East West Players invites you to the benefit premiere of the 2026/27 Theatre for Youth Tour
East West Players invites you to the benefit premiere of the 2026/27 Theatre for Youth Tour
WHEN YURI
MET MALCOLM
Sunday, September 13, 2026 • 4:00–6:30pm
EWP’s David Henry Hwang Theater
Sunday, September 13, 2026 • 4:00–6:30pm
EWP’s David Henry Hwang Theater
Join us Sunday, September 13, 2026, 4pm, at the David Henry Hwang Theater in Little Tokyo, for the premiere performance of our 2026-2027 Theatre For Youth touring production WHEN YURI MET MALCOLM
Hosted by Jeanne Sakata, our program will feature the performance, a post-show conversation about the struggle for civil rights then and now moderated by May Lee, a special insight into EWPlay!, and a dessert reception in the courtyard.
More details to be announced in the coming weeks. Tickets for this fundraiser benefitting EWP’s arts education programs for youth are $100 each and available online through September 10th.
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Jeanne Sakata is honored to host the benefit premiere performance of WHEN YURI MET MALCOLM, having begun her career both as an actor and playwright with East West Players. Jeanne has enjoyed guest star/recurring roles on ABC-Shondaland's Station 19, Magnum P.I., NCIS Hawai’i, NCIS Los Angeles, Marvel/Hulu’s Hit Monkey, Disney Plus' High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, and Disney's Big Hero 6. Onstage, she most recently performed with the 2025-26 national tour and world premiere of Moisés Kaufman & Amanda Gronich’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES at McCarter Theatre, Wallis Annenberg Center, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and La Jolla Playhouse, as well as the 2023 revival of Anna Deavere Smith’s TWILIGHT: LOS ANGELES, 1992 at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum. Jeanne’s acclaimed solo play, HOLD THESE TRUTHS (Drama Desk Nomination, Outstanding Solo Performance; Theatre Bay Area Awards, Outstanding Production, Direction, and Lead Performance; San Diego Critics’ Circle Award), has been performed across the country in over two dozen productions after originally premiering at East West Players. She has been commissioned by LA TheatreWorks for her audio plays FOR US ALL and THE SECRET GARDEN, and recently workshopped her new play, SPRINGS, for Ford’s Theatre Legacy Commissions program. Her special honors include: Theatre LA Ovation Award for Outstanding Lead Actress, Chay Yew’s RED, East West Players; Trailblazer Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, East West Players; Lee Melville Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Los Angeles Theatre Community, Playwrights’ Arena. JeanneSakata.com / HoldTheseTruths.info
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May Lee is an award-winning, broadcast journalist/host who has been both a US-based and international anchor, host, correspondent, and producer and a former member of EWP’s Board of Directors. She currently co-hosts the vodcast "Shoes Off Inside with MKT" with iconic API actresses Kelly Hu and Tamlyn Tomita.
May is a prominent voice in the effort to combat anti-Asian hate and has also led the charge in breaking down stereotypes of Asian women. She was named one of Forbes 50 Over 50 in 2021 and one of 50 Unsung Heroes by Asian Hustle Network in 2022. Along with her media projects, May has established herself as a respected educator and trainer in diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in education, the workplace, and non-profit.
In 2007, May founded Lotus Media House and produced original programs including the first iteration of “The May Lee Show,” the first pan-Asia talk show for women. May’s international experience as a broadcast journalist began in 1992 at Japan’s NHK network. From 1995 to 1999, May was CNN’s Tokyo Correspondent and then an anchor for CNN International in Hong Kong, becoming CNN’s first Korean American anchor. In 2000, May joined Oxygen Media, founded by Oprah Winfrey, as one of its main talk show hosts. She also has served as CNBC Asia’s primary anchor.
Her books include MAY LEE, LIVE AND IN PERSON. It all begins with Passion, published by John Wiley & Sons and Random House Korea, and So You Want to be On Air? A Guide to Anchoring, Hosting and Voice-overs, based on her wildly popular workshops and published by Cognella.
YURI KOCHIYAMA
WILL BE PLAYED BY
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Pauline Yasuda (she/her) is elated to return to EWP's Theatre for Youth for her third show! She was previously seen in TAM TRAN GOES TO WASHINGTON and as Congresswoman Patsy Mink in PATSY. She has an extensive commercial career and can be seen in ads for Volkswagen, Avocados from Mexico, State Farm, Google, Homes.com, and McDonalds, just to name a few. TV shows include Criminal Minds and Ballard with Maggie Q. She is also a professional stand-up comedian and was finalist in the 2019 San Francisco Comedy Competition and winner of California's Funniest Female Competition in 2013. She is also honored to continue her work as a Teaching Artist for EWP's EWPlay! Program.
MALCOLM X
WILL BE PLAYED BY
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Erik Orjiako (he/him) is a Nigerian-American actor with decades of experience on the stage and in film. With professional training in both comedy and drama, Erik's performances are charged with emotion, passion, and an understanding of the complexity of his character's inner worlds. WHEN YURI MET MALCOLM marks Erik's return to the stage after many years spent primarily in front of cameras, and he's excited and honored to portray such an iconic and nuanced character alongside a talented cast and crew.
MEET THE PANELISTS
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Alisa Pimentel is a Consulting Instructor and West Coast Coordinator at The Asian American Education Project (AAEdu). Before joining AAEdu, Alisa spent over seven years as an educator and program leader in public and private school settings, as well as nonprofits, throughout Southern California, on multicultural integration, arts education, and social emotional skills education. She received her B.A. in Liberal Studies from Concordia University Irvine, with a focus on global studies, and M.A. in Social Emotional Learning from National University.
Based in Orange County, Alisa identifies as a Filipino American. Her family's heritage motivates her commitment to culturally responsive education and empowering diverse student populations. Her background in Polynesian dance gives her a unique appreciation for Pacific Islander American history and cultures. In her spare time, Alisa enjoys traveling with family, attending live theatre productions, and performing 'ori Tahiti.
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Dr. Stef Lira is an organizer with Pilipinos in Education for Community Action, a board member with the Filipino Migrant Center, and a professor of Ethnic Studies at Long Beach City College. Her life's work is to provide accessible, community-led education with the objective to agitate, organize, and mobilize migrant and immigrant communities towards a more just, liberated future.
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Dr. Juli Grigsby is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at Long Beach City College. Prior she held an Assistant Professor position in Anthropology at Haverford College and has taught courses at Harvard University, Boston College, and University of California at Riverside. Dr. Grigsby’s postdoctoral research took place at Pennsylvania State University at the Africana Research Center and in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She received her PhD and MA degrees from the University of Texas at Austin in Anthropology and her bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in Chicana/o Studies and Anthropology. The past recipient of Davis Putter Fellowships and a Humanities, Arts, Science, Technology & Advanced Collaboratory Scholar (HASTAC), her photographic work has appeared in the Black California Dreamin’ journal and at the Metro Art Gallery in Pomona. Juli’s written work has been published in Anthropology News and Women's Studies Quarterly. Her research interests are primarily in the areas of race, gender, and U.S. social movements, social inequity with a focus on reproductive health and violence. Before completing her doctoral research, Juli volunteered with several Los Angeles reproductive justice community organizations and continues to advocate for reproductive freedom.
PLAYWRIGHT AND DIRECTOR SPOTLIGHT
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Rosie Narasaki is a second-generation actor and playwright. Her play UNRIVALED had its world premiere co-produced by Playwright’s Arena and the Boston Court in Los Angeles, and was also co-produced by the Seattle Public Theater and SIS Productions in Seattle. It won the 2022 LA New Play Project Award and the 2023 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Original Writing. Her play WHEN YURI MET MALCOLM had its world premiere with East West Players in 2022, and she is delighted that they are reviving it again now! She also wrote for a Netflix show once.
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Khalif J. Gillett is a Los Angeles-based writer, director, and actor. His work seeks to expand the narratives of Blackness, queerness, and Latinidad through poetry, surrealism, and satirically anachronistic period pieces. Khalif is an alumnus of the Labyrinth Theatre Company’s Intensive Ensemble, a Candela Playwriting Fellow, and a finalist in the Nuyorican Poet Café’s Theatre Festival. His past directing credits includeIN THE HEIGHTS, GREASE, PIPELINE, and BEETLEJUICE. Khalif seeks to educate those without resources to study the arts and believes knowledge to be a form of reparations. He wants to empower the marginalized and underprivileged to tell their own stories to create healthy ways of processing their realities. Finally, he feels that marginalized joy is a radical act of resistance and that a story doesn’t have to be painful for it to be impactful.
This special event is supported in part by Alex Giza & Cathy Noonan and the Beulah Quo & Edwin Kwoh Fund for Arts Education.
Theatre for Youth is supported in part by Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, L.L. Foundation for Youth, Cathay Bank Foundation, Green Foundation, The Sun Family Foundation, The Tsao Family Foundation, The Walt Disney Company, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture.
East West Players’ Season 61 is sponsored in part by NBCUniversal. EWP is a recipient of the 2026 THRIVE! Grant, funded by the Mark Edelman Theater Fund and administered by Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for theatre leading for a just and thriving theatre ecology.
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