Berkeley Rep actors set sail on a field trip to prepare for a play about Angel Island (SF Chronicle)
From left, Whit K. Lee, Tess Lina, Lloyd Suh and Johanna Pfaelzer are seen on a Feb. 14 ferry ride to Angel Island during a field trip with cast members and creatives for the upcoming production “The Far Country” in San Francisco. The show, set partly on Angel Island in the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act, will premiere from March 8 to April 14.
March 4, 2024
By Lily Janiak
“Don’t touch the walls,” Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation Executive Director Ed Tepporn said. “They’re historic. There’s also lead paint in them.”
He was addressing the cast and creative team of Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s “The Far Country,” which is set partly on Angel Island in the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act. On a brisk winter day, with dramatic clouds threatening rain, the theater artists were making an unusual field trip, riding a ferry to the island where a half-million emigrants, the majority from Asia, were processed from 1910 to 1940.
Tepporn’s words came as the group was about to enter the Detention Barracks Museum, on whose walls detainees carved more than 100 poems — some of which are quoted in Lloyd Suh’s play, which begins performances Friday, March 8. Many of the lines are spare, epigrammatic and cutting:
Do not forget this day when you land ashore.