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Candice Afia and Jeff Manabat. Photo by Ed Krieger.
What happened when the Yellow Peril left the Los Angeles area during World War II? A wave of black moved into Little Tokyo and for a few brief years, people called it Bronzeville. In its world premiere at the new Los Angeles Theatre Center, just a few city blocks away from the neighborhood in question, Tim Toyama and Aaron Woolfolk's "Bronzeville" considers what might have happened if one Japanese-American refused to go and an African American family sheltered him. This Robey Theatre Company production has potential, hitting emotional buttons and reminding us that the problem with race in America isn't just black and white.
if you're not up on American history, in 1942 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which mandated that all West Coast Japanese and Japanese Americans be sent to relocation camps. Most of the community leaders had already been rounded up soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Los Angeles at that time was divided up into ethnic ghettos. The Japanese and Japanese Americans were mostly living in Terminal Island area and in Little Tokyo. Some were sent to Santa Anita Racetrack before being transferred to internment camps as close as Manzanar, California, and as far as Arkansas.
With a whole work force suddenly gone and war time production booming, African Americans from the Deep South came to Los Angeles. Of course, there were places where no blacks were allowed and with Little Tokyo empty, some took up residence there.
In Toyama and Woolfolk's play, the Goodwin family moves into a beautiful house with something extra: a starving Nisei man, Henry (Jeff Manabat) who has been hiding for a few months. Father, Jodie (Dwain A. Perry), wants to turn him in, worried about the repercussions, but Mama Janie (CeCe Antoinette) reminds him that she was a slave once and they had relatives who died, being punished for seeking freedom. Jodie's wife, Alice (Adenrele Ojo), plays peacemaker.
Henry becomes friends with Jodie's brother, Felix (Larry Powell), a jazz musician of whom Jodie doesn't approve. Felix not only finds a job in a local jazz club, but he also finds Henry a job--pretending he is Chinese American. Henry is attracted to Princess (Candice Afia) which means trouble at home and in the neighborhood.
While there is emotional power in the script, there are a few rough edges. We don't really know about Henry's life before or after and his relationship with his father (who we don't see until the end). There are no scenes between Henry and his father (Dana Lee). Under the director Ben Guillory, the scenes when Henry is being interrogated do not play well and come off stilted and Henry's conversion isn't entirely convincing.
Still, this Robey Theatre Company presentation in association with the New Los Angeles Theatre Center presentation of "Bronzeville" has great potential to illuminate history and race relations in Los Angeles and beyond.
"Bronzeville," New LATC, 514 S. Spring Street, Downtown Los Angeles. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. $20-$30. Ends May 17.
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