Conjunto, a new play by Oliver Mayer, recently received its world premiere at Teatro Visión in a joint project with Contemporary Asian Theater Scene. Conjunto's setting may seem familiar these days—a depressed economy during wartime—but the play takes place during World War II. The play addresses the internment of Japanese-Americans and the mass deportations of Mexican immigrants, who were blamed by many for the Great Depression. Conjunto tells the story of California workers of Mexican and Filipino descent who work the farm of a Japanese-American sent to an internment camp. Toiling with them is the farmer's mail-order bride, a first-generation Japanese-American woman.

Cherylene Lee's play The Legacy Codes offers more recent proof that institutionalized discrimination often withstands the test of time. The play, which made its world premiere at TheatreWorks this month, is loosely based on a true story that unfolded just a few years ago—the case of Chinese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was accused of stealing nuclear secrets for China. Although the media whirlwind that followed largely suggested his guilt, all the charges but one minor one were eventually dropped. Playwright Lee reimagines this national political saga as a family drama and a personal journey for a Taiwanese-born scientist who, scapegoated by an ambitious colleague, finds himself reevaluating his life through the lens of his cultural identity in America.

"I saw a newspaper article in March of 1999 that talked about a Chinese-American scientist working at a national lab who had allegedly given the legacy codes to the People's Republic of China. And it was the words 'legacy codes' that actually inspired me," says Lee. "As soon as I saw those words, I knew I was going to write a play. To me legacy codes has a lot of resonance in a lot of different ways—not just computer codes, but also in terms of DNA, also how family codes are passed from one person to another, how cultural codes are passed. So there were many ways that I immediately saw the words 'legacy codes' applied to how we pass on information from one person to the next."

Though the plays—both written, incidentally, pre-Sept. 11—speak powerfully to the current highly charged political climate, at the same time the works tackle enduring issues of ethnic and cultural identity that have become almost inherent to a nation built largely by immigration.

"The woman in my life is Japanese-American, and I'm Mexican-American. Over the years, I've wondered at what attracts us and keeps us together," Mayer says of his inspiration in writing Conjunto. "I couldn't help looking at us in the context of the history of our families, and our peoples, here in California. Naturally, that took me to the fields, where Japanese and Mexicans have been working side by side for generations. We literally have changed the landscape of this country. It wasn't hard to imagine romance between our peoples, not to mention drama."

In a country that encompasses people of so many different heritages, cultures clash and cultures blend, not only in communities, but within families as well. Tai Liu, the Wen Ho Lee­like character in The Legacy Codes, finds himself at odds with his own son. On both the public and personal levels, it may boil down to a matter of misunderstanding, says Lee. "What I hope people can become aware of by seeing the play is how we can misinterpret people's behavior because we have our own ideas of what is American, " she says. "Even the father and son [in the play] misinterpret each other. The son misinterprets how his father is behaving; the father has certain expectations of the son and he doesn't understand how his son is behaving. I think that we carry certain life experiences and expectations with us. Hopefully people will become aware of all the things that we carry with us when we interpret somebody else's behavior."

Both plays tell stories that could only happen in America—for better and for worse, these are tales of American history, and most importantly, about American people.

"'Conjunto' means united, together, conjoined. I wanted to write about the way we as people are conjoined through our history and the sweat of our labors—Mexicans, Japanese, Anglos, Blacks, Filipinos," says Mayer. "I also wanted to dramatize the enforced disunity which occurred when the U.S. interned Japanese-Americans during World War II and created the Bracero Program, which made migrants an underpaid underclass. Most of all, I wanted to show how these events affected people in real ways—literally where they live and who they choose to live with. Hopefully people will leave the show and realize our connectedness, then and now."

"Conjunto" runs through March 23 at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose. Tickets are $12­$17. For information, call 408.272.9926. "The Legacy Codes" runs through April 6 at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto. Tickets are $20-$43. For information, call 650.903.6000.