#asian-american-identity

#asian-american-identity

Tiger Style! - Profile Theater's first full production in a two-year dive into the work of playwright Mike Lew - is a canny choice, well-designed to whet audience members' appetite for Lew's work and keep them watching for the next offerings in a planned cycle. The play's quick comic timing deftly navigates themes that might otherwise encounter resistance, leaving those who are willing with lots to chew on.

Profile Theatre's Tiger Style is the best bargain to be found right now in Portland theater. You buy a ticket to a comedy and get-as a free bonus-a dazzling array of vignettes dissecting Asian American education, life, relationships, and myths. It's giving a side eye to corporate life, showing how families break up and make up, and offering biting examples of Communist Party of China (CPC) politics. Such a deal!

"You know, when you do a celebrity bio there's a certain kind of format," he says on a recent afternoon in a downtown Los Angeles bookstore, where outside at one point gunshots and police sirens interrupted the calm inside. "The mission is to dig up all the dirt you can. The essential narrative is, 'This person wasn't an angel.'"