Asian Explosion

Asian Explosion 2012

Magic Theatre’s Asian Explosion 2012 is a five-day festival for discovering, celebrating, and giving exposure to the vibrant community of Asian and South Asian writers for the theatre. The festival will coincide with the world premiere production of Lloyd Suh’s Jesus in India. Magic’s relationship with Lloyd Suh began with the development and production of American Hwangap, which traveled to New York and the Philippines in its subsequent productions. The world premiere this winter of Jesus in India (after two years of development through the Virgin Play Series) creates the perfect opportunity to weave in a weeklong “explosion” of cold readings, workshops, concerts, salons, discussions, and panels from some of today’s hottest young Asian and South Asian writers. Lloyd Suh will act as a writer and facilitator, and his new work will be the focal point. Acclaimed spoken word comedian powerhouse Kate Rigg will help to lead the festival events, which includes a multitude of incredible artists from across the country who are presenting work that spans performance mediums.

This season provides a unique opportunity for an innovative, themed week of special events surrounding this extraordinary subset of new American playwrights. From JC Lee to Regie Cabico, from Chris Chen to Eugenie Chan, from Rey Pamatmat to Rehana Mirza, we begin to look at American playmaking from a generation of writers with a theatrically unique lens. Amongst the groups involved in our canvassing are: USC, Ma-Yi’s emerging writers Lab in NY, The Taper in LA, Pan Asian Rep in NY and many others.

Asian Explosion events and readings will all take place on the Magic Theatre stage surrounding performances of Jesus in India, and every reading is free and open to the public.
*All performances of Jesus in India require a paid ticket.

Asian Explosion 2012 Events
Thursday, February 9 through Monday, February 13
All Events at Magic Theatre (except for February 13 reading at the JCCSF)

Thursday 2/9:

4pm-6pm
100 Flowers Project by Chris Chen

Christopher Chen’s plays include Into the Numbers, The Window Age, and Anomienaulis. His work has been translated into Russian and Chinese, and has been produced and developed by Central Works, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Beijing Fringe Festival, American Conservatory Theater, The Lark Play Development Center, hotINK Festival, Theatre Mu, Silk Road Theatre Project, Fluid Motion, Just Theater, Asian American Theater Company, and Crowded Fire, where he is currently developing his newest play The Hundred Flowers Project as a co-commission with the Playwrights Foundation. It will be produced in Fall 2012. Honors include a Ford Foundation Emerging Writer of Color Grant, 2nd Place in the Belarus Free Theater International Competition of Modern Dramaturgy for Into the Numbers, Jerome Finalist, Seven Devils Finalist, and Princess Grace and O’Neill Conference Semi-Finalist. He is currently a Resident Playwright at the Playwrights Foundation, and is a graduate of UC Berkeley. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from SF State.

Friday 2/10:

3pm-5pm
Madame Ho by Eugenie Chan

Eugenie Chan is a 5th generation San Franciscan whose forefathers sold slippers in Chinatown, dry goods in the desert, and love in the bordellos. No wonder her plays tend to mix up language, reality, tradition, and history. Her work includes, Bone to Pick (Best of 2008 List, SF Bay Guardian); Madame Ho; Kitchen Table; Daphne Does Dim Sum; Rancho Grande; Emil, A Chinese Play; Novell-aah!; Pilgrim; Consent; Circus; and opera libretto, Snakewoman. Upcoming production: Tontlawald, Cutting Ball (February 17–March 11, 2012). Recent premieres: Diadem, Cutting Ball (January – February 2011); Courtside, Houston Grand Opera: HGOco (February 2011). Other theatres that have produced or developed her plays include, in the West: Magic Theatre, Thick Description, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Northwest Asian American Theatre, Group Theatre, East West Players, and the Asian American Theater Company; on the East Coast: The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Ma-Yi, Centenary Stage, Pan Asian Rep, and Perishable Theatre. Eugenie has received commissions from the Houston Grand Opera, Cutting Ball (3 plays), the San Francisco Arts Commission, Magic/Sloan Science Initiative, and the San Francisco Foundation. She has also written political satire for the San Francisco Mime Troupe and screenplays which have been semifinalists for Nicholl and Cinestory Fellowships. Eugenie is a Resident Playwright at Cutting Ball, New Dramatists, and alumma resident of the Playwrights Foundation.

5:30pm-7pm
Out of Joint by A. Rey Pamatmat

A. Rey Pamatmat recently received the 2011–12 Playwright of New York Fellowship. His play Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them began its rolling world premiere at the 2011 Humana Festival before playing at New Theater, Actors Express, Mu Performing Arts, B Street, and Manbites Dog. His plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway by Second Generation (Thunder Above, Deeps Below), the Vortex (DEVIANT), HERE (High/Limbo/High), and Vampire Cowboys (Red Rover). Samuel French will publish both Edith and Thunder in 2012. Rey’s work has been developed at The Public Theater, Playwrights’ Horizons, Ma-Yi, the O’Neill, Victory Gardens, Magic Theatre, The Curious Theater, American Theater Company, Ars Nova, Rattlestick, E.S.T., New Dramatists, and The Lark. He was a recipient of the Princess Grace Fellowship for Playwriting, a NYFA Playwriting Fellowship, an E.S.T./Sloan commission, and is a proud member of the Ma-Yi Writer’s Lab. BFA: NYU, MFA: Yale School of Drama.

10pm-11pm
REGIE CABICO LIVE

Regie Cabico is one of the country’s leading innovators and pioneers of the poetry slam, having won 3 top prizes in the 1993, 1994 & 1997 National Poetry Slams and winning The Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam. Bust Magazine ranked him in the 100 Men We Love & The Kenyon Review called him “the Lady Gaga of Poetry”. He received 3 NY Innovative Theater Award nominations and won a 2006 Best Performance Art Production award for his work on Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind. Other theater credits include the Hip Hop Theater Festival, the Humana Theater Festival & Dixon Place. He has appeared on two seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and NPR’s Snap Judgement. His work is published in over 40 anthologies including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, Spoken Word Revolution & The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. He has taught at Urban Word, Poets House, Kundiman, and Split This Rock. Mr. Cabico received the Writers for Writers Award for his work with at-risk youth from Poets and Writers. Other recipients include Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Amy Tan and Stephen King. Mr. Cabico has shared the stages with Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg & Michael Ealy as part of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History and with Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg, and Smashing Pumpkins, among others as a featured poet on Lollapalooza. He is former NYU Artist in Residence for Asian Pacific American Studies. When not performing throughout the UK and North America, he resides in Washington, DC. where he makes Thai food and practices his Tina Turner impersonation.

11pm-Midnight
KATE RIGG LIVE IN ASIA MAJORA

Kate Rigg graduated with a degree in acting from New York’s prestigious Juilliard school where she won the Interarts Award for Interdisciplinary arts. She is an actor/writer/stand up comic/playwright and trailblazer for Asian Americans. She developed her first comedy and music revue Kate’s Chink-O-Rama for NBC’s PSNBC in New York, and the HBO Time Warner workspace in Los Angeles. It had a first run at the Brava Theater in San Francisco and toured extensively to comedy festivals, colleges, and special events around North America. Her follow up, Birth of a nASIAN (a collection of characters, stand up, and trip hop spoken word), was developed at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum’s Summerfest, La Mama ETC in New York, MACLA in San Jose, and New World Theater in Massachusetts and was invited for special events to the Comedy Central Stage in Los Angeles, and the Smithsonian Institute In Washington DC. As a standup comic, Kate has appeared on NBC Late Friday, Comedy Central, vh1, CTV Women of The Night, NPR, CBC Radio, Sirius Radio, STAR TV, National Lampoon’s International Comedy DVD, SEX TV, PBS, as well as being profiled in the PBS film Race is the Place. Her band, Slanty Eyed Mama (with electric violinist Lyris Hung), has toured the US, Canada, and Australia, notably at the Perth International Arts Festival in Australia, the Eurasian Nation Festival, the Asian Film Festival at University of Michigan, the A/PI heritage fest in Union Square NYC, LA’s GRAND Performances at City Center, The Asian American Jazz Festival in Chicago, The Philadelphia Fringe Fest and the Women in Performance Conference, The Smithsonian Institute, NYU’s A/PA Center and many more…Kate was a 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) fellow as well as a 2005 NEA grant recipient for her Amerasian work. She has been awarded grants and prizes by a multitude of theatres, foundations, and organizations across the continent. Her outreach work with Asian American student leaders, kids in crisis, women of color, and other communities continues to be a big part of her work and is the inspiration for new projects and adventures.

Saturday 2/11

10pm-Midnight
The Phoenix Rides a Skateboard by Kate Rigg

See Kate’s bio above.

Sunday 2/12

11am-1pm
Wicked Fox by JC Lee

JC Lee is a Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwriting Fellow at The Juilliard School and winner of the Lecompte Du Nouy Prize from Lincoln Center. His plays include This World Is Good, Pookie Goes Grenading, The Inexplicable Disappearance of Hector Villaraigosa, The Nature Line, Into the Clear Blue Sky and many others which have been seen/staged/developed throughout the United States including The Williamstown Theatre Festival, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Crowded Fire Theatre Company, Sleepwalkers Theatre Company, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and South Coast Repertory where he is currently under commission.

Monday 2/13

7pm-9pm
Lonely Leela by Rehana Mirza
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco

For information on Rehana Mirza and this reading, please visit the 2012 Virgin Play Series page here.


For more information, please call the box office at 415.441.8822.