Erin Mackey to Lead Reading of Christine Toy Johnson's PAPER SON at Guthrie Theater

A reading of PAPER SON, a play written and directed by Christine Toy Johnson (currently playing "Bloody Mary" in SOUTH PACIFIC at the Guthrie Theater), will be presented on Monday, August 8 at 7 pm in the Guthrie's Kitchak Lounge, 818 S. 2nd Street, Level 3, Minneapolis, MN.

Featured are Erin Mackey (currently playing "Nellie Forbush" in the Guthrie's SOUTH PACIFIC), Katie Bradley (currently playing "Bloody Mary's Assistant" in the Guthrie's SOUTH PACIFIC), Randy Reyes (artistic director of Mu Performing Arts) and Eric "Pogi" Sumangil (Mu Performing Arts' TOT).

A conversation with Erika Lee, Professor of American History, Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota and award-winning author of THE MAKING OF ASIAN AMERICA, will follow the reading.

Inquiries about the few remaining tickets available can be made by emailing info@reimaginedworldentertainment.com. Admission is free.

PAPER SON is about a young Chinese man who tries to balance his American identity with his family's immigrant journey. It's 1952, and when he meets his match in an American-born-Chinese girl, romance and new questions about the name he lost in his secretly illegal immigration follow. Inspired by the playwright's father's own story.

This is the first time that Johnson and Lee, who are first cousins, are collaborating on an event together. The reading also coincides with the publication of the play on Indie Theater Now, a "digital library for the 21st Century" whose purpose is" to call attention to worthy new work and to promote new productions of this work, and other work by the playwrights, in New York City, around the country, and around the world."

Christine Toy Johnson is an award-winning writer, actor, director and advocate for inclusion. Her plays and musicals have been developed and produced at such places as the Roundabout Theatre Company, Village Theatre, Crossroads Theatre, The Barrow Group, Prospect Theater Company, CAP21, The Weston Playhouse, Gorilla Rep, and Leviathan Lab. A collection of her written work is included in the Library of Congress Asian Pacific American Performing Arts Collection. Proud member: Dramatists Guild Council, Actors' Equity Association Council, Asian American Composers & Lyricists Project (Founder), BMI (alum). She was honored by the JACL (the nation's largest and oldest Asian American civil rights organization) in 2010 for "exemplary leadership and dedication", the "Wai Look Award for Service in the Arts" from the Asian American Arts Alliance in 2012, and the Rosetta LeNoire Award for "outstanding contributions to the universality of the human spirit" from Actors' Equity Association, in 2013. www.christinetoyjohnson.com.

ERIKA LEE teaches American history at the University of Minnesota, where she also directs the Immigration History Research Center. The granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, her award-winning books include At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 and Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America (co-authored with Judy Yung). Lee's new book, The Making of Asian America: A History (September, 2015), a new history of the fastest-growing group in the United States timed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Immigration Act, has already received starred reviews from Library Journal and Kirkus Review, which calls it "a powerful, timely story told with method and dignity." Erika has been the recipient of numerous national awards, including best book awards from the San Francisco Chronicle, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, the Association for Asian American Studies, the American Librarians Association, and the Western Historical Association. In 2015, she received the Immigrant Heritage Award from the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation.

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