Skip to main content

Header Navigation

Artists

Philip Kan Gotanda

He // Him // His

Playwright and Filmmaker

Berkeley, California

A man with short gray hair and glasses smiles slightly with his arms crossed in front of him. He wears a multi-colored, patterned scarf and a dark pinstriped blazer.

Photo by Diane Takei.

“To tell the Asian-American story, it must be the whole story of this country. One must investigate not just one’s own community but its intersectionality with other marginalized communities.”

Philip Kan Gotanda is a major influence in broadening how theater has been defined in America. Through plays and advocacy, Gotanda has been instrumental in bringing stories of Asians in the United States to American theater, Europe, and Asia. Author of one of the largest collections of Asian American–themed plays, his works have been seminal in the field of Asian-American drama.

His plays have broadened the thematic boundaries of Asian American theater. Interracial marriage in Yohen. Generational conflicts of mixed-race children in The Wash. The historic intersection of African American and Asian Americans in After the War. Stereotyping and closeted gay Asian American performers in Hollywood in Yankee Dawg You Die. I Dream of Chang and Eng examines issues of orientalism and disability. A Fist of Roses centers around toxic masculinity and male violence against women. Angry Red Drum is an antiwar critique of the Bush administration.

He has been awarded the inaugural Dramatist Guild Foundation Legacy Award 2020–2022, a Guggenheim Award, a grant from the Pew Charitable Trust, a Rockefeller Award, the Lila Wallace Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, an TCG-NEA Residency, a Sundance Theater Fellowship, a MAP Fund grant, a Creative Work Fund grant, and a New Play Production Award from the Gerbode Foundation. In 2023, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Anthologies No More Cherry Blossoms and Fish Head Soup and Other Plays are published by the University of Washington Press. Other publications include The Wash, Yankee Dawg You Die, The Dream of Kitamura, Day Standing on Its Head, The Wind Cries Mary, The Ballad of Yachiyo, and The Dominion of Night.

Gotanda has directed and produced three independent films that were official entries into the Sundance Film Festivals: The Kiss, Drinking Tea, and Life Tastes Good.

Donor -This award was generously supported by Mellon Foundation.

This artist page was last updated on: 07.11.2024

Theater & Performance
<em>The Dream of Kitamura</em> by Philip Kan Gotanda thumbnail.

Excerpts from The Dream of Kitamura by Philip Kan Gotanda, 2018. Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley, CA.

A Black man and a Japanese woman hold hands and embrace on a stage made up to look like a domestic setting

Yohen by Philip Kan Gotanda, starring Danny Glover and June Angela, a co-production with Robey Theatre and East West Players.

Photo by Michael Lamont, courtesy of East West Players.

Two people crouch center stage, as though in flight. A monitor at the top of the stage reads “A knock on the door in the middle of the night.” A stylized black-and-white illustration of a train car filled with solemn passengers forms the stage’s backdrop.

Both Eyes Open by Philip Kan Gotanda. Operatic telling of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Photo courtesy of Philip Kan Gotanda.