Bay Area Actor Anne Yumi Kobori Creates Her Own Life On The Stage
by Heather Cassell
Theater has been in Anne Yumi Kobori’s blood since childhood. She was always performing along with her sister who was a dancer.
It was perhaps inherited by her mother’s birthmother who was who was an actress, singer, and dancer in Japan.
“[It’s] always a nice thing to think about, even though I never met her, I know that it’s meaningful to my mom that I’m in the arts,” the 28-year-old founding artistic producer of the independent theater company Utopia Theatre Project, told Girls That Roam. “There’s not anything else that I want to spend my time doing.”
It didn’t concern her parents that she and her sister had artistic tendencies. Rather than cautioning their daughters, they supported them, as they continued to study their crafts and go into the arts professionally.
Anne’s mother guided audience members to their seats opening night of Utopia Theatre’s most recent performance, “Every Day Alice,” which explores balancing a creative life and mental health, at PianoFight.
“My parents were always really, really supportive both me and my sister … engaging in the arts,” said Anne. “When I said I want to make it a career, they were very supportive … and helping me out in any way to make that happen.”
“I know that it’s meaningful to my mom that I’m in the arts,” she added.
The Artist’s Path
Anne took off to New York for college, studying theater at Sarah Lawrence College for two years before transferring before she was called home to the San Francisco Bay Area for personal reasons. The Berkeley native took time off from school and worked until she returned to studying theater at Santa Clara University.
It was there that she discovered her love for playwriting and first launched the Utopia Theatre Project recruiting her college friends to perform in productions at a studio theater during the summer.
The company went on hiatus after she graduated with a degree in theater arts and started working professionally as an actor, costume designer, playwright, and teaching artist.
Classically trained in Shakespeare since she was 8-years old, the Japanese American actor has performed with Silicon Valley Shakespeare, the Arabian Shakespeare Festival, Amios ShotzSF, Woman’s Will, Bay Area Children’s Theatre, and Palo Alto Players.
Anne became a resident artist and the education program manager at the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, also known as SF Shakes. At SF Shakes she’s performed in “A Winter’s Tale” and “Othello” and performed the title role of “Hamlet” and as well as designed the costumes for “Hamlet” and “As You Like It,” as well as teach at its Bay Area Shakespeare Camps, Midnight Shakespeare, and Tailor-Made Residencies.
“I think with Shakespeare it is so much about the poetry and the words and bringing a story that has been done many times to life again,” said Anne. “You can do Shakespeare in any style you want now.”
Finding Utopia Again
She was backstage with Maryssa Wanlass, artistic director of Utopia, when they began discussing her desire to adapt Russian playwright and short story author Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” and Maryssa’s desire to direct the same play.
“The Seagull” dramatizes four stages of actors and playwrights’ lives through four characters Boris Trigorin, a story writer; Nina, an ingenue; Irina Arkadina, an aging actress; and Irina’s son, Konstantin Treplev, a playwright.
Anne’s adaptation of “The Seagull” and performing as Nina in the production with Maryssa at the helm as artistic director relaunched Utopia Theatre in 2014.
Founding the theater company fulfilled a dream Anne always had. Like Shakespeare, she believes actors should be paid for the work like other artists, such as painters and photographers.
“I admire the work that nonprofits do, but it’s definitely a bit of a grind,” said Anne, who views Utopia as a theater startup with no intention of following the nonprofit business model. “While theater will always be a grind, in a good way, I definitely believe that artists should be paid what they are worth … just like all the other art forms.”
“I think we spent a lot of time and effort on this theater piece and we should definitely get paid as much as visual artists,” she said justifying why actors and other performance artists – including costume and set design – should be paid for their creativity.
Her other reason for wanting to remain a profitable venture is because many of the works Utopia produces are political theater.
“I also believe in political theater and I don’t want us to be answerable to a board or anything like that,” she said.
Anne enjoyed the role of directing a play that she had written in her original work, “Seeds,” but in “Every Day Alice” she had trepidations about performing the lead character in a work she wrote.
“It’s definitely sort of straddling both sides of that table in a way of to be behind the table as the playwright and then be on stage as an actor,” said Anne. “That’s definitely a new challenge.”
The play also strikes a personal cord for Anne, who started developing the script during one of her college playwriting classes. Living with post-traumatic stress disorder, Anne herself has had to take charge of her own mental health and manage it with her creative life.
“The play is so much about young people trying to be loved trying to do that successful[ly] and also struggling to have an artistic career,” she said. “What would it mean to have a child thrown in that mix?” she asked before addressing her own “big question.”
“What it’s like to be an artist and to also be struggling with a mental health issue? How much you are willing to push aside your health for your art and vice versa?” she asked, wondering what it means to be your own health advocate figuring out what treatments work best for the individual.
The experience completing her most recent work has “definitely been interesting and reflective,” she said adding. “Imagination is so crucial for adults to find that again if you have lost it.”
Developing Emerging Artists
Utopia isn’t only about producing works Anne has written. After two decades of performing, she’s interested in developing emerging playwrights, actors, and other theater.
“I think as a woman it’s just a little bit harder to get a word in edgewise. I would say most of it is not blatant, it’s just harder to get a seat at the table and once you are at the table it’s harder to make yourself heard,” said Anne about her experiences being intersectional with age, gender, and race. “Trying to find a way to lead the conversation is definitely a challenge.”
There aren’t enough women, especially women of color, in all aspects of theater, she said.
Anne advises all women to “stick with it,” she said, seek out mentors and safe spaces learn different disciplines to hone your craft.
“I would definitely encourage, especially young female artists, to continue working in theater,” said Anne. “There are not enough of us.”
“If you have the drive and you have the ambition then you will be able to make a career out of it even if people tell you it’s impossible.”
Keep an eye out on Utopia Theatre Company and Anne.
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