Slant’s repertoire of eight evening-length theater works grew in popularity by consistently portraying wacky and fantastical characters confronting and parodying Hollywood’s stereotypes of Asian men, resisting pressure to assimilate into the dominant culture, and keeping ethnic cultural legacies alive, accompanied by rocking guitars, soulful shakuhachi flutes, and the insistent drum and gong beats of social justice for all. 

After wildly successful cross-country and international tours from 1995 to 2008, the group gradually drifted apart to parent young children and take care of aging parents. But the close bonds between the three friends and collaborators were sustained and endure. From 2022 to 2024, the trio began to perform together again for community fundraising events in New York City’s Chinatown. In 2025 they are compelled to reunite to combat an alarming rise in social divisiveness, frightening anti-immigrant policies, and oppressive new restrictions on freedom of expression. 

Juxtaposing intimate archival footage from the group’s genesis in the 1990’s until 2008 with the raucous new reunion show in May 2025, Lucky FM, the film deftly weaves between past and present, revealing each member’s ethnic cultural history against the backdrop of American laws that dictated obstacles to their social and economic advancement.   Richard Ebihara is a 4th and 5th generation Japanese American whose entire family were ordered into American concentration camps through executive order 9066 during World War II. Wayland Quintero is a 2nd generation American of Filipino and Japanese ancestry who grew up in Hawai’i under a racial/ethnic hierarchy seeded by American colonialism. Perry Yung is a 1st and 4th generation Chinese American who never met his grandmothers because of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that separated his family for three generations.  Dramatic vignettes depicting these personal stories will be intercut with archival material and manga-inspired animation illustrating the broader historic context and tying violent events of the past to the authoritarian tactics used today by far-right politicians to divide and conquer. 

The SLANT Performance Group’s triumphant return challenges the new administration’s anti-immigration tactics by celebrating the bravery of their ancestors who fought similar racist laws. The three artists of SLANT educate audiences about the heroism of the 442nd Japanese American Regiment, the most decorated battalion during World War II; the galvanization of community activism birthed from the fight to save Filipino American and Chinese American seniors from eviction at  San Francisco’s International Hotel during the period of 1968 to 1977; and the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American mistaken for being Japanese in Detroit when auto workers were laid off due to Japanese automobile imports. Contemporary news footage of ICE kidnappings and new social movements for justice bring the story full circle.    

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