Back Stage; 8/20/1999; Horwitz, Simi
The Immigrants' Experience in Theatre

Still, life goes on. And Zeqay, who has now been relocated to--of all places--Fort Worth, Tex., has his own plans. "I came here because of the crisis, but now that I'm here, I plan to stay a year. And if I can make it as an actor I will stay longer."

In Kosovo, Zeqay was a member of a professional children's theatre troupe and the co-creator of a film production company that produced short original films for video and cassette distribution.

"The first thing I have to do is learn English. So I'm reading magazines and watching a lot of television. The next step, I hope, will be a screen test."

The image of America as the place--literal and metaphorical--for great opportunity lingers. Culture shock is yet to come.

Nobody knows exactly how many immigrant theatre artists are in the States. A spokesperson for the Department of Naturalization and Immigration says that artists register under the category "Extraordinary Abilities," but that category also includes many others. No numbers were available.

And even if they were, their meaning would be debatable. According to Martha Coigney, head of the New York-based International Theatre Institute, "Most immigrants are not going to admit they're artists. It's a real turn-off to immigration."

Many who were professional in their countries are not yet established here. And it's impossible to track down those who are union members. The three U.S. unions (SAG, AFTRA, and Actors' Equity) don't keep their members' country of origin on file either.

Among the dozen-plus immigrants we talked with--mostly New York-based--more than half are union members. The overwhelming majority have day jobs, their credits vary, and a fair number are discovering that some self-reinvention is necessary to make it here. They all marvel at the cutthroat world they find themselves in and the strategies that American theatre artists engage to land paying gigs.

In most countries--outside of the States and Western Europe (to a lesser extent)--the worlds of agents, managers, packaging, and marketing are virtually unknown. The frenzy of the hurly-burly theatre-movie scene is both alluring--all of our interviewees have been seduced by Hollywood movies--and frightening.

Imagine what Polish-born actress Elzbieta Czyzewska feels. A film and theatre star in her country before she immigrated to the States in the late '60s, she still can't acclimate to the relentless competition, and auditions for every small part. She's an Obie Award-winning actress who has appeared in all media. Still, it's an ongoing struggle. Each time it's almost like starting from scratch, she says.

"The big competition in Poland is to get into the acting schools. Without it, you don't work in theatre. But once you get in and graduate, your career is largely laid out for you. You join one of the repertory companies and that's it. You might take a screen test at some point, but outside of that there's no more auditioning."

She adds that the gamesmanship between actor and director during auditions in the States continues to be alien to her. "Instead of discussing how the role should be interpreted, you find yourself shrewdly trying to figure out what exactly the director wants and then give it to him. That's not the way it works in Poland."

Ukraine-born Anatole Fourmantchouk, a director who has been here for five years, echoes the view, making a related point: "Theatre people in Central Europe have far more status than they do in the States. The conservatory training and the steep competition to get it, in part, account for the difference in social attitudes. Theatre people are seen as real professionals, not unlike doctors and lawyers."

That sense of professionalism, he says, is further enhanced by the fact that theatre people are working regularly. "You would never call yourself a professional unless you were working and had studied steadily for at least four years. Here you put an ad in Back Stage and you emphasize 'professionals only,' everybody shows up. There is the belief here that if you've taken a 10-day workshop in Chekhov, for example, you not only know Chekhov well, but you are a professional."

Still, he stresses, "I love American actors because they are so eager, open, and quick. They are team players."

They Come for Many Reasons

Reasons for immigration run the gamut. Marriage, politics, economics, and war have played their respective roles.

Czyzewksa, who was formerly married to a very well-known American journalist living in Poland at the time--she asked us not to name him--was forced to leave the country when he was thrown out. "He had written an article about Polish anti-Semitism that the government did not like."

Perhaps the best-known foreign-born artist living in the States is the Nigerian-born Nobel Prize-winning play-wright Wale Soyinka. An open critic of his homeland's totalitarian government--he has urged insurrection--Soyinka resides here in exile.

When we interviewed him three years ago, he said, his tone stunningly. nonchalant, "There is a price on my head right now. Goons have been sent Out to get me and both the FBI and Scotland Yard have been notified. No, I do not travel with a bodyguard, but in some countries I have to take special precautions. Here, I have friends who keep me informed of what's. happening." His wife and children are in exile in the States, too, but he would not say where, fearing for their safety.

Soyinka's is an extreme case. Still, the United States has always been a haven for artists who are politically repressed. In response to the atrocities in Germany, during World War II, stars of international stature made the United States their home. Among these: Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weill, and Herbert Berghof.

Most artists who immigrate to the States, however, are less notable in their accomplishments and, oftentimes, are part of a mass migration from a single country or area. Others are aspiring performers--indeed, they come to study. A handful have no interest in theatre when they arrive; the impulse develops later.

Adusah Boakye, a native of Ghana, immigrated to the States in .1976 to study engineering at City University of New York. But he found himself drawn to theatre and started taking classes at H.B. Studio. He earned his degree in engineering and has also founded the Africa Arts Theatre Company, a troupe that specializes in producing plays about Africans by African writers. It's a permanent company, mostly made up of African-American actors.

"Unlike Russians and Poles, many African actors who come to this country are not prepared," he says candidly. "They come from countries where theatre is not taken seriously and the training is not vigorous. And once they're here they drop out quickly, moving into other professions."

Tibetan Tashi Ddondup Sharzur--a performer who specializes in traditional Tibetan song and dance-never thought he'd have a theatre career in this country. "I'm doing it to preserve my culture," he explains.

Consider his personal history: Like many Tibetans who fled their homeland after the Chinese occupation in 1959, Sharzur's family relocated in India and Sharzur was born in exile.

"Previous generations passed the theatre traditions down from father to son," he recalls. "In exile, however, the training became formalized. There was the fear that it would be lost."

Still, the professionalism that's required to score in the States was foreign, says Sharzur. "One of the big surprises for me was how truly dedicated American artists are. And the public is genuinely interested." (Compare his response to those from Central Europe!)

Japanese-born Yuko Hamada, who has been in this country for six years, came to study dramatic writing at New York University. "By the time I decided to go to a university I was 22 years old. In Japan, after the age of 21, you can't get into a university. I also wanted to come to the States because playwriting is taught from a practical point of view; it's not simply an academic study."

Launching an acting career in the States is not all that removed from the way it's done in Japan. Still, there are differences, Hamada notes. "In Japan there are usually no auditions. You get a role because you are already known and the producer casts you in it. You move up the hierarchy through an agent who picks you up on the basis of looks, not talent."

Connections are important and you're more likely to have them if you're older, says Hamada. Seniority plays a role and age is valued. 'The young girl in 'Miss Saigon' will probably not be played by a young actress, but rather by a woman over 40."

Interestingly, most of the actors we interviewed are not forced to readapt their acting styles for American sensibilities. One notable exception, however, is Hamada, who finds American actors' "spontaneous" onstage style a bit foreign.

"I know that to Americans we look as if we're hesitating onstage when, in fact, we're thinking. Our moves are seen as stiff and tense, although we don't experience it that way."

Yet she concedes it is difficult for Japanese to be "open and relaxed [American style]. And expressing emotions is hard for us. As children we are taught, 'Don't cry.' 'If you laugh, cover your mouth,' especially if you're. a girl. For American actors it's very natural to respond to directions like 'Laugh!' 'Cry!' For Japanese, the dynamics of expressing emotion is very different. For the most part, we don't speak out. And when we cry, it looks like we're giggling."

Adjustments and Reactions

Aggressive self-promotion is difficult for many. For those born into cultures that frown on the practice, it's that much more problematic.

"You're supposed to repress any impulse to call attention to yourself," says Filipino-born actress Ching Valdes-Aran. "We're all taught that if you're good, you will be noticed. The work will take care of itself." Valdes Aran is an Obie Award-winning actress, currently playing the title role in "Mother Courage," produced by Ma Yi Theatre Ensemble, a Filipino-American Theatre, operating out of The Connelly Theatre on the Lower East Side.

Adds Tibetan Tashi Ddondup Sharzur, who recently appeared at the Tibetan Festival at the World Trade Center: "We're told to hold back and always keep our feet on the ground. Where I come from, you don't talk about where you last performed. No one engages in self-promotion. Since I've been here [12 years], I've acquired the skills of survival. I have an agent. I've made a video, and I understand concepts of packaging."

No Respect

"Devastating" is perhaps an understatement for those artists who were major players in their countries and are unknowns here.

"I'm not used to doing good work and being ignored, says Moscow-born director Oleg Kheyfets. "I've won many international festival awards for directing. Here nobody knows or cares. And the idea that you put on a play that's good and you can't even fill the theatre for three nights--" He doesn't finish the sentence. "I wouldn't have believed this was possible."

Says composer Alexander Zhurbin, also a Russian native, "I was considered one of five top composers in Russia. I had written 50 film scores, 16 musicals, six operas, and the first Russian rock musical. It sold two million copies. I was invited to the States in 1990 to be a composer in residence at the 92nd Street Y.

"But when people ask what you do and you say you're a composer, they say, 'Yeah, but what do you do for a living?' It's taken me a long time to accept the fact that I have to work at something else. I now play the piano at weddings and at night clubs."

Immigrants Rate American Actors, Directors, Methods, Schools, et al...

Most of the new Americans we talked with don't cotton to theatre training (acting, directing, or music) in this country. Many view it as lax, certainly not comprehensive.

Wole Soyinka finds it "pretentious. They seem to be far more interested in creating schools of acting as opposed to teaching the actor anything that relates to his real experiences onstage."

Affection for American actors--and most of our immigrants voice that sentiment--does not extend to American directors, who are seen, in some instances, as invasive auteurs or, more usually, altogether too laissez-faire in their approach.

Says Moscow actor Stass Klassen: "I'm used to directors who analyze each character deeply. In my country, there is a lot of detailed discussion of interpretation. Here directors pretty much let actors figure it all out for themselves."

So what do immigrants think about American theatre?

Responses cover the spectrum. Check out Wole Soyinka' s tempered spin on black theatre in the States. "I find interesting those plays set in the context of the black American struggle: Amiri Baraka, Ben Caldwell, Lonnie Elder, Lorraine Hansbury." But he admits candidly, "I do not have a rapport with the work of August Wilson."

Nevertheless, Soyinka introduced black American plays into the theatre curriculum at the universities of Ibadan and Ife where he taught. "But it's a one-way thing. There's no complementary interest in African theatre [among black-American theatre educators]. I suppose that's because they feel there's so much material in the United States, they don't have to look elsewhere."

Perhaps the most striking source of culture shock for many new immigrant theatre artists is the unions' presence (SAG, Actors' Equity, AFTRA). In most countries, unions for entertainers are unheard of, our foreign-born theatre people note. Theatre companies police themselves. Many immigrants find some of the unions' rules puzzling and counter-productive, i.e., having to interrupt an intense and successful rehearsal

because the union demands that actors get a five-minute break after every hour of work. East Indian actor Ajay Mehta--he recently appeared in the Manhattan Theatre Club's production of "East Is East"--is one of the few immigrant-actors we interviewed who likes the unions and their rules. "The unions make the theatre world more professional and give the performing arts credibility and status that they would not have without them," he states.

Politics and Aesthetics

Adjusting to freedom is a startling experience for some immigrants who come from countries that have limited freedom--political, cultural, and otherwise.

Tony Award-winning playwright ("Nine") Mario Fratti remarks, "The biggest shock for me was living in a country that had no cultural censorship. I wrote an anti-Nixon play and a pro-Che Guevera play, and nobody cared." An Italian native and an American resident for 36 years, he still sounds stunned. "As long as a production makes money, everyone is happy!"

In subtle and perhaps not-such-subtle ways, the political scene and the peculiar way it has affected theatre in their homelands continue to haunt the immigrants we talked with.

Hysen Zeqay recalls how theatre in Kosovo changed radically in 1990 when Milosevic came to power. "A national theatre [one of two] had been created in 1945, and until 1990, it was made up of ethnic Albanian actors and directors. We produced what we wanted. In 1990, first the Serbs told us what we could produce.

"Then they took over the theatre. They fired most of the ethnic Albanians, deliberately leaving 15 actors, so they could turn around and say, 'See? We're fair, everything is fine.' The Serbs then did the same thing in TV, radio, and movies," he continues. "Albanians who were producing the films were out. So were the Albanian movie actors. No new ones were hired. The [alleged] reason? The Serbs did not recognize the diploma many Albanian actors had earned from the Albanian University.

"Before 1990 we were producing classics and original Albanian works. After 1990, all plays had to have a pro-Socialist message. The audience vanished. Non.-professional theatre, which had been partially underwritten by the government, ceased to exist. Children's theatre, which was always self-supporting, was not affected, however."

Adds Kosovar native Agim F. Gerbeshi--a director who has lived in the States 10 years--"When I left, theatre in Kosovo was not at all political. The plays were influenced by Russian realism. The acting, on the other hand, was stylized, theatrical, and metaphorical."

Moscow-born director Arnold Shvetsov talks about Russian theatre during and post Communism. "Before Communism's demise, all contemporary scripts were reviewed by a government official. Classics were usually safe and adaptations were okay if they conformed to a Soviet Union ideology. After the fall of Communism, there was access to more material within and outside the country."

Still, there is a downside to the new freedoms, he says. "Although actors actually earn more money now than they did, funds went much further before and they were a constant. Not all theatres are subsidized anymore and a lot of theatre people, especially those in the tech crews, have to leave the theatre for financial reasons."

Actress Elzbieta Czyzewska describes how the underground theatre in Poland circumvented the Ministry of Culture censorship in the mid-'60s. "Actors and audiences had shared codes. For example, if we were doing 'Hamlet' we might costume Polonius as a contemporary cop. Everyone in the audience understood that we were commenting on the secret police and censorship.

"In movies, screenwriters were able to sneak in their [politically unacceptable] views by writing, in addition to the scene they wanted, one or two more scenes that were blatantly objectionable," recalls Czeyzewksa. "The censors would be so appalled by those scenes, which, of course, they'd cut, they'd forget about the others, and the scene(s) that the writer really wanted would slip through."

Polish director Kazimierez Braun, now teaching at the University of Buffalo, left his homeland because of the censorship. Nevertheless, he points to the significance of Polish theatre within the culture. "Like all the arts, theatre was a way for Poles to maintain a national identity during World War II and during Communism. Unlike in the States, where theatre is conceived of as entertainment, in Poland it addresses spiritual, philosophical, and intellectual ideas.

"The acting style is intellectual and poetic, as opposed to the American style that is realistic, psychological, physical, and literal. In Poland the references are larger. Symbolism is important onstage."

Language, Accents & Typecasting

Mastering English is the key for all new immigrants, especially those who hope to have careers in theatre. Losing the accent and conquering the idiom is central. Not everyone finds that a hardship. For Mario Fratti, "English is the perfect language for drama. It is monosyllabic, telegraphic, and precise. Spanish and Italian are polysyllabic and not nearly as suited for drama." Fratti had earned a Ph.D. in English well before he came to the States. And all of his plays are written in English, a completely natural endeavor for him.

Actress Alicia Kaplan -- brought up in Venezuela and bilingual--on the other hand, finds she is constantly redefining herself as a performer because of the particular demands of language. "When I speak English onstage I automatically tone down my acting. Spanish, however, lends itself to a more passionate interpretation.

Currently appearing in "They've Got Death Bound Up," with the Puerto Rican Traveling Company, Kaplan adds that she is in a peculiar bind as a "Latina who is blonde and blue-eyed. In the States, the mix is puzzling for directors who are constantly typecasting [based on ethnic stereotypes]. In Latin America, these problems don't exist because we're truly a cultural mix and come from everywhere."

Cuban-born playwright Eduardo Machado, who launched his career as an actor two decades ago, also experienced ethnic typecasting that left no room for variation. "I remember auditioning for 'Zoot Suit,' in L.A. and was told I was too tall, too skinny, too white. From the point of view of American casting directors -- and it doesn't matter if they're Latino-American--I can be cast neither as a Latino nor a white American." (His unhappy encounters as an actor made him turn to playwriting eventually. He also heads the playwriting department at Columbia University).

Filipino actress Ching Valdes-Aran faces similar problems because "Filipinos don't have a common look. Casting directors don't know how to place us. Are we Asian? Are we Hispanic?"

Imagine the difficulties Ghana-born actor Adusah Boakye faces, "an African who looks African-American and speaks with a British accent. I'm frequently told that if I want to get work I'm going to have to lose my accent." Another. wrinkle: "Truthfully, I'm more comfortable doing Shakespeare than contemporary plays."

Not surprisingly, ethnic actors from abroad contend perhaps with even more pointed stereotyping than do ethnic-American actors -- i.e., East Indians are still largely cast as cab drivers, newspaper vendors, and restaurant owners. But what about those foreign-born actors whose nationalities are not familiar to Americans yet and are thus not identified with any particular stereotypes?

No matter, asserts Timo Flloko, a celebrated movie actor in Albania, who has lived in Beverly Hill for two years. "If you speak with an accent and look foreign, you are cast as the villain. In my country I always played the hero. Here, I'm the heavy, and sometimes I play victims." (In an episode of "Silk Stalkings" he played a Kosovo refugee, threatened and intimidated by a corrupt and evil shakedown artist, also from Kosovo. They spoke in Albanian; subtitles flashed on the screen.)

Immigrant Playwrights Are Also Typecast

Immigrant playwrights are also well versed in being typecast- seeing their work pigeonholed, to be precise.

Playwright Machado talks about the difficulties he has encountered writing about Latinos. There's the belief, he says, that the subject is not broad based in its appeal. "It's true that if you are writing for non-Latinos you have to explain more. The cultural allusions are not the same.

"For example, in a macho society, if a wife tries to win her husband back after he has cheated, that's viewed as an everyday occurrence. The assumption is that they have a passionate relationship. In America, that relationship is seen as dysfunctional or masochistic on the wife's part."

The rhythms of Machado' s plays are also a little alien for Americans, he notes. "I move very rapidly from comedy to tragedy to comedy again. That emotional back-and-forth is very Latino. But the same American audiences who have problems following the rhythms if Latinos are onstage would understand what's happening just fine if the actors are [Caucasian] Americans."

By far, the most racist experience he had was with a producer, who genuinely liked his work and in the spirit of helping said, "'Your name is Eduardo Machado. Audiences expect you to write 'Carmen Miranda,' not the kind of intellectual scripts you write.'"

Machado is convinced that many Latino-born writers are deliberately writing plays that appeal to expectations, in the belief that it will get their work produced. "They're writing a kind of 18th-century romanticism, filled with flowery language and supernatural occurrences. It's exotic, poetic, and false. If you are writing about the spiritual and erotic, without intellectual content and devoid of politics, you are catering to stereotypes."

Interestingly, playwright Michael Garces, (whose "Dreaming in Cuban & Other Works" recently enjoyed an Off-Broadway run at the American Place Theatre) has a different spin on what American producers expect from Latino writers. "When they think 'Latino play,' especially if the writer has spent a number of years in the States, they're looking for urban problems, kitchen-sink style. There is stereotyping and that's a disadvantage. On the other hand, I suspect I've gotten into some doors that I might not have gotten into otherwise, because I'm Latino."

The Immigrant Experience Reflected on Stage

There's no shortage of plays that look at the immigrant's experience in the New World. For starters, this past season, Manhattan Theatre Club produced "East Is East," a classic example of a work that examines culture clash, intergenerational conflict, and traditions versus modernity.

The scene is London and the central figure is a Pakistani native married to a British woman. Their adult children are caught in the crossfire between new--somewhat rootless--ways and the old--downright authoritarian--values.

At Theater for the New City, two seasons ago, Ma Yi mounted "Flipzoids"--a pejorative term for Filipinos--that considers Filipino life in this country coupled with mother-daughter conflict. The potential "villain" is an adult daughter of an immigrant. The daughter wants to be fully assimilated and has little tolerance for her ranting old-world mother, who in her view belongs in a nursing home.

Last year, at the American Place Theatre, Aasif Mandvi presented his semi-autobiographical one-man show, "Sakina's Restaurant"--in the John Leguizamo vein--which skewers and embraces a range of East Indian immigrant types. These include the traditionalist parents and their super-Americanized kids in conflict with each other and the new society they find themselves in.

Clearly, the playwrights are attempting to present ambiguous situations.

"Asgi, [the protagonist in 'Sakina'] comes to America with great expectations," Maudvi noted when we talked with him last year about his play. "His dream is to make big money and drive a Cadillac. Asgi learns that he is not going to find anything--his identity or his dreams--out there. The answers are within, meaning. he cannot deny who he is or what he comes out of. The characters who abandon their identity and connection to the past are unhappy."

Machado asserts, "In an attempt to justify their place in the New World, the characters [in many immigrant plays] embrace their past as a first step."

The defining experience for many immigrants--as mirrored in their plays--is that they're not at home anywhere, says playwright Michael Garces. "They're strangers in their homeland and in America"

Conflicts over identity are a common theme, says Marcy Arlin, founder and director of the 11-year-old Immigrants Theatre Project, now operating out of the Immigrant Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. The resolutions of these conflicts vary with the country of origin, she suggests.

"If the country was colonized, like those in the Caribbean or Latin America, the immigrants have a series of conflicts to resolve. For the most part, Russian immigrants are fairly confident about who they are--they are Russian. Russian Jews, on the other hand, see themselves as outsiders in both cultures."

The race to be fully assimilated is usually not voiced in these new immigrant plays, explains Professor Janet Neipris, head of playwriting and screenwriting at NYU. "And that's because America is no longer seen as a melting pot. That's very different from the perceived America of 75 or 100 years ago."

Russian-born playwright Sophia Murashovsky observes, as a case in point, that the Russian Jewish immigrant at the turn of the last century, unlike those of her generation (she's been here 20 years), "saw the new culture as a gift from God. And they were terrified of being sent hack. 'That's not to say there weren't very real hardships and inner conflicts over assimilation. But onstage these issues were presented as light, satirical, and ironic. It was a way of covering up their [the immigrants'] real feelings." Her play, "Coyote, Take Me There," was produced at La MaMa last fall. "Coyote" centers on an encounter, seen through a surrealistic lens, between Latino and Russian Jewish immigrants in the States.

Paradoxically, along with cultural self-embracing there's more open self-criticism onstage today in immigrant and first-generation theatre. Self-censorship is not practiced and for the most part presenting stereotypes--as long as there's an element of truth in the images--is largely viewed as acceptable.

The new plays cut across a wide stylistic spectrum. "I see everything from kitchen-sink naturalism to expressionism to plays that include film clips," remarks Arlin. "Realistic or method acting is still the norm for actors from Central Europe. By contrast, African and Caribbean playwrights often incorporate traditional story-telling [music and dance] into their plays.

"Typically, those immigrants who come from totalitarian cultures create characters who are suspicious of others, not sure whom to trust. Their plays deal with finagling, corruption, and hustling," she continues. "Political oppressors are often presented as absurdist and expressionist figures. In much of immigrant theatre the director is far mom powerful than he is in the States. And rarely is 'he' a 'she.'

Dreams that Didn't Work, and Those that Hopefully Will

"There is still the old myth about America," asserts Polish-born actress- producer Marilyn Valant. "And that is, if you come to the States, great things will happen." Valant, who hoped to make it here as a professional actress--indeed, studied formally--simply could not get cast because her accent, as much as she had "softened it," stood in the way.

In 1990, she formed an Eastern European theatre company, Players' Forum, whose mission was to introduce Eastern European and Central European plays in English to New York audiences.

"We got not-for-profit status and had more than 4,000 people on our mailing list," she recalls. "The fact is, E a s t e r n Europeans, including the Jewish population in New York, make up the largest ethnic block here. All of our actors were from Central Europe and we did works-in-progress, staged readings, and translations. Our audiences were mostly the elderly who came from Central Europe and college students who had Central European roots. Still, after several seasons, the theatre fell apart, the board members grew apathetic, and there just wasn't enough of an audience to keep it going."

Professor Kazimierz Braun (also a Polish immigrant) remarks that that scenario is common, especially among Poles. "Since they no longer feel oppressed, they don't need a Polish theatre to maintain their cultural identities. Beyond, that, there's such pressure to find jobs and make it, they don't have the lime to go to theatre, certainly not Polish theatre. They want to go to Broadway."

Russian composer Alexander Zhurbin faced similar responses among his New York-based Russian compatriots when he tried to get them to underwrite his Russian-American Musical Theatre, which despite all odds, lasted six years.

"We did nine original musicals, all with Russian, largely Jewish, themes. The first few productions were in Russian, then we decided to do them in English When we tried to get funding from Americans we were told, 'Get your people to support you.' We got 150 Russian sponsors, but most Russians said, 'We want to be Americans.'"

Zhurbin is now forging his own one-man autobiographical show, "From Russia With Songs," that combines storytelling, music, and songs. The spirit is Victor Borge, Zhurbin says. The show will be presented in English and he is hoping to see it produced some time this fall in an Off-Broadway theatre ideally for a mixed audience--Russian natives and everyone else.

East Indian actor Ajay Mehta notes that until fairly recently there was a loose affiliation of South East Asian actors in New York. "We're on hiatus now," he says, adding, "I would like to form a company for us not unlike the Pan Asian Repertory. We would be able to do Shakespeare and the work of our own native playwrights [classical and modem pieces], as well as the work of emerging [American-based East Indian] playwrights that deal with our situation here."

Two theatre companies--one that's already in the works and another that's about to be launched--are the brainchildren of Russian immigrants. Respectively, these are: Anatole Fourmantchouk' s New York Art Theatre, now in its third year, and Oleg Kheyfets' Stan Theatre Studio, also to be based in New York.

Khetyfets looks forward to a full repertory company with a school on the premises that will do contemporary and classical works. Fourmantchouk suggests that his theatre's goal is "to create a team, a core of actors we use regularly. But more important, all elements in each production will get equal weight, be of equal importance: the writer, the actor, the set designer. We will be like the Moscow Art Theatre, only we will be the New York Art Theatre. Our first production this season will be an adaptation of Dostoyevksy's 'The Idiot.'"

Each director hopes his theatre will have an international flavor, bringing together plays and artists from across the globe. Perhaps internationalism is the new wave of immigrant theatre.

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