Updated FLOWER DRUM SONG and More Set For East West Players' 60th Anniversary Season

East West Players has announced its 60th Anniversary Diamond Legacy Season, helmed by recently appointed Artistic Director Lily Tung Crystal.

The season includes five productions by acclaimed Asian American writers that blend time-honored classics with bold new works.

EWP’s 60th Anniversary Season will launch in 2025 with Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band, directed by Chay Yew, followed by Philip Kan Gotanda’s Yankee Dawg You Die. EWP will be part of a simultaneous world premiere of the sequel to The Brothers Paranormal, Prince Gomolvilas’s Paranormal Inside, directed by Jeff Liu. Jaclyn Backhaus’s timely new work Wives will make its Southern California premiere. Closing the season is the golden-era musical Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song with a new, updated book by Tony Award-winner David Henry Hwang revised especially for the Spring 2026 production to be directed by Lily Tung Crystal. Tam Tran Goes to Washington, written by Elizabeth Wong, returns as the 2025/26 Theatre for Youth touring production.
 
“It is a profound honor to curate and present East West Players' 60th Anniversary Season, a milestone that reflects the enduring power of our stories to transform and uplift,” says EWP’s Artistic Director Lily Tung Crystal. “This season is a celebration of the brilliant writers who define multiple generations of Asian American theater classics, and a tribute to the persistent impact of their work. We’re honoring the legacy artists who paved the way for us and make what we do possible. We’re also looking forward to the new voices in our community who will create the next 60 years of the American canon. We are excited to amplify both long-established and contemporary voices that will continue to inspire and captivate our community for years to come.”

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song

The enchanting golden-era musical Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song, directed by EWP Artistic Director Lily Tung Crystal, will serve as the grand finale for EWP’s Diamond Legacy season. This captivating tale will receive a newly updated book by the Tony Award-winning playwright, librettist, screenwriter, and EWP theater namesake David Henry Hwang. At a time when conversations about identity and cultural preservation are more important than ever, Hwang’s reworking of the book for the Spring 2026 production allows Asian Americans to reclaim this cherished story in a meaningful way, illuminating the complexities and richness of the community’s continuous evolution. Flower Drum Song pulls back the curtain on themes of assimilation and tradition in 1950s San Francisco Chinatown as Mei-li, a young Chinese opera artist fleeing communism, arrives in America, where she is immediately drawn into the dazzling world of the Grant Avenue nightclubs.
 
“My history with East West Players started when I was 10 years old. My mother was the pianist for one of their first productions, Menotti’s operetta The Medium, directed by Mako,” says playwright David Henry Hwang. “At an early age, I saw people who looked like me as actors and artistic leaders, which perhaps made it possible for me to envision myself as a playwright when I got to college years later. In 2002, EWP co-produced my new version of Flower Drum Song, which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum before moving to Broadway. I’m thrilled to revisit and further revise this classic musical, working once again with the company that has been at the heart of my entire artistic life.”
 
EWP Artistic Director Lily Tung Crystal says, “As a theater kid growing up, I'll never forget the first time I saw Flower Drum Song—it was pure magic seeing faces like mine light up the silver screen in a major Hollywood production. The original has its share of flaws and stereotypes, but it nonetheless holds a special place in my heart. Watching David's Tony Award-winning M. Butterfly on Broadway opened my eyes to what seemed impossible: a real path in theater for an Asian American artist like me. This feels like a watershed moment—directing one of my most cherished musicals written by a playwright I've long admired, whose name graces our theater's marquee in my first season as artistic director of East West Players. After directing and bringing David's first adaptation of Flower Drum Song to life in 2019, I'm deeply honored to collaborate with him in shepherding the next iteration of this musical that has meant so much to the Asian American community.”  
 
David Henry Hwang and East West Players share an intimate history. The theater’s current location at the former Union Church in historic Little Tokyo was funded in part by Henry and Dorothy Hwang, the parents of the renowned playwright for whom the theater is named. Previous productions of Hwang's work at East West Players include FOB (1980 and 1997 revival), The Dance and the Railroad/House of Sleeping Beauties (1993), Golden Child (2000), M. Butterfly (2004), Yellow Face (2007), Chinglish (2015), and Soft Power, a co-production with Center Theatre Group (2018).
 
Lily Tung Crystal is a director, actor, singer, and the artistic director of East West Players. She is also the former artistic director of Theater Mu in Minneapolis-St. Paul and co-founder of Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a director, her recent productions include the world premiere of Jessica Huang and Jacinth Greywoode’s new musical Blended 和 (Harmony): The Kim Loo Sisters (Mu/History Theatre); the world premiere of Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay’s The Kung Fu Zombies Saga (Mu); Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band (Mu/Jungle Theater); Susan Soon He Stanton’s Today Is My Birthday (Mu); and Steven Karam’s The Humans (Park Square Theatre), which won the Twin Cities Theater Bloggers’ Favorite Play 2022. She also helmed David Henry Hwang’s Chinglish and Flower Drum Song (Palo Alto Players) and the world premiere of Leah Nanako Winkler’s Two Mile Hollow (Ferocious Lotus), all for which she was named a Theatre Bay Area Award Finalist for Outstanding Direction.

Cambodian Rock Band

 
Kicking off the season in February 2025, EWP will present the Los Angeles premiere of Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band, featuring music from Dengue Fever—the LA band that inspired the play after Yee attended one of their Long Beach concerts. This poignant new classic of the American theater canon has taken the country by storm, and EWP is proud to be the first to bring this production to Los Angeles County, the home of the largest ethnically Cambodian population outside of Cambodia. This part-play, part-rock concert explores the story of a Khmer Rouge survivor as he returns to Cambodia after 30 long years. As his daughter prepares to prosecute one of the country's most notorious war criminals, the ghosts of their shared past begin to stir. This deeply moving story weaves back and forth through time as father and daughter confront history, turning to music as a path towards healing. This production brings back Director Chay Yew and features members of the original cast from the show’s world premiere at South Coast Repertory. Yew also helmed the off-Broadway premiere at Signature Theatre. 
 
Playwright Lauren Yee says, “There’s no better feeling than bringing the epic experience of Cambodian Rock Band home to Southern California for its LA premiere at a theater I have long admired, and whose importance to the Asian American theater movement cannot be overstated.”
 
"In Cambodian Rock Band, Lauren has deftly fused history, arts, politics, rock concert, family drama into a potent work,” says director Chay Yew. “This funny intimate epic touches on the timely issues of genocide, human rights abuses and immigration; the rights of refugees and émigrés; the consequences of apathy when a country shifts under the brutal regime; and the destruction of freedom of expression and art in the midst of personal and political upheavals. In Lauren's astute eyes, one thing remains consistent throughout our temperamental world: the resilience and enduring power of art and artists. Cambodian Rock Band celebrates the indomitable legacy of art—how artists capture our individual and national spirit and hopes; and the uncanny ability of art to inspire, affirm our humanity, and to bring us together. I can't think of a more important play for our current times."
 
Playwright Lauren Yee is best known to EWP audiences for The Great Leap (2019), co-produced with Pasadena Playhouse, and is one of the most produced playwrights in America. Yee’s current commissions include Arena Stage, Geffen Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Center Stage, Second Stage, and South Coast Rep. This will be Chay Yew’s tenth production as a director for East West Players. His directing credits with EWP include Big Hunk o’ Burnin’ Love (1998), A Beautiful Country, in association with Cornerstone Theatre Company and Mark Taper Forum’s Asian Theatre Workshop (1998), Golden Child (2000), Red (2002), Sisters Matsumoto(2002), M. Butterfly (2004), Question 27, Question 28 in association with Japanese American National Museum and Mark Taper Forum’s Asian Theatre Workshop (2004), Durango (2007), and Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, a co-production with Center Theatre Group (2023). As a playwright, EWP has produced Yew’s Whitelands Trilogy - Porcelain, A Language of Their Own, and Half Lives (1996), as well as Red, A Beautiful Country, and Question 27, Question 28.

Paranormal Inside
 

Just in time for Halloween 2025, East West Players joins forces with Theater Mu in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota and Perseverance Theater in Juneau, Alaska to present the simultaneous world premiere of Prince Gomolvilas's thrilling new work Paranormal Inside, directed by Jeff Liu. This haunting sequel to The Brothers Paranormal, which made its acclaimed Los Angeles premiere at EWP in 2022, dives back into the mysterious world of Max and Delia—two souls brought together by tragic loss and mutual compassion. As they grapple with the depths of intergenerational trauma and ancestral influence on their lives, a malevolent spirit threatens to consume them. Will they survive the night, or will they succumb to the spiritual possession that lurks within?
 
"When East West Players mounted a stunning production of The Brothers Paranormal in 2022, I fully intended it to be my last show—a fitting bookend to a career that began at EWP so long ago,” says playwright Prince Gomolvilas. “East West Players, Perseverance Theatre, and Theater Mu had the audacity to offer me a new-play commission. I couldn't refuse, and I found that I had more to say about supernatural phenomena, Thai America, cross-cultural connectivity, and the mysterious world in which we all inhabit.” 
 
"How rarely do we get to do a sequel in the theater? What a joy that three wonderful companies came together so we can go on another adventure with these bruised but funny souls, the Thai American Max and African American Delia,” says director Jeff Liu. “They’re older, possibly wiser, but life’s challenges and those voices from the other side aren't done with them yet, so we too get to deepen our relationship with these indelible characters that Prince has so lovingly imagined into further life.”

EWP has produced multiple plays by Gomolvilas, including Big Hunk o’ Burnin’ Love (1998), The Theory of Everything (2000), Mysterious Skin (2010), and the EWP Theatre for Youth show Scrimmage (2019). Director Jeff Liu was behind the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre and East West Players productions of The Brothers Paranormal and the East West Players productions of Ixnay (2009), Chinglish (2015), and Unbroken Blossoms (2024). Paranormal Inside was co-commissioned in 2022 by East West Players, Perseverance Theatre, and Theater Mu, and is supported in part by the the National Endowment for the Arts and Venturous Theater Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation.

Yankee Dawg You Die

East West Players presents a timely revival of Philip Kan Gotanda's Yankee Dawg You Die. This groundbreaking play, returning to the stage in July 2025, illustrates the complex, often fraught journey of Asian American actors in Hollywood. Through the lens of an unlikely friendship between two artists, Vincent Chang and Bradley Yamashita, at different stages of their careers, Gotanda's masterful storytelling exposes the painful compromises actors make to succeed in the industry. First performed in 1988, Yankee Dawg You Diehas long been an indictment of the stereotypes and limitations imposed by the entertainment industry on actors of color. This play ignites crucial conversations about representation, identity, and the resilience of Asian American artists–how far we’ve come in the last 60 years and how much further there is to go.
“Doing Yankee Dawg You Die at East West Players is a homecoming,” says playwright Philip Kan Gotanda. “EWP is where I developed the material for the play. Actors I met, actors I worked with, actors who became good friends. They and their hearts are all in there. The Bradleys, now Vincents. The Vincents, now mostly angels. All alive, living memories.”
 
Philip Kan Gotanda is the author of one of the largest collections of Asian American-themed work and is a seminal figure in the field of Asian American drama. This will be East West Players’ second time mounting Yankee Dawg You Die, which was first presented in 2001. Gotanda’s other East West Players credits include The Avocado Kid, or Zen and the Art Of Guacamole (1979), The Dream of Kitamura (1983), A Song For A Nisei Fisherman (1984), Fish Head Soup (1993), in the dominion of night (1995), The Wash (2001), Sisters Matsumoto(2002), The Wind Cries Mary (2004), and Yohen, co-produced with the Robey Theatre Company in both 1999 and 2018.

Wives

In an era where marginalized voices are shaping mainstream consciousness like never before, Wives by Jaclyn Backhaus offers an ardent exploration of the power and resilience at the heart of women's stories. The laugh-out-loud comedy, featuring a South Asian and South Asian American cast, will have its Southern California premiere at EWP in March 2026. The play finds an immediate resonance after the recent national election, where the first South Asian American woman presidential candidate and the first South Asian American second lady found themselves in the spotlight of America’s two major political parties. Wives takes the audience on a spellbinding journey from 16th-century France to 1920s India and 1960s Idaho, offering potent perspectives on the lives of history’s influential men through the eyes of their equally formidable spouses. This work challenges the construction of historical narratives, framing them not as a series of events dominated by men, but as a tapestry woven by many hands. 

“This play offers its actors the opportunity to time travel, to play many characters, and to ultimately ask the question of what it means to be able to be fully seen for who they are, rather than who society supposes them to be,” says playwright Jaclyn Backhaus. “It is a play about how women might support each other in a world run by tyrant men, a play about how community is built by sharing abundance in the face of scarcity.”
 
Jaclyn Backhaus is a playwright, screenwriter, and educator hailing from Phoenix, Arizona. Her Off-Broadway plays include Out Of Time, Wives, India Pale Ale, Men On Boats, and You On The Moors Now. She has developed theater, film, and TV work with 1497 Features Lab, Sundance, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Berkeley Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theater Club, Ars Nova, The Public Theater, and Two River Theater. She is currently a New Dramatists resident playwright, a core member of The Kilroys, and co-founder/creative director of Fresh Ground Pepper, an artistic process lab in NYC. Wives had its world premiere Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in September 2019.

Theatre for Youth 202526 Tour 

In Fall 2025, East West Players Arts Education will launch its annual Theatre for Youth tour. The company commissions playwrights to create original pieces about notable Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), responding to a STAATUS Index study reporting that many Americans are unable to name a prominent AAPI historical figure. Last year, Allison Minami was commissioned to write Patsy, exploring the life and legacy of Patsy Mink, the first woman of color to serve in Congress and the co-author of Title IX. 
 
Tam Tran Goes to Washington by Elizabeth Wong, commissioned by EWP in 2017, will return as the 2025/26 Theatre for Youth touring production. The play is based on the true story of Tam Tran, a quiet UCLA senior who prefers life behind her camera, as she faces her biggest challenge yet. As an undocumented student, Tran unexpectedly becomes an activist alongside her outgoing Best Friend Cinthya Felix. When Congress invites Tam to testify for the DREAM Act in Washington DC, her world turns upside down. Despite her fears of public speaking and concerns for her family's safety, Tam finds the courage—with help from her mother, teachers, and friends—to stand before the Senate and fight for her right to dream.
 

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