Asian American Plays, by Authors (M-O)

• Gold Mountain (2017)
  This original musical spins an epic love story, set against the backdrop of the 1860s construction of The Central Pacific Railroad, built by thousands of Chinese men.
• Barcelona (music, libretto by Christine Toy Johnson)

Mabasa, Ed

• The Kiss (Bindlestiff, 2006)

MacDonald, Jim

• The Untitled Mickey Tiles Project (EWP, 2005)
  Mickey Tiles can motivate, inspire and change the lives of millions of people if he can just survive one more day.

Macaraeg, Darah

• Boxing Rule (Bindlestiff, 2006)

Madlansacay, Noel

• Like Rain (AATC, 1999)
  In Like Rain, you will encounter a mathematician, a Wall Street banker, a graduate student and a juggler who are locked in cyberspace, and the light goes off. Uh-uh!….Did the dead gay man turn the power off? People look for love: puppy, ideal, lost love. Loving men, women and yourself. This is a world where the living creates the virtual realities of the dead and searches for the ultimate number of pi. Will they find the formula that will solve everything, and discover the last light bulb joke?

Maeshiba, Naoko and Ware, Kendra

• Recollections (Dance Place, Source Theatre, 2000)
  Short play

Maeda, Kevin

• Blowing Thirty (EWP: Paper or Plastic, 1999)

Magwili, Dom

• The Descent of Chrome (Lodestone, 2006) At the southern-most tip of Argentina, something not quite human escapes the destruction of a cloistered abby and begins a long journey north.  Meanwhile, a fifth generation clone of an international industrialist hires Wing Saito, a female cyborg thief, to steal a formula for immortality.  With the help of a 200 year-old hologram, Wing plans the heist and uncovers corruption, betrayal, and machines in love.

Mah, Dominic

• Search for Water (Lodestone, 2005)
  Missed connections and consensual kidnappings revolve in this mysterious comedy about losing yourself in the ones you love.

Mahhija, Anju

• Meeting with Lord Yama (Rasik Arts, 2007)
  By a strange set of circumstances, Brinda Pillai finds herself in Yamapura, the abode of the Lord of Death according to Hindu mythology. Contrary to expectations, Lord Yama turns out to be quite a ladies’ man. While Brinda wonders if he will give her a fresh lease on life, she is forced to see life itself afresh as he questions her. Adding to this unusual, oft-comic situation is the presence of Lord Yama’s pet dog.

Maisel, Jennifer

• There or Here (East West, 2010)
  A dark comedy about a mixed race American couple who outsources their pregnancy to India. Tomorrow, Robyn and Ajay meet the woman who will have her egg and his sperm implanted inside her. Tonight they won’t have sex even though they want to. Past and present, America and India – connected by the tenuous threads of time zones and technology. Outsourced computer technicians, fast food order-takers and phone sex operators become the refuge they can’t seem to be for each other.

Majumdar, Anita

• Fish Eyes (2004?)
• The Misfit (2008)
  This dark comedy about honour killings introduces us to Naznin, formerly a respected classical Kathak dancer. Naznin runs away to India to be with her aspiring pop singer lover, Lucky Punjabi, a boyfriend of her own choosing – the results are dire when Lucky is killed by angry villagers, disgusted with Naznin for running away with a man who isn’t her husband. Naznin is disowned by her Canadian family and finds asylum as choreographer for the Taj Mahal Dance Company, a group of classically trained dancers who perform traditional Mughal-era Indian dance at Indian wedding receptions to English MTV pop music.

Malik, Rohina

• Yasmina’s Necklace (2016, 16th Street Theater)
  Meet Abdul Samee: his father is Iraqi, his mother is Puerto Rican-but if you ask him, he’ll say he’s Italian. Longing to shed his cultural identity he changes his name to Sam, marries an American and does everything in his power to turn his back on his heritage. But when Sam meets Yasmina, a beautiful woman from his father’s homeland, he begins to learn that a tree without roots cannot stand for long.

Mandvi, Aasif

• Sakina’s Restaurant (American Place Theatre, 1998)

Maog, Victor
Victor Maog is the Artistic Director of Second Generation (2g) and a NYC-based freelance director and artist-educator. He’s also directed and developed works at the Public, Hartford Stage, Williamstown, Signature, Mabou Mines, Intar, Ma-Yi, Lark, National Black Theatre, and New Dramatists. He’s brought 2g to Joe’s Pub, La Mama, 54 Below, and launched the 2ST Uptown Residency Series; and after a six year hiatus, has returned the company to full production at the New Ohio’s Ice Factory Festival. Received the NEA/TCG Career Development Award, Altvater Fellowship at Cornerstone, Van Lier Directing Fellowship at 2ST, and the Presidential Award with the Theatre Arts Project, where he served as Artistic Director at age twenty.

• Tot (Mu Performing Arts, 2015)
  Tot follows an immigrant boy who travels from the Ferdinand Marcos-ruled Philippines to the San Francisco Bay Area to meet his long lost parents. He journeys from a country full of strife and military rule only to find himself in his lonely American bedroom conjuring a pro wrestling fantasy to escape his new life.

Mapa, Alec

• I Remember Mapa (ATW, 1998)
  Winner of the L.A. Weekly Award for Best Solo Performance, I Remember Mapa is the comic journey of a gay Filipino American actor struggling for work, love and acceptance. From the Broadway stage to the California Pizza Kitchen, I Remember Mapa examines the role of Asian American actors and revisits a childhood of being “a dorky kid in glasses and corrective shoes.
• Pointless (East West: Word Up!, 1999)
  Pointless is a hilarious and outrageous performance by Alec Mapa. Come spend the evening with the award-winning actor/performer as he takes to the stage and rants about his favorite four-letter word: love. In the direct fire of Cupid’s many arrows, he also discusses the issues of the day, dishes celebrities and talks about his favorite subject: himself.

Marinelli, Daria Miyako

• Ravenous
  2, 1M 1F, 60minsYou don’t understand how hungry I am / Trust me I do
  Adri’s come home for her gun and Cian just wants to be left alone. And both of them know that without a gun they surely will die. Set in Post-World War II Italy, Ravenous examines what it means to be hungry and what we will do to become satisfied.
• A Departure
  They say you are leaving / Yes
  Do you even know what love is? / No but I know what it is not
  Ume has fallen in love, again. This time, with a woman. In Japan. And what about her family in The States? Who is the woman she has become and who is the woman she thought she would be? Taking place on the eve of World War Two in both The United States and Japan, A Departure follows Ume as she negotiates her duties as daughter, mother, and lover in her decision between loyalty or love in the great war of her heart.
• We Are Samurai (Venus Theatre,2014)
  After Josephine returns home to find her cats brutally murdered for a crime she committed in a past life, she enlists her boyfriend to help her avenge her cats’ deaths. What follows is a series of small, violent acts that are mundane and yet deeply tragic in their cyclical nature.  Rooted in both contemporary suburbia and the historical traditions of Japanese Theatre, We Are Samurai uses cats, iPhones, and simultaneous action to explore age-old questions of agency and entitlement.
• Untameable (The Unsoft War & Highly Impractical Theatre, 2015)
  Pitting diamond heist against museum intrigue, Untameable follows the story of two young women, one trying to steal a jewel and the other trying to keep it safe. The work is an immersive romp between a criminal den and a modern museum; the audience navigates their own experience and much like the characters themselves, must decide between love and diamonds, honesty or victory.  Untameable is an investigation into what we will do to achieve our magnum opus and what gets lost in the winning.
• 893/ya-ku-za (Vortex Repertory, 2018)
  Set over the course of a business lunch in a unknown Japanese restaurant somewhere in the United States, 893 | Ya-ku-za follows Aya’s bid to become the first female member of the infamous Japanese crime syndicate. Exploring themes of ambition, power, and loyalty, 893 | Ya-ku-za asks what it means to be first and what we’re willing to do to get there.

Marquez, Marissa

• Cyber Fishing (Mu, 2012)
  A family farce about a Filipino family where the mother’s demands about marriage for her grown up kids makes them turn to desperate measures.

Martens, Craig

• The Pursuit of Happiness (EWP: Paper or Plastic, 2000)

Maruyama, D. Hideo

• Accidental Nexus or An Illustration of Billie Holiday’s Rendition of “What a Difference a Day Makes (East West, 2003)
  A woman is killed in a random pointless mass killing. Her death turns out to be a nexus point.
• Sato’s Dream in Blue (East West, 2006)
  What is the American Dream? A Nisei guitar maker tries to figure it out with the help of a Black blues player in the 1950s; a biker, a bartender and illegal Mexican worker try to figure it out in the Reagan 1980s, and the blues player in old age reexamines Sato’s Dream in the 2000s with a Thai guitar playing apprentice. Is America the place to be?
• Time After Time: A Catalog Of Traumatic Events (East West, 2007)
  How do you move from Winter to Summer? Snapshot after snapshot of small and global tragedies that make up daily life; it’s a series of photographs in words: how daughters can become fathers of men.
• IFDD Station (East West, 2009)
  What do Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Isamu Noguchi and Dorothy Hale have in common? Art, fame, sex, affairs and a curse of being famous? Well, maybe the sex part.
• Double Exposure (East West, 2013)
  Mix a shrink, an A-list White Actress, A celebrity chef and a Transvestite Fortune-Telling Thai Cooking Show host of the Third Sex. Stir fry with sweet, salt, sour and spicy relationships. Serve hot and bothered.

Mawji, Aly

• No I.D. (East West, 2010)
  An Indian in Africa. An African in America. An American in Canada…A first-generation Canadian struggles to get in where he fits in and seeks out his place in the world through hip-hop.

Mason, Michael

• Masks (East West, 2013)
  Have you ever been stuck in a dream before? Or smoked a Bob Baker? Our main character has. BAM!

Masuhara, Jenna

• Before They Cut Down Our Tree (VACT, 2021)
  Two ex-friends find themselves forced to deal with their past issues with each other when they are unexpectedly reunited after the death of a loved one. It’s been ten years, what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what secrets have both been hiding?

McCormick, Bryan

• Sifting Omoide (East West, 2010)
  An Equation: (AF+FM) (TC) ÷ (NMH) (DS+L/C) = LGW/ORC
  Aging Father plus Failing Mind times Talking Cat divided by Neighborhood Meth Whore times Dutiful Son plus Lover/Caregiver equals Life in Gardena… Without a Rice Cooker
• Jack in Common (East West 2013)
  Jack’s family secret… Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.

McMullin, Dan Taulapapa

• Bikini Boy (AATC, 1999)
  A young research writer at an American right wing think tank pens essays justifying the bombing of a U.S. territorial island in the Pacific, not knowing that it was the homeland of his mother. She prays daily in her prayer closet in her new found home in Minnesota for the salvation of her son through the ex-homosexual movement: Home is not home. His journey takes him from cities of the plain to islands of the sea, and a banned past. Also known as Sodomie.
• Pink Heaven (AATC, 2000)
  This three character play takes place in American Samoa. A dark tale of an old man who returns to Samoa after a lifetime in the U.S. Unwelcome by his eldest son whom he never sees, he is slowly being poisoned to death by his daughter-in-law. A story of contemporary Polynesian life under American colonialism in the South Pacific.

Mendoza, Edgar

• Lion Plaza ()
  A riff on the Cyrano story.
• All the Earth (EWP 2002)
  It began as a paradise on Pangea. But as soon as the Earth divided itself, so did its people

Milado, Chris

• Peregrinasyon (Wandering Nation)

Mims, Cheri

• LoveStoneHeart (Bindlestiff, 2006)

Minami, Alison

• Soredewa (East West, 2011)
  In search of a better future, Hamada sets sail for Cuba, leaving his young wife Tomiko and infant son in their native Japanese fishing village. In Havana, Hamada eventually re-marries to Isabel and dotes over their daughter Flores. But even through economic hardship and success–including a World War II imprisonment–Hamada never stops dreaming of returning home. At the dawn of the Cuban revolution, after nearly three decades in a new land, Hamada makes the difficult decision to once again leave his family. This is the story of finding home and family–the improbable journey of one man who must confront his deepest longings and fears while his loved ones untangle themselves from his choices.

Mirza, Rehana Lew

Rehana is the recipient of a 2016 Lilly Award (the Stacey Mindich “Go Write A Play” Commission) and is currently in a shared National Playwrights Mellon residency with her husband Mike Lew at Ma-Yi Theatre. They are currently in collaboration on a trilogy of plays and a musical, BHANGIN’ IT(with composer Sam Willmott). Past honors include: Rhinebeck Musical Theater Residency for BHANGIN’ IT, Tofte Lake Emerging Writers Residency, IAAC playwright residency with The Lark Development Center, a TCG Future Leader fellowship with New Georges, an E.S.T. Sloan commission, the NBC DiverseCity ShortCuts Audience Award, P2 for a Cause Grant, Leopold Schepp fellowship, a 2G residency, John Golden Award, and an LMCC artist grant.

For her advocacy work with the South Asian community, Rehana was nominated for a South Asian Media Award and was featured in publications such as India in New York, DesiTalk, India Abroad, Bibi Magazine, Nirali Magazine, EGO Magazine, among others. Her short film MODERN DAY ARRANGED MARRIAGE was acquired by the LOGO network. Her feature film HIDING DIVYA exposes the taboo subject of mental illness in the South Asian community, and had a self-produced run in SF, Atlanta, New York, NJ and Michigan, followed by a nationwide college tour with the assistance of a grant from the Asian Women Giving Circle.

She is a member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab (having served as a co-director from 2011-2014) and a member of the Dorothy Strelsin Primary Stages Writers Group. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University and BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, Tisch School of the Arts.

• Just Air
  90 minutes
  1M, 2W
  Setting: The Airport of Americas
  A homeless, hasbeen child pop star who has taken up residence in an airport and falls in love with the security guard.  But when the security guard takes under his wing the extremely sheltered only child of a Bollywood superstar couple, a love triangle turns into international headlines.
• Barriers (Indocenter, 2002)
  With the homecoming of the only daughter, Sunima, who is returning from NYC to announce her pending engagement, the play quickly unravels as the mixed Muslim family is forced to confront past betrayals and issues and eventually ends up reaching a critical mass point.The
• Good Muslim (Ma-Yi, 2006)
  When an unlikely friendship that blossoms between Nora, a 28-year old, club-hopping atheist, and Farzana, a sheltered 19-year old Muslim girl, will it be like Felix and Oscar, or Bush and Osama?
• The Radio Diaries of Hank, Yank & Prank (Desipina, 2006)
  A semi-serious comedy about a radio show that wakes up New York with frivolous pranks, and the intern who comes along to reform it, one fart joke at a time.
• A Dose of Reality (2g, 2008)
  Gemna is tired of watching reality TV. So she’s decided to make everyone else watch her. Find out what happens when you stop being yourself, and start being real.
• if it’s said I don’t want to see it (2g, 2009)
  Damien runs a water company. Robert, Miriam and Savti just work there. As the global economy becomes increasingly smaller, each of themcomes to face what they’re willing to give up in pursuit of a happy ending.
• Particles of Pakistan
  Drama, 1 hr, 40 min
  1W, 4M
  When 16-year-old Haroon gets suspended from his Michigan high school, his mother ships him off to Pakistan until he shapes up.  But then he meets Mehreen, a young woman whose idol is a Physicist named Abdus Salam, whose research in the 50s, 60s, and 70s has led to the current-day discovery of the ‘God’ particle, a historical figure’s past shapes his future.
• Lonely Leela
  Dark Comedy, 90 min
  3(+) W, 4(+) M
  Leela’s boyfriend has disappeared. So she goes into the Internet to find him. An Alice in Wonderland type adventure where malicious codes and white knight bloggers meet in a shifting world of everything’s at your fingertips but you can’t quite find what you’re looking for
• A Distant Relations
  Dark Comedy: 90 min
  2W, 1M
  Setting: Suburbs of Virginia
  Bi-racial, lesbian, bio-geneticist Heather Ramos firmly believes that the Y chromosome is unnecessary. Until she discovers that she has a long-lost brother.  With her on and off girlfriend Martha, Heather embarks on a trip to find this brother and put her world back in order again. But when she finds him, will she be able to handle what’s hidden in her family tree?
• The Romantics
  Dark Comedy, 1 hr, 40 min
  3W, 1M
  A new play re-imagining the Bronte sisters living today in a Brooklyn brownstone. Emily is a burnt out prodigy. Charlotte is an underperforming genius. But only one can be the winner as they fight over selling their childhood home.
• Soldier X (Ma-Yi Theatre, 2015)
  Soldier X follows a young African American military social worker, Monica, who falls for a returning soldier, Jay, and the subsequent love triangle that ensues when he decides he is in love with his fallen comrade’s Muslim sister. The play tallies the emotional scars inflicted on our young men and women returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. How exactly do you rejoin a society that remains as conflicted about its wars as it is with issues of race and gender?
• Neighborhood Watch (Ma-Yi Theatre, 2015)
  A suburban family man, Paul, becomes so convinced that his new neighbor is a terrorist that in his pursuit to uncover the truth, he terrorizes his daughter and neighborhood.
• Hatefuck (Primary Stages, 2016)
  Local Michigan lit prof seeks out famous Muslim-American novelist to find out if he’s an Islamophobe, a rube, or a really good lay.
• Bhangin’ It, with Michael Lew (La Jolla Playhouse, 2019)
  “Bhangin’ It” draws inspiration from the high-stakes world of intercollegiate competitive bhangra – a traditional Indian folk dance morphed into a good ole American dance-off. The story follows a biracial student, Mary, who gets kicked off her bhangra team for not being “Indian enough”. When she forms a team of her own, cultural authenticity and cultural pluralism are set on a collision course in this brash, intoxicating and gripping new musical.  Winner of the 2018 Richard Rodgers Award.

Mitsunaga, Elizabeth

• Monsters in the Closet (East West, 2008)
  What happens when you’re re-introduced to the childhood monsters that lurked in your closet? Are they just silly “boogie-men” or perhaps something even more frightening? Come see if you recognize some of them for yourself.

Miyagawa, Chiori

• 

  Chiori Miyagawa

  Yesterday’s Window ()
  Short play.

• Jamaica Avenue (NY International Fringe Festival, 1998)
• American Dreaming
• Nothing Forever
• Woman Killer (Crossing Jamaica, 2001)
  Two Brooklyn families are torn apart in this startling new drama about the nature and origin of evil, inspired by a 1721 Bunraku puppet play from Japan.
• Fire Dance
• Broken Morning
  Broken Morning is a poetic dialectic between the prison industry, the prisoners, their loved ones, and the society that made them that way. Taking place in a sewing factory at the Ellis One Unit of the Huntsville State Prison where men awaiting execution go to work every weekday, Broken Morning weaves personal stories and confessionals of sorrow, regret, pain and optimism. With reenactments and overlapping dialogue, the play illustrates how violence, poverty and struggle against society are connected to us all. The spare and simple songs deepen the expression of these conflicts.
• Thousand Years Waiting (2006)
  created in collaboration with Bruce Odland, Masaya Kiritake, and Sonoko Kawahara. Kiritake is Master in Otome Bunraku, which is an early 20th century offshoot of traditional (17th century) Bunraku Puppet Theatre. In Otome (Japanese word for female) Bunraku, a single woman performer dances with a four-foot puppet. It’s a nearly extinct artform; only three women perform it professionally today. The play contains three simultaneous realities: present-day New York City, Japan circa 1000, and inside The Tale of the Genji, the world’s first novel. The history of storytelling is woven like a spider’s web and the woman in the present steps in and out of real and fictional worlds in the past.
• Resisting Forgetting ()
• Leaf (Manhattan Theatre Club, 2006)

Miyake, Perry

• What the Enemy Looks Like (East West, 1980)
• Visitors from Nagasaki (East West, 1984)
• Interracial Relations (LATC Asian Theater Lab, 1990)
• Doughball (East West, 1991)
• Motty-Chon (East West, 2006) Martin is 48-years old, single, works a dead-end job and lives at home with his aging Nisei parents Mits and Helen. His bachelor status is the perfect target for his meddling parents and their gossip-hungry friends. Then Gina, a white, 24-year old pierced and tattooed punker chick enters Martin’s life. What’s a parent to do? Motty-Chon is a comedy that shatters stereotypes about parental expectations and the search for love from the playwright of Visitors from Nagasaki and Doughball.

Miyamoto, Anne Noelani

• Air and Angels (Pan Asian, 2010)
  What happens when the ghost of ne’er do well Jack Cassidy visits his neglected wife and daughters seeking redemption before crossing into the netherworld?

Moench, Anna

Bio: 2g Commissioned Artist, Anna Moench’s full length plays include Hunger, In Quietness (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Great Eastern, and The Pillow Book (59E59). Productions of Anna’s work have been seen at the Old Vic, The Flea, Dance Theater Workshop, Dixon Place, The Kraine, The Looking Glass Theatre, and FringeNYC.

• Hunger
• Sin Eaters
  
• Mothers
• In Quietness
• Great Eastern
• The Pillow Book
• Three Kingdoms (2g, 2015)
  It’s summer in the suburbs and Wendy’s father, Han, is arriving on a flight from China. After 40 years of no contact, they have a lot of catching up to do. Wendy has a happy family, a lovely home, and is living the American Dream. But when he arrives, everyone quickly realizes that picking up where they left off won’t be easy.
• Man of God (East West, 2019)
  During a mission trip to Bangkok, the four members of a Korean Christian girls’ youth group discover that their revered pastor has hidden a camera in their hotel bathroom. Samantha is personally wounded that Pastor would do this to her. Jen is worried about how this might affect her college applications. Mimi’s out for blood, as usual. And Kyung-Hwa thinks everyone needs to have lower expectations for men. Their communal rage and disillusionment fuel increasingly violent revenge fantasies amidst the no-holds-barred neon bubblegum sex-tourism mecca of Bangkok.

Montreal, Lani

• Nanay (Night of the Living Moms, 2017)
  Nanay (Filipino word for “mother”) is about a young Filipina coming to terms with her mother’s secret identity as a manananggal (a supernatural creature, usually disguised as a woman, that sprouts wings and flies off from the waist up and can reconnect with its lower torso).

Moore, Chinsook Kim

• Jung/ture (EWP: Paper or Plastic, 1999)

Morita, Walter

• Above The Call: Best Damn Soldier (East West, 2008)
  In 1943, less than two years after Pearl Harbor, five young Nisei men meet in an U.S. Army barrack in Camp Shelby, Mississippi.

Morizono, Lesli Jo
Lesli-Jo Morizono’s hometown is Berkeley, California, where she received a BA in psychology from the University of California. As a young girl, she dreamed of being an actress, and at the age of fifteen, she won an acting scholarship to the American Conservatory Theatre’s Summer Congress Training Program. Morizono says, “Luckily, I learned in time that I didn’t have the talent or a strong stomach for acting. Now I write plays and screenplays, something I enjoy enormously.” In 1992 she graduated with an MFA in dramatic writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She lives with her husband, Toshio, and her dog, Washington (a.k.a. “mongrel from hell”), in New York City.

• In the Valley of the Human Spirit (1992)
• Fried Rice (NY Shakespeare Festival, 1993)
  A young woman orders fried rice and sees God amidst the bean sprouts; unfortunately, she and the restaurant’s African American owner can’t agree on the color and gender of the deity.
• Now I Lie (Gaia/Cuchipinoy, 2003)
  The story of three generations of Chinese-American women who are on the run from their past, a curse on their bloodline in the form of a witch-dog that hunts their offspring.
• In Freakish Times ()
• The characters are responding to having seven fingers on one hand, and other effects of the apocalypse.

Moss, Nancy

• Will the Real Charlie Chan Please Stand Up? (Kumu Kahua, 2013)
  The fictional Charlie Chan and the real-life detective he was modeled after join forces to fight crime in Honolulu.

Moua, Evan

• Alden and the Janitor (East West, 2013)
  The untold story of Aladdin, the magic lamp, and his high school years at Sultan Prep.

Muki, Mari

• As Yet Undetermined Life (EWP: Paper or Plastic, 1999)

Muruyama, Milton

• All I Asking for is My Body (Kuma Kahuna, 1999)

Nakase, Justine

• E-mmaculate (EWP: Paper or Plastic, 2000)
• Iphigenia in the Fog ()

Nakauchi, Paul

• Untitled (East West, 2010)
  See the “model minority” myth shattered as a not so typical Asian American family deals with some of the headline issues of the day: prejudice, homosexuality, drug abuse, and sex addiction, without even leaving their own front porch.

Natarajan, Meena

• From the Ashes (Pangea World Theatre, 2007)
  Using the immediacy of street theater as the idiom, From the Ashes explores the global question of migration and movement in a multi-lingual, physically charged performance with live music.

Narasaki, Ken

• Ghosts and Baggage (LA Theatre Center, 1998)
  A comedy about love, fear and hope. In a single night filled with desire and revelation, Narasaki tells the story of two Sansei who meet when one returns a faulty “anger management tape for Asian Pacific men” to the other’s New Age bookstore. Oliver and Sara then must face a Spirit Guide, the ghost of an Ex-husband, a Dead Dad, and a devil boyfriend to find the truth about themselves.
• Innocent When You Dream (EWP, 2003)
  Eighty year-old Nisei Dan Yamada has suffered a catastrophic stroke and his grown children do their best to convince the hospital to help them pull the plug. Meanwhile, back in the 1940s, a young Dan meets a girl whom he comforts, but can never understand. Both time periods move forward as the play progresses, until Dan finally finds forgiveness, and perhaps regains a measure of innocence, when past and present finally connect.
• The Mikado Project (Lodestone, 2007)
  A struggling Asian American acting troupe tries to create their own deconstructed politicized version of THE MIKADO, while dealing with grant deadlines, interpersonal problems, sexual/political issues and an ex-lead actor-turned-TV star.
• No No Boy (Timescape, 2010)
  Ken Narasaki’s stage adaptation of John Okada’s ground breaking novel No-No Boy is set after World War II as Japanese Americans return to the West Coast, the play follows draft resister Ichiro Yamada after he is released from prison and struggles to come to terms with the consequences of his choices, while the rest of the community tries to get back on its feet after a war that has uprooted them all.

Nee, Phil

• The Last of the Nees (1999)
  Phil Nee’s One-Man Show about Growing Up Asian in America.

Newman, Jerry

• Pressure (EWP, 2009)
  A professor clashes with his university over raising an athlete’s grade. By the time the conflict is resolved both their lives are changed forever. Winner of the 2006 Palm Springs Playwrights Circle Award.

Ng, Cheeyang

• Eastbound (2019, Village Theatre)
  Two worlds. Two cultures. One question: How far are you willing to go to find family? Chinese-American adoptee Calvin travels to China in search of his birth mother. Unbeknownst to him, his biological brother, Yun, travels to America, seeking to break free of family traditions. Their quests in search of their own identity force them to evaluate whether family is chosen or biological.

Ng, John

• I (Toronto Fringe 2001)
  A Chinese Canadian family must decide whether or not to risk sheltering their Chinese God-sister who has entered the country illegally.
• Joy Geen (See You Again) ()
• The Wonder of Larry Kwong (fu-GEN, 2005)
  He was only 24 in 1948, but Larry Kwong had already achieved the quintessential Canadian Dream: to play in the National Hockey League. Now 81, an unexpected birthday gift – a framed shot of him receiving the key to New York’s Chinatown 57 years earlier for becoming the first Asian in professional hockey – rekindles the journey that he took to reach his childhood goal. From a simple life in small-town Vernon, B.C., to the frenetic urban world of the Big Apple and, finally, a date with destiny at the Montreal Forum…and a fellow named Rocket Richard. Kwong recalls each step with humble honesty and a trace of regret. The final question: Did I do enough?

Ngai, Serin
Serin Ngai graduated from the University of Washington with a B.A. in English: Creative Writing. After graduation, she worked in the publishing industry for almost three years, starting out as a freelance researcher, and moving on to jobs such as assistant editor, copywriter, PR writer, and art manager. She has acted in a variety of groups from OPM to Repertory Actors Theatre and is a founding member/producer of SIS Productions.

• Sex in Seattle, Episode 1: Deceptions and Reflections (SIS Productions)
• Sex in Seattle, Episode 2: Other Women (SIS Productions)
• Sex in Seattle, Episode 3: The Colors of Love (SIS Productions)
• Sex in Seattle, Episode 4: New Year Confessions (SIS Productions)
• Sex in Seattle, Episode 6: Vicious Valentines (SIS Productions)
• Sex in Seattle, Episode 7: Graphic Images (SIS Productions)
• Peace and Truth (SIS Productions, 2006)
  Peace & Truth explores the approaching death of an elderly Chinese American woman.
• Our Last Hours (SIS Productions Insatiable! 2 Reading Festival, 2007)
  Three sisters grapple with the state of their lives after dealing with the untimely passing of their mother.
• Quality Time (SIS Productions Insatiable! 2 Reading Festival, 2007 & 2008)
  Meng and Tristan escape to a nearby hotel over a weekend to spend quality time together as a married couple.  However, as time ticks away, the quality of their time spent together becomes uncertain as their weekend escape evolves into inconvenient exposures and disclosures.

Nguyen, Anh

• Untitled (EWP: Paper or Plastic, 2000)

Nguyen, Derek

• Last Year’s Kisses (2nd Generation, 1999)
  Three people, two couples, four New Year’s Eves… Carlye can’t shake her memories. A dress. A hotel room. A found receipt. Billy, her husband can’t shake his infidelities and his drinking. Mai, her lover, can’t shake her need to be with someone. New Year’s Eve is a time to clean the slate….
• Monster (2nd Generation, 2001)
  Monster is a film-noirish detective story set in the backdrop of the desert community of Southern California. Tang Tran, a private investigator, is hired to search for Jonny Bonnard, an adopted Vietnamese teenager, who has run away from home after the brutal beating of another Vietnamese boy.  As Detective Tran interrogates the cast of characters who are close to Jonny, secrets are revealed, lies exposed, and Detective Tran is horrified to discover that he himself may be a key player in the search for Jonny’s past.
• Mother’s Milk ()

Nguyen, Don

• The Commencement of William Tan (Ma-Yi, 2012)
  William, a well-liked student athlete at Lincoln High plans to cruise through his senior year until racial tensions arise between William’s friends, who are on the football team and a gang of Asian kids. These turn of events forces William to come to terms with his thoughts on race, and how he identifies, or doesn’t identify with his own ethnicity as the entire school, including the staff turns to William to make peace between the two groups.
• The Supreme Leader (Ma-Yi, 2014)
  A coming of age story centered on Kim Jong-Un’s early days at an international school in Switzerland.
• Sound (Azeotrope, 2015)
  Sound by Don Nguyen navigates the waters off of Martha’s Vineyard and the impassioned dispute between a fiercely protective deaf father and his hearing ex-wife over the use of cochlear implants to restore their daughter’s hearing. They battle over what is ‘normal,’ what is ‘natural,’ and the morality to change what God intended. In a parallel story, we also witness Alexander Graham Bell, 130 years earlier, and his obsessive research to cure deafness. His actions leave loss and betrayal that reverberates through the long and disparate history of Martha’s Vineyard and the deaf community.
• Red Flamboyant (Timeline Theatre, 2015)
  Mrs. Hue lives in present day Vietnam with a small group of women who are all living with HIV/AIDS. Bricks smash the windows of her small house. The locals fear they will be infected by the women. Mrs. Hue is forced to seek help from a stubborn government official to protect and support her group. Unlikely heroes emerge both in this world and the next as these poor women reach new heights of courage.
• Hello, From the Children of Planet Earth (Playwrights Realm, 2017)
  The show is “a comedy about conception and deep-space travel.”

Nguyen, Duy

• Blood is Thick (AATC, 2009)
  A thriller unfolding in a whirlwind across four stages surrounding the audience. Hitting rock bottom, desiring a normal life, a drug-dealer invades a family and ensnares them in a horrific deception–it takes a bit of madness to be normal.

Nguyen, Qui
Qui Nguyen is a playwright, TV/Film writer, and Co-Founder of the OBIE Award-winning Vampire Cowboys of NYC. His work, known for its innovative use of pop-culture, stage violence, puppetry, and multimedia, has been lauded as “Culturally Savvy Comedy” by The New York Times, “Tour de Force Theatre” by Time Out New York, and “Infectious Fun” by Variety.

Scripts include Vietgone (2016 Steinberg Award, 2016 LADCC Ted Schmidt New Play Award, 2016 Kennedy Prize Finalist); Poor Yella Rednecks; She Kills Monsters (2013 AATE Distinguished Play Award); Soul Samurai (2009 GLAAD Media Award nom); Begets; Krunk Fu Battle Battle; and the critically acclaimed Vampire Cowboys productions of The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G, Alice in Slasherland, Fight Girl Battle World, Men of Steel, and Living Dead in Denmark.

For tv/film, Qui’s written for AMC, SYFY, PBS, and Marvel Studios, where he is an alumni of the Marvel Studios Writers Program. He currently writes for Netflix and Walt Disney Animation Studios for tv and film, respectively.

Notable honors include a 2016 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Preschool Animated Program (Peg+Cat), a 2015 NY Community Trust Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, and a 2014 Sundance Institute/Time Warner Fellowship. He’s currently under commission by South Coast Rep/Manhattan Theatre Club (The Vietgone Saga), The Geffen, Center Theatre Group/The Goodman, The Atlantic, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

He is a proud member of the WGA, The Dramatists Guild, The Playwrights Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Ma-Yi Writers Lab and an alumnus of New Dramatists and Youngblood.

His company, Vampire Cowboys, often credited for being the pioneers of “geek theatre”, holds the unique distinction of being the first and currently only professional theatre organization to be officially sponsored by NY Comic Con.

• Stand Up Absurdity (Groove Theatre, Chicago)
  Ten minute play.
• Belted Blue, Bleeding Yellow (AATC, 2003)
  The play follows father Quang Nguyen and his son Troung and the generation gap that divides them. Told through the background of Martial Arts, the story explores topics such as the search for Identity and the nature of family.
• Stained Glass Ugly (Vampire Cowboy Theatre, 2003)
  In his Stained Glass Ugly Qui Nguyen asks the question, “Would you still love me if I was ugly?” Adam is horribly disfigured … and recently engaged. Over its one-act length, …Ugly examines Adam’s relationship with his fiancee, Madison and whether the relationship is strong enough to survive one of them becoming grotesquely deformed.
• Trial by Water (2003)
  Trial By Water is the odyssey of two teenage brothers forced to flee Vietnam in the middle of the night by boat. When the ship’s engine breaks down, their dreams of a better life are suddenly shattered by the nightmare of being stranded out at sea. With each day passing without any sign of rescue, each brother must confront his own issues of mortality and morality when faced with unthinkable acts of survival.
• A Beginner’s Guide to Deicide (Vampire Cowboy Theatre, 2005)
• Living Dead in Denmark (Vampire Cowboy Theatre, 2006)
  The action adventure sequel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet following the quest of a resurrected Ophelia, Lady MacBeth, and Juliet as they try to save Denmark from an impending zombie invasion.
• Men of Steel (Vampire Cowboys, 2007)
  Three interwoven tales of people with superpowers including the downfall of America’s beloved Captain Justice, the adventures of Brooklyn’s Los Hermanos Manos, and the tragic tale of an indestructible man, that ultimately collide inside the walls of a maximum security prison. A superhero story for adults.
• Blood in America (2g, 2008)
  Hung Tran has finally made it to America after a tumultuous escape from Vietnam that cost the lives of both his parents and his brother. Now living with his Aunt and rebellious cousin in the state of Arkansas, Hung must learn to adapt to a new life filled with southern drawls, trailer parks, and Super Mario Brothers while being haunted by the sins of his past.
• Fight Girl Battle World (Vampire Cowboys, 2008)
  E-V, the last human female in all the known galaxies, along with the help of her rag-tag team of an ex-military general, a feisty spaceship pilot, and one very sarcastic robot sidekick, quests to find the last human male before he is destroyed by alien forces.
• Soul Samurai (Vampire Cowboys/Ma-Yi, 2009)
  A show about a young samurai girl and her fight through the mean streets of Brooklyn wow’d crowds and sold out houses. Once again mixing Vampire Cowboys award-winning blend of stage combat, puppetry, and multi-media, the undead wranglers and NYC’s favorite Asian American theatre company created a post-apocalyptic vision of NYC filled with hip-hop, jive, vampires, and samurai that had folks cheering and coming back for more.
• Alice in Slasherland (Vampire Cowboys, 2010)
  Alice in Slasherland, a slasher comedy about a teenage fanboy who accidentally opens a gateway into hell by resurrecting the soul of a brutally slain girl named Alice.
• Begets: Fall of a High School Ronin ()
  Geekgurl Emi Edwards is righter of wrongs, the slayer of her school’s cruel shoguns. But, as she journeys to dethrone each clique leader, will her own cravings for popularity and power corrupt her quest to establish a new world order? An action-packed samurai story set inside the halls of an all-American high school. Begets: Fall of a High School Ronin explores whether violence always begets more violence.
• The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G (Vampire Cowboys 2010)
  When playwright Qui Nguyen refuses to finish his “Gook Story Trilogy”, his main character kidnaps him and forces him to pen the story he’s been avoiding 10 years to finish in this hysterical metatheatrical ride filled with racist puppets, ninjas, and one very angry David Henry Hwang!
• Krunk Fu Battle Battle (East West Players, 2011)
  When young Norman Lee accidentally offends the most notorious b-boy in Brooklyn’s Chinatown, he finds himself in an all-out dance battle competition that will decide his fate as either a ballah or just straight-up busted. Along with his fast-talking sidekick Wingnut and his street-tough crush Sweet Cindy Chang, Norman must now learn how to groove or die trying. Originally commissioned by East West Players. Book by Qui Nguyen, Lyrics by Beau Sia, and music by Marc Macalintal.
• WAR IS F**KING AWESOME (2012)
  A politically incorrect action-comedy following the adventures of Unity Spencer, a young colonial girl who has been imbued with Native American powers to defend the US against all enemies. Used as the America’s secret weapon, she finds herself fighting in every American conflict from the American Revolution to present day and onward.
• She Kills Monsters (2013)
  Average Agnes is finally leaving her childhood home following the death of her sister Tilly. However when she stumbles upon Tilly’s Dungeons & Dragons notebook, Agnes embarks on an action-packed adventure to discover more about her geeky sibling than she previously cared to know. A heartwarming comedy about loss, bullies, and dragons!
• Six Rounds of Vengeance (Vampire Cowboys, 2015)
  In a post-apocalyptic “Lost Vegas”, an ex-lawman enlists the help of a young swordstress and her cursed strongman to help avenge the murder of his lover. However the gang they’ll be going against has powers that go way beyond just gunpowder and steel. To get revenge, they may have to become just as blood-thirsty as the monsters they’re facing. A sideways sequel the Vampire Cowboys’ critically acclaimed and fan favorite show SOUL SAMURAI
• Vietgone (South Coast Repertory, 2015)
  In a Vietnamese refugee camp in the middle of Arkansas, a man (who plans to catch a plane to Guam and hop a boat back to Vietnam) meets a woman (who doesn’t like greasy American food and listening to Elvis, but knows when there’s no home to go back to) and an unlikely romance begins. Using his hip-hop, comic-book style that Variety calls “infectious fun”—and skipping back and forth from the fall of Saigon to the here and now—Qui Nguyen gets up close and personal to tell the story that led to … Qui Nguyen.
• Poor Yella Rednecks (South Coast, 2018)
  Shadows of their Vietnamese homeland haunt Tong and Quang’s attempts to settle in a foreign world called Arkansas. Married life is hard, especially for refugees and even harder when it turns out your first marriage isnâ’t over. An irreverent hip-hop take on the immigrant story.
• Revenge Song: A Vampire Cowboys Creation (Geffen Playhouse, 2020)
  A rousing, romping, music-filled look at the real life of Julie d’Aubigny, a queer 17th century French swordswoman and opera singer, Revenge Song is a heroine’s journey toward self-discovery and acceptance. In this world premiere Geffen Playhouse commission, conversations about gender and sexuality blend together with the outrageous fun and superhero style of the Vampire Cowboys to create a genre unto itself—a hilarious, historical comedy with epic fight scenes and a punk rock attitude.

Nhan, Ngo Thanh

• Hugging Beer Bar (Peeling, 2003)
  A married, traveling Vietnamese businessman mixes romance and capitalism at a bar where girls make a living as best they can.

Nhuong, Huynh Quang

• Dance of the Wandering Souls (1997)

Nishikawa, Lane
Nishikawa is a veteran theatre artist who served as Artistic Director of San Francisco’s Asian American Theater Company and as actor, writer, director and dramaturg for over 55 productions there for nearly two decades. Nishikawa is best known for his acclaimed solo shows exploring Asian American identity: Life in the Fast Lane, I’m On a Mission From Buddha (adapted for TV and aired on PBS), and Mifune and Me, which have toured to over 75 cities in the U.S., Europe and Canada.

He has also worked with the American Conservatory Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Repertory Theater, Old Globe Theatre of San Diego, Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, Berkeley Repertory Theater, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Repertory Theater, Northwest Asian American Theater, El Teatro Campesino, LATC and the Odyssey Theater amongst others.Nishikawa recently appeared in the national tour of Gate of Heaven, a drama that he wrote and starred in about a Nisei soldier who liberates a Jewish survivor from the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, and The Ballad of Yachiyo at the South Coast Repertory Theater. The extensive Gate of Heaven tour included a run at the U.S. National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

Nishikawa’s numerous film credits include: Wayne Wang’s Eat a Bowl of Tea, Steven Okazaki’s Living on Tokyo Time and American Sons (on PBS), and Wim Wender’s Until the End of the World. Nishikawa recently completed his first film, When We Were Warriors.

Nishikawa is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including: the Solo Performance Fellowship from the NEA, the Profiles of Excellence award from ABC-TV, and the Ruby Yoshino Schaar Playwrights and the Henry and Chiyo Kuwahara Award from the National Japanese American Citizens League. He has also been honored by the Harvard Foundation for his continued contributions to American Performing Arts and Inter-Cultural Race Relations and is the recipient of the JACCC’s Humanitarian Award. Lane Nishikawa was the first Asian American to receive an U.C. Regents Fellowship at U.C. Santa Barbara where he directed the first Asian American production on campus.

• Mifune & Me
  The title refers to Nishikawa’s admiration for Mifune, whose typical role was that of the samurai warrior – brave, fierce, awe-inspiring. Nishikawa juxtaposes Mifune as a role model for Asian American actors with the image of the Asian in the media, its stereotypes and realities. His journey provides a hilarious look at the personal sideof theater, film and television, a exploration of what it means to be an actor in America with an Asian face.
• I’m on a Mission from Buddha
• Gate of Heaven (Old Globe Theatre,1996)
  Take two WWII vets, one Jewish, one Japanese American. Mix on the battlefield in Europe. Follow the two for over forty years. The result: one moving story.
• Life in the Fast Lane ()

Nishikawa-Hirano, Miki

• Kabuki Underground (EWP 2002)
  Ghosts who love too much, an old man and his granddaughter, an alcoholic underground Kabuki actor, an agorophobe with a camera…and a Mime. Who can save them?
• Whispers (EWP 2003)
  Behind every door … a second chance.
  Between every mother and daughter … discovery.
  And in every family … an Uncle John.

Nofre, Henrietta Chico
A Los Angeles native, she is an alumnus of the East West Players‚ David Henry Hwang Writers Institute whose short stories were recently included in the anthology Going Home to a Landscape: Writing by Filipinas.

• Driving Lessons (EWP: Paper or Plastic, 1999)
• Driving in L. A. (2nd place winner, EWP’s Got Laughs, 2005)
  Driving in L.A. focuses on Gracie, a 23-year old who lives with her mother and never learned to drive, and Carlo, a five-foot-three certified driving instructor who loves wearing tight leather pants.

Ogawa, Aya

• oph3lia (HERE, 2008)
  We know what we are, but know not what we may be… Three disparate stories of displacement, inspired by Shakespeare’s character, are interwoven in this haunting and playful exploration of identity in a globalized world.

Ogawa, Ruby

• right door, left door (EWP, 2000)

Oh, Charlie
Charlie Oh is a recent graduate of The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. His work has been developed at Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, The Lark, Second Stage, The Goodman Theatre, BMI Lehmen Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, NYC Songspace, American Music Theater Project, The Brooklyn Generator, and Catwalk Writer’s Residency. His play LONG won the Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting, placed second for the Mark Twain Prize for Comedic Playwriting, and was a 2019 Honorable Mention for The American Playwriting Foundation’s Relentless Award. His play Coleman ‘72 won the Kennedy Center’s Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award. He is a winner of the Disney/NMI New Voices Project and The Craig Carnelia Songwriting Award. He currently holds a commission from Manhattan Theatre Club and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Oh is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he studied playwriting under Laura Schellhardt. Acting: The King and I directed by Bartlett Sher, All These Small Moments(Tribeca Film Festival).

• Coleman ’72 (South Coast Rep)
  Jenn, Michelle and Joey look back at the summer of 1972, when their Korean American family piled into the Buick for an All-American road trip—spontaneously orchestrated by their father. From Milwaukee to Los Angeles and back again, they hit the open plains, stocked with kimchi, banchan and lemon drops, rickety Coleman camper in tow. But Korean parents and American kids hold conflicting ideas of what they’re looking for and the real purpose of their journey comes to light.

Oh, Tony

• Fergana (EWP, 2006)
  Can faith in God survive corruption and ambition? A zealous pastor grooms his two sons to go overseas and expand his church. Five years later, the brothers reunite at their father’s funeral, trying to piece together the remains of their faith, family and themselves.

Okamura, Akemi

• Tremendous Tanaka and His Terrific Travelling Sheep (EWP, 2009)
  Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Come one, come all! Step right up and see the Tremendous Tanaka! He never leaves the safety of his store and his nose is always stuck in a book. Watch as his new assistant Keiko bravely attempts the death defying feat of trying to bring the world to him using hundreds of tiny sheep. If Tanaka won’t go to the world, then the world will come to Tanaka.

Okimoto, Jeannie

• Uncle Hideki (NWAAT, 1995)
• Uncle Hideki and the Empty Nest (React, 2005)
  Ten years have passed since we last visited the Suyama family. Helen has remarried, Rodney and Suzanne have grown, and Uncle Hideki is back for another visit in this world premiere of the amusing sequel by local playwright and bestselling children’s author, Jean Davies Okimoto.

Okinaka, Ryan

• IHula (Kumu Kahua, 2016)
  Kumu `Iwalani is trying her hardest to pass on her love for hula and the knowledge she has learned from her K?puna to her students, a task that gets harder to do to with each passing generation.
• Who You Again? (Kumu Kahua 2022)
  A family struggles to care for their matriarch as dementia slowly steals her memories away. Her grandson’s method of existing within — and adding to — the imaginative world she inhabits creates a special bond. He helps her cope with changing realities, and she gives him the gift of self-acceptance.

Okita, Dwight

• The Rainy Season (Chicago Dramatists, 1993)
  A tale of romance between Harry and Antonio…
• The Salad Bowl Dance (commissioned by the Chicago Historical Society),
  which looks at the aftermath of the Japanese American relocation camps as internees resettled in great numbers in Chicago after the war.
• Richard Speck (American Blues Theater)
  a black-comic look at the Richard Speck murders and the dangers of sleeping on a futon.

Oliver, Anthony Michael

• Theme Park (Kumu Kahua, 2002)
• Teacher, Teacher (Kumu Kahua, 2006)
  Sharon Kido is a forty-year-old, unmarried college English teacher who, as she describes it, loses her cool on the last day of class and scolds her students for being drifters, dreamers, and slobs who can’t speak, dress, or even walk properly, and have no manners, respect, goals, or plans. Gavin, one of her students, takes her words to heart and later asks her to help him change by giving him lessons over the summer. When the local-style Pygmalion process begins, the teacher-student relationship is maintained. But, as the weeks go by, the situation changes. Playwright Anthony Michael Oliver was the winner of the 2002 Kumu Kahua Theatre and University of Hawaii-Manoa Playwriting Contest Hawaii prize for his play Theme Park.

Omata, Garrett

• S.A.M. I Am (East West, 1995)
  The comedic play explores the contemporary racial politics of dating. John Hamabata, a single Asian male, seeks Jackie Shibata, a single Asian female who has a thing for white guys. To win her heart, he tries to become as white as possible. On the periphery is John’s roommate, Lohman Chin, a S.A.M. into blond S.W.F.s and Jackie’s roommate, Betty Hamabata, a S.A.F. into M.A.’s and Ph.D.s.
• Mystery Play (Deep Yellow, 1998)
  An intriguing look into the nature of faith.

O’Malley, Sean TC

• To the Last Hawaiian Soldier (Kuma Kahua, 2002)
  This drama juxtaposes the 19th Century tale of Robert Wilcox, King David Kalakaua and his sister, Queen Lili’uokalani in the days before the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy with a contemporary story about a young Hawaiian man, frustrated by a lack of progress in the sovereignty movement, who is driven to an act of terrorism, bringing to question the use of violence as a means of achieving idealistic ends.
• Wilcox’s Shot (Kumu Kahua, 2012)
  Robert Kalanihiapo Wilcox, the revolutionary-turned-politician, arrives in Washington as Hawai‘i’s first delegate to Congress in 1901. A man of action in a powerless position, Wilcox confronts some of the most famous names of the era as he grapples with his own role in shaping Hawai‘i’s future. Wilcox’s Shot dramatizes the life of one of Hawai‘i’s most fascinating historical figures, at the dawn of the 20th century.

Ong, Han

• Chang Fragments
• M
  ID
  DLE
  FINGER
  (A play in 24 scenes) (East West, 2000)
• The Suitcase Trilogy: Swoony Planet (Ma-Yi, 1997)
  Han Ong’s SWOONY PLANET is the remarkable story of immigrants searching for identity in the vast American landscape. Kirtana, a single, Indian woman, seeks out her runaway son Farouk. Jessica, a Filipina who has adjusted to life in the Midwest, aids her search, leading Kirtana to an unimaginable world no child should experience. Artie, Jessica’s son, races to find the father who abandoned him 16 years ago. Each, longing for wholeness and the chance to swoon, takes on an unforgettable, compromising journey.
• Chairs and a Long Table (Ma-Yi, 2014)
  Chairs And A Long Table follows a group of Asian American actors in New York City as they prepare to attend a conference addressing racial discrimination in the casting of a Chinese American play.

Ong, Henry
Ong was a journalist-turned-playwright who worked for several newspapers and magazines before embarking on his theatrical writing career at the University of Iowa. He is an internationally-produced playwright whose signature play and first foray into playwriting was an instant success. The one person play, Madame Mao’s Memories” is based on the life of Chairman Mao’s widow, Jiang Oing, was last seen at the Old Globe Theatre is San Diego in 1994. Ong is a member of the Dramatist Guild, the Los Angeles Stage Alliance and the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights. He is an Artistic Associate and Literary Manager of Playwrights’ Arena.

• Madame Mao’s Memories (1994)
  Based on the life of Chairman Mao’s widow.
• Fabric (1998)
  A docu-drama about the Thai garment workers’ slavery case, which was staged at the Singapore Arts Festival by the Singapore Repertory Theater in 2000.
• Odd Birds (Artists against Oppression, 1999) libretto
• Dream of the Red Chamber (2000)
  Based on the Chinese classic
• Lady White Snake and other Folk Takes ()
• People Like Me ()
• Dim Sum and Then Some (AATC, 2001)
  Twelve Minute Play
• Sweet Karma (Playwrights’ Arena, 2002)
  Based on the life and death of the Oscar-winning actor, Haing Ngor.
• The Old Lady Who Popped Out of the Sidewalk and Became A Christmas Tree (Milton School, 2003)
  A morality play about a poor man struggling to keep his family fed, and the temptation to become enormously rich when he encounters an Old Lady who pops out of the sidewalk.
• Rachel Ray (Pacific Resident Theatre, 2007)
  Set in the idyllic English countryside of Devonshire, Rachel Ray tells the story of the eponymous heroine pursued by the dashing, ambitious and persistent Luke Rowan who is at the same time battling to gain control of the local brewery. Populated by a host of unforgettable Trollopian characters, Rachel Ray could be the liveliest and most compact of dramas from the pen of that greatest of Victorian storytellers, Anthony Trollope. Adaptated by playwright Henry Ong, this may be the very first attempt at bringing the 19th century novel to the stage.
• Blade of Jealousy (2018)
  Dashing Melchor moves to Los Angeles to court his online dating connection but unexpectedly falls in love with a mysterious veiled lady (Magdalena), and she with him.  He later meets her sans veil but is unimpressed, thus igniting Magdalena’s jealousy – of herself! A farcical amalgam of disguise and deception ensues.

Ong, Warren

• Eye in the Sky (Stanford Asian American Theatre Project, 1981)

Ortega, Giovanni

• ALLOS: The Story of Carlos Bulosan (East West, 2011)
• Iyakan Blues: The Criers (East West, 2015)
  Aurora, Remedios, and Eugenia are three of the most sought-after professional criers (individuals paid to cry at funerals) in Monterey Park. They are eager to welcome Aurora’s 14-year-old daughter Ligaya (nicknamed Gaya) from the Philippines into their world and teach her their somber trade. However, they soon realize that Gaya has the opposite effect on people, making them laugh instead of cry. What ensues is a hilarious and heartwarming story of cultural identity, generational conflict, and finding home in a new country.

Otalvaro-Hormillosa, Gigi

• Cosmic Blood (AATC, 2002)
  Cosmic Blood by Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa, explores the concept of mestizaje, the Latin American and Filipino term used to describe the race mixture of Spanish and indigenous blood as a result of colonialism, from a perspective informed by history, contemporary culture and racial formation and creative, spiritual speculation about the future. By redefining mestizaje to incorporate mixed race and queer identities that take on countless forms as in the case of multicultural San Francisco, Otalvaro-Hormillosa paints a picture of the revolutionary potential for such subversive, yet fluid identities to dismantle the binaries created by colonial constructs relating to race and gender. Live sound, composed and performed by Melissa Dougherty.

Ouchi, Mikeo

• Burning Mom (fu-GEN, 2016)
  A retired suburban Calgary housewife and mother tragically loses her partner after 45 years together. So what does she do? The only thing that makes any sense at all. She goes to Burning Man.

Oyama, Sachi

• Yearnings ()
• Oyakoshinju: Deathbond
• Day Care (LATC)
  One Act
• The Painter (The Complex)
  One Act
• Boat (Deaf West)
  One Act
• Kampuchea (Barnsdall Park)
  One Act
• Homeland (Playwrights Theatre)
• Tryst (Cal Arts)
• Endangered Species (Interact)
• Gate of Heavenly Peace,
  a musical, in Burbank, California
• Poodles, a one-act commissioned by the Working theatre in New York.
• Imelda (EWP, 2005)
  Lyrics by Aaron Coleman and music by Nathan Wang. This new musical details the rise, fall and exile of the infamous Imelda Marcos using song and dance. Does the story of the First Lady of the Philippines go beyond the shoes? In this musical biography, an Imelda emerges aggressive, naïve and ultimately discovers that her husband‚s newfound power is a means to obtain everything she was once denied. Thief or political ploy? Greed or need?