ONG WINS FOURTH CULTURAL AFFAIRS GRANT TO WRITE PLAY ON HAING NGOR, OSCAR-WINNING ACTOR OF THE KILLING FIELDS

Playwright Henry Ong, author of Madame Mao’s Memories, has received his fourth City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department grant for the year 2000-2001. The grant is to research, write and present two performances of a play based on the life of Haing Ngor, the Oscar-winning actor of the Killing Fields. Ngor survived the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, only to succumb to gang violence in Los Angeles in 1996.

Ong’s first grant from Cultural Affairs in 1992 was to present his internationally produced play, Madame Mao’s Memories to underserved students in Los Angeles. In 1996, he received his second grant to collect the oral histories of gay and lesbian teenagers in Los Angeles. The resulting play, People Like Me,”= was produced at Playwrights’ Arena and won Ong a DramaLogue award for excellence in writing.

In 1998, Ong wrote and presented a play about the Thai garment workers slavery case, Fabric, also on a Cultural Affairs grant. The play was produced by Singapore Repertory Theatre in Singapore at the Singapore Arts Festival the following year. Last year, Fabric was mounted by Nomad Theatre in Surrey, England from November 21 to 26.

“I am grateful to Cultural Affairs for giving me the means to write about the life of a local hero and a humanitarian whose story is very much about our people and our diversity,” Ong said.

Ong was commissioned by the Library Foundation of the Los Angeles Public Library to adapt a six-hour stage adaptation of the Chinese classic, Dream of the Red Chamber. Two staged readings were held at the Mark Taper Auditorium in Central Library in May and June of 2000, in conjunction with “Visible Traces,” a National Library of China exhibit of rare books and special collections. Ong’s play is the only known English language stage adaptation.