1. Yamauchi subsequently generated a string of dramas, including The Music Lessons (1980), adapted from her short story “In Heaven and Earth”; 12-A-1 (1982), set in a Japanese internment camp; and The Chairman's Wife (1990), about Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's wife.

2. Esther Kim Lee, A History of Asian American Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 51.

3. Wakako Yamauchi, And the Soul Shall Dance, in Songs My Mother Taught Me: Stories, Plays, and Memoir, ed. Garrett Hongo (New York: Feminist Press, 1994), 153–208, at 157. The earlier short story “And the Soul Shall Dance” is on 19–24. Subsequent page citations for either are given parenthetically in the text. Although I cite from the script published in Songs My Mother Taught Me, I have cross-referenced the lines I quote with two scripts of the drama in the East West Players Records in the UCLA Special Collections (hereinafter EWP/UCLA). In discussing the play, I use the names of the adult characters provided on the character list. In the short story, by contrast, characters are generally identified by their family names. This difference appropriately suggests the adaptation's shift away from Masako's first-person narration.

4. Osborn, William P. and Watanabe, Sylvia A., “A MELUS Interview: Wakako Yamauchi,” MELUS 23.2 (1998): 101–10, at 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Garrett Hongo, “Introduction,” in Songs My Mother Taught Me, 1–16, at 5.

6. In a 1995 interview with Karen Shimakawa, Yamauchi affirmed that she preferred “seeing her work in Asian American theatres, observing that the effect she sought was enhanced by the intimacy of the (typically smaller) Asian American theatre spaces.” Karen Shimakawa, National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 75.

7. See Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics of Reading between West and East (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), especially chap. 1, “Seeing Modern China: Toward a Theory of Ethnic Spectatorship”; and Josephine Lee, Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), especially chap. 2, “The Asian American Spectator and the Politics of Realism.”

8. For example, in her study of three Asian American women writers, King-Kok Cheung argues that “as minority women these writers are subject not only to the white gaze of the larger society but also to a communal gaze. Mediating between a dominant culture that advertises ‘free’ speech (but maintains minority silence) and an ethnic one that insists on the propriety of reticence, all three writers have developed methods of indirection that reflect their female, racial, and bicultural legacies”; King-Kok Cheung, Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 16. In her work on betrayal and ethnic American literature, Crystal Parikh observes, “The injunction to silence, one not uncommonly depicted in narratives by writers of color, bespeaks an anxiety that the minority insider might come to serve as a traitorous informant of his or her community”; Crystal Parikh, An Ethics of Betrayal (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 96.

9. Patricia G. King, “Gardena's First Play: Her Sink or Swim Effort Now Soars,” Gardena Valley News, 23 March 1978, n.p., EWP/UCLA, subseries 37, box 15, folder 3.

10. See Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001).

11. Dan Sullivan, “‘Soul Shall Dance’ at East/West,” Los Angeles Times, 28 February 1977, F1; Dan Sullivan, “Bringing It All Back Home,” Los Angeles Times, 20 March 1977, V52; Dan Sullivan, “TV Review: Yamauchi Play on Channel 28,” Los Angeles Times, 7 February 1978, E12.

12. Yamauchi, “And the Soul Shall Dance,” 19.

13. Ahmed, Sara, “The Contingency of Pain,” Parallax 8.1 (2002): 17–34, at 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 4.

15. Ibid., 6, Scarry's italics.

16. Sullivan, “‘Soul Shall Dance’ at East/West”; Sullivan, “Bringing It All Back Home”; Sullivan, “TV Review: Yamauchi Play on Channel 28.”

17. An invitation East West Players sent to organizations for And the Soul Shall Dance called it “an evocative recollection.” A transcript of a video public service announcement described it as “a poignant tale of the depression years wrapped in the delicate threads of memory.” See also advertisements in Angel's Theatre Guide, 16 March 1977 and Pacific Citizen, 8 April 1977; and reviews by Dan Sullivan (“‘Soul Shall Dance’ at East/West”; “Bringing It All Back Home”); Ed Kaufman, “‘Dance’—Going Home, Again,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 7 March 1977; Jon Inouye, “Making the Soul Dance,” Pacific Citizen, 11 March 1977; Dwight Chuman, “Yamauchi's ‘And the Soul …’ Premieres at E-W,” Rafu Shimpo, 28 February 1977; and R. Pennington, “Stage Reviews,” Hollywood Reporter, 1 March 1977. These documents are available in EWP/UCLA, subseries 37, box 15, folder 3.

18. Dan Sullivan, “Highlights of a Healthy Year,” Los Angeles Times, 18 December 1977, 96.

19. See Kaufman. In a review dated 18 February 1977, Lori Higa writes, “The story unfolds as if one were looking into an [sic] room from high above. Membranes of the past are sliced away… . Things are shown in a clear, objective light.” Unidentified newspaper clipping, EWP/UCLA, subseries 37, box 15, folder 3. Dorothy Ritsuko McDonald and Katharine Newman suggest that Yamauchi's ability to identify with each character imparts the same ability to the audience: “Yamauchi portrays both man and woman so vividly that the playgoer (or reader) can sympathize with both… . Yamauchi writes as though she herself is playing in turn each character of this little tragedy.” McDonald, and Newman, , “Relocation and Dislocation: The Writings of Hisaye Yamamoto and Wakako Yamauchi,” MELUS 7.3 (1980): 21–38, at 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 28.

21. See Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer, “Diegetic and Mimetic Narrativity: Some Further Steps toward a Narratology of Drama,” in Theorizing Narrativity, ed. John Pier and José Ángel García Landa (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 331–54; Richardson, Brian, “Voice and Narration in Postmodern Drama,” New Literary History 32.3 (2001): 681–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jahn, Manfred, “Narrative Voice and Agency in Drama: Aspects of a Narratology of Drama,” New Literary History 32.3 (2001): 659–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Claycomb, Ryan, “Here's How You Produce This Play: Towards a Narratology of Dramatic Texts,” Narrative 21.2 (2013): 159–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. Julie Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation (London: Routledge, 2006), 48.

23. Roland Weidle, “Organizing the Perspectives: Focalization and the Superordinate Narrative System in Drama and Theater,” in Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization: Modeling Mediation in Narrative, ed. Peter Hühn, Wolf Schmid, and Jörg Schönert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 221–42, at 238.

24. Claycomb.

25. Wakako Yamauchi, And the Soul Shall Dance, unpublished script, 2-6-1-91, EWP/UCLA, subseries 37, box 2, folder 6.

26. Polly Warfield, “What Was It Like to Be a Calif. Japanese in 1930,” Gardena Valley News, 3 March 1977, n.p., EWP/UCLA, subseries 37, box 15, folder 3.

27. Jay Stanley, “Jay Walking from Hollywood,” 16 March 1977, unidentified newspaper clipping, EWP/UCLA, subseries 37, box 15, folder 3.

28. Stephen Holden, “Trying to Adapt to Inhospitable Terrain,” New York Times, 25 March 1990, 63.