” he says.

“亚裔美国人不断被告知我们不是这个城镇的一部分，我们不是这个国家的一部分，所以我的想法是让东亚和南亚人出演，让他们首先穿上他们的传统文化服装。随着他们变得更加美国化，他们服装的一些碎片开始被撕掉，你会看到他们里面穿着牛仔裤。它以死亡告终，我希望这与他们文化的死亡是平行的，”他说。

The concept for Our Town stemmed from a 2006 Time Out Chicago article on the whiteness of Chicago theater that quoted one casting director as saying that no Asian actors from Chicago could be found for a recent production.

《我们的小镇》的概念源自 2006 年《Time Out Chicago》杂志上一篇关于芝加哥剧院的白​​色的文章，其中引用了一位选角导演的话说，在最近的制作中找不到来自芝加哥的亚洲演员。

“The Asian actors in Chicago were furious—we’re right here!” Rhee recalls. “This isn’t considered our town—so I’m going to do the most traditional American play as pansori, where the only thing accompanying it is a drum, and this person is almost screaming the lines to say, ‘This is our town.’”

“芝加哥的亚洲演员非常愤怒——我们就在这里！”李回忆道。 “这不被认为是我们的城镇——所以我要表演最传统的美国剧《盘索里》，唯一的伴奏就是鼓，而这个人几乎是尖叫着台词说，‘这是我们的城镇.’”

“If you look at most of my plays, they always end in what Aristotle calls a ‘scene of suffering’—Aristotle believed that every play has to have some sort of scene of suffering, whether it’s someone’s hand being cut off, i.e., The Empire Strikes Back, or death,” says Rhee

“如果你看我的大部分戏剧，它们总是以亚里士多德所说的‘痛苦场景’结束——亚里士多德相信每部戏剧都必须有某种痛苦的场景，无论是某人的手被砍掉，即，帝国反击，或者死亡，”李说