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>> Tetsuro Shigematsu's banana pudding by RUPERT BOTTENBERG It's difficult to be called on as a representative of one's culture, particularly if your feelings about that culture are rather ambivalent. "I'm not any kind of Asian activist," says Tetsuro Shigematsu. "I'm a pretty typical North American kid in most ways." In 1993, a Boston theatre producer coerced West Islander Shigematsu into creating a play that would appeal to the large Asian population of Cambridge, Mass. Shigematsu was initially apprehensive. "I violently resisted the idea of doing a show on the subject. It was the equivalent of approaching someone who's still in the closet sexually and asking them do a monologue about their sexuality."
Other episodes in the play deal with the Shigematsu family, particularly his father. The experience led Shigematsu to rethink his stance on his heritage, culminating in a two-year sojourn to Japan. Upon returning last summer, he was approached by local community TV station CJNT to create LalaPanAsia, a grab bag of issues of interest to young Asian-Canadians. Unfortunately, soon after the first few episodes were completed contract negotiations broke down, leaving the program in oblivion. Shigematsu was left with conflicting feelings about the television medium. "On the one hand," he says, "it was really exciting to learn how to do a half-hour variety show. On the other hand, I guess it confirmed what I already suspected, that much of the work is administrative and it doesn't have the same level of creative heat as theatre." Seeking to rekindle that heat, Shigematsu has recently reunited with the original director of Rising Son, Michel Choquette, in order to lay the groundwork for a revamped take on the play. "We're two stones keeping each other sharp creatively," says Shigematsu. Sharp enough to poke through to the next level? Choquette's background in comedy and TV has spurred him on to inject a pop, multimedia element. "Bells and whistles, to appeal to a younger audience," says Shigematsu. With their eyes set on a cross-Canada club tour, the States and (luck be a lady) Broadway, it seems this son's sun will continue to rise.
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The Son also rises
Eventually, though, Shigematsu came around and wrote Rising Son, a series of vignettes performed solo, articulating the condition of the "banana"--the Asian raised as a Canadian. "There's a story called Black Belt, White Lie, for instance, for which the premise is that, being Asian and having taken a few Judo classes like everyone else, everyone thought I was this martial arts expert. I used that to my advantage and exploited that stereotype and abused it, to the point where I'm found out and the jig is up."