SEAMLESS by Dorinne Kondo
A drama with imagination, heart and history that asks is it possible to find happiness in our present and a path to our futures if we remain unaware and unsettled about our history and legacies? Poignant and comedic, this theatrical view of history and identity refracted through gender, work, family, and generation introduces us to successful Japanese American corporate attorney Diane Kubota, whose life is seamlessly perfect. When she is interviewed by Harvard psychologist Dr. Kathleen Goto about her parents' internment during WWII, the questions launch Diane on a quest that compels her to ask how well she knows herself, her family, her culture. A play about history and memory, the afterlife of trauma, and the (im)possibility of knowing the people you love most, SEAMLESS illuminates the lingering impact of an episode of American history that remains too little known. Spotlighting a picture-perfect “model minority” family, SEAMLESS stages the fragmentation of the American Dream.
Dorinne Kondo
Dorinne Kondo is an author, playwright, dramaturg, Professor of American Studies and
Anthropology, and former Director of Asian American Studies at the University of Southern
California. She has written three full-length plays: (Dis)graceful(l) Conduct (winner, “We Don’t
Need No Stinking Dramas” National Comedy playwriting award), But Can He Dance?
(production, Asian American Repertory Theater) and Seamless (2nd place, Jane Chambers
Award) and is at work on a new full-length and a new one act. The latter stages the existential
effects of COVID and anti-Asian violence and was honored at a plenary event for last year’s
national conference of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. Kondo is the author of
award-winning books: Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese
Workplace; About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater; and the recent Worldmaking:
Race, Performance and the Work of Creativity. “Reparative creativity,” a concept from the book,
was a theme for the ATHE national conference and will be honored at an upcoming conference
on the arts and social justice at Johns Hopkins University. Kondo served as a dramaturg for three
world premieres of renowned theatre artist Anna Deavere Smith’s plays: Twilight: Los Angeles
1992, House Arrest, and Let Me Down Easy. She reprised her role as dramaturg in the 30th
anniversary revival of Twilight: Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum in Spring of 2023 and was
represented as a character in the Broadway version in 1994 as well as the MTF revival of
Twilight in 2023.