The Asian American Writers' Workshop presents
Theater, Words, Movement, & Film
exploring the immigrant & refugee experience to the U.S.
Curated by Mary Ellen Obias
Thursday, July 15, 2004, 7 PM
@ The Asian American Writers' Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, Suite 10A
(btwn 5th Avenue & Broadway)
New York City
$5 suggested donation
Carla Ching and Michael Hidalgo address the mythologies of immigrating to
America and finding work, love and a better future. A handful of workers
struggle to negotiate between their new homes and the homes they left
behind in this collision of film, theater and poetry. Inspired by President Bush's Temporary Worker proposal.
In a piece entitled, "Home?" Pradit Prasartthong (Tua) combines movement, bilingual poetry in Thai and English, and recorded music to tell the story of a Thai immigrant who starts his new life in New York. As the piece follows the immigrant's good and bad experiences, it becomes a meditation
on the irreplaceable sense of belonging and identity that can get lost in
leaving the past behind.
Nobi Nakanishi performs a dialogue between a 14-year-old Japanese American
kid and his New York City taxi-driver. Caught in a traffic jam on Fifth Avenue in the late 1980s, the taxi-driver and his fare convey the tensions
between the United States and Japan at a moment when Japanese companies
seem to be buying up everything.
In a program curated by Sarah Palmer, Rooftop Films brings us eight short
films exploring themes of identity, home, and immigration. In The Practice,
Songyi Kim masters the arts of personality erasure. Helen Cho's Under
Pressure tells us about Helen's experiences as a first-generation American,
driven by the force of her parents' expectations of her. In Eunhee Cho's
Spin, a man's wound spawns its own woven cover, and becomes the catalyst
for a woman's cocoon. The spinning loom crafts a cycle of turning inward and
out, as two people chase each other through their various metamorphoses.
Vision Test, by Wes Kim, begins as a routine eye exam and turns into an
examination of people's subconscious attitudes towards race, gender and power. In The Self Portrait: Part I, Songyi Kim returns to the roof to
continue documenting of her own face, this time with drawings.
In Katherine Copeland, Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi, & Vivian Wenli Li's Barely
Audible, the intersecting lives of Darius and Trina spiral out of control
in rhythm to the increasing crescendo of Chinaka Hodge's poetry. Konrad Aderer's documentary, Life or Liberty (Trailer), tells us about Middle
Eastern-American citizens being detained and deported after 9/11. Mariam
Ghani's Kabul: Reconstructions is a glimpse into Kabul, which regenerates
itself a piece at a time.
For more information, contact the Workshop at 212-494-0061 or visit
http://www.aaww.org.
Carla Ching is a playwright and poet whose work has been produced by
Desipina & Company, Lovecreek Productions, No-Pants Theatre Company, Above Ground Theatre Company, and Ma-Yi Theatre Company. Formerly a writer and performer with Peeling and a collaborating member of LCC Productions, Carla is an MFA candidate at Actors Studio Drama School in Playwriting, a member of the Ma-Yi Writers Unit, and a member of the Dramatist's Guild.
Michael Hidalgo is a playwright, screenwriter, and filmmaker whose work has
been featured in Peeling, the Lemonade reading series, and Desipina &
Company's "Seven/Eleven Convenience Theatre." Michael received a BFA in
Dramatic Writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
Pradit Prasartthong (Tua) is an actor, dancer, and theater director trained
in Thai classical music and dance, street performance, mime, and
contemporary dance. Tua received a degree in sociology and anthropology
from Thammasart University, in Bangkok, before becoming Artistic Director of The Grassroots Micromedia Project (MAKHAMPOM Theater Group). He is Chairman of the Bangkok Theatre Network, Director of the Bangkok Theatre Festival, and a frequent lecturer and workshop facilitator at a range of community, artistic, and social service settings throughout Thailand and
internationally. Tua is in New York on a grant from the Asian Cultural
Council, a foundation supporting cultural exchanges in the visual and
performing arts between the United States and countries of Asia.
Nobi Nakanishi is a playwright, screenwriter, and filmmaker. Currently an
MFA candidate in Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts, Nobi's plays
have been produced in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. His short
films have been screened at the New York International Film and Video
Festival. Nobi has video work on collection of The Museum of Modern Art.
Rooftop Films is a non-profit film festival and production collective that
supports, creates, promotes, and shows daring short films worldwide and in
a weekly summer rooftop film festival.
