THE FIRST MEETING OF LODESTONE

Lodestone Co-Founder Tim Lounibos looks back on the first meeting of what would become Lodestone...

Ahhh, the first meeting. 

I believe it was June 1999 when we put out a call to local artists, having absolutely no idea what kind of response we’d get (and we were cutting-edge back then because we were using email... though a handful still needed to be called or paged ;-).

At the time, Jenny and I were living in a condo in Sherman Oaks (fresh off our May wedding), and we agreed to host this theatrical gathering in our building’s rec room.  We had absolutely no idea how many would show up to hear Alexandra, Phil, Chil and I propose our vision for a new Asian American theatre company.  In fact, I’d have been very happy to see a dozen or so show up... and was quite and pleasantly surprised to find that room packed—actors, writers and directors making up most of the standing-room-only audience.

The energy was intense.  An excitement.  A buzz.

And, for some, it was mixed with a keen skepticism.

Now, I’m too old to remember the exact order of things (my kids have pummeled my brain to senseless mush ;-), but Chil was the driving force at that meeting, especially in terms of communicating an administrative and fundraising plan of action.  It’s important to remember that back then our country was in the midst of the infamous dot.com boom where money could be had all over the place—like flies swarming a can of spoiled spam (wait is that even possible?!).  You just needed to know how to ask for it.

ENTER Chil Kong.

At that initial meeting, Chil shared tales of his fundraising prowess in Seattle (when he was artistic director of NWAAT) and how he’d be able to apply that same skill and savvy to our purposes.  The numbers he threw out were impressive and he was just so damn mesmerizing and convincing (so much so that I’ll never forget Jenny remarking – later, when we were alone, and I’m paraphrasing – “I sure hope he’s not the Music Man come to town, raising all our hopes, only to dash them away at the end”) that the possible seemed very probable.

During our parts of the presentation, Alexandra and I spoke from an acting perspective and how we envisioned a company that would be egalitarian and democratic and a place where you could always come home, no matter where your life’s path took you.  As long as you put in your volunteer hours, you would have an equal voice and opportunity to perform (this would change through time when we reached a crossroads and had to choose between equality and quality).  We also wanted to provide a training ground for artists which would occur through our Yellow Box program.

Philip spoke of our vision of being a mulit-cultural AA theatre group that wouldn’t cater to traditional AA themes.  We would produce completely untraditional and unconventional, contemporary, twisted, kick-ass shit—period; creating shows which displayed an aesthetic that was all our own.

Well, this all sounded great to those in attendance and pretty much everyone was swept up in such an exciting and visionary endeavor... 

HOWEVER, there were a couple of people (Roger Fan and Eddie Mui, I promise not to divulge any names), who really questioned our sincerity of having a truly multi-cultural AA group and vision.  In particular, they questioned me and Phil because of our past connection with the Society of Heritage Performers.

SHP was a group which had the goals of creating and fostering a Korean American performing arts tradition in the United States, as well as encouraging the Korean American community’s involvement in mainstream culture through the performing arts, while introducing the mainstream culture to the performing arts tradition of Korea and Korean America.  Phil was the main writer and I was the main young male lead (Soon Tek Oh being the older one) for a number of well-publicized and well-received shows which predominantly incorporated the mahdong-nori style of theatre-in-the-round. 

So it was natural that questions would arise.  Would all the shows of this new venture be written by Phil?  He made it clear that they would not.  In fact, we would put out a call for play submissions.

Other questions seemed to get a little more heated when actors couldn’t seem to fathom that an actor who was always the lead in his previous group would selflessly step aside so that other actors could come to the fore in this one.  Now, I’m from a small town and have always believed in treating people fairly and with respect and that my word is my word.  I’ve always considered these to be unquestionable and obvious traits of mine; so I was rather surprised and baffled that someone would actually question my integrity... but all I could do was assure them that the proof would be in the pudding.  I still planned to act but had no intention whatsoever of cornering the market... and Phil, Chil and Alexandra would certainly never let me get away with attempting anything like that!

The other big issue concerned the fact that the four of us who were making this proposal of a ground-breaking, pan-Asian American theatre group were all KAs.  What was going to stop us from continually choosing to produce shows that dealt with KA issues?

Again, those things did not interest us; SHP was Soon Tek Oh’s vision; and they’d just have to trust that we were being straight with them.  The proof would be in the pudding.

Well, our passion and words seemed to carry through that night.  Hugs abounded (even with the unnamed ones whom I considered my brothers... still do ;-) and we told everyone we’d be in touch through email, with our first course of action being to vote on a name for this new venture...