Multicultural comedy club performs holiday musical
story by Wendy Shimshak • Intermission • UW Daily 12/6/2001
The musical comedy, Crouching Elves, Hidden Packages, is being performed this month by the Pork Filled Players (PFP), a multicultural group. The show plays from Dec. 7 to 23 in Seattle’s International District.
“Crouching Elves has got a Saturday Night Live vein; it’s got some topical stuff, singing and dancing and lots of other things to make you laugh,” said Roger Tang, cofounder of PFP and the show’s producer.
The plot contains events as diverse as the group performing them, including layoffs at the North Pole, an Asian Santa suffering from an identity crisis, confused multicultural Christmas carolers and more.
As its title suggests, Crouching Elves, Hidden Packages is mostly about elves since, like most cultures of color in America, elves are in the consciousness of the mainstream, but not represented all that much because Santa and his reindeer get most of the press, Tang said.
“In keeping with that, we want to shine the light on the underrepresented,” he added.
Tang said the show contains both lighthearted and more serious issues related to minorities in America, but always with humor at their core.
“[The musical is] multicultural but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be hit on the head with guilt trips about what people of color go through,” Tang said.
Through this show and others, the PFP — a Seattle-based sketch-comedy group — attempts to explore viewpoints and characters through an Asian American perspective in a way that celebrates the similarities and differences between groups. They attempt to do so through the use of humor and song.
“I think Asian American comedy is a great thing,” said singer, songwriter, actor and playwright David Kobayashi, who formed the group. “It’s great to look at yourself and laugh, and comedy is a way to demystify our culture.”
“We want everyone to get our jokes,” Tang said. “We all laugh at the same things — funny is funny.”
The players derived “pork-filled players” from a phrase on Uwajimaya’s lunch menu because they found the name humorous and non-mainstream. The group was formed in the fall of 1997, and is made up of about 12 members, most of whom are in their 20s. The ethnicities of the PFP also vary and include Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Chinese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Guamanian, Hawaiian and Caucasian Americans.
The six-member cast of Crouching Elves, Hidden Packages includes newcomer Edward Tonai, child star of the Emmy-winning The Baseball Bunch.
There has been a considerable amount of praise for PFP’s cast and shows.
“The Pork Filled Players know not only how to make an audience laugh, they also provide a view of Asian Americans that goes beyond the usual stereotypes,” said the Northwest Asian Weekly.
The Seattle Weekly has called the PFP’s work, “likable and amusing, if not always laugh-out-loud funny” and said the group “[mines] familiar sketch-comedy themes like dating, health clubs and the sex lives of cereal mascots with great success.”
The group works with the Northwest Asian American Theatre — the premiere Asian American theater in the Northwest, which is now in its 28th season — to gain resources such as new audiences, money and experience.
Tickets range from $5 to $8 and shows last an hour on Fri., Sat. and Sun. evenings.
(Wendy Shimshak is a student in the UW School of CMU News Laboratory.)
Email oink@porkfilled.com