TheatreWorks Silicon Valley Hosts Release Party For Hit Musical FOUR IMMIGRANTS Cast Album

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley launched the cast album for The Four Immigrants: An American Musical Manga at an exclusive release party at OPAL Night Club in Mountain View on Monday. The album features an infectious ragtime and vaudeville score by Bay Area composer/lyricist Min Kahng. Drawn from one of the first ever graphic novels, this comic musical follows four Japanese immigrants through a world of possibility and prejudice in turn-of-the-twentieth-century San Francisco. From surviving the tumultuous earthquake of 1906 to an exhilarating World's Fair, audiences can relive the hit show and listen as the determined quartet pursues the American Dream, despite limited options in the land of opportunity. For more information or to purchase the CD visit theatreworks.org/4-immigrants-cd/

The Four Immigrants: An American Musical Manga has been a fan favorite since its debut at TheatreWorks' 2016 New Works Festival. It was mounted on TheatreWorks' main stage in 2017 and received critical acclaim, called a "quintessential American story" (The Mercury News), "smart, funny, touching and visually stunning, it's simply wonderful" (Palo Alto Weekly), and a "delight to behold and hear" (Talkin' Broadway). The production won seven San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle (SFBATCC) awards, including awards for "Entire Production - Bay Area."

Min Kahng is an award-winning Bay Area playwright and composer whose produced works include Where the Mountain Meets the Moon: A Musical Adaptation, The Song of the Nightingale, Tales of Olympus: A Greek Myth Musical, and Story Explorers. Kahng adapted this musical from Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama's The Four Immigrants Manga: A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904-1924, a work that chronicled the Issei, the first generation of Japanese immigrants to arrive in America between 1885 and 1924. After extensively researching the history of cartoons, Japanese-American history, and theatre and musical styles of the era, Kahng began writing the musical in 2014 at TheatreWorks' Writers' Retreat, where he worked closely with the translator of the graphic novel, Frederik L. Schodt. The work was presented at the 2016 New Works Festival where it proved to be an audience favorite. Kahng's previous work, The Song of the Nightingale, an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen story The Nightingale, was praised as an "enchanting, must-see musical" by The Mercury News. He has been featured in American Theatre Magazine as one of the "9 Musical Theatre Writers You Should Know." Kahng is a recipient of the Theatre Bay Area Titan Award for Playwrights and is a resident playwright with Playwrights Foundation. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Theatre Communications Group, Theatre Bay Area, and Theatre for Young Audiences USA.

Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama's original 1931 comic book, The Four Immigrants Manga: A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904-1924 tells the true adventures of four young Japanese men in America, and it is arguably one of the first true comic books, or graphic novels, published in the United States. Kiyama began the work in 1927 when he exhibited a series of hand-drawn colored pages titled Manga Hokubei Iminshi ("A Manga North American Immigrant History") which depicted the lives of Kiyama and three friends in San Francisco between 1904 and 1924. While visiting Japan in 1931, Kiyama had his work printed in black and white. That year he brought it back to San Francisco, where he self-published it as Manga Yonin Shosei, or "The Four Students Manga." Frederik L. Schodt discovered Kiyama's work in a library in Berkeley around 1980. After much research, he completed a translation of the book in 1997, and it was published by Stone Bridge Press in Berkeley, retitled The Four Immigrants Manga: A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904-1924.

With some 100,000 patrons per year, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley has captured a national reputation for artistic innovation and integrity, often presenting Bay Area theatregoers with their first look at acclaimed musicals, comedies, and dramas, directed by award-winning local and guest directors, and performed by professional actors cast locally and from across the country.