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Seattle Actress Keiko Green Reflects On Success As A Non-White Player

Seattle actress Keiko Green left New York City a few years ago, frustrated with the theater scene and intent on taking her career in a different direction. Instead she found the Emerald City’s openness to new material a boon to her ambitions as an all-around theater artist.

“Seattle is a place that’s really thirsty for new voices right now,” she says. “And as a person that’s not only into performing, but also creating work, I think that it’s been an incredible place for me to grow as an artist here.”

At the moment she has a lead role in the in ACT Theatre’s production of Aaron Posener’s modern take on Chekov, "Stupid F#@*ing Bird." The show is the first of three she’ll perform in at ACT since becoming a member of the theater's core company.  At the same time, a play she co-wrote is up at the Annex Theatre on Capitol Hill. And this is the second year running that she’s had overlapping projects in Seattle.  

Tough To Get Work For Mixed Race Actors

Despite her success, Green is outspoken about the challenges she faces making a living in the theater — because of the color of her skin.

She says being Japanese-American is a big part of her identity. Her colleagues have commented on how certain aspects of that culture seem to infiltrate the work she creates.

“We bring whatever history we have, so for example the show that I wrote last year, called "Bunnies" – that had a lot of human beings playing animals. And that’s something that comes up in Japanese stories quite often, even in Kabuki stories,” she says.  She also speaks Japanese.

“Someone actually, in "Stupid Bird," was telling me that ‘there’s a bit of an anime quality to your acting work,’ which I didn’t know whether that was a positive or a negative, but I took it.”

She says being a mixed race person – half Japanese, with a white father – presents special challenges in the theater world.

“One thing I have noticed is that I have never been cast [in a role] as someone who has a family member. People of mixed race are often portrayed as these lonesome people without any kind of support system, often in the theater, because people don’t really know what to do with them and what their families would look like,” she said.

She felt this as a child, in Atlanta, where Japanese Americans were relatively rare.

“I grew up going to the grocery store and people looking at us strange, once I got into high school, people wondering what our relationship was. And it’s confusing still for people. I don’t think that they quite know how to process that kind of family in their own brains.”

She says that can make it a little bit scary as she fights for what Asian and mixed-race people can do on stage.

Not Sure What Success Will Look Like

“It’s still a little confusing how we can actually get there, because even within the Asian-American community, we’re still … not mixing like that, in quite the right way.”

And for her personally, there’s the challenge of being Asian American, but also 5’9” with freckles.

“Right – what do you do with that?” she asked.

She has found some solace by writing her own material for the stage, building on her training in experimental theater instead of waiting around for others to create works where she might fit in.

“I just didn’t want to be dependent on waiting for other people to give me a job or creating my art based on other people’s whims,” Green says. “And that’s why Seattle has been such a great place for me, because it’s been so supportive.”

Seattle's Alt Scene Rich For Experimentation

She started creating work again for the first time since college at Capital Hill’s Annex Theatre, a longstanding institution for contemporary experimental works. 

“Starting with little 10-minute pieces, that I would create every other month for their variety show. And then eventually getting a musical in, last year,” she said.

"Bunnies" tells the story of an infestation of bunnies at Woodland Park Zoo.

“Inspired by the classical play, 'The Bacchae' – and a musical,” she says with a laugh.

More Diverse Casting  Needed

But another solution to the shortage of roles for non-white talent, she says, would be if theaters would trust their audiences and their actors more with regards to casting diversely. She says they should not be afraid to break with convention and get more imaginative. She remembers, even in Atlanta in the 1990s, where there are much deeper issues of racism, seeing productions of Shakespeare with mixed casting – and audiences embracing the experience. 

Here in Seattle, she says that’s still not happening in quite the same way.

“It’s scary,” she says. Some companies are starting to push those boundaries, such as Book-It Repertory Theatre's production of "Emma" last year, which featured a large mixed cast of actors.

“But again, it comes down to the family. We still have these ideas of how we’re portraying family and whether we’re allowed to mix like that,” Green says, but she wants to see more of that happening.  

“It might throw some people off for maybe the first 10-15 minutes,” she says.  “I think that after that, they’ll get over it,” she said.

The rewards won’t just be in more roles for non-white actors such as herself.

“The best part about casting diversely isn’t just that it looks cool. It’s that we bring such different histories and experiences to the stage that the story ultimately just becomes richer, through that.”

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You can see Keiko Green as Masha in ACT Theater’s production of , Stupid F#@*ing Bird, by Aaron Posener, through May 8. The Annex Theatre is showcasing a play she co-wrote with Bret Fetzer, Puny Humans, with performances continuing till May 14.

Bellamy Pailthorp covers the environment for KNKX with an emphasis on climate justice, human health and food sovereignty. She enjoys reporting about how we will power our future while maintaining healthy cultures and livable cities. Story tips can be sent to bpailthorp@knkx.org.