When more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II, San Francisco’s bustling Japantown suddenly became an urban ghost town. African Americans from the neighboring Fillmore District, rural whites from the Midwest, and other societal outcasts began to fill the vacant neighborhood. But what happened when the Japanese Americans came back? In the world premiere of After the War, commissioned and developed by A.C.T. under the direction of Carey Perloff, Philip Kan Gotanda portrays an unexpected grouping of characters as they struggle to revive a community shattered by the effects of the war. After the War played at the American Conservatory Theater March 22-April 22, 2007.

Panelist Discussants: Philip Kan Gotanda (Playwright), Carey Perloff (Artistic Director, American Conservatory Theater), Colleen Lye (English), and Duncan Williams (East Asian Languages & Cultures).

Philip Kan Gotanda is a San Francisco-based playwright and filmmaker whose plays, which include A Fist of Roses, Yohen, The Wind Cries Mary, Floating Weeds, Sisters Matsumoto, Fish Head Soup, Ballad of Yachiyo,and Yankee Dawg You Die, have been produced locally (Asian American Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Campo Santo/Intersection for the Arts, Eureka Theatre, Magic Theatre, and San Jose Repertory Theatre), as well as by theater companies across the country, in Great Britain, and Japan. Gotanda is also an independent filmmaker whose works have been seen in film festivals around the world.