Despite Rosha's best efforts, she will never fit in. To her classmates, she is forever an outsider, a girl from the fringes of the empire just lucky enough to have well-off parents.
Haunted by the invisible rules that pull her dreams just out of grasp, she walks out on the eve of her final exams, throwing away her one chance at becoming an official mage of the empire.
Years later, her father's shoddy business deals have finally landed him in trouble and he disappears without a trace. Rosha reluctantly enters the services of a rich sorcerer, his last known connection. To protect herself and her family, Rosha must impersonate the most powerful man in the empire. As she becomes everything she has ever hated, she stumbles upon conspiracies that seek to break the empire from within...
A team of lawyers uses a little-known legal writ to fight and overturn the conviction of Fred Korematsu, unjustly sentenced for resisting the WWII mass incarceration of all Japanese Americans on the West Coast. The play draws much inspiration from Enduring Conviction: Fred Korematsu and his Quest for Justice by Lorraine K. Bannai (University of Washington Press 2015) and Justice Delayed by Peter Irons (Wesleyan University Press 1989).
Includes a conversation with playwright Jeanne Sakata and four of the attorneys from the Korematsu v. United States case: Lori Bannai, Peter Irons, Dale Minami and Don Tamaki.
For Us All is sponsored by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library.
Recorded at The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood, in January 2021.
Directed by Anna Lyse Erikson
Producing Director: Susan Albert Loewenberg
Edward Asner as John J. McCloy
Brooke Ishibashi as Karen Korematsu
Tess Lina as Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, Times Analyst, Clerk
Mike McShane as Lt. General John L. DeWitt, CBS News Anchor, ABC News Anchor, NBC Reporter
Derek Mio as Dale Minami
Joy Osmanski as Lorraine (Lori) Bannai, Maya
Jeanne Sakata as Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga
André Sogliuzzo as Edward Ennis, Victor Stone, NY Times Reporter
Josh Stamberg as Peter Irons
Greg Watanabe as Fred Korematsu, Eric Yamamoto
Paul Yen as Don Tamaki
Senior Producer: Anna Lyse Erikson
Prepared for audio by Mark Holden and mixed by Charles Carroll for The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood
Recording Engineer, Sound Designer, Editor: Neil Wogenson
Senior Radio Producer: Ronn Lipkin
Foley Artist: Jeff Gardner
Are we stuck with our memories – or can we fix them? Pia is a neuroscientist whose research focuses on changing the way we process traumatic experiences. Will Pia’s emotionally distant mother - who survived the Khmer Rouge in 1970’s Cambodia – benefit from her daughter’s work? Or are some things just too terrible to remember?
Includes a conversation with Dr. Daniela Schiller, a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
“What You Are Now” is part of L.A. Theatre Works’ Relativity Series of science-themed plays. Lead funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, bridging science and the arts in the modern world.
Recorded at The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood in November 2022
Directed by Anna Lyse Erikson
Producing Director: Susan Albert Loewenberg
An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast recording starring:
Carie Kawa as Pia
Tess Lina as Chantrea
Joe Ngo as Darany
Samantha Quan as Siobhan
Mark Jude Sullivan as Evan
Greg Watanabe as the Narrator
Senior Producer: Anna Lyse Erikson
Prepared for Audio by Mark Holden for The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood
Recording Engineer, Editor and Mixer: Charles Carroll
Sound Design by Charles Carroll and David Wilson
Senior Radio Producer: Ronn Lipkin
Foley Artist: Jeff Gardner
The original song “What You Are Now” is by Him Sophy, founder of the Him Sophy School of Music in Pnomh Penh.
Special thanks to Professor Craig Woodson and Dr. Terry Miller for their recording of “The Sorrowful King” from “Roots of Rhythm.net.”
