Buddhism & Video Games Come to the Stage

Full Contact Enlightenment had an interesting post this morning about a play in Los Angeles involving Buddhism and video games!

In the recent newsletter from Ken McLeod, he made mention to a play by the name of “Cave Quest” put on by the East West Players in Las Angeles. The group are described as “The Nation’s premier Asian American theatre and

“EWP has premiered over 100 plays and musicals about the Asian Pacific American experience and has held over 1,000 readings and workshops. Our emphasis is on building bridges between East and West, and one measure of our success is an audience of 56% Asians and a remarkable 44% non-Asian attendance.”

The theme behind EWP’s production of “Cave Quest” will certainly resonate with many Buddhists who are noticing the increased trend towards ‘get enlightenment quick/make me rich’ gurus hoping to package up enlightenment in a easy to purchase format.

The play is described on the EWP’s website as follows:

“The search for inner peace is often a life long journey. However, Justin Yi plans to condense that journey into minutes by packaging it into a $49.95 video game. In order to create the game, he tracks down Padma, a legendary American Buddhist nun in a Tibetan cave high in the Himalayas. Padma hasn’t spoken in five years, but that’s okay, he’s only looking for the bullet points of enlightenment. When Justin’s charm and fervor falls short, he embraces darker tactics and the cave becomes an arena for a conflict of wills and surprising revelations that changes the course of their lives.”

If anyone does check out the play, I’d love to read a review. It’s running until March 14th so get there quick!

Many thanks to TMcG for this heads up. I’ll be sure to check out this playsometime this week!