The Question of Identity in Contemporary Asian Canadian Drama

Writers and playwrights of Asian origin have been and continue to be active on the stage of Canadian literary life, expressing the problems, values, concerns and experiences of their people. This thesis proposes to analyze two plays of Asian- Canadian playwrights: The Tale of A Mask by Terry Watada and Mom, Dad, I¿m Living with a White Girl by Marty Chan. The plays discussed in this paper raise questions regarding the problematic relationship between the two cultures an Asian-Canadian immigrant is part of, and the need to integrate both of these cultures into a personal identity. In these plays Watada and Chan merge different elements of Canadian and Asian culture in order to show the difficult process of finding identity beyond restricting stereotypes and shallow slogans of multiculturalism.