Fish Head Soup (1994)
With beautifully lyrical language and stunning imagery, Fish Head Soup paints a
moving portrait of a Japanese American family struggling to hold together as cultural
and generational conflicts threaten to tear them apart. When Mat returns after a
mysterious disappearance, he finds a family falling apart at the seams: Papa clutching
to a dream world of life before the internment camps; his mother immersing herself in
her work to avoid her husband’s senility; an older brother still healing from the scars
of the Vietnam War. Mat’s sudden arrival upsets the family’s tenuous balance, forcing
them to exorcize the secrets and demons of their past in order to realize their dreams
of the future.
Philip Kan Gotanda is the critically acclaimed author of Yankee Dawg You Die,
A Song for a Nisei Fisherman and The Wash.
This production will be a unique collaboration between ACT, The Group Theatre
and Northwest Asian American Theatre, and will be directed by The Group’s Tim
Bond. ,