In observation of National Angel Island Day 2024, Angel Island Immigraion Station Foundation (AIISF) & the Del Sol Performing Arts Organization (DSPAO) & ArtsEd4All presented a special in-person screening of the 1985 adaptation of Genny Lim’s PAPER ANGELS on Tuesday, January 23, 2024 at the Marina Theater (2149 Chestnut St, San Francisco, CA 94123).
7pm – Welcome by Ed Tepporn, Executive Director, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF) Music by Del Sol Quartet
7:30pm – 8:30pm – “Paper Angels” film screening
8:30pm – 9:00pm – Q&A with Genny Lim
After the film screening, the audience enjoyed a short Q&A about the making of the film with Genny Lim.
Video courtesy of Leianne Lamb, President of Contemporary Asian Theater Scene (CATS)
About PAPER ANGELS
This television adaptation of Genny Lim’s play dramatizes a chapter in the history of the Chinese immigrant experience in America. Set in the early 1900s, the program recounts the experiences of the men and women detained at the immigration station on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. The new arrivals express their hopes and anxieties as they try to reconcile their Chinese heritage with their new lives in California.
GENNY LIM’s ground-breaking play PAPER ANGELS was the first Asian American play to air on PBS’s American Playhouse on Monday, June 17, 1985 at 9:00 PM.
“Miss Lim has written about her play: ‘It was essential for me to discover and to articulate the meaning of what went on out there at Angel Island, how it linked up with the present.’ She and ‘Paper Angels’ are well served by this American Playhouse production.”
— “WNET Drama Looks at Angel Island,” New York Times, June 17, 1985
“Director John Lone (who also directed the 1983 theatrical version) shapes Lim’s simple staged play into visual poetry. It focuses on seven characters who endure dehumanizing detention in Angel Island barracks that segregated the sexes, thereby splitting families and increasing the immigrants’ feelings of loneliness and isolation…
The cast–Rosalind Chao, Joan Chen, James Hong, David Huang, Beulah Quo, Victor Wong and Ping Wu–is excellent. Not that their excellence necessarily will advance their careers on TV. It is not only rare for Asians to perform in works by Asians, it’s rare for Asians to have substantial TV roles of any kind.
Rosalind Chao (Ku Ling) has had recurring roles in “AfterMASH” and “Diff’rent Strokes,” and Beulah Quo (brilliant here as Chin Moo, whose husband deserted her for 40 years) has had some significant roles, though few to match her talents.
The career of James Hong (who plays Fong), a solid actor whose face is familiar to TV audiences, is a better metaphor for Asian character players who regularly work. He has more than 200 TV roles to his credit–many of them as a gardener.”
— “The Chinese Experience is Illuminated on KCET,” Los Angeles Times, June 17. 1985
READ THE SOURCE TEXT: “Paper angels and Bitter cane : two plays,” by Genny Lim, published in 1991 by Kalamaku Press, Honolulu, Hawaii.
WATCH THE PLAY by Genny Lim :
1980 production of Paper Angels Asian-American Theater Company
via California Revealed on the Internet Archive
Cast: Robert McBride, Wood Moy, Katherine Monohan, Jean Lee Wong, A.M. Lai, Dennis Dun, Kelvin Han Yee, Damon Lee, Victor Wong, Lynette Chun, Bernadette Hak Eun Cha, Kitty Tsui, H.R. Rosen
https://archive.org/details/cusb_000172
