(Alexis Soloski’s article appeared in The New York Times, 6/25; via Pam Green.)
When the actress Mia Katigbak was a student at Barnard College in the 1970s, she was the only Asian-American studying theater and mostly got to play “maids and hookers,” she said. One day the department head asked her to join a Molière comedy. She would play the harpsichord from behind a screen, Ms. Katigbak recalls his saying, “because there were no Asians in France at that time.”
No one is putting her behind a screen anymore. Today Ms. Katigbak, known for tenacity and grace as a stage actress, is much in demand. And for the last 25 years, as co-founder and artistic producing director of the National Asian American Theater Company, she has made it her mission to send Asian-American actors wherever the theatrical canon may lead, from “Our Town” to “Othello” to “Antigone.” Molière’s plays, too.