Paper Flowers: A New Dramatic Play

"When hope is lost, let this anger you feel, fuel you to find hope again."

 

Paper Flowers is a new, dramatic historical play about hope being an active form of resistance against hate. Its world premiere will be during the Hollywood Fringe Festival this June 2026!

 

Paper Flowers is set in 1970 during the height of both the Civil Rights and the Anti-Vietnam War movements. Nanami Nishiyama, an overcontrolling Japanese American woman, runs a boarding house with a cast of eccentric boarders in Chicago, IL. She relives her haunting memories of Japanese incarceration after a racial slur is burned into their front yard, targeting her teenage daughter and her boyfriend. We explore themes of female friendship, standing up for one another, war, activism, interracial relationships, grief, and moving forward from the past.

 

This show is a love letter to the Japanese American community that offers all audience members a message of hope, written by a granddaughter whose family was upended and displaced by this very incarceration.

 

We ask our audiences, "How much has really changed?" Turns out, not much.

 

84 years ago, President FDR signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced mass removal of more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps. The same fear-mongering, hate speech rhetoric, and outright kidnapping are happening again, targeting our immigrant and Latino communities as well as even threatening legal, naturalized neighbors once more. History is repeating itself, yet so many do not know the history of the Japanese camps. Like much of American History, these stories are absent from our history books and are being scrubbed from national databases.

Paper Flowers loudly reminds audiences that we have a right to be angry about what is happening, that "Never again, is now," means no more cages. Ever. We want to inspire our audiences to speak up in the face of injustice.

 

We are thrilled to be working with The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), who will be receiving a portion of our ticket sales as donations. CHIRLA's mission is to achieve a just society fully inclusive of immigrants. They have done tireless work helping empower immigrants to push policies that promote freedom of movement, full human rights, and the vigorous civic action that strengthens this democracy."

 

Along with Nikkei Progressives, a grassroots, all-volunteer, multi-generational community organization whose mission is to engage and unite the Nikkei community to stand against injustice, inequality, and white supremacy, and to work in solidarity with others for a more just society.

 

Most of our funding goes to our rehearsal spaces and Fringe venue at the beautiful Promenade Playhouse at the LAPAC! Which is almost $5,000! Paper Flowers will be playing on dual stages of a reverse thrust stage, making for an intimate, semi-immersive style of theater. We have scenes that take place in a 1970s Chicago boarding house alongside scenes that take place in the 1940s in the WRA camp Manzanar. We may even lead the audience in a protest chant!

Your funding also goes to helping with marketing, costumes, props, and a super cool sentry tower made out of paper! And helping to pay our stunning team and cast.

 

Paper Flowers was originally written as a teleplay during the CAPE New Writers Fellowship in 2024 and went on to win multiple awards, including the grand prize for a Drama Screenplay, and earned a spot on the "Top 25 Screenwriters to Watch" by the ISA Network. Alli Kiko Masloske has been writing in the TV, film, and game spaces for nearly a decade, working at such places as Netflix, Lionsgate, Yotta Games, Amazon Studios, Webtoon, and Moonbug Entertainment, among others. Alli prides herself on writing pieces that tackle tougher topics with grace, humor, and a lot of heart.

 

Hollywood Fringe website tickets go live May 1st!

Instagram for cast and show updates!

To reach the play directly, email paperflowersplay@gmail.com

Learn more about CHIRLA here.

Learn more about Nikkei Progressives here.