Alison Minami

Alison Minami

Alison Minami is an Asian American playwright, actress, and educator based in Los Angeles. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from UC Riverside and a Master's in Secondary English Education. She is the recipient of the Gluck Fellowship for its Program for the Arts in Drama and a Humanities Research Grant at UCR. She is a member of Antaeus Theater Professional...
Alison Minami is an Asian American playwright, actress, and educator based in Los Angeles. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from UC Riverside and a Master's in Secondary English Education. She is the recipient of the Gluck Fellowship for its Program for the Arts in Drama and a Humanities Research Grant at UCR. She is a member of Antaeus Theater Professional Playwrights Lab and of the Company of Angels Playwrights Group (Season 2020-'21). She is a former student of the David Henry Hwang Writer's Institute at the East West Players Theater, a former member of the writers' pool for Playground LA, a 10-minute-play collective, and a member of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights. Her plays have had development and/or readings at The East West Players Theater, the Torrance Cultural Arts Foundation, Here and Now Theatre Company, The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, the Victory Gardens Theater of Chicago through the CAATA Confest, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival through their Black Swan New Works Development Fellowship. Her fiction can be found on connotation press and Angel City Review and her storytelling has been featured on the Moth Radio Hour.

Plays

  • Face to the Sun by Alison Minami
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    8
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    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama + 1 more
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    Keyword: japanese internment, Japanese American + 6 more
    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama, political
    Keyword: japanese internment, Japanese American, Japan, Cuba, Cuban, Japanese-Cuban, revolution, Castro
    Set in Havana at the dawn of the Cuban Revolution, Face to the Sun is a lyrical, language-driven, play with a multicultural cast. Haunted by memories of his homeland and fearful of another war-driven imprisonment by the Cuban government, Hamada, an upstanding leader of the Japanese Cuban community, decides to uproot his family and return to Japan. But his daughter Flora is running with a guerrilla and Isabel,...
    Set in Havana at the dawn of the Cuban Revolution, Face to the Sun is a lyrical, language-driven, play with a multicultural cast. Haunted by memories of his homeland and fearful of another war-driven imprisonment by the Cuban government, Hamada, an upstanding leader of the Japanese Cuban community, decides to uproot his family and return to Japan. But his daughter Flora is running with a guerrilla and Isabel, his Cuban wife, is no longer attracted to him. Each of them must make a choice about love and loyalty to both country and family.
  • This is a Banana by Alison Minami
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, farce, satire
    A cautionary tale about religious cults and following a group-think mentality in order to find happiness.
  • Sinkhole by Alison Minami
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    7
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    Genre: comedy, drama + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, drama, political
    When a giant sinkhole hits a small town in Florida, Paul, the prodigal son, goes missing. His sister Naomi is convinced that he's fallen into the hole, but his mother believes that he's used the hole to fake his own death, thereby shirking his obligations to the family owned sushi restaurant. When Edgar, a big city scientist is sent to study the hole in an effort to combat climate change, Naomi's...
    When a giant sinkhole hits a small town in Florida, Paul, the prodigal son, goes missing. His sister Naomi is convinced that he's fallen into the hole, but his mother believes that he's used the hole to fake his own death, thereby shirking his obligations to the family owned sushi restaurant. When Edgar, a big city scientist is sent to study the hole in an effort to combat climate change, Naomi's stupor is shaken by his new perspective. Her ex-husband, Henry, also the mayor, is frustrated by Edgar's prolonged research and lobbies for the hole to be filled so that commerce can once again be revived. The play moves back and forth between a year after the sinkhole has occurred, a time right before the sinkhole hits, and a dream-like surreality where characters explore the hole itself.
  • Shizzy's Story by Alison Minami
    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: young audiences
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    Keyword: Japanese American, internment + 1 more
    Genre: young audiences
    Keyword: Japanese American, internment, concentration camps in World War II
    When Jason, one of Principal Tagaki's students, name calls Amir for being Muslim, she uses the incident as an opportunity to share her story of being sent to a Japanese Internment Camp during World War II, and to teach the students an important lesson about racism and what it is to be an American. Based on a true story.
  • Urban Scholars Academy by Alison Minami
    Cast: 
    5
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    Genre: drama, political
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    Keyword: Charter Schools, education + 4 more
    Genre: drama, political
    Keyword: Charter Schools, education, Race, College Readiness, Race and Class Inequality, Asian immigrants
    Nia Thao, principal of the Urban Scholars Academy (USA), a newly opened charter school, goes head to head with Principal Lyons, who runs Mckinley High, where USA is housed in a forced co-location agreement by the district.
  • Dear Baby X by Alison Minami
    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: comedy, drama + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, drama, political
    Kim struggles to have a baby on her own while also navigating the complexities of being an Asian American police officer trying to date Donovan, an African American graduate student whose concerns about institutionalized racism in the police force and beyond are the central theme of his dissertation.