You’re welcome! It was an interesting questions and your observations thoughtful as well.

I appreciate Brainsofminerva.com giving me and our community the opportunity to respond to what is important to us!

My answers aren’t short, but good questions deserve well thought out and thorough answers.

Again, thank you for your support!!

xoxo
Leslie

Thank you!
Leslie

First, there is a kind of healthy competition that I enjoy with colleagues where we spur each other on to do our best and break through what we thought were limitations. Then, there is the kind where we seek to make ourselves better positioned by putting down, or even crushing those who appear to be in competition for the same role or positon in an orchestra, company, etc. I have tried being cutthroat and I have been the target of this sort of competivieness and either way, it has threatened to destroyed my selfworth.

I have learned that if I am focusing on the other artists in the waiting room who are also up for the same part, I am not focusing on the work. I am only hurting my own audition. Again, as in the article above, what do I need to do to “love” my audition?

In the bigger picture, I learned from being at the UN Conference On Women, that our survival is directly connected to how generous we are with each other. I participated in what I consider now an incredible model for how the world could more than survive, it could thrive if we could be generous in everything we do. I witnessed Palestinian and Israeli women demonstrating generosity of spirit in sitting down to talks despite deep fear and anger. I witnessed women helping other women to participate in the workshops while they watched their booths to sell their wares so they would have enough money to return to their countries. I witnessed Northern and Southern Irish women come together to embrace their commonalities while other women stood up for Muslim women who had been raped and convicted as guilty. The generosity of the Japanese women making an open apology to the Korean and other South Asian women was profound and moved relations forward.

I haven’t been the same since this conference experience. Along with my personal mission statement above in the article, I vowed to be as principled in every area of my life as much as possible and generosity, I learned, is required to remain principled. Generosity doesn’t mean allowing unprincipled behavior, it means caring enough to be principled to help foster what you know is most creative, can grow and make change. AND good art makes change! It is worth it to study and dig within yourself to make the best and most imaginative art you can possible create! Good art is usually created under very generous and principled environments.

Consider joining ArtsForLA.org where you can receive notices like the event I attended with Michael Kaiser. You will get out and learn about the big picture and see that you are a part of something quite large. We artists need to focus on ourselves so much that I know I can tend to get self-involved and self-indulgent. I constantly work to be aware of the world around me.

Finding an artistic home where you can experiment with being a part of something larger that interfaces with the city, state, national, or even international community is also really interesting and a very generous way to contribute to your communities. You get more than one perspective and it can be empowering. You might find your generosity and talents will be far reaching within a larger organization. Try it and let me know what happens!!

Great questions! Yes, I do think that we see many more Asian Americans in the industry than when I started, so I think it has improved. For myself and my colleagues and students, there are more projects, auditions, and ultimately, work–paid work.

There are more of us trained. When I graduated from ACT, I believe I might have been the only Asian American to graduate that year in the country. There were others after me and just a tiny few before me. Now there are often more than one Asian American a program each year. There are also more classes going on since those of us trained have been teaching for a number of years now.

In the next ten years, I see us being household names and a major part of the landscape throughout the industry. This has already begun. Our writers are now in “the room” collaborating on major tv shows and on film sets much more regularly and they are influencing the number of Asian regulars and recurring parts that are in shows and films. There are Asian writers in the writer’s room on LOST. I have to believe this is why there are a number of Asian perspectives represented on that show.

I ran into two Asian colleagues in one week and we had all worked on Flash Forward in the first episodes. What great validation that things are improving!

More Asian American producers and directors are breaking through as well. We have wonderful Asian American writing teachers at the University level now as well. My teacher, Prince Gomolvilas, is a professor in the Master’s Writing Program at USC now. We’re in more places offering expertise, experience and influence. All of these signs encourage us to know we belong in the industry too. We always have, we needed the opportunities, and now we’re getting the visibility that helps the arts to grow in our communities. It’s getting less scary for our parents now since they see many of us being able to successfully make a living working more regularly on screen, in theaters, and also behind the scenes in voice over, on crews, etc. Now when I work I see more than one Asian on any given crew as well.

I can already see the future as my conversations with other Asian American artists have shifted from talking about discrimination to talking about our next projects and what we can dream up and create.

There is still more work to be done regarding discrimination, however, and the studios aren’t stupid. The population here in LA is nearly majority people of color. This is the future now. They won’t leave any money on the table. Their marketing tells them the Asian American communities love entertainment; movies, television, theater. They know we love seeing ourselves on screen and we buy and download programing that we directly relate to. The industry will go where the money is and that is towards us.

So, I see that being on the screen or behind the scenes soon won’t be the issue. The issue continues to be how we are represented in all of these places. We must dream and plan so that we are in charge of how we want to be portrayed in the stories and conversations that are important to us. We plan so we can be ready to pitch and make sure these projects are included in budgets and production.

Keep dreaming and planning! Thank you for the questions!
Leslie