by June Chua

At the age of six, Nina Aquino found herself at the centre of a tempest. It was her first professional gig and she had the lead in the musical "Annie," but management was in a tizzy over her hair.

"They wondered if I should wear a red wig or have my hair curled. They debated it for weeks," laughs the director and dramaturge of fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company in Toronto, Canada. "I felt like a rebel, me and my black hair. In the end, I had my hair curled."

The little girl with the problem hair grew up to become a veteran of musical theatre. Aquino performed "Annie" while living in Houston where her mother was a representative of the Government of the Philippines. After six years in the U.S. the family returned to Manila where Aquino continued a successful career as a musical actor.

The title song of "Annie" imbues the 27-year-old's spirit because all she can think about is "tomorrow." While finishing her masters in theatre at the University of Toronto, she began holding play readings with a loose collective of actors in her living room. The group blossomed into the fu-GEN (short for: "future generation") Asian Canadian Theatre Company, which incorporated in August 2003. Fu-GEN has a board of directors and runs playwriting workshops, play readings for actors and theatre skills seminars from how to read a Shakespearean play to stage fighting.

"There are not a lot of full-time Asian-Canadian artists, so we need to make work for ourselves. I want to mount new works," says Aquino.

Canada has a population of 31 million plus and Asians account for about one out every 10 people, yet their presence in the professional theatre scene is negligible.

Fu-GEN is helping artists in their 20s and 30s become professional playwrights, actors, directors and set designers. Aquino is emphatic about not staging plays concerning "dragons, jade, parents of my parents or being fresh-off-the-boat."

The company is fresh off a winning September run at Toronto's Factory Theatre with a stage adaptation of Terry Woo's novel "Banana Boys." The story follows the friendship of five young Canadian men, lost between the demands of their Chinese parents and society's definition of success.

The production was a breakthrough in many respects: an all-Asian cast and management from different backgrounds (Korean, Hapa, Chinese, Filipino), a new Asian-Canadian play and a story that spoke to the experiences of 20-something Asian-Canadians. It also made a profit. In the last 10 days of the play's two-week run, the theatre was sold out nearly every night.

For Richard Lee, who starred in the play and is also fu-GEN's general manager, it blasted through decades of stereotyping.

"You can look at the Caucasian male and there's the player, the jock or the artsy guy. All those types exist in the Asian culture and types in between. I know them. It's nice this play has all that."

Inspiration: Bruce Lee

The 28-year-old has been with fu-GEN from the time play readings were held in basement apartments. Lee has a bachelor of arts in acting and has appeared in several professional productions in Toronto.

"What fu-GEN has given me is the opportunity to explore different facets of myself as an artist. I was encouraged to start writing a play. I discovered I didn't like playwriting but now, I have respect for the craft. It informs my acting."

Lee has just completed a project studying martial arts and its application to theatre, made possible by an arts grant. He spent a year with different instructors learning aikido, kung fu and a South Asian form of fighting called banethi (bah - NETTEE).

"I want to teach students how to utilize those techniques for the stage, how to use martial arts to tell a story."

Lee's fascination with martial arts dates back to Bruce Lee, someone he regards as a role model.

"Bruce Lee became an extreme martial artist on screen to battle the stereotype of the weak Asian guy."

Just as Bruce Lee worked hard to break barriers, Aquino wants Asian Canadian artists to keep striving.

"I'm all about self-creating and not waiting for your agent to call. Write a play! I'll show you where the grants are, I'll show you how to produce. Don't wait and whine."

Asian artists have been trying to gain a foothold on the Canadian scene since the mid-1800s, when various cultural community theatre companies came into being. One of the earliest was the Chinese United Dramatic Society, formed in 1933, which performed Chinese operas. Through the eighties and nineties, several groups sprouted up such as the Carlos Bulosan Cultural Workshop, focusing on Filipino social issues, the Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre and Loud Mouth Asian Babes in Toronto.

Growing New Talent

What sets fu-GEN apart is that nurtures and promotes emerging Asian artists while developing new material for the stage.

"It's exciting what [fu-GEN] is doing," says Nadine Villasin, creative director of the Carlos Bulosan Theatre, which morphed from a community theatre group to a professional one three years ago. "They are taking it to the next level, to depict the lives of Asian-Canadians in a truthful way. Ten years ago, Asian actors couldn't even beg for an audition in this city."

Norman Yeung is one fu-GENer who wants to spawn new stories. The 26-year-old actor/writer/painter is developing a script to be read at fu-GEN's second annual "Kitchen Potluck" of new plays slated for next spring.

"I've never had anything produced. I've written scripts for creative writing courses but fu-GEN is providing us with a venue for free, workshops to make us better writers and an audience. Without them, I'd be lost."

Yeung's play will focus on three characters, two are Asian and one will be Caucasian. The plot will cast light on the issue of fetishization of the Asian female, why they are seen as "exotic" by white males.

"It came from my first playwriting session at fu-GEN. We were given a photograph and told to write a story around it. I had an image of three people and that sparked my plot."

Yeung credits Aquino with creating an environment for artists to flourish.

"In any movement, the leader has to be strong and have a plan. Nina is that for young Asian Canadian artists here. She's professional. She has a board of directors, funding intact and plans for future seasons past 2007. Fu-GEN has scope and foundation."

Yeung says he'd like to write plays that don't have the word "Asian" in them, but happen to have Asian actors. It's also a goal for Nina Aquino.

"Years from now, we'll become the fu-GEN Theatre Company, never mind the 'Asian' part," declares Aquino.

It circles back to her "Annie" experience. Both Aquino and Richard Lee say they want all the Asian theatre orphans to find a home with the fu-GEN family. Lee puts it aptly: "We don't want to have to knock on other peoples' doors. We can build this home for ourselves."