I got interested in Commedia del Arte many years ago but had forgotten all about it until recently, when I read an actor's obituary in The New York Times. What drew my attention was the photo - a face I had seen many times, though I couldn't remember him playing any particular role - and the headline:"Soon-Tek Oh, Actor Who Chafed at Asian Stereotypes". Often, especially early in his career, he was cast as the stock Asian, rather than a flesh-and-blood person - the "houseboy" or some other Asian stereotype in productions where any role of substance was played by a white actor. Oh, Li and seven other actors started a theater company called the East West Players to give Asian actors an opportunity to play real roles instead of the caricatures they were always cast as. I can think of only one regular series in the 1960s, a detective series, that had a regularly appearing Asian role played by and depicted as a real person of Asian heritage.