World Premiere of ONCE UPON A (KOREAN) TIME & More Announced for New Ma-Yi Theater Programming

Ma-Yi Theater Company - which recently celebrated a return to in-person events with the four-time Lortel nominated production of Lloyd Suh's The Chinese Lady at The Public Theater - has announced additional programming running May 1-September 18, 2022. The events strengthen Ma-Yi's role in leading the national discourse about what it means to be Asian American today and highlights its commitment to the development of new work and adventurous artists.

In celebration of AAPI Heritage Month and running May 1-31, Ma-Yi will rebroadcast two digital works including the award-winning puppet play Vancouver, which centers on a mixed-race family who relocate from Japan to the Pacific Northwest. Written and directed by Ma-Yi Producing Artistic Director Ralph B. Peña and created in collaboration with puppetry director Tom Lee, Vancouver confronts anti-Asian aggressions through the experiences of one family hoping to find more stability. Vancouver has received numerous awards for Best Short, Best Score, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Art Direction at various international film festivals including New Creators, Indie Short Fest, International Motion Picture Awards, and South Film and Arts Academy Festival, to name a few.

Produced by Ma-Yi, The First Twenty: 20 Years of Asian American Playwriting, a 30-minute documentary film that showcases the evolution of the Asian American playwright over the last 20 years, will rebroadcast on ALL ARTS from May 1-31. Created and directed by Ralph B. Peña, the documentary takes a close look at the shift in how Asian American plays are broadly perceived, as well as the widening scope of subjects tackled by Asian American writers that move far beyond identity politics. Interview subjects include David Henry Hwang, Young Jean Lee, Qui Nguyen, Lloyd Suh, Mike Lew, Rehana Lew Mirza, Lauren Yee, and Chay Yew.

On June 26 and 27, Ma-Yi will work with 2g to produce Short Stack PLAYFEST. A short-play festival consisting of playwrights from all ranges of career levels matched with directors and actors to present two nights of their comedic five-minute works.

Ma-Yi has also announced the world premiere of Daniel K. Isaac's ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME. Mixing traditional Korean fables with the horrors of the Korean War, Isaac's new play, running August 23-September 18 at La MaMa, is a funny and deeply moving analog for the experiences of the Korean American diaspora. Isaac deftly moves his characters through time, tracing the legacies of trauma that are passed from one generation to the next, and the various coping mechanisms each one uses to soldier on.

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. Please visit www.ma-yitheatre.org and for more information.

Ma-Yi Theater Company

Founded in 1989, Ma-Yi Theater Company is a Drama Desk, Lortel, and Obie Award-winning, Off-Broadway not-for-profit organization whose primary mission is to develop and produce new and innovative plays by Asian American writers.

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.

The Ma-Yi Writers Lab, a signature program founded in 2004, is the largest resident company of Asian-American Playwrights ever assembled. The Lab emboldens a new generation of Asian American artists to voice their experiences, while developing a steady stream of quality new works by Asian American Playwrights for Ma-Yi's own performing repertory. New works developed at the Writers Lab have gone on to successful productions around the country, at such theaters as Victory Gardens, Laguna Playhouse, Long Wharf Theater, Woolly Mammoth and the Actors Theater of Louisville, to name a few.

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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