Not long before theatre director Mina Morita spoke about the upcoming production 'Yoga Play', Donald Trump made a ridiculous claim during a televised presidential debate.
After ranting about crowd sizes at his rallies, the presidential contender claimed immigrants were eating the pets of residents of a town in Ohio.
“There’s so many memes,” Mina laughs. “All of my friends are marking their pets safe. I mean, you can’t make these things up. If somebody wrote that into a TV script, no one would buy it.”
Western treatment of immigrants has been an ugly experience. When not being subjected to racial vilification by former presidents, immigrant families suffer the indignity of accusations regarding assimilation while also having their identities appropriated and commodified.
It’s these themes that Mina has been recently exploring as she takes the helm directing ‘Yoga Play’, coming soon to Brisbane’s La Boite Theatre.
Set in Los Angeles, California, ‘Yoga Play’ follows Joan, the new CEO of yoga apparel company JoJoMon. After the previous CEO is forced out due to a scandal, Joan is struggling to bring the company back to its former glory when she comes up with a risky idea that could potentially make or break the business.
“It’s a hilarious romp through corporate America,” Mina describes. “It’s very much about how spirituality is co-opted for capitalism, and the fiasco that ensues because of it causes some of the folks who are running the corporation to consider what authenticity might mean and how they could be more grounded, and also what an actual spiritual practice is.”
‘Yoga Play’ is the work of writer Dipika Guha, a writer who has worked on stage and for shows such as ‘The Marvelous Mrs Maisel’. Born in Kolkata, India, Dipika immigrated with her family to Britain, Russia, and finally the US. It’s while living in Berkeley, California when she was commissioned to write a new work.
“[Dipika] was inspired because she wanted to write about yoga and she wanted to know more about yoga as a South Asian playwright,” Mina explains. “She went to a three-hour supposed-informational, and she arrived and the person who was there was this white guy who had been deeply involved in the spiritual practice for decades, and so knew more about yoga than she did.
“She thought, ‘This is really interesting. What is true lineage?’ So, she wanted to explore the complexities of that, and for many of us who are immigrants or come from immigrant families, what is our relationship to our culture?”
Mina has known Dipika for more than 15 years since meeting in Berkeley. Like Dipika, Mina’s own family story involves immigration across generations, beginning with her Russian grandmother fleeing the Bolshevik revolution to Japanese-occupied China. There, she met a Japanese supply soldier, fleeing to his home in Japan. Mina’s mother immigrated to Wisconsin in the US, and Mina was born in Long Island and has since moved to Hawaii.
“I had to really face questions about survival related to assimilation and find belonging in that way,” she says. “As I grew up, I started to question how close I was to my culture because I’m also of mixed heritage. There’s something about forging or choosing the best bits of ourselves that we want to really continue to develop or learn from.”
While the play is set in California, Mina believes Australian audiences will relate to the play’s themes of authenticity, exploitation, and cultural appropriation.
“Something I’m really enjoying [about Australia] is that there is an archness that I love,” she says. “There’s a great sense of humour and self-awareness in the community here, and so many similar elements just around yoga, which feels so big [in Australia]. [‘Yoga Play’] felt like such a great match for the community here, just thinking about the demographics and the identities here.”
‘Yoga Play’ plays La Boite Theatre from 7-23 November.
