Z Space

CCSF Theatre Arts presents

After The War Blues

May 10-12 2024
on Z Space’s Steindler Stage

1948. San Francisco’s Fillmore District, to some the "Harlem of the West", to others “Japanese Town”. Racial tensions simmer, love triangles soar, and the wrecking ball looms as each community feels the weight of the past and the pressure of an uncertain future.

In this rich, poetic play, the newly arrived African-American and recently interned Japanese-American communities jostle shoulder to shoulder in the boarding houses and on the unemployment lines. Young lovers find each other on the dance floors and in the bedrooms of a 1948 boarding house. The play is full of the jazz and swing music of San Francisco’s post war blues.

The city-scape of this play is a familiar map. Geary Boulevard, the living scar of eminent domain seizure of two thriving neighborhoods in one, The Fillmore and Japanese Town. However, the stories of communities of marginalized people who were displaced still resonate today and need to be told by this passionate young and diverse performing company from CCSF Theatre Arts.

About Philip Kan Gotanda

Playwright Philip Kan Gotanda has been a major influence in broadening how theater has been defined in America. Through his plays and advocacy, Gotanda has been instrumental in bringing stories of Asians in the United States to mainstream American theater as well as to Europe and Asia. The author of one of the largest canon of Asian American-themed work, Gotanda is a seminal figure in the field of Asian American Drama. Philip Kan Gotanda’s plays are studied and performed extensively at universities, colleges and learning institutions in the United States and abroad.

DIRECTOR/DESIGNERS

Patricia Miller (Show Director for After The War Blues) is based in London/San Francisco. Patricia brings a diversity of experience and training to theater directing, teaching and acting. She is interested in the dynamic between text work and physical theater techniques. She works in many genres ranging from classics to new play development, modern works and live arts genres (performance, circus, ritual and opera). Her work has been seen all over the UK, including Edinburgh premieres, Europe and California. Winner of Theatre Bay Area’s Titan Award. She is currently teaching Directing and Play Creation at Berkeley Rep School of Theatre. 

Brian Livingston (Set Constructor)  is an actor, actor trainer, and educator, he is a longtime Bay Area Artist and is currently a professor at CCSF and has been guiding the stagecraft class for this production of After The War Blues. He was a longtime member of Bay Area theater company foolsFURY Theater, He holds a MFA from UC Davis and is a San Francisco State University graduate. He’s very proud of all the work everybody has put into the show and is happy to share this San Francisco story with the audience. A special thanks to all the hard work of our stagecraft class, the director and staff of Z space. 

Alexandria Volk (Costume designer) Growing up on a ranch in North Dakota, Alexandria Volk learned how to use both a sewing machine and an arc welder before she turned 10. She is an experiential academic—learning through experimentation and re-creation as well as research—and has degrees in biology, art studio, art history, and poetics, and certification in Cultural Heritage Preservation and Theatrical Millinery. Her work is in corporate and private collections and has been featured in international fashion campaigns, galleries, films, and theatrical presentations. She is the costume shop manager of the Great Dickens Christmas Fair. She enjoys challenges.

Anahit Arzrumtsyan (Projection Designer) from Armenia, is thrilled to make her debut as a projection designer for After the War Blues at CCSF. With acting training from the Theatre of Arts Hollywood conservatory and a background in Armenian theater studies, she brings a unique perspective to the stage. As an international student in the Theatre Arts Department at CCSF, she aspires to tell stories both on stage and camera, blending her passion for acting and stagecraft.

Jeffery Kelly (Lighting Designer) has been with the theater arts department at CCSF since 1986, he is a staff member, department master electrician, he’s also done freelance with Bay Area theater companies. They say he has a passion for theater.  

George Georges department sound designer, rigger, master electrician, all around tech for the department, has been involved with theater for 35 years, and CCSF since 1987. 

THANK YOU TO

National Archives at San Francisco
San Francisco History Center 
San Francisco Public Library
Densho Digital Repository
OpenSFHistory

CAST