Audience is who we make theater for, and it was a privilege to have such a lively one witness the first staged reading of our new theatrical adaptation of John Okada’s No-No Boy at the Seattle Rep on Thursday, May 8.

An earlier version of the script had a table reading for an invited audience in September 2023, but this was our first paid, ticketed audience.

This workshop began on Monday, May 5, with a readthrough of the new work-in-progress. With discussions and breaks it took us the afternoon to work through it, after which the Rep’s artistic director, Dámaso Rodriguez, offered what he called a provocative suggestion, that is to say, a suggestion meant to provoke fresh thinking. Without giving too much away, he suggested cutting several of the characters and refocusing the play around a certain grouping of scenes.

It was a brilliant insight, and I spent that evening deleting scenes and characters and removing 28 of the 113 pages, a cut of 25 percent. What remained forms a new spine for the story, one from which I can now build out and solve some other problems such as how to physically make scene transitions.

Casting director Shawna Grajek assembled an outstanding cast, anchored by LA veterans Emily Kuroda and Keone Young bringing new dimensions to the characters of Ichiro’s mother and father, and for the next two-and-a-half days director/dramaturg Leslie Ishii worked with the actors on the text and blocking.

On the final day, several hours before stage managers let in the audience, there was a moment when the reading clicked into place for me. In staging the climactic scene, Leslie had the ensemble react with horror in unison to an off-stage event and I thought, oh yeah, this is a stage picture, this feels like performance.

But it was the audience that brought the energy and emotion to the room. Their reaction to the play was overwhelming and I’m still processing it. The material landed hard with many who said they were excited to see how I had reframed the core of the novel to bring a Japanese American sensibility in line with where we are in the 21st century — what Steve Fujimura perceptively called the “re-contextualization of incarceration history.” Their response shows we’re on the right track and that means the world to me.

I also heard much praise from the audience for the actors. I appreciate all the work the cast put into their characters and their work really shone. Seeing the physicality of the actors on stage and hearing their voices read the dialogue gives me a lot of rich material to work with. Special thanks to the stage managers, script supervisors, and other crew working to run the workshop like clockwork.

This is a work-in-progress, so if you were there — what worked for you, what didn’t? You can send a private comment here.

There are several paths forward to a prospective world premiere production, and Leslie and I are pursuing them all, even as I continue to shape the postwar world of John Okada’s vision into a form that engages and entertains an audience.

The work that led to this public reading would not have been possible without a commission from Megan and Greg Pursell. It was Megan’s vision to develop the novel into a stage play and the reading represented a major milestone.

Crucial support for the director and actors to lend their talents for this four-day workshop comes from the Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Foundation. We are also grateful to supporters of the New Works Program at Seattle Rep.