Kimchi Kid

by Joanna Halpert Kraus

Contemporary family drama built around the experience of an American-Asian adoption. 9 men, 7 women (doubling possible). One hour 20 minutes . $ 6.50

To which world does Hak-Soo belong--his native Korea, where the villagers despise him because of his American soldier father, or his new home in America, where nobody seems to know how to cook rice properly and children call him "Yellow Banana"? Real adoption, as Hak Soo and his adoptive parents learn, is different from the picture painted by the social worker.

While Kimchi Kid has unusual pertinence to our growing community of Asian-American children, it would be a mistake to define it as a "special interest" play. Its concerns are common to all families. As Kraus puts it, "In today's world, families are made in different ways--the biological family, the step family, and the adoptive family. This play is about bonding. ... Only out of mutual respect can a family begin to form. Only through respect and love can three become one."


Playwright Joanna Kraus takes us, with the eloquence and taut theatricality we have come to expect from her, through flashback and memories and a series of suspenseful episodes, on the long voyage between adoption and becoming a family.