Making Tracks

Making Tracks is an Asian American musical theater production by Second Generation, a New York-based theater company, with music by Woody Pak, lyrics by Brian Yorkey, and concept and book by Welly Yang. Making Tracks tells the story of the rich and diverse history of Asians in America. Asians were (and still are) often limited to playing the roles of "the gook," "the geek," and "the gangster." In the summer of 1993, Welly Yang began searching through history books and reading stories of Asian Americans. In 1998, Yang asked two friends, Woody Pak, a recent Juilliard graduate whom he met through a mutual friend, and Brian Yorkey, a classmate from Columbia University, to collaborate on a rock musical to tell these stories. The original show was produced Off-Broadway in cooperation with the Taipei Theater in New York City in February 1999, bringing on another Columbia classmate, Lenny Leibowitz, as director. It also had Shawn Ku as choreographer and it was musically directed by David Jenkins and Tom Kitt. Yorkey and Kitt would go on later to write the Tony award-winning show Next To Normal. The show employed a cast of Asian American theater professionals, many who had performed with Yang from Miss Saigon. It starred Hoon Lee, Cindy Cheung, Timothy Huang, Mel Duane Gionson, Thomas Kouo, Mimosa, Michael Minn, Kiki Moritsugu, Aiko Nakasone, Rodney To, Virginia Wing, and Yang. Sets were by Sarah Lambert; projection design by Elaine McCarthy; graphic design by Richard Ng; lighting by Stephen Petrilli; costumes by Rasheda Poole and Shawn Ku; sound by Virg Nafarette. Village Theatre invited the show to Washington state to continue developing the show as part of the Village Originals program in the spring of 2000. That production added a new second act. After that successful production, the Taipei Philharmonic Foundation invited them to Taiwan, and launched the show's concept album, in collaboration with Sony Music Taiwan.