www.propergander.net Trent (Teddy Chen
Culver) opens up to Ellen (Anh Nguyen).
"Achievers" plays at the Century City Playhouse Oct. 5 to Nov.
11.
By Ryan Joe
Daily Bruin Contributor
Oversexed and jacked to the nines with rabid testosterone,
Johnny Wang drills a gun into his creator, Murphy’s face. The
antithesis of all Asian-American stereotypes, he froths, he blazes,
acidic with red-raw masculine fury. Here is a badass who sticks his
Wang in more places than Shaft stuck his; who drives a BMW, not an
Acura; who doesn’t know kung fu.
Johnny Wang is a fictional character created by the aspiring
writer Murphy, who is yet another character in
“Achievers,” a play brought to life by director Naoya
Imanishi, playwright Michael Golamco and a close-knit group of
other artists, mostly UCLA grads.
“Achievers,” which opened Friday at the Century City
Playhouse, shadows five freshly-evicted Asian-American friends in
their post-college years, unleashed into the turbulent world of
West Los Angeles. In a play that interweaves situations and
relationships, the cast of five must deal with their private
insecurities, social identities and racial disparities in ways that
are sometimes poignant, sometimes dramatic and sometimes … damn
funny.
The play is presented by ProperGander, a local Asian-American
theater troupe (which itself stemmed from the UCLA-based Asian
American theater company Lapu, the Coyote that Cares).
Though the company’s members all have Asian ancestry,
Golamco doesn’t necessarily see this production as the
aggrandizement of preachy Asian-American social issues.
“It’s not really an Asian-American play,”
Golamco said. “The best way to describe it is a play about
our generation that has Asian Americans in it.”
Yet the members of ProperGander are certainly conscious of
Asian-American issues and stereotypes that exist within
today’s society. Actor Teddy Chen Culver plays dual roles,
one as the hardboiled Johnny Wang.
 www.propergander.net A peaceful revelation with
Ellen(Anh Nguyen) and Akira (Mariza
Rivera). “(He’s) very in your face about his
views on how angry and frustrated and pissed off he is about the
situation on how Asians are, say, not considered good-looking
men,” Culver says.
While Johnny Wang is a marauding lunatic with a firearm,
Culver’s other character frequents the opposite end of the
spectrum. The character Trent has a thick Asian accent and his
insecurities with women are expressed through chronic acts of
masturbation.
“We deal with a lot of the same issues that other cultures
do,” Culver says. “But we just have a different spin on
them and we want to bring that to life.”
“Achievers” remains ProperGander’s biggest
endeavor yet. It is their first professional production, though the
play has already been performed on college campuses across the
United States from Dartmouth to Stanford.
In spite of the multiple national productions of
“Achievers,” ProperGander has the advantage of being
the home theater company of playwright Golamco.
“We actually watched the Stanford production. It was
interesting (but) I think we have a bit more depth of
understanding. If we had a problem, we’d say “˜Mike,
what were you going for with this part?'” said director
and former LCC member Imanishi.
Benefiting from close ties like this, ProperGander is an
intensely personal group that, following graduation, scoured
neighborhood trash bins for unwanted debris, wood and other
materials with which to build a huge stage in the backyard of actor
and UCLA graduate Randall Park
Free space being L.A.’s most precious commodity,
ProperGander had to scrape out their own performance place where
members still get together to put on short performances, one-acts,
soliloquies, and improv in a hodge-podge performance. Like a keg
party for the performing arts, the troupe, surrounded by around 90
fans in the audience, would eat, drink, write and perform.
“It’s based on everyone’s
contributions,” Park said. “We have all this alcohol, a
resident DJ and people just come and hang out.”
So what are the prospects of overloading one’s liver at
the Achievers production?
“Not this one. We reserve that for the backyard,”
said Park. We’re taking this one pretty seriously.”
THEATER: “Achievers” will be at the
Century City Playhouse from Oct. 5 to Nov. 11. Showtimes are at 8
p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 6:30 p.m. on Sundays. There will
be no shows Oct. 26, 27 or 28. Tickets are available by phone at
(323) 655-TKTS (8587) or at the box office one hour before
showtime, and cost $15 for regular performances and $12 for
students with ID.