Theatre Diaspora, Oregon’s only professional Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) theatre company, and MediaRites Productions, a nonprofit organization that provides innovative, award-winning documentary, theatre and outreach programs, today announce their co-produced staged reading of The Book of Mountains and Seas by award-winning playwright, Yilong Liu. Winner of the LGBTQ industry’s Lambda Literary Award for Drama, the play will be performed at Fuse Theatre Ensemble (4319 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd., Portland, OR 97215) on July 29, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. for one night only, followed by a short audience talkback.

Liu’s play involves a Chinese-born father from California who visits his deceased gay son’s American boyfriend in New York after discovering his son’s Yelp restaurant reviews two years after his son’s death. The father’s mission: to visit all of the restaurants his son reviewed on his Yelp page with the help of the former boyfriend. What results is a joint adventure filled with cultural clashes, friendship, differences, and the son’s spirit from the digital world, checking in on this unlikely pair.

The Book of Mountains and Seas is directed by Terry Kitagawa, a Theater Diaspora company member and seasoned actor, writer, director, and educator who had worked in San Francisco and New York City. The cast is comprised of Samson Syharath, who is also the managing artistic director of Theatre Diaspora, Matt Sepeda, and Larry Toda (also a company member of Theatre Diaspora).