| Photo collage via Ma-Yi Writers Lab
NEW YORK [UPDATE-Feb. 17) – Seven new playwrights have joined the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, the largest collective of AAPI playwrights in the country, Ma-Yi Theater Company has announced. Participants include Nina Ki, Roger Q. Mason, Claro de los Reyes, ayla xuân chi sullivan, Gaven D. Trinidad, Seayoung Yim, and Max Yu. Trinidad is with Kalina Ko and current Ma-Yi Writers Lab member Kimber Lee and will serve as co-coordinators.
Founded in 2004 by Sung Rno in connection with the TCG/NEA residency program, the Ma-Yi Writers Lab is a professional peer-based workshop in permanent residence at Ma-Yi, designed to nurture and showcase Asian-American playwrights across the country. It is unique for its peer-to-peer format and how it leverages its collective AAPI brain trust in creating a space where writers do not have to explain themselves.
Michi Barall, Hansol Jung, Kimber Lee, Michael Lew, Rehana Lew Mirza, Qui Nguyen, Jiehae Park, Nandita Shenoy, Lloyd Suh, and Lauren Yee, to name a few, are members of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab. Collectively, the Lab has altered the face of Asian American Theater with works that break stereotypes and redraw boundaries for what is considered culturally specific theater.
Ma-Yi Theater is committed to providing the Writers Lab with rehearsal facilities and development support for workshops and readings. The playwright, it said, is at the center of this process, driving all aspects of development.
Additionally, Ma-Yi played host to an Anti-Asian Violence Forum following the 2 pm performance on February 4 of Hansol Jung’s Wolf Play, which is enjoying an encore engagement at MCC Theater through March 5. New York State Assemblymember Ron Kim Historian Minju Bae broke down the themes within Wolf Play and how they correlate to our understanding of Korean diasporic history today.
Since its founding in 1989, Ma-Yi Theater Company has distinguished itself as one of the country’s leading incubators of new work shaping the national discourse about what it means to be Asian American today. Its numerous acclaimed productions include Mike Lew’s Teenage Dick and Bike America, Qui Nguyen’s The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G and Soul Samurai (with Vampire Cowboys), and Hansol Jung’s Among The Dead. Other productions include: Rescue Me by Michi Barall, Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady, and Lonnie Carter’s The Romance of Magno Rubio.
Ma-Yi’s productions have earned 10 Obie Awards, 5 Henry Hewes Award nominations, a Drama Desk nomination for Best Play, and the Special Drama Desk Award for “more than two decades of excellence and for nurturing Asian-American voices in stylistically varied and engaging theater.”
Ma-Yi Theater is under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Ralph B. Peña.
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UPDATE -Changes [February 17]
In the first paragraph, Kalina Ko deleted and added Roger Q. Mason. The final sentence of the first graph, “Trinidad is with Kalina Ko, and current Ma-Yi Writers Lab member Kimber Lee will serve as co-coordinators. Photo collage replaced.
