Velina Hasu Houston
Encyclopedia
Velina Hasu Houston, born Velina Avisa Hasu Houston, (on May 5, 1957) is an award winning American playwright
, essayist, poet
, author
, editor
, and screenwriter
. She has had many works produced, presented, and published, with some drawing from her experience of being multiracial
, as well as from the immigrant experiences of her family and those she encountered growing up in Junction City, Kansas
.
Her work focuses on the shifting boundaries of identity with regard to gender, culture, and ethnicity, often embracing a transnational view of identity based upon her own Japanese and American background. Her works' themes also have extended beyond these issues to explore stories related to women in society. She is best known for her play Tea which portrays the lives of Japanese war brides who move to the United States with their American servicemen husbands.
Her plays are studied in the US, Asia, and Europe in high schools and in colleges and universities. She is the only American playwright to amass a body of work that explores the transnational US-Japan relationship through stories that include a bilateral, global view of identity and belonging. The former Honorable Consul General of Japan of Los Angeles Kazuo Kodama paralleled Houston’s work in drama to the work of Isamu Noguchi in fine art, both being offspring of one Japanese parent and one American parent.
. Her father, Lemo Houston, was African Native American/Blackfoot
-Pikuni
Native American Indian originally from Linden, Alabama
. Her mother, Setsuko Takechi, is Japanese
originally from Matsuyama, Ehime
, a provincial town in Shikoku Island. Houston's ancestral lineages include historical ethnic ties to India
, Cuba
, Armenia, Greece, and China, with family ties to Hawai'i
, England
, Germany
, Brazil, Argentina, and Scotland
.
Her parents met in Kobe
in 1946, beginning their nine year courtship at the disapproval of Velina's maternal grandfather who committed suicide as a result of his country's defeat in World War II (exacerbated by his daughter's desire to marry an American) and by the loss of his family's land due to the land reform policies supported by the US occupation. After the couple married, they eventually severed ties with both their families. The couple went on to adopt their only son Joji Kawada George Adam Houston, an Amerasian, in Tokyo
after he was left orphaned at eight years old during the U.S. occupation.
In 1949 Velina's father returned to the United States. In order to be reunited with Setsuko, he volunteered for active duty in the Korean War and returned to Asia in 1951. Lemo and Setsuko's nine-year courtship was due to the fact that he respected her wishes to remain in Japan to care for her ailing mother. The couple married in 1954 and came to the U.S. in 1957 with the adopted Joji and Velina's sister Hilda Rika Hatsuyo, Velina being born en route and granted citizenship at her father's first U.S. military assignment at Fort Riley. Their new American experience was met with being discriminated against by Americans (including Japanese Americans) from both within and outside of their family, but the experience strengthened them and planted the seeds for the young writer.
The family settled in Junction City, Kansas
, a small town adjacent to the military base
, living a culturally Japanese
lifestyle at the insistence of Velina's mother, Setsuko. In 1969, as a result of combat-related stress and alcoholism, Velina's father's died. Setsuko continued raising her family in Junction City, a community consisting of hundreds of mostly Japanese
and European immigrant women who married Americans
after World War II
.
. She holds a PhD from USC's School of Cinema and Television, and an MFA from the university's School of Theater.
Houston is the recipient of fifteen playwriting commissions from institutions such as Manhattan Theatre Club
, Los Angeles Opera
, Asia Society
, Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Foundation, Mark Taper Forum
(two), State of Hawai’i Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Jewish Women's Theatre Project, Sacramento Theatre Company
(three), Cornerstone Theatre Company, Mixed Blood Theatre Company
, Honolulu Theatre for Youth, and Silk Road Theatre Project
in association with the Goodman Theatre. Houston began her writing career as a teenager after receiving the Young Kansas Writer awards for her poetry, as well as recognition from the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival for her one-act play, Switchboard. By twenty-two, her play, Asa Ga Kimashita (Morning Has Broken) garnered two national first prize awards, the Lorraine Hansberry Award for the best new play about the African American experience and the David Library Award for the best new play about American freedom (Kennedy Center/ACTF). By twenty-four, she was produced off-Broadway with American Dreams at the Negro Ensemble Company
and regionally in Los Angeles at the nation’s oldest Asian American theater company, East West Players
, with Asa Ga Kimashita. Within six years, she was off-Broadway again at Manhattan Theatre Club with the world premiere of her play, Tea, which has become a hallmark of her work with productions around the globe including U.S. nationwide, Osaka, Tokyo, Hiroshima, nationwide radio in Japan, People’s Republic of China, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Houston has been recognized as a Japan Foundation Fellow, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow (twice), a Sidney F. Brody Fellow, a James Zumberge Fellow (thrice), a California Arts Council fellow, and a Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts Fellow. She is a Pinter Review Prize for Drama Silver Medalist for Calling Aphrodite, which also was a finalist for the American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg New Play Award for its 2007 world premiere. Calling Aphrodite has been embraced by The former Honorable Consul General of Japan of Los Angeles Kazuo Kodama as a "remarkable and appropriate exploration" of the Hiroshima experience. In 2008, Calling Aphrodite was presented at Tokyo Engeki Ensemble (TEE), Tokyo. TEE and Houston continue to collaborate toward an international presentation of the play in Hiroshima. Houston’s work in Messy Utopia, a commissioned project at Mixed Blood Theatre, was the recipient of the Twin Cities 2007 Ivey Award. Along with California Poet Laureate Carol Muske Dukes, Houston was a part of Visions and Voices: The USC Arts & Humanities Initiative, receiving a 2008 grant to explore the power of language in theatre and poetry. Her play, Ikebana, was honored by PEN Center USA West. She is the 2008 recipient of the Made in America Visionary Award from East West and a 2009 Red Carpet Award from Women in Theatre. She also received a second USC Visions and Voices grant to support a special performance event of Calligraphy directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera; Dramaturge, Luis Alfaro, in September 2009.
For film, Houston has written for Columbia Pictures, Sidney Poitier, PBS (adapted Yoshiko Uchida’s Journey Home for WonderWorks, staff writer for Puzzle Place), Lancit Media and several independent producers. A documentary film that Houston co-produced –Frank Suffert and Lillemor Mallau’s Desert Dreamers – premiered on PBS-KQED’s “Truly California” series in September 2006 with Peter Fonda as Narrator.
Her critical essays and poetry are published in journals and anthologies. Her book “Writer’s Block” Busters: 101 Exercises to Clear the Dead Wood and Make Room for Flights of Fancy, a cornucopia of writing exercises to jump-start the imagination, is published by Smith and Kraus, which also has published her work in The Best Women's Stage Monologues of 2008. She has edited two Asian American drama anthologies: The Politics of Life (Temple University Press, 1993) and But Still, Like Air, I’ll Rise (Temple, 1997). Besides these volumes, her plays appear in anthologies published by Vintage Books-Random House, Applause Books, University of Massachusetts Press, University of Illinois Press, Rowman & Littlefield, Heinemann, and University of Texas Press. An acting edition of Tea is published by Dramatists Play Service. A majority of her works is available from Alexander Street Press. She penned the foreword to Yuko Kurahashi’s book, Asian American Culture on Stage: The History of the East West Players; and is included in the books Encounters: People of Asian Descent in the Americas (Editors Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, Rajini Srikanth, and Leny Mendoza Strobel), Amy Ling’s Yellow Light: The Flowering of Asian American Arts, as well as other books of cultural criticism. She has written for American Theatre magazine and the Los Angeles Times. She has been published in Japan by Akashi Shoten (Contributor, Crossing the Ocean: A new Look at the History of Japanese Picture Brides and Japanese War Brides, Editor: Noriko Shimada, Tokyo 2009). Forthcoming publications include: Japanese War Brides' Experiences: Immigration, Gender, and Ethnicity, Editor: Fumiteru Nitta, University of Hawaii Press, 2010, Chapter: "Matsuyama Daughter: Japanese War Brides in Kansas"; The Eyes of Bones in Living and Writing on America's Left Coast: Contemporary Women's Plays, 2010; and Outstanding Women's Monologues, Dramatists Play Service 2010.
Houston’s awards and honors include the Made in America Visionary Award, Pinter Review Prize for Drama Silver Medal, Women in Theatre Red Carpet Award, Inaugural Recipient of the USC Provost's Mentoring Award, Twin Cities Ivey Award, Remy Martin New Vision Screenwriting Award from Sidney Poitier and the American Film Institute, Japan Foundation fellowship, James Zumberge Innovation Fund individual fellowship (twice), James Zumberge Innovation Fund interdisciplinary collaborative fellowship for 2002-2003 (with Dr. Dorinne Kondo for her play Seamless and for Houston’s play Calling Aphrodite), Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, David Library of American Freedom Playwriting Award, California Arts Council fellow, Japanese American Woman of Merit 1890-1990 by the National Japanese American Historical Society, twice-named Rockefeller Foundation fellow, and others. In Japan, several documentary films about her work and family have been produced by Japan’s key broadcasting concerns: Nippon Hoso Kai, Mainichi Hoso, and Television Tokyo Channel 12.
A Phi Beta Kappa, Houston is Professor of Theatre, Director of Dramatic Writing, Associate Dean of Faculty, and Resident Playwright at the School of Theatre, University of Southern California, where she founded the graduate playwriting program in 1990. She also guest-taught the 434 Advanced Screenwriting Workshop in the School of Theater, Film, and Television at her alma mater, the University of California at Los Angeles, for a decade. In 1999-2000, she was a Visiting Professor at Doshisha University, Kyoto. Houston has a Ph.D. from the School of Cinema Arts, USC; a Master of Fine Arts from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television; and a Bachelor of Arts in journalism, mass communications, and theater (minor in philosophy) from the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Kansas State University.
Houston is a Commissioner for the U.S. Department of State's Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, a member of the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (a binational cultural advisory panel), and a member of the Japan-US Bridging Foundation. In Japan, she also has served as a Research Advisor for "Studies on Modernization of Classic Greek Theatre and Myth in Contemporary British, Irish, and American Poetic Drama and Theatre," Curator: Professor Mariko Hori Tanaka, Aoyama Gakuin Daigaku, Tokyo.
Professional memberships include The Writers Guild of America, west; The Dramatists Guild, and the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights.
Her works and papers are archived in The Velina Hasu Houston Collection; Huntington Library, Art Collections, & Botanical Gardens; San Marino, California; Curator: Ms. Sara Sue Hodson. To access partial archives on-line at the Huntington, go to: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2m3n98qm. A smaller collection of her work exists at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and in New World Theatre’s Asian American Theater Collection at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
For many years, she has maintained the same literary agent: Ms. Mary Harden, Harden-Curtis Associates, New York.
Houston is Professor
, Associate Dean of Faculty, Resident Playwright, and Founder/Director of the undergraduate Playwriting Program and Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing at the University of Southern California
. She continues to lecture nationwide while teaching courses about playwriting and adaptation at the University of Southern California
School of Theatre. For several years, she taught master classes in screenwriting at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Theater, Film, and Television.
. She is married to Peter H. Jones of Manchester, England with whom she has two children and two stepsons: Kiyoshi S. S. Houston, K. Leilani Houston, Evan W. Jones, and Jason K. Jones. Raised as a Buddhist and Shintoist, Houston attends an Episcopal parish, but practices a polytheistic faith.
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, essayist, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
, and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
. She has had many works produced, presented, and published, with some drawing from her experience of being multiracial
Multiracial
The terms multiracial and mixed-race describe people whose ancestries come from multiple races. Unlike the term biracial, which often is only used to refer to having parents or grandparents of two different races, the term multiracial may encompass biracial people but can also include people with...
, as well as from the immigrant experiences of her family and those she encountered growing up in Junction City, Kansas
Junction City, Kansas
Junction City is a city in and the county seat of Geary County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 23,353. Fort Riley, a major U.S. Army post, is nearby...
.
Her work focuses on the shifting boundaries of identity with regard to gender, culture, and ethnicity, often embracing a transnational view of identity based upon her own Japanese and American background. Her works' themes also have extended beyond these issues to explore stories related to women in society. She is best known for her play Tea which portrays the lives of Japanese war brides who move to the United States with their American servicemen husbands.
Her plays are studied in the US, Asia, and Europe in high schools and in colleges and universities. She is the only American playwright to amass a body of work that explores the transnational US-Japan relationship through stories that include a bilateral, global view of identity and belonging. The former Honorable Consul General of Japan of Los Angeles Kazuo Kodama paralleled Houston’s work in drama to the work of Isamu Noguchi in fine art, both being offspring of one Japanese parent and one American parent.
Early life
The youngest of three, Houston was born in international waters on a military ship en route to a U.S. base in JapanJapan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. Her father, Lemo Houston, was African Native American/Blackfoot
Blackfoot
The Blackfoot Confederacy or Niitsítapi is the collective name of three First Nations in Alberta and one Native American tribe in Montana....
-Pikuni
Pikuni
The Pikuni are a Native American Group. They are part of the 'Blackfeet', a group who lived in the prairie areas of Montana. The area where the Pikuni lived bordered the Canadian and American Rocky Mountains. Other Blackfoot groups included the Nehiyawak, the Siksika, and others....
Native American Indian originally from Linden, Alabama
Linden, Alabama
Linden is a city in and the county seat of Marengo County, Alabama, United States.. The population was 2,424 at the 2000 census.-History:Originally known as the Town of Marengo, it was changed to Hohenlinden in 1823 to honor the county's earliest European settlers, French Bonapartist refugees to...
. Her mother, Setsuko Takechi, is Japanese
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
originally from Matsuyama, Ehime
Matsuyama, Ehime
is the capital city of Ehime Prefecture on the Shikoku island of Japan. It is located on the northeastern portion of the Dōgo Plain. Its name means "pine mountain." The city was founded on December 15, 1889....
, a provincial town in Shikoku Island. Houston's ancestral lineages include historical ethnic ties to India
Demographics of India
The demographics of India are inclusive of the second most populous country in the world, with over 1.21 billion people , more than a sixth of the world's population. Already containing 17.5% of the world's population, India is projected to be the world's most populous country by 2025, surpassing...
, Cuba
Cubans
Cubans or Cuban people are the inhabitants or citizens of Cuba. Cuba is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...
, Armenia, Greece, and China, with family ties to Hawai'i
Native Hawaiians
Native Hawaiians refers to the indigenous Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands or their descendants. Native Hawaiians trace their ancestry back to the original Polynesian settlers of Hawaii.According to the U.S...
, England
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
, Germany
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
, Brazil, Argentina, and Scotland
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
.
Her parents met in Kobe
Kobe
, pronounced , is the fifth-largest city in Japan and is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, approximately west of Osaka...
in 1946, beginning their nine year courtship at the disapproval of Velina's maternal grandfather who committed suicide as a result of his country's defeat in World War II (exacerbated by his daughter's desire to marry an American) and by the loss of his family's land due to the land reform policies supported by the US occupation. After the couple married, they eventually severed ties with both their families. The couple went on to adopt their only son Joji Kawada George Adam Houston, an Amerasian, in Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
after he was left orphaned at eight years old during the U.S. occupation.
In 1949 Velina's father returned to the United States. In order to be reunited with Setsuko, he volunteered for active duty in the Korean War and returned to Asia in 1951. Lemo and Setsuko's nine-year courtship was due to the fact that he respected her wishes to remain in Japan to care for her ailing mother. The couple married in 1954 and came to the U.S. in 1957 with the adopted Joji and Velina's sister Hilda Rika Hatsuyo, Velina being born en route and granted citizenship at her father's first U.S. military assignment at Fort Riley. Their new American experience was met with being discriminated against by Americans (including Japanese Americans) from both within and outside of their family, but the experience strengthened them and planted the seeds for the young writer.
The family settled in Junction City, Kansas
Junction City, Kansas
Junction City is a city in and the county seat of Geary County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 23,353. Fort Riley, a major U.S. Army post, is nearby...
, a small town adjacent to the military base
Military base
A military base is a facility directly owned and operated by or for the military or one of its branches that shelters military equipment and personnel, and facilitates training and operations. In general, a military base provides accommodations for one or more units, but it may also be used as a...
, living a culturally Japanese
Culture of Japan
The culture of Japan has evolved greatly over the millennia, from the country's prehistoric Jōmon period to its contemporary hybrid culture, which combines influences from Asia, Europe and North America...
lifestyle at the insistence of Velina's mother, Setsuko. In 1969, as a result of combat-related stress and alcoholism, Velina's father's died. Setsuko continued raising her family in Junction City, a community consisting of hundreds of mostly Japanese
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
and European immigrant women who married Americans
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Education
Houston attended graduate school at the University of California at Los Angeles and at the University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. She holds a PhD from USC's School of Cinema and Television, and an MFA from the university's School of Theater.
Career
Houston is an internationally acclaimed playwright of over twenty plays as well as a published poet and essayist, and screenwriter. She has published two anthologies of Asian American drama, one of them being the first anthology of plays by Asian American women.Houston is the recipient of fifteen playwriting commissions from institutions such as Manhattan Theatre Club
Manhattan Theatre Club
Manhattan Theatre Club is a theater company located in New York City. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynne Meadow and Executive Producer Barry Grove, Manhattan Theatre Club has grown since its founding in 1970 from an Off-Off Broadway showcase into one of the country’s most acclaimed...
, Los Angeles Opera
Los Angeles Opera
The Los Angeles Opera is an opera company in Los Angeles, California. It is the fourth largest opera company in the United States. The company's home base is the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, part of the Los Angeles Music Center.-Current leadership:...
, Asia Society
Asia Society
The Asia Society is a non-profit organization that focuses on educating the world about Asia. It has several centers in the United States and around the world Hong Kong, Manila, Mumbai, Seoul, Shanghai, and Melbourne...
, Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Foundation, Mark Taper Forum
Mark Taper Forum
The Mark Taper Forum is a 739 seat thrust stage at the Los Angeles Music Center built by Welton Becket and Associates on the Bunker Hill section of downtown Los Angeles...
(two), State of Hawai’i Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Jewish Women's Theatre Project, Sacramento Theatre Company
Sacramento Theatre Company
The Sacramento Theatre Company is a Regional Professional Theatre in the Northern California city of Sacramento.- History :The theater was originally formed as the Sacramento Civic Repertory Theatre in 1942, an ad hoc troupe formed to entertain locally stationed troops during World War II.Realizing...
(three), Cornerstone Theatre Company, Mixed Blood Theatre Company
Mixed Blood Theatre Company
The Mixed Blood Theatre Company is a professional multiracial theatre company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was founded in 1976 by artistic director Jack Reuler. Its core stated values are promoting cultural pluralism, individual equality, and artistic excellence.Its plays range from intimate...
, Honolulu Theatre for Youth, and Silk Road Theatre Project
Silk Road Theatre Project
The Silk Road Theatre Project is a production unit located in Downtown Chicago which presents plays written by individuals of Asian and Arab descent....
in association with the Goodman Theatre. Houston began her writing career as a teenager after receiving the Young Kansas Writer awards for her poetry, as well as recognition from the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival for her one-act play, Switchboard. By twenty-two, her play, Asa Ga Kimashita (Morning Has Broken) garnered two national first prize awards, the Lorraine Hansberry Award for the best new play about the African American experience and the David Library Award for the best new play about American freedom (Kennedy Center/ACTF). By twenty-four, she was produced off-Broadway with American Dreams at the Negro Ensemble Company
Negro Ensemble Company
The Negro Ensemble Company is a New York City-based theater company. Established in 1967 by playwright Douglas Turner Ward, producer/actor Robert Hooks, and theater manager Gerald S...
and regionally in Los Angeles at the nation’s oldest Asian American theater company, East West Players
East West Players
East West Players is an Asian American theatre organization in Los Angeles, founded in 1965. As one of the nation's first Asian American theatre organizations, East West Players today continues to produce works and educational programs that give voice to the Asian Pacific American...
, with Asa Ga Kimashita. Within six years, she was off-Broadway again at Manhattan Theatre Club with the world premiere of her play, Tea, which has become a hallmark of her work with productions around the globe including U.S. nationwide, Osaka, Tokyo, Hiroshima, nationwide radio in Japan, People’s Republic of China, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Houston has been recognized as a Japan Foundation Fellow, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow (twice), a Sidney F. Brody Fellow, a James Zumberge Fellow (thrice), a California Arts Council fellow, and a Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts Fellow. She is a Pinter Review Prize for Drama Silver Medalist for Calling Aphrodite, which also was a finalist for the American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg New Play Award for its 2007 world premiere. Calling Aphrodite has been embraced by The former Honorable Consul General of Japan of Los Angeles Kazuo Kodama as a "remarkable and appropriate exploration" of the Hiroshima experience. In 2008, Calling Aphrodite was presented at Tokyo Engeki Ensemble (TEE), Tokyo. TEE and Houston continue to collaborate toward an international presentation of the play in Hiroshima. Houston’s work in Messy Utopia, a commissioned project at Mixed Blood Theatre, was the recipient of the Twin Cities 2007 Ivey Award. Along with California Poet Laureate Carol Muske Dukes, Houston was a part of Visions and Voices: The USC Arts & Humanities Initiative, receiving a 2008 grant to explore the power of language in theatre and poetry. Her play, Ikebana, was honored by PEN Center USA West. She is the 2008 recipient of the Made in America Visionary Award from East West and a 2009 Red Carpet Award from Women in Theatre. She also received a second USC Visions and Voices grant to support a special performance event of Calligraphy directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera; Dramaturge, Luis Alfaro, in September 2009.
For film, Houston has written for Columbia Pictures, Sidney Poitier, PBS (adapted Yoshiko Uchida’s Journey Home for WonderWorks, staff writer for Puzzle Place), Lancit Media and several independent producers. A documentary film that Houston co-produced –Frank Suffert and Lillemor Mallau’s Desert Dreamers – premiered on PBS-KQED’s “Truly California” series in September 2006 with Peter Fonda as Narrator.
Her critical essays and poetry are published in journals and anthologies. Her book “Writer’s Block” Busters: 101 Exercises to Clear the Dead Wood and Make Room for Flights of Fancy, a cornucopia of writing exercises to jump-start the imagination, is published by Smith and Kraus, which also has published her work in The Best Women's Stage Monologues of 2008. She has edited two Asian American drama anthologies: The Politics of Life (Temple University Press, 1993) and But Still, Like Air, I’ll Rise (Temple, 1997). Besides these volumes, her plays appear in anthologies published by Vintage Books-Random House, Applause Books, University of Massachusetts Press, University of Illinois Press, Rowman & Littlefield, Heinemann, and University of Texas Press. An acting edition of Tea is published by Dramatists Play Service. A majority of her works is available from Alexander Street Press. She penned the foreword to Yuko Kurahashi’s book, Asian American Culture on Stage: The History of the East West Players; and is included in the books Encounters: People of Asian Descent in the Americas (Editors Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, Rajini Srikanth, and Leny Mendoza Strobel), Amy Ling’s Yellow Light: The Flowering of Asian American Arts, as well as other books of cultural criticism. She has written for American Theatre magazine and the Los Angeles Times. She has been published in Japan by Akashi Shoten (Contributor, Crossing the Ocean: A new Look at the History of Japanese Picture Brides and Japanese War Brides, Editor: Noriko Shimada, Tokyo 2009). Forthcoming publications include: Japanese War Brides' Experiences: Immigration, Gender, and Ethnicity, Editor: Fumiteru Nitta, University of Hawaii Press, 2010, Chapter: "Matsuyama Daughter: Japanese War Brides in Kansas"; The Eyes of Bones in Living and Writing on America's Left Coast: Contemporary Women's Plays, 2010; and Outstanding Women's Monologues, Dramatists Play Service 2010.
Houston’s awards and honors include the Made in America Visionary Award, Pinter Review Prize for Drama Silver Medal, Women in Theatre Red Carpet Award, Inaugural Recipient of the USC Provost's Mentoring Award, Twin Cities Ivey Award, Remy Martin New Vision Screenwriting Award from Sidney Poitier and the American Film Institute, Japan Foundation fellowship, James Zumberge Innovation Fund individual fellowship (twice), James Zumberge Innovation Fund interdisciplinary collaborative fellowship for 2002-2003 (with Dr. Dorinne Kondo for her play Seamless and for Houston’s play Calling Aphrodite), Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, David Library of American Freedom Playwriting Award, California Arts Council fellow, Japanese American Woman of Merit 1890-1990 by the National Japanese American Historical Society, twice-named Rockefeller Foundation fellow, and others. In Japan, several documentary films about her work and family have been produced by Japan’s key broadcasting concerns: Nippon Hoso Kai, Mainichi Hoso, and Television Tokyo Channel 12.
A Phi Beta Kappa, Houston is Professor of Theatre, Director of Dramatic Writing, Associate Dean of Faculty, and Resident Playwright at the School of Theatre, University of Southern California, where she founded the graduate playwriting program in 1990. She also guest-taught the 434 Advanced Screenwriting Workshop in the School of Theater, Film, and Television at her alma mater, the University of California at Los Angeles, for a decade. In 1999-2000, she was a Visiting Professor at Doshisha University, Kyoto. Houston has a Ph.D. from the School of Cinema Arts, USC; a Master of Fine Arts from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television; and a Bachelor of Arts in journalism, mass communications, and theater (minor in philosophy) from the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Kansas State University.
Houston is a Commissioner for the U.S. Department of State's Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, a member of the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (a binational cultural advisory panel), and a member of the Japan-US Bridging Foundation. In Japan, she also has served as a Research Advisor for "Studies on Modernization of Classic Greek Theatre and Myth in Contemporary British, Irish, and American Poetic Drama and Theatre," Curator: Professor Mariko Hori Tanaka, Aoyama Gakuin Daigaku, Tokyo.
Professional memberships include The Writers Guild of America, west; The Dramatists Guild, and the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights.
Her works and papers are archived in The Velina Hasu Houston Collection; Huntington Library, Art Collections, & Botanical Gardens; San Marino, California; Curator: Ms. Sara Sue Hodson. To access partial archives on-line at the Huntington, go to: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2m3n98qm. A smaller collection of her work exists at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and in New World Theatre’s Asian American Theater Collection at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
For many years, she has maintained the same literary agent: Ms. Mary Harden, Harden-Curtis Associates, New York.
Present day
Houston continue to write plays and also work in other genres of writing. New works include Calligraphy (Los Angeles Theatre Center 2010), The DNA Trail (Silk Road Theatre Project/Goodman Theatre 2010, commissioned), and a Los Angeles Opera commission. Works-in-progress include a novel version of her play Tea and several new plays: The Last Resort, Cymru Am Byth (Wales Forever), The Territory of Dreams, The Tongues of Men and Angels, and Cinnamon Girl, and a screenplay, Disenchanted Christmas.Houston is Professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
, Associate Dean of Faculty, Resident Playwright, and Founder/Director of the undergraduate Playwriting Program and Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. She continues to lecture nationwide while teaching courses about playwriting and adaptation at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
School of Theatre. For several years, she taught master classes in screenwriting at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Theater, Film, and Television.
Personal life
Houston resides in Los Angeles, with homes in Hawai'i and KyotoKyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...
. She is married to Peter H. Jones of Manchester, England with whom she has two children and two stepsons: Kiyoshi S. S. Houston, K. Leilani Houston, Evan W. Jones, and Jason K. Jones. Raised as a Buddhist and Shintoist, Houston attends an Episcopal parish, but practices a polytheistic faith.