An American in Japan Turns Her Experiences Into One-Woman Show

“Tokyo Bound” is Hollywood bound.

Fresh from a smash run at East West Players, Amy Hill’s one-woman “Tokyo Bound” has moved to the Matrix Theatre in Hollywood, a prospect that prompts its writer-star to say: “I’m terrified of not having an audience.

“It’s a new environment,” she added. “Also, Asian-American theater produced by the person performing it is rare. At East West, I’d look into the audience and see faces like mine, people who are half” Asian.

The actress, born in Deadwood, S. D., and raised in Seattle, is the product of a Finnish father and a Japanese mother. Her show recounts the years, from ages 18 to 24, that she spent in Japan.

“I wanted to go abroad, but we didn’t have the funds to send me anywhere I wanted to go,” Hill said. “My mom used all the money she’d made as a cook to send me to Japan. I got there and realized it might be a big mistake.”

At 18, Hill had never cooked for herself, paid a bill or made a decision without her parents. Suddenly, she was on her own in a strange country--with only a limited knowledge of Japanese and, initially, no place to stay. Enrolled at Sophia International University (“a really archaic, hard-nosed system”), Hill got involved in the foreign students association and quickly found that her American look was a major sales commodity.

“I was the Sunkist lemon girl,” she recalled cheerfully. “I went around Japan handing out lemons.” One day, she answered a call from the national radio network. They needed a travel show host who could speak Japanese and was under 5 feet, 7 inches (so as not to intimidate the locals). “It was the best job,” Hill said of her five-year stint. “I could travel anywhere I wanted, then go back and talk about it. I also did cable television, in English for foreigners, ‘The Tokyo Entertainment Report.’ ”

In “Tokyo Bound,” Hill, 38, weaves half a dozen characters (including an obsessive elevator girl and an insecure pop star) into her own story, which also involved marriage to a Japanese man. After moving back to the Bay Area in ‘78, Hill and her husband divorced, and she began working with the Asian-American Theater Company.

“Doing theater in San Francisco, being around Japanese-Americans, I realized I was still very attached to Japan,” she said. “But it was hard to process all those feelings.”

In 1985, Hill began incorporating some of her Japan stories in acting workshops and stand-up comedy. (Locally, she has performed with Cold Tofu and ComedySportz.) Then, last year, while working as an interpreter for a film in Monterey Park, she got a call from the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in downtown Los Angeles, asking about a show they had heard she’d developed. “I really didn’t have a show at that point,” Hill said. “It was just a bunch of little things in a notebook.”

In three weeks, she sat down and wrote a 30-minute version of the show and performed it last summer at the center. A few months later, Seattle’s Northwest Asian American Theatre called. Hill said this forced her to rework and expand the piece: “Left to my own devices, it probably would’ve been another five years.” Now 65 minutes long, the show got raves during its eight-week run in Seattle, which prompted East West to offer her a slot on its summer schedule.

Although Hill is nervous about the show’s move to Hollywood, she believes that it will be good for the work--and potential audiences. “It’s important that we don’t ghettoize ourselves ethnically,” she said. “We can’t expect people to understand us if we isolate ourselves from the mainstream culture.”

On a personal level, she added: “It’s easy to spill the beans about myself comedically. Dramatically, it’s not so easy. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me or look at what I do as self-indulgent.”

A resident of Los Angeles since 1987, Hill--whose TV credits include “Night Court,” “Perfect Strangers” and “Beverly Hills 90210”--is planning her next piece, which will focus more on her childhood, her divorce (“a real blow to me as a woman”) and issues of identity. “Growing up, I wanted to be anybody but myself,” she said. “I was not proud of where I came from. I always wanted to be an actress. It seemed to be a place for people on the outside.”

Director Anne Etue, who became friends with Hill years ago in acting class, has been with this piece from the start. “Originally,” Etue said, “I functioned as an interrogator, asking questions like, ‘Why is this story important?’ Amy has a wonderful ability to open up; there’s realness and truth where she comes from. One thing we never wanted was for this to be an Asian-American show. It’s about accepting who you are, where you come from. And that’s something everyone can relate to.”