What does recent Guthrie show-stopper Randy Reyes have in common with Jeany Park of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and gifted actor-writer Sun Mee Chomet, who was cast in the world premiere of Tony Kushner's "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures"?

All of these still-ascending theater artists honed some of their skills with Mu Performing Arts.

When theater founder Rick Shiomi first wanted to find actors for his then-fledgling company 16 years ago, the landscape was bare.

"There was an Asian-American playwright who had to turn down a grant because he couldn't find Asian-American actors in town to do his work," he said.

Shiomi and others set out to build a company that would foster Asian-American theater artists. Now he is reaping the fruits of his labors.

When "Flower Drum Song" opens Saturday at the Ordway Center, it will be with an all-star cast of Twin Cities actors nurtured by Shiomi, who is directing the show.

"One of the things about Rick is that he was once a social worker," said David Henry Hwang, the Tony Award-winning playwright ("M. Butterfly") who updated the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and who has been friends with Shiomi since 1980, when both played in West Coast bands. "He has an uncanny ability to bring out the best in people."

Preserving, updating culture

"Flower Drum Song" stars Reyes, who has stood out in such productions as "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "A Midsummer Nights' Dream" at the Guthrie, where he is slated to play the lead next season in Hwang's "M. Butterfly."

In "Flower Drum Song," Reyes plays Wang, a devotee of Chinese opera who is trying to keep the tradition alive in the United States, even though his son wants to convert their opera house into a nightclub. Wang befriends Mei-Li, a refugee from communist China who is living in San Francisco.

After its Broadway opening in 1958, "Flower Drum Song" fell away, overtaken by the tide of history.

"I think it became passé because Asian-Americans, like other groups, wanted to speak up for ourselves and write our own master narratives," said Shiomi.

A big part of Mu's mission has been to create an alternate reality for Asian-Americans to live in, he said. "We are in the business of unpacking the stereotypes and archetypes surrounding Asians and Asian-Americans."

With "Flower Drum Song," it couldn't have chosen a more complex show. Yet the musical was progressive for its pre-civil rights era.

"Imagine the environment -- it was during the McCarthy Red Scare era, when to be Chinese meant that you could be a communist playwright," Hwang said. The musical came a dozen years after Japanese-Americans had been interned. "Here was this show that was forward-thinking then, even if I grew to develop some complex feelings about it."

It was the first Broadway work about Asian-Americans, as opposed to Asians, Hwang continued. "And it had strong male and female leads, the only ones I knew. So, I don't fault the playwright for the stereotypes. People work from what they know. When they don't know something, they fill in the gaps with what they think they know."

Hwang rewrote the book of the show for a 2002 Broadway revival, changing the plot and setting (the action now takes place in a fading opera house that becomes a nightclub when there are no performances). He cut characters and added new ones. He also dropped entire numbers, changed lyrics of the songs that remained and added historical context to the show.

Hwang's version "comes from the inside out instead of the outside looking in," he said. "And the jokes are not at the expense of the characters." Time magazine called the revival "a work of bravery and intelligence."

Farm team?

The re-tooled "Drum Song," with its new, humor-laced context, is the type of show Juilliard-educated Reyes relishes. He has been involved with Mu for five years. He said that the Minnesota theater contrasts with Asian-American companies in New York. "After Juilliard, I was trying to break into them, but they're closed," he said. "Mu was wide open, and that's a big part of why I moved to the Twin Cities. Rick has a bigger mission, and it's a testament to his vision that he anticipated the growth in the Asian-American population in Minnesota."

Mu's success contrasts with failures elsewhere. "You would expect a place like San Francisco to have a big, thriving Asian-American [theater] community, but they're struggling," said Hwang.

Yet ethnic-specific companies often find that they can cultivate talent but not keep them.

"We don't think of ourselves as a farm team, but if we are, we have no problem with that," said Shiomi. "If our actors and directors are working elsewhere, that's more credit to us. Sure, we would love to employ and hire them all the time. But we're not there yet."

The youthful-looking Reyes plays an elder figure in "Flower Drum Song," which is very different from how he has been cast elsewhere.

"With Mu, I play these older men, and when I'm at, say the Guthrie, I play much younger characters," he said. "It's nice to be able to have that opportunity to play such a range."

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390