Kumiko Mendl has worked as an actor, teacher, storyteller and director and is Artistic Director of Yellow Earth, the award winning British East Asian theatre company. She led on the companies education and outreach programme before becoming Artistic Director in 2011 and set up the first BEA acting summer school; Yellow Earth Academy in 2010 to encourage more BEA’s into the industry. She is also co-founder and co AD of A Thousand Cranes and artistic associate at Artsdepot. Andrew and Kumiko discuss her career from growing up in Watford, discovering her passion for mime and subsequently training at Jacques LaCoq. The two amble through the various important acting, directing and other jobs that she would go on to do including appearing at the National Theatre, Carol Churchill’s Top Girls, appearing as a life-model and how she and others founded Yellow Earth Theatre – a company dedicated to creating work for British East Asian artists, her involvement with A Thousand Cranes, setting up the UK’s first BEA summer school and the many different challenges that she and other British East Asians face in today’s industry.

Episode features include:

The Soapbox: Andrew and Kumiko discuss the many unfair challenges that face being an East Asian performer in the performing arts industry and surrounding issues such the use of yellow-face, white-washing, colour-blind and colour-conscious casting and dispel the myth that there aren’t enough East Asian performers in the UK.

Dramatic News: Andrew covers the latest news headlines including stories relating to Kevin Spacey, The King & I and Evita.

The Platform: Our featured composer is Joe Purdue with a song called Still So Close performed by Lewis Greenslade and Sarah Joyce from his Tolkien inspired musical Unfolding Tales.