As the lights go down on the Hayes Theatre Co stage, Akari Komoto’s face is illuminated by a single text message cast across her phone screen.

The Perth composer and musical director is invited to play at the Festival of New Work in Sydney to a hushed audience. They erupt into applause with the final note. She looks back at the screen.

Another performer asks Komoto for the sheet music she just poured her heart into, seeking the artist’s blessing to bring the song into the audition room. “That’s not why I do what I do, but it’s crazy that people are interested in putting my songs into their repertoire,” she says.

Classical piano is Komoto’s second language. Born in Brisbane to Japanese parents, music bridged a gap in early communication. By seven, she was playing practice rooms filled to the brim with stuffed toys, serenading teddy bears as seriously as if she were in a concert hall, each ballad a building block for her creative voice.

Now she’s starting to command the attention of arts lovers across the country.

On the surface, 2025 has been a breakthrough year for Asian-Australian theatre makers looking for greater representation in the arts, with performances from homegrown events to fringe festivals. In truth, it’s a fraction of the change these artists long to see.

According to Diversity Arts Australia, just five per cent of people working in Australian theatre, dance and stage are culturally and/or linguistically diverse. This can lead to a lack of insight from creative teams when it comes to adapting shows featuring minority groups.

And the crumbs of representation the Asian community sees on stage don’t always paint the most flattering picture. “Since 1989 it’s really shocking how little has changed,” Komoto says.

This was the year Miss Saigon opened in London’s West End. Despite critical acclaim, the show is often loathed by the demographic it claims to represent – not helped by Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce taping his eyes to appear “more ethnic”.

More than ticking boxes

Komoto poured over 30 years of casting while preparing for her honours thesis on the evolving perception of Asian representation in musical theatre, before completing her composition and music technology degree at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

She feels Asian performers, regardless of specific ethnicity, are being thrown at the show to keep critics quiet. Komoto claims the production teams are rarely bothered to commit all the way. The show’s climax, for example, is filled with soldiers who have their faces covered by bulky military helmets.

As a result, she found these background roles are often cast ambiguously. “Any Asian actor we can get, great,” she says facetiously.

Komoto echoes the sentiment of countless performers she spoke to for her thesis who say they hate the story and what it stands for. Yet they still compete to play their part because roles for them are thin on the ground in contemporary musical theatre.

The artist even found herself questioning whether she truly earned the opportunities that have come her way, or if she simply ticked a diversity box.

One of five people selected for a musical directing mentorship with Laura Tipoki, a sought-after musician and conductor who has worked on the likes of Hamilton and Hadestown, Komoto began comparing herself to her contemporaries.

“I’m a young Asian female, is this why I’m here?” Komoto asked herself.

Making their own work

Perth writer and theatre maker Arthur Brown decided early on they needed to make their own opportunities, rather than wait for society to catch up.

Chinese Malaysian on their mother’s side, Brown strives to explore the difficulties of “[Being] different in a world where you don’t necessarily feel like you’ve earned that right” with each new play they pen.

“Hey this would make an awesome stage production,” Brown thought while sitting in the competitive chaos of their high school debate team’s battles.

Years later the ever-changing dynamics of those teammates and friends sparked the play which would change their life.

“[With] the benefit of hindsight and the ability to make it funny, to make it dramatic, [I could] sort of elevate all of those big emotions I was feeling,” Brown says.

Making its debut during the Hayman Theatre’s 2024 Lunchtime Theatre season, Stand and Deliver returned for the WA Fringe World Festival in February 2025.

The WA Fringe World Festival cast performing in Stand and Deliver. Photos Supplied: Connor Flint.

After many production meetings taken over Zoom inside Brown’s car, parked outside a 7/11, the show headed to Sydney’s Actors Pulse Playhouse from September 3-6 for its first interstate production.

Brown was beyond thrilled with the new cast of local talent, reinterpreting their script for a new audience, an audience who responded with enthusiasm, packing the theatre for a sold-out closing night.

Despite the success of these young artists, driving new works based on their own experiences, change at the highest level remains at a snail’s pace.

When it comes to having a show on the great white way, popularity doesn’t seem to be a deciding factor in who gets to tell Asian-led stories.

With a love story set in the distant future of South Korea’s bustling and fluorescent capital, Seoul, shining light on the endless Asian American talent Broadway has to offer, the sky was the limit for Maybe Happy Ending.

Keeping pace with its competition during the 2024-2025 season at the Belasco Theatre, the show broke records, boasting 10 Tony nominations and six wins, the most of the year.

Actor Darren Criss also made history as the first Asian American to win Best Leading Actor in a Musical category for his portrayal of retired Helper-bot Oliver.

Weeks after this monumental achievement, it was announced the role would be temporarily taken over by a white man, actor Andrew Barth Feldman, dividing fans. Criss returned to the show on November 5, but it is unknown who his permanent replacement will be once he does take his final bow.

Seeing the announcement after a long day of production left a sour taste in Brown’s mouth. “Can’t people just let us have this one little thing,” they ask.

Contemporary Asian Australian Performance is Australia’s only performing arts company devoted to bringing Asian Australian artists to main stages nationally, providing production and development support.

CAAP artistic director Tessa Leong agrees there has been a backwards step in the past few years, with some companies shrinking their goals for original programming, choosing to re-mount plays that are known successes in favour of core business, diminishing opportunities for all artists.

Leong says what can be surprising is even if a town’s streets are bustling with a rich variety of cultures, it does not guarantee the same diversity behind the closed doors of these companies.

“There is a huge disparity between who’s walking down the streets and when you cross over into a venue,” she says.

Since taking over the company of more than 300 actors in 2022, Leong has continued its mission of celebrating and platforming Asian Australian performers, creating a tapestry of new work leading to centre stages.

Leong believes a key pillar of this philosophy is nurturing new work once it is done, allowing the artists to travel and go on a wider search until a show clicks with the right audience.

“There’s a deep desire… to engage with people of certain cultural backgrounds because they understand the resonance that could come about,” she says. “We’re all different and there’s a multitude of different ways we experience the world.”

Leong doesn’t believe the term “colour blind casting” – providing opportunities for performers regardless of race – is useful anymore. Instead, she is adamant audiences will read into every creative choice whether a director likes it or not.

Komoto believes drawing back the curtain to increase tertiary education acceptance rates in the arts would allow more students the opportunity to access the kind of knowledge that can launch creative careers.

The as-yet-untitled work she showcased at the Hayes explored a young woman reconnecting with her Asian heritage after growing up with a white mother, never knowing her father. “That other half that makes me ‘me’,” Komoto says. 

Hoping to revisit this concept later, Komoto is finalising her new work, Burnout: The Musical, which will be performed at WAAPA on December 4. The show is based on the tendency of those in their early 20s to overextend themselves, balancing creative endeavours on top of the demands of work and social life.

Scouring Pinterest boards, putting passion to paper, leaning over her trusty piano through many sleepless nights, Komoto has written eight songs in just two and a half weeks. “I feel like I don’t get to complain because I get to do the thing that I love,” she says.

Komoto hasn’t felt this passionately about a project in a long time. “It’s kind of a terrible feeling as a creative when you’re actively working on a show that you’re not proud of… I think I’ve made the right decision,” she says.