Ma-Yi Studios is Now Available for Rentals

Following a two-month opening period, Ma-Yi Theater Company has announced that Ma-Yi Studios, the Company's digital streaming center and live capture studio, is now available for rentals. Equipped with state-of-the-art recording devices and strict social distancing and safety guidelines, Ma-Yi Studios empowers playwrights, directors, and actors to envision and produce a new kind of online theater. With live performance venues across New York City closed, Ma-Yi Studios deepens Ma-Yi's commitment to artists and craftspeople by enabling theater artists to produce new work for the screen. "We always intended to make the studio available to our artists and colleagues as a resource to help them make work," says Ma-Yi's Board Member Jorge Ortoll. A digital tour of Ma-Yi Studios is available here.

Ma-Yi Studios aims to be a home for artists across New York struggling to create high-quality digital theater. Affordable rental packages include a complete audio, visual, and lighting bundle; a suite of editing tools and computers, a technician; personal protective equipment; and the ability to both digitally capture or live-stream events. Ma-Yi Studios follows the strictest of safety protocols including overnight UV air scrubbers, commercial-grade air purifiers, and activated carbon filtered air conditioning.

Since opening in August 2020, Ma-Yi Studios has already produced several online projects including "Second Home Owners," a 4-minute parody that centers on the struggles of second-home owners and the pain they quietly endure. Directed by Ralph B. Peña, the cast includes Jon Hoche, Jennifer Ikeda, Alfredo Narciso, and Ching Valdes-Aran. Ma-Yi Studios also produced "Pinoy Street Dancers," a 15-minute documentary that spotlights Angelo Caraan and Michael Sales, two young Filipino American dancers who have each charted different paths to pursue their passion for street dance.

The online home of Ma-Yi Studios, ma-yistudios.com, has also served as the streaming platform for Ma-Yi's 2020-2021 season and has hosted works of digital theater by like-minded artists. First up was "Sophocles in Staten Island" by Obie award-winning, Ma-Yi affiliated artist Ron Domingo. It centers on a Filipino-American family quarantined in Staten Island who, thanks to an overbearing homeschool father, decides to make a film of Oedipus Rex and Antigone that will surely impress the College Board. The project was critically-acclaimed in both The New York Times and Vulture.

Ma-Yi is currently broadcasting "A Divergent Waw: Songs for the Pandemic," a collaboration between longtime Ma-Yi affiliated artists lyricist Joi Barrios and composer Fabian Obispo. This series of five original songs in Filipino (with English translations) are a response to the crises brought upon the people of the Philippines by the COVID-19 pandemic. Each song takes a unique perspective on the effects of the Philippine Government's Enhanced Community Quarantine, a draconian measure meant to stem the spread of the coronavirus that forcibly locked people in their homes for months with little access to basic necessities.

"When the coronavirus pandemic first broke out in Asia and Europe, I knew it had the potential to wreak havoc in the U.S.," says Ralph B. Peña, Ma-Yi's Producing Artistic Director. "When the government shut down on March 12 forcing Ma-Yi to cancel two-thirds of our 30th anniversary season, my fears were confirmed, and I began to think of ways we could continue to work. That was how the idea for Ma-Yi Studios came about. Artists were going to be out of work, and we had to find a way to create employment opportunities for them.

"Ma-Yi Theater Company was founded because we didn't want other people to solve our problems. It's the same impetus that animates Ma-Yi Studios. Some will say this is not theater, or it's contributing to the demise of the art form. We have to set aside that kind of existential pearl clutching to focus on employing artists and craftspeople. First, let's give them work, the artistry will follow. Our instinct to secure the means of production and distribution comes from knowing that artists and communities of color are historically left out of institutional responses to crises. We want to return the power to create and disseminate back into the hands of artists. What might happen if we had fewer obstacles, fewer gatekeepers? That is a proposition worth exploring."

Ma-Yi is one of the leading incubators of new work shaping the national discourse about what it means to be Asian American today. Immediately following the outbreak of the coronavirus, Ma-Yi quickly embarked on a bold plan to transform the company's midtown rehearsal space into Ma-Yi Studios. The six-figure renovation was supported by lead funding from The New York Community Trust.

Please visit ma-yistudios.com for more information.

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