Kokoro (True Heart)
by Velina Hasu Houston

"Cultural conflicts have seldom been so intelligently explored on the stage.” —The New Yorker. ”Houston's engrossing riff on the flip side of the American immigrant experience is a fascinating, elegant debate about differing perceptions of honor. The piece is a winning, subtly complex melding of Western theatrics and Japanese conversational oratory in which simple sentences are often fraught with untold layers of meaning.“ —Backstage. ”…Velina Hasu Houston explores Japanese and American ethnic distinctions to often stunning effect. The line between the quick and the dead is a fine one in Houston's cosmology, where spirits wander freely and the afterlife seamlessly melds with the now. Houston creates a timeless, timely parable of mother love and a woman wronged.“ —Los Angeles Times. ”…intriguing and complex…[a] touching story…a thought-provoking piece of theatre.“ —Drama-Logue. ”Something deep inside of me had been touched. My soul had grown. [The play is] a bittersweet reminder "

— Rafu Shimpo