Philip Kan Gotanda

Philip Kan Gotanda is a Japanese-American playwright originally from Stockton, California. He graduated from the University of Santa Barbara with a degree in Japanese Art and completed a law degree at Hastings University. During law school, he began writing songs about the Japanese-American experience and later helped found the Asian American Music Organization. The success of his first play, a musical based on a Japanese children’s story, inspired him to create more work for Asian-American theatres.

Gotanda’s work often explores issues of Asian-American identity and spans a range of styles and genres. His play Yankee Dawg You Die has been published in both English and Chinese. It originally premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 1988 and has been revived at East West Players twice, most recently in July 2025. Gotanda has received the Legacy Playwrights Award from the Dramatist Guild Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Flora Roberts Award for recognition of distinguished work from the New York Dramatists Guild. He is a full professor at U.C. Berkeley’s Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies.