What I liked
I really thought Alli and the production did a great job utilizing the space! It is a tricky venue with a lot of angles and blindspots, and they used the space incredibly well—separating the timelines, alternating from one end of the room from another. The use of projections were also very affective. The environment is just as much of a character, and the set gave the actors something very real to hold on to that felt grounded in the trauma, the love, the laughter, and fight to find one’s voice! The script also gives a lot of food for thought. It displays how intersectionality can play out in our day-to-day lives, how it affects our institutions, and how we combat injustice. It’s an ingenious device. I also loved how diverse the audience was in the performance that I watched. Most stories about race or injustice are consumed predominantly by those same marginalized groups, and I loved how this audience defied that expectation. Everyone and their mama (literally) was in that crowd, and I think it speaks to how much audiences want to learn more about the American concentration camps and their aftermath.
What I didn't like
I thought pacing could be picked up a bit, particularly around transitions. This note may be more of an issue caused by the space itself and how tight the backstage area must be for a cast this large. But because the show is made up of many scenes, spanning across decades, and jumps between time and space, there could be some refinement in how we go from one scene to another to draw our eye more immediately across the room and zoom the audience in to the next beat. Excited for future productions and how that problem gets solved in future iterations of this script!
My overall impression
Thought provoking and illuminating. This play depicts a multifaceted American story about surviving U.S. sanctioned racial discrimination, confronting past trauma, finding coalition, and raising one’s voice to speak up against injustice. As a Japanese American woman myself I am constantly looking for artists who are willing to tell Internment stories. It is a part of history that is so rarely told and Paper Flowers is not just any Internment story. It digs so much deeper. It succeeds in doing what most civil rights stories are missing. Paper Flowers explores the intersectional way in which marginalized groups face discrimination and the intersectional way marginalized groups can fight their injustice. It is a must watch for everyone.
