Brenda Wong Aoki

Brenda Wong Aoki is an American playwright, actor and storyteller. She creates monodramas rooted in traditional storytelling, dance movement, and music. Aoki's work combines Eastern and Western narratives and theatrical traditions such as noh, kyogen, commedia dell'arte, modern dance, Japanese drumming, and American jazz. Most of her performances express themes of history, mixed race, home, gender, and mythology. Aoki is a founding faculty member of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University. Aoki and her husband Mark Izu, an Emmy-winning jazz music composer, are the founders of First Voice, a San Francisco-based nonprofit arts organization.

Early life and education

Brenda Wong Aoki was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and grew up in Long Beach, California. Aoki is of Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and Scottish descent, and she is the eldest of six children. Aoki's paternal grandfather was a founder of San Francisco's Japantown in the 1890s.

Aoki graduated in 1976 from University of California,Santa Cruz, with a bachelor's degree in Community Studies. She later received a K-12 credential from San Francisco State University. She spent years as a community organizer working with at-risk-youth at Centro De La Raza and then as a public school teacher with the Long Beach Unified School District and San Francisco Unified School District, while continuing her activities as a poet, dancer, musician, singer and activist. She taught one of the first Asian American Women's Studies Class in the country at San Francisco State University.

Aoki sought to trace her family history by consulting with relatives and finding information from archived newspapers at the San Francisco Public Library. In 1909, her great-uncle Gunjiro Aoki, a Japanese immigrant, became engaged to Helen Gladys Emery, the Caucasian daughter of Grace Cathedral's archdeacon. The engagement incited public outcry and resulted in Californian legislation adding Japanese immigrants to the list of races banned from marrying white citizens; a law that remained in effect until 1948.

Career in theatre Aoki's performances combine traditional Japanese theater styles of Noh and Kyogen with contemporary storytelling. Her style uses dance, music and theater with few props, exaggerated movements, and simple sets. Aoki traveled to Japan to study Japanese theater. Additionally, Aoki studied with Mansaku Nomura and completed an apprenticeship with Yuriko Doi's Theater of Yugen in San Francisco in the 1970s. In 1988, she launched her solo career. She was the first storyteller of Asian Pacific heritage to perform at the NAPPS National Storytelling Festival (National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling) in Jonesborough, Tennessee. These sojourns brought her to the realization that America is in need of a new cosmology that includes the experience of all its people.

Works

Aoki's multidisciplinary performances combine Japanese Noh, Kyogen Theater, Commedia dell'arte, movement and voice. She uses dance, music and theater with few props, exaggerated movements, and simple sets. Her first play, Obake, came directly out of her Nohgaku training and was based on Japanese ghost stories In Noh, the dead are more important than the living. She believed that the actions of the dead bring us to the present and knowing the past allows us to change the future. Using her own life stories and observations growing up in a multicultural family, Aoki premiered The Queen's Garden, in 1992.

Aoki and Izu created Mermaid following the birth of their son, Kai Kane. Research led her to the conclusion that all cultures have legends of mermaids because all humans begin as mermaids swimming in their mother's womb. This work was based on the Japanese proverb "eat the flesh of a mermaid and you'll live forever." In 2023, Aoki debuted a new multi-media piece about the city of San Francisco, directed by David Furumoto and developed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recognition Aoki's plays and solo performances have received critical acclaim and recognition including Drama-Logue Awards and Critic's Circle Awards. Her recordings have received INDIE Awards for Best Spoken Word (1990 & 1999). and she has been recognized with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Society for Composers, Authors and Publishers, the Asian American Arts Foundation, and the U.S. Pan Asian Chamber of Commerce.

Aoki's monodramas have been commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts, Random Acts of Kindness (1994) Mermaid (1997) Ballad of Bones (2000) Kuan-Yin: Our Lady of Compassion (2002) Uncle Gunjiro's Girlfriend (2007) The Legend of Morning Glory (2008) Soul of the City (2023)

Discography 2009 Legend of Morning Glory, as CD and as digital download on IODA: the Independent On-Line Distribution Alliance 2008 Mermaid Meat: the secret to immorality book with C.D. Belly to Belly 2008 The Queen's Garden, C.D. new release Belly to Belly 1999 The Queen's Garden, C.D. Asian Improv Records 1997 Black Hair: Some Japanese Ghosts, audio-cassette Pele Productions 1990 Dreams & Illusions: Tales of the Pacific Rim, C.D. Rounder Records

Publications No Way Out (1984) Layin’ It on the Line (1985) No Way Out (1984) Living on Tokyo Time (1987) Tales of the Pacific Rim (1990) Black Hair (1998) The Queen's Garden (1999)