Originally staged by the East West Players, pioneering author Wakako Yamauchi’s adaptation of her award-winning play, “And the Soul Shall Dance,” for KCET’s Hollywood Television Theatre is a poetic, haunting drama that reveals the hardships Japanese Americans faced during the Great Depression. Set in California’s Imperial Valley, Yamauchi's moving work explores the lives of two farming families as they struggle to make ends meet and assimilate in a so-called land of opportunity defined by systemic racism.

Yamauchi’s teleplay unfolds through the eyes of a sensitive girl, Masako (Denice Kumagai), who bears witness to the challenges facing her loving parents (Pat Li, Sab Shimono) and the unraveling lives of a neighboring couple, Emiko (Haunani Minn) and Oka (Yuki Shimoda). Abused by her husband from an arranged marriage, Emiko dreams of a return to Japan to reclaim her past life, far from an inhospitable America. Her profound journey represents an indelible requiem for generations of Issei and Nisei beyond the play’s setting of the 1930s, with Yamauchi herself unjustly incarcerated as a teen at the concentration camp for Japanese Americans in Poston, Arizona, during World War II.

Before the screening in the lobby, beginning at 6:30 p.m., UCLA Library Audiovisual Project Conservator Maile Chung will display archival materials related to the East West Players from UCLA Library Special Collections. In person: Q&A with actor Denice Kumagai-Hoy; Brian Niiya, content director, Densho; Lily Tung Crystal, artistic director, East West Players; moderated by UCLA Professor Karen Umemoto, Helen and Morgan Chu director of the Asian American Studies Center.

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